Molly took a breath that sounded painful. In the dark, I couldn’t see her tear-streaked face, but I saw her hands fist in her dirty shirt. Deep inside me, Beast’s claws eased out of my gut. I was able to rise straight. I caught my breath as Molly thought about what I was offering her.
“And if I kill him?” she asked. “If I turn him into a pile of ash like the plants in the hotel room? Like the plants I passed in the yard as I ran away tonight?” She gusted out a sob. “What if I lose control?”
I remembered the wash of blood on the wall, the splatter made as Shoffru lifted Eli and tossed him over his shoulder. It had been shaped like a swan’s wing. And I remembered Aggie One Feather’s words. Women had the right and the power to claim prisoners as slaves, or adopt them as family and kin, or condemn them to death, “with the wave of a swan’s wing.” Part of an ancient ritual. But Molly wasn’t ready to hear that she was about to become a War Woman.
“If you start to do too much, I’ll bonk you on the head and knock you out,” I said softly.
Molly stuttered a laugh. She managed a breath that sounded like tires on wet earth, grinding. “Ah, hell.” I blinked at the swearword. Molly never swore. Of course, she never killed two vamps either. “I’ve missed you, Jane. Okay. Okay. I’ll do it.”
I had a single heartbeat to worry. Beast, you better be able to do what you said.
Beast sniffed and looked away, bored.
Boots crunching on the ground, I walked toward Molly. “Don’t get too close,” she said, the fear making the lightning of her magic flicker around her, the shadows wavering and splintering on the ground.
“Nah. I’m not worried,” I said. “We’re gonna do a little experiment.” I pointed to a container full of flowering plants. “Without killing anything but that, I want you to kill every plant in it.”
“That’s someone’s property,” she said instantly. I sighed, pulled a twenty from my back pocket, and set it under the edge of the pot. “Kill it. Just that. Nothing else.”
“I’ve never done this—”
“Do it!” I snarled.
Molly jumped, glared at the container, and her magic coiled. Like a spring-loaded, compound archery bow, it aimed, released, and exploded with power. Lightning flickered, hot and fast. Everything in the pot shriveled and died and turned to ash. It took maybe two seconds. Maybe one and a half. Molly let a breath out with a whoosh, as if she had been holding it for days. The lightning around her settled into a slow pulse, and I realized that her magic was synced to her heartbeat, her adrenaline, her very life force.
“Impressive,” I said blandly. “How did it feel? To use your magic?”
Molly closed her eyes, her mouth pulling down in a frown. She turned away, crossed her arms again, and gripped them in her hands as if holding herself together. “You know how it felt.”
“Yeah. I do,” I said gently. “Say it. Accept it. Own it.”
“I.” Her voice shuddered. “Don’t.” Her grips tightened. “Want. To.”
“Tough. It’s yours. Deal with it.”
Molly whirled on me. “What do you know about it? What do you know about anything?” The lightning flickered, gaining strength from her emotions.
I hooked my thumbs into my jeans waist, going for moxie and guts over kindness and compassion. This story was getting told a lot tonight. Soon I’d have no secrets left anymore. “My grandma gave me a knife when I was five years old,” I drawled. “She took my hand, holding that knife, and helped me kill my first human.” Molly stepped back once, her eyes going wide, her mouth in an O. “She was trying to make me into a War Woman. A woman who could kill when needed. Who could go to war with her husband or in his place if he fell in battle. Who could protect her children and her tribe. Who could use wisdom and violence as needed. She succeeded.
“Life is trying to remake you too. So. How did it feel, Molly, to use the magic that kills?”
“It felt good. You know it felt good. You could smell it on me.”
“Yep. Now kill that.” I pointed to a small tree. “I’ll pay for it.”
Molly bared her teeth at me, and Beast looked up, interested. Molly pointed at the sapling. Her magic coiled. The instant she released it, I stepped in front of the burst of death magic. And took it.
It was a gamble. A big one. And if part of the willingness to step in front of a burst of death magic was the knowledge that living without Molly in my life had sucked, and living with her permanently gone would be unbearable, well, I’d have to live with the knowledge that I offered my life to her on a silver platter. Or be dead, if Beast was wrong.
The death magic hit me in the solar plexus like a great big honking fist. I fell to my butt on the grass, rocking back, booted feet in the air. The darkness wrapped around me, burning and tightening, sucking the air out of my lungs.
“Jane!” Molly whispered, dread in her voice. Horror.
“Oops,” I gasped. My heart stuttered. And stopped. Agony sat on my chest like a pink elephant. My vision started to go dark. Maybe this wasn’t so smart.
Beast reached out a paw and swiped, claws bared, catching and hooking the death magic. With an underhanded toss, she pitched the magics away. They landed on the driveway, where they sizzled and burned the white concrete. Flame licked up. And then it was gone.
My heart beat. It was so painful I thought I’d rather go ahead and die anyway. Then it beat again. And I took a breath. And it hurt as if I really had died and come back, fatally wounded. “See?” I grunted, breathless, aching. “Not a problem.” Inside I was thinking, That officially sucked scummy pond water. But I didn’t say it.
Molly didn’t approach me. Didn’t kneel at my side. She just stared at the blackened place on the white concrete drive. I rolled to my side, and somehow to my knees. All without screaming, grunting—too much—or throwing up. That last one was a near thing.
When I reached my feet, moving like an arthritic eighty-year-old human, I looked at the blackened place. It was shaped like me. I didn’t know if that was because it had already latched onto me and shaped itself to fit what and who I was before Beast ripped it off, or if the magics shaped themselves as they were thrown, before they even hit. “Yeah. Like that,” I said, as casually as I could manage between gasps, “except with more control, because I’d like him weakened but still undead.”
“Are you insane?” she demanded, eyes wide.
“Probably,” I groaned. “But now you know you can’t kill me with your death magic.” I managed a breath that almost didn’t hurt. “And now you know you can control it. Instead of hiding from it.”
“Insane. Totally insane.”
“You aren’t the first person to suggest that.” I managed to stand upright.
Molly pivoted and studied another sapling. Pointed at the tree. Her magic was slower this time. More controlled. The tree wilted, leaves drooping, young branches sagging. But it stopped dying at the early-wilt stage. I figured that with enough care, the tree might survive.
“Oookaaay,” I said.
“Evan?” she asked. She sounded uncertain, worried, and with the vamp stink on her, she probably had reasons to be worried, reasons I didn’t really want to know about.
I shook my head. “He’s in place already. You two lovebirds get to make up later.” I described to her what I wanted her to do and when she agreed, I finished with “Let’s go kick us some undead butt.”