“Good luck with that,” I said.
“You forget. I’m still the Phoenix.” She poked me hard in the chest. “And you’re not.”
Then she turned and headed for the porch. I assumed she’d read something in the key that she thought might kill me.
“Wrong,” I said, and clasped a hand to the phoenix tattoo imprinted on the back of my neck only moments before by the lightning.
Shifting as a vampire. God, it was great. The flash of light so much flashier, the bone-deep chill delicious when followed by the flare of welcome heat.
I fluffed my wings. The colors dazzled—scarlet and neon orange, daffodil against sapphire. I opened my beak and called out. The Phoenix froze as suddenly she understood.
Slowly she turned, lip curled like a rabid dog. “You loved him?”
Yeah, it was news to me too.
She shot fire in my direction, but I could fly, and I zoomed straight up, then dived back down, headed right for her. Except she’d already shifted, admirably fast, and we met a dozen feet off the ground.
Our clash was the thunder, the slash of fire new lightning. My wings sizzled, and I called on the rain to put them out. Before I circled back to hit her again, I’d grown new ones, and so had she.
The battle was epic—flames and blood across the sky. Feathers flew everywhere, like a rainbow tumbling to the earth in a thousand oval pieces.
We could do this for days—hurt and then heal, die and be reborn—but the simple fact remained that I was the bigger phoenix. I was more than just a firebird; I was a vampire and a shifter and now a sorcerer too; the depth of my power stunned even me.
So I called on the storm; I brought the lightning, and then I hit her with everything at once—fire and electricity, wind and magic.
Her outline flared white. The silhouette against the stormy sky made me think of a cartoon X-ray. ZZZAAAPP!
Then the light went out. For a single instant she hung there, no longer brightly colored, but black as coal dust.
Slowly the cinders began to drip away, falling toward the ground like silver-edged snowflakes. Before they could pile into a drift and—who knows?—maybe regenerate, restore, renew, arise, I hit them with a gale-force wind and sent her in a thousand different parts to a hundred different places.
Resurrect that, I thought.
I sailed downward, and the dust of the revenants blew past me like a sandstorm. I ignored them, all my intentions centered on the two beings left alive in the yard.
Summer had released Jimmy. They stood close, but not touching, staring up at me. As I neared, the fairy stepped in front of Jimmy, but he shoved her back.
I imagined myself as myself, and the change reversed—a bright flash, the heat gave way to a certain chill, and I touched down with five toes instead of three.
Naked, but I didn’t care. Vampires don’t care about much. Pure evil can be so liberating.
I still wanted to suck Jimmy dry—he practically glittered with power—and it occurred to me that if I killed the fairy, I could.
I crossed the short distance between us. Summer flew upward without benefit of wings, a graceful leapfrog, over Jimmy’s head, to land between him and me.
Idiot. I couldn’t touch him until she was dead, and she’d just made it so much easier.
I grabbed her by the throat, lifted her off the ground, glanced around for something to kill her with. I didn’t have to look far. An old bird feeder atop a steel bar listed crookedly at the side of the house. I dragged her in that direction by her shiny blond hair.
I should have known that something was wrong when Jimmy let me have her. He didn’t jump on my back; he didn’t yank off his cock ring and try to kill me. And I say try, because killing me just wasn’t going to happen—unless I chose to die.
Talk about liberating.
I reached the bird feeder, yanked it out with one hand, while I held Summer with the other. A quick shake and the wooden container on the top flew into the side of the house and burst into smithereens. I considered shaking Summer the same way, just for the hell of it. Could I rattle her brains? I kind of thought so.
But I wanted to open Sanducci’s neck, let the blood run free, touch it, drink of it and discover how long it would take him to die. Unless he tasted so good I decided to keep him alive forever. The possibilities were endless once this annoying Tinkerbell takeoff was gone.
I needed cold steel, but the post in my hand remained warm from the sun that had shone down before I’d called the storm. I closed my eyes, and an icy wind stirred my hair. Seconds later hail pinged against the ground. I waited until my fingers cramped from the cold, until the metal became foggy with frost; then I lifted the post and prepared to ram it down her throat.