“Ant Jane!” She pulled her hands free and slapped me again.
I jerked my head back, banging it on the gym wall. “Okay. Lachish and Soledad.” Lachish was in the null prison, here in NOLA. Soledad was in the estate house and it was heck and gone from here. “How do you know Soledad?”
“We talk all the time. In the betweens. It’s gonna happen soon.” Angie wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly.
I looked at Koun, who had the weirdest look on his face. Soft and... sweet. It freaked me out. “Get Alex to warn Lachish and the new security team at the null prison and at the estate where Soledad stays. Full alert. No mercy. Then send them all reinforcements.”
“Yes, My Queen.”
I pushed up from the floor, taking Angie with me. There were vamps everywhere. Staring at me. The memory slammed back into my head.Grégoire. Holy crap. I had tried to kill Grégoire. And he had let me try. I looked back at the floor and the place where I had fallen. There was blood. Like, a lot of blood. It was smeared along the floor to the wall where I had been sitting, showing that someone had dragged their queen to the side. Grégoire had hurt me. Bad. Maybe mortally. On purpose. He had goaded me into... into fighting with all I had and all I was. And he had killed me. To make me use my combined powers to shift. I had shifted and healed.Holy crap on crackers with toe jam.
He knew I had already been drawing on my Dark Queen magic and my skinwalker magic when I was fighting. He had recognized that I was using the merged magics together, as one weapon, one tool. And he had killed me. On purpose?
No. I remembered the death strike. I had expected it to be from the left and it had come from the right. I had turned into the cut and it had sliced through my side, at the bottom of my rib cage, all the way to my midline. A death strike I should have blocked.
Using all my magics together, I had shifted like I used to.
I touchedle breloque. It was still hot. My scalp and forehead were blistered.
My eyes swept the room, finding my warlord, Leo, and Edmund gone.
Carrying my goddaughter—who weighed a ton—I headed for the gym doors, Koun on my heels. The doors were opened by my security team, vamps moving fast, eyes lowered, deference in their stances.
Holy crap.They were scared of me. As if I really did beat Grégoire, the best swordsman on two continents. I thought back to the fight.
“Well. Dang,” I muttered. I actually did.
I strode through the halls of HQ and to the rooms set aside for the witches in an increasingly crowded building. A very bloody Angie on my shoulder, I tapped on the door and Molly answered, still half asleep.
“She’s not hurt,” I said as Molly came awake fast.
“Son of a witch on a switch. How’d she get by me this time?”
“Beats me,” I said, “but when she starts dating, you are screwed.”
Molly took her daughter and glared at her. “I’ll end up a gramma by the time she’s fifteen and Big Evan will be in jail for killing the father.”
“Angie, tell your mother what you told me.”
Angie looked down, her lips pressed tight. Molly shook her, very slightly. “Angie?”
Angelina heaved a deep breath. “Fine. Miss Lachish and Miss Soledad are about to be in trouble and Ant Jane has to save them.”
Molly closed her eyes and enfolded Angie against her. She met my gaze and murmured the word, “Seer?” She was asking if her daughter was growing into a prophet.
I said, “We are what we are, Molly. All of us. It’s controlling the darkness and the light that makes us saints or devils. And, as to her warning, Alex already sent out teams and alerts.”
Molly closed the door.
“My Master,” a gentle voice said. I looked down and into the eyes of Edmund, the Emperor of Europe and my primo.
Crap. I threw my arms around him, half-form strong.
He grunted.
The coronation was tomorrow night. Or the one after. My days were all mixed up. But now I knew why the halls were so crowded—visiting vamps were safer here than any place in the city. So my clan home, while fully prepped for company, was home to Santiago and not many others. My mouth formed the wordEd, but no sound emerged.
Edmund was here. And I hadn’t killed Grégoire. And I had shifted when Blondie killed me. No one had died in Barataria. Bruiser was coming home to me. All was right with the world, or would be when Mainet was dead.
