Moving fast despite her wounds, Shiloh limped-ran, taking shelter behind a remaining corner of the cabin. She carried a vamp-killer in her off hand, its little strap around her wrist so she could release it, and a silver-lead-loaded nine-mil in her right. Dropping the blade, she steadied her aim and squeezed off a shot at the wolf savaging Fred’s leg. He yelped and let go, snapping at his own flank.
Shiloh shifted aim to Kang. The vamp and were-bitch were gone.
Fred gutted the dangling wolf. The vamp seemed to like the gutting move, effective in close-in work with werewolves. Fred took its head. Staggered. Fell to her butt. She shot the wolf Shiloh had injured. It flopped to the ground, keening. Fred began to apply a homemade tourniquet to her leg.
Stepping over entrails, Shiloh took the last two heads. The wolf killed by magic was like hacking through a salt block. Crystalized blood and flesh.Cool.
She was breathing heavily, a human reaction to the explosion, battle, and using magic she had forgotten. Magic and battle, together with vengeance, satisfied and soothed the razors.
The smell of vamp blood was as strong on the air as the wolf entrails. Fred was injured. Shiloh was still seeing stars. Mi-sook…
“How many?” Fred gasped. She jerked the tourniquet tight around her leg.
“Three wolves dead here, fourth one dead in the woods, that way, the first one dead that way”—Shiloh pointed in different directions—“one injured and MIA, and Kang, working with the bitch.” She fell to one knee and checked Mi-sook. The vamp had lost part of both arms and was bleeding slowly from a massivehead wound. Shiloh wasn’t sure any vamp could fully heal from either, and Shiloh had no idea if she would still be the Mi-sook she had been. But the vamp wasn’t true-dead, so there was that.
“I swallowed my snuff,” Fred groused.
Shiloh bit off a cackle.
“That shit plays hell on a vamp’s digestion,” Fred said. She nodded at Mi-sook. “Close her wounds.”
Vamp saliva clotted blood and constricted blood vessels. Trying not to gag, she licked Mi-sook’s bleeding wounds until they closed, all but her skull. Shiloh wasn’t a zombie; brains held no appeal. Remembering thehealingamulets, she pulled the charms from her pocket and stuck three into the blood pooled in Mi-sook’s throat, against her skin, activating them before tucking them into Mi-sook’s various wounds. Tossed the fourth to Fred, and stuck the last inside her own thigh wound. Instantly, her blood clotted. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but whatever.
Her armor was tattered. But she had weapons and ammo. And magic.
Shiloh scanned her surroundings, still testing her ankle. Broken. “We tracking Kang and the were-bitch?”
“Hell, no. I’m taking Mi-sook to the nearest cell signal for exfil.” Fred thumbed at the wide end of the valley and the city lights. “You can come with, or you can track. Don’t care. I got indigestion from the snuff and I’m outta here.” She tossed Shiloh the trank gun.
Tranks didn’t work instantaneously. The only amulet Shiloh had left was ahedgeworking: easy to activate, and she could invert it into a prison cell, areverse hedge. The razor sensation in her veins was an indistinct itch. It wanted to track and fight and use her magic. But chasing a wounded werewolf, a were-bitch, and a vamp alone, with a broken ankle and a concussion, wasstupid. She had the spins and couldn’t remember the working she had used on the wolf. She hadn’t fed. Starvation and blood loss slowed healing, speed, and judgment.
She sat and held her booted foot to Fred. “You know how to set ankle bones?”
“Usually didn’t bother when I was a farmer. Just shot and ate the critter.”
“I’d probably give you farts. How about you jerk my foot and see if it sets?”
Fred grabbed Shiloh’s boot. Yanked. Nearly whipped Shiloh into the smoking cabin ruins.
She skidded into the charred logs and rotated to avoid staking herself on splintered wood. “Son of a witch,” she groaned.
Fred snorted with amusement.
Shiloh tried the ankle and it bore her weight. Vamps healed fast. Faster if they got vamp blood. She had taken a taste of Mi-sook’s while closing the other vamp’s wounds, but the sip hadn’t healed her.
Fred was going to need all of her supply when Mi-sook woke, hungry and deranged, batshit crazy, as injured vamps did.
“I’ll pile the trophies and help get Mi-sook to safety,” Shiloh decided. She piled heads and bodies, and took pics in case something carted them off before they could be retrieved for bounty.
With Shiloh at their six, Fred hefted Mi-sook’s blood-soaked body and strode along the footpath. The moon had set. It was dark, even vamped-out. The faint grind of their feet on the dirt was the only sound. It was too quiet.
Halfway to the distant city lights, Shiloh heard a twig snap.
“Run,” Shiloh said.
Fred, limping, took off for the horizon and that cell signal, Mi-sook bouncing. Shiloh hoped Mi-sook’s brains stayed in place.
A white wolf lunged from the dark. Shiloh shot the bitch.
