“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.”
She nodded, but halted the action midnod. Her head whipped across the darkness. “He’s here,” she said. She licked her lips and I could almost feel the desire for blood kicking in. On top of dealing with death magics, Molly was addicted. Just freaking great.
“I knew, logically, that there wouldn’t be time, but I had hoped to make a run at the house, disable all his vamps, and be in position before he got here. I guess we’ll play the hand we’re dealt. Come on.” I gestured toward the house where Jack Shoffru was getting out of a car, a body over his shoulder.
Ideally, now would be the time to take Eli back, but before I could figure out how to attack five vamps and as many humans, they were inside, the door closed. “So. We’ll do it the hard way.”
Getting into a house, finding a hostage, rescuing him, and getting out again without casualties was usually a job for a big, well-trained force. We had me. And a few charms Big Evan had put together for me. I had a look-away charm, a feel-better charm, an obfuscation charm—the closest thing to invisibility that witches could make—and a pain charm, what witches called a curse, one that gave pain instead of relieved it. I carried spelled and silver-plated knives, silver shot in my weapons, flashbangs, and some old holy water. Holy water had worked well one time against vamps, but it seemed to have an undeclared expiration date. One day it would work; the next it stopped, without warning. It wasn’t something I could depend on.
My biggest advantage was Eli himself. He wouldn’t do anything stupid to make my job harder. He would help if he could. And I wasn’t smelling his fresh blood on the night air. That had to be good. It had to be.
Observing the house from the driveway next door, hidden behind a Hummer painted a horrid hue of warning yellow, I adjusted my coms unit on my head and ears. Tapped the mic. “Kid? Can you hear me?”
“Copy, Jane. Bruiser is on the way over. He can hardly stand, but he says he’s coming for moral support. And before you ask, Tia and I are watching the babies.”
“Yeah, okay. That means no rolls in the hay. Eyes and attention on the job at hand.”