I heard them, moving fast, knowing that it was one of my enemies. “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo,” I muttered, readjusting my grip on the vamp-killer.
On the wind, I smelled Molly’s magic, cued by fear and by addiction. My body tightened. “Evan. Play that disruptive melody. Now!”
A blast hit the house again. It wasn’t the magic of an air witch. It was something else, something darker and bloodier, icy air and heated magic, smelling of sage and burned hair. Candles in the office lit, brightening the room. So did the gas logs in the parlor, a whoosh before everything went dark again. Eli cursed and I knew he had lost his low-light vision in the burst of light. The air went still. Evan began to play.
I heard the sound of footsteps. They were inside. This was not good.
I said, as conversationally as I could manage, “The Enforcer of New Orleans is on the premises.” Which was so not scary. “Withdraw. Or suffer the consequences,” I added. Could I do a hot C-grade movie line or what?
In the office the melody became discordant, a flute played by an air witch with a gift for undoing spells.
The next seconds were overlaid, like images seen beneath fireworks, broken and disjointed. From the doorway, a burst of magic hit, lighting everything—smelling of burned hair. Out of the bright, a form leaped at me through the doorway, vamp-fast, a flash of bright scarlet red. Diving at my throat. I fired a single round. Silver shot. Caught her midbelly. A split instant later, to keep from shooting off my own hand, I lifted the vamp-killer. Brought the weapon in hard. Dark fell again, taking my vision with it.
I was body-slammed. I smelled Adrianna as she rode me down. I kicked out and up, catching her abdomen, my foot sinking into the shotgun wound there, flipping her over me. She held on, knocking us into a back somersault. Momentum pulled at me. I flipped her over me into the wall. Rolled to my knees. Not fast enough. She tackled me, knocking me to the floor. I tried to roll up, but she crawled up my body, vamp-fast. I smelled burning vamp flesh and boiling vamp blood from the silver shot as fangs tore into my right shoulder, going for maximum damage, tearing. I lost the M4, heard it clatter to the floor, my arm instantly numb. No pain yet, just hot blood. With my left arm, I stabbed up. Feeling the rubbery resistance of flesh. She screamed, the ululating wail of vamps dying, heard even over the deafness from the shotgun blast. I dug up with the blade, buried to the hilt. Cold blood flooded over my hand, across my body. Mixing with my own.
A burst of the light-magic lit the room, the burned hair smell gagging. Adrianna yanked her fangs out of my shoulder. Her eyes were vamped-out, lips snarling back from extended fangs.
Adrianna was supposed to be in custody with Gee DiMercy.
My blade was buried in her gut, and I angled it higher, aiming for the heart. Her blood was slippery, almost oily, and the hilt slid in my grasp.
“Stop or he is dead.”
The lamps came back on, bright after the black-night fighting. I blinked against the glare. Jack Shoffru stood in the opening to Katie’s Ladies, Eli against his chest. Blood was everywhere, cascading over my partner. Not arterial. But too much. Shoffru’s fingers were around Eli’s neck, the talons buried in the flesh. Eli was human. He would die. And there would be no bringing him back. Images flashed through me of Eli dead, flesh pasty white. Of Eli in a coffin.
I released the hilt of the blade buried in Adrianna.
She hissed, bloody mouth open like a cat. Lifted herself off me and stumbled into the corner, against the wall. Away from the office and the sofa that hid Bliss and Rachael. I was happy to see my blade still buried in her, the hilt in her right side, where her liver had been when she was human. The point tented her clothes on her left side, poking through between her ribs, under her arm. I had missed her heart, the thrust too low, but I smelled scorching blood, the silver on the blade burning her. Poisoning her. Though not fast enough. I remembered my words to her at the gather. “Hello, dead woman. I’ll have your blood on my hands soon.” I’d been right.
I reached across my body and lifted my own hand. Pulled my damaged arm to me, feeling/hearing broken bones grate against each other. My breath was fast and shallow, my heart sprinting. But no blood spurted. It just ran down my arm and off my fingertips. The pain was already starting, a throbbing, distant gong echoing through me, like a great bell of pain, gathering and building, but still distant. I set my face in emotionless lines as I tucked the numb hand into my waistband. It was cold and bloody. I needed to shift. Beast? I asked. She didn’t answer, but I felt the skin beneath my fingers ripple and bristle. Pelt was forming on my numb hand. Intense pain flashed through my arm, lightning hot. My eyesight tunneled down, black at the edges. I was close to passing out.
It’s never smart to show weakness to a vamp, and fainting from blood loss probably fell into the category. I huffed a laugh at the thought. With a foot, I flipped up a stool that had found its way into the foyer from elsewhere. I sat a hip on it. My eyesight widened. I managed a single deep breath and my field of view widened again.
At his side, Eli’s hand was pointing. In his other hand, hidden in the shadows, he held a fragmentation grenade. I clamped my teeth against a pained breath and huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that’d do it, but it’s sorta overkill, dontcha think?”
Shoffru looked confused and then dismissed my comments. “Give me the blood diamond.”
“Let him go, heal him, and we’ll chat.” Eli, trusting me to get him out of this, tucked the grenade back in a pocket.
“You have nothing with which to bargain,” Shoffu said.
“He dies, and neither do you,” I said.
Evan stepped up to me, his music playing. In Beast’s vision, I could see Evan’s magic pushing back on the directed death-magic. Molly’s magic. And I knew the moment he realized that the magic was familiar. Was his wife’s. His music nearly died as he breathed it in, but he played on, with only that single hitch in the melody. His scent changed, though, and I smelled the panic flooding through his body. Fight or flight. And with Big Evan that always meant fight.
“I have your friend.”
“Not with you, you don’t. See, I’m not human, and while I smell her magic, I don’t smell Molly. You have her somewhere safe. But not here.” My words were spoken to Shoffru, but were meant for Evan, to keep him from doing anything stupid.
To my side, Adrianna slid to the floor, leaving a long smear of blood on the wall. Sitting, she gripped the blade and pulled. It dragged from her body with an awful sound. She moaned softly, like a child in pain, holding the knife out. Her blood poured from both sides, bubbling and dark as the silver poisoned her. She had started the night dressed in white. Now she looked like death served cold. Her arm slowly dropped, until the blade touched the floor. Her fingers went limp and released the hilt. She took a breath, released it, and went still. She wasn’t exactly true-dead. She could be brought back if a master vamp was in the mood to save her. Or she could rise as a revenant if no one took her head. But for now, she was no danger to anyone. At most she was a bargaining chip, though I had little reason to suspect that Shoffru cared for her.
Through the busted windows I heard more sirens far off, growing closer. Someone had figured out where the problems were. Big Evan played on. He knew we were in trouble, big trouble, and he wanted me to know he wasn’t going to fly off the handle, that he understood that Molly wasn’t here. Wasn’t just outside, in need of his help. I turned my attention back to Shoffru. Eli was pale and sweaty in his grip. His black camo was wet and even blacker, drenched with blood. “I’ll let you take Adrianna. In return, you let Eli go.”