The team scrambled back outside. Fast. Leaping over the remains of the door.
Cameras juddered with the motion.
My heart raised into my throat like the fist of death. Unmoving. Cold.
One camera looked back. Bruiser’s camera as he dove through the door. Stumbled.
A massive boom sounded. Comms audio caught part of it. Went to static.
The place imploded.
***
Night had fallen. Three of our people had been sent to Tulane Medical Center with concussive injuries. Bruiser was one of the injured. And no one would tell me how bad, except that he was unconscious and bleeding. A trip wire had been at the base of the door, and Bruiser had triggered it on the way out. He’d caught the blast.
I was not allowed to go to Tulane, for fear my presence would call down an attack on the hospital. Instead, Florence had been escorted there to help them heal, the Infermieri under heavy guard.
Useless. I wasuseless. When Bruiser’s cam went blank, I had unexpectedly shifted to a super-furry half-form. In utter agony.
I had justshifted. Out of control. Fast. Too freaking fast. That need to fight, to do something,anything, driving the shift. It was the kind of shift I had once done automatically when my body was dying. Maybe I was getting that gift back, not that it helped Bruiser. Even in half-form I could do nothing to help. I paced the floor around the big security room table, my claws out, damaging the floor. Ripping into it. Because I had to hurt something, damage something. I was angry, so angry that it leaked out of my pores, scented my breath. My eyes glowed a gold so bright that I could see the shine myself.
Bruiser...
Koun stood across the table from me, watching me pace, deeply focused on my every move. His face was kind. Which made me want to claw him. He was holding his cell phone, as if he had made a call. While Bruiser was dying, he had...made a call. I growled.
Gee appeared at Koun’s side. Not coming through the door. He just appeared. Magic act.
“My Queen,” Gee said, his tone slithery as a snake, mesmerizing, insulting. “You are weak. You are... what do the humans of today call it? A waste of air.”
I stopped. My pulse pounded. My breath came in a low growl. “What did you say?”
Gee—delicate, diminutive Gee DiMercy—tossed me two staves. My wooden practice staves. I caught them from the air, my hands finding the shaped hilts by instinct. “You are weak,” he said. “Wanting. Without use—”
I dove across the table and attacked. Wood staves raised. But he was gone in the same instant. I had no one to kill.
“I believe the Mercy Blade is in the gym,” Koun said, his voice disconcertingly calm.
I moved.Fastfastfast. Out the door, along the hallways.Le breloqueclamped itself onto my head. My crown. Useless piece of metal. I ripped the gym doors open with such force they dented the walls when they hit. I screamed. Puma cat challenge. Beast challenge.“Kill!”I screamed.
Gee DiMercy stood in the center of a fighting circle. The lights were on and bright. I took a breath, my nostrils fluttering. Smelling the Everharts. Angie, EJ, Molly. But they weren’t here. They had left. Smelling vamps. Dozens of vamps. They stood along the walls. Watching. Waiting.
Gee tapped the mat at his feet. It was a slow tap, a single insolent gesture, as if he called me to him like a pet.
I screamed again. And I attacked.
Wood staves clicked and clacked, rose and fell. Gee defended. My long stave swept his staves up and away in a long circle. Again. Again. I stepped inside his guard. My short stave thrust, thrust,thrust. Advancing with each kill strike. Backing Gee off the mat. My thrusts and cuts perfect. Each one a killing strike. Each one dragging a grunt from Gee.
I stabbed him over and over. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Felt but ignored the return thrusts that made it through my defenses. Some of them kill strikes as well. Pain buried beneath the anger of being useless.Useless. Faster than I had ever moved.
I wanted him dead. Dead and rotting. He backed intothe gym wall. I stabbed him in the solar plexus with all my might. He dropped to the floor. I whirled and screamed. The rage echoed off the walls.
“Next,” a calm voice said.
A vamp I knew stepped up to me. What was her name? I didn’t care. With two strikes she was down. Bleeding across her forehead where I’d rattled her brains.
“Next,” the voice said again.
A male vamp stepped up. Before he could raise his weapons, I ended him with a move that would have disemboweled him had I been holding steel.
