She grinned wickedly. “How about a whip? A gorgeous calf-skin cat-o’-nine-tails with tiny sterling-over-steel blades in the ends. Christie taught me how.”
“I spelled them for her,” Bliss said. She shrugged when I looked at her curious. “One part of healing is to decrease the ability of blood to clot, for people having heart attacks or clot-made strokes. There’s a spell for that; Molly showed me how.” She looked down and then back up, holding me with her eyes. “If I push the spell a little, and put it on the metal barbs, then whatever it cuts won’t clot over. Instead it will relax and expand the vessels it cuts, making the person bleed out faster. Vamps would bleed out really fast unless I reversed the spell, or they had help from a master vamp.”
“How fast can you reverse it if needed? Like an instantaneous reversal?”
She nodded, knowing I was going to ask her to use her magic against another sentient being. But to have created the spell in the first place, she had already planned that. So I wasn’t leading a witch into dark magic, I lied to myself.
I pulled a throwing knife. “Can you do that with this too?” She nodded again, reaching out a finger to touch the blade. I felt the hilt go cold. The blade seemed to frost over, a spiderweb of power that vanished as quickly as it appeared. The hilt warmed again, as if it had never been cold. “Nifty.” I grinned at her. “I promise to use it only for good, and to the benefit of mankind.”
Bliss dropped her head, her black hair sliding forward, hiding her face, but I had the feeling that she was pleased with my promise, no matter how silly I had phrased it. “I have a passel of knives that need the spell. And when we get where we’re going, can you keep an eye out for anyone who isn’t trying to kill us as we rescue Eli, and reverse the spell if they get cut by accident?” She nodded again. “Good. And just in case,” I added, holding out a silver stake, “can you make this one already reversed, so I have it as needed?”
Bliss’ forehead crinkled, as she tried to figure out how to reverse a spell that wasn’t there yet. Then she just touched it twice. The first time, the sterling stake iced over and went cold; with the second touch, it heated, fast.
“I can shoot,” Shiloh said. “I used to hunt with my dad.” Her face closed off for an instant as she thought of her dad, who had been killed by her mother. That had to be a tough thing for a kid to remember, even a bloodsucking kid vamp. “Rifle,” she went on, “shotgun. But a rifle is better. I don’t like a shotgun’s kick.”
“Good. There’s probably a hunting rifle with a scope in the SUV. Let’s roll.”
“One little problem,” Shiloh said. “What do we do with the dead Mithran in Katie’s living room? We can’t decapitate her. It wouldn’t be right.”
Why not? But I didn’t say it. Shiloh was still human enough to have morals, not a trait common to most vamps, and a quality I wouldn’t harm.
I looked at Katie, who said, “Such is not my responsibility. It belongs to the Mercy Blade.”
I flipped open my burner cell again and dialed Leo’s new primo. When Adelaide answered I gave her an update and said, “Adrianna is close to being true-dead, but still has her head. Would you be so kind as to send the Mercy Blade to Katie’s to, uh, pick her up? You can have the Council accountant deposit my fee electronically.” I could almost feel Del’s single elegant eyebrow rise. “Just tell Gee DiMercy. He’ll explain it all.”
I closed the cell and looked over my small band of warriors, finding a smile somewhere inside and plastering it on my face. “Let’s go.” I grabbed up my weapons and headed for the car, not arguing when Big Evan shoved the driver’s seat back as far as it would go and turned the key. Not arguing when Shiloh and her vamp blood-servants piled in back. Not arguing about anything, as Big Evan and my coterie of fighters drove out of the city.
We were still on the east side of the river when Shiloh’s cell warbled a punk rock tune from the ’nineties. She looked at the screen, but rather than answer, she held out her phone to me. It was purple and studded with bling. A teenage vamp from the ’nineties. Go figure. I looked at the number on the screen. It was Reach’s number. I didn’t let my face change. I couldn’t. If I did, Evan would rip the phone out of my hand and crash the SUV.
“Hello?”
“Jane?” Molly. The connection was awful, but her tone came through anyway, sounding disbelieving, as if she didn’t really believe it was me. Sounding guarded as if she was expecting me to lash out at her. “How . . . ? Really you?”
“Yeah. It’s me.”