I heard Alex giving orders on the makeshift coms system. I felt more than saw Bruiser leave the room. And it was just Eli and me on the floor, my hands trying desperately to hold in the blood. To hold in the life. His pulse thumped and stuttered and raced. I leaned in and hissed, “Do not die on me. Do. Not. Die.” Tears ran from my eyes and snot dribbled under my nose. They dripped onto my hands as I sobbed, trying to be silent. Knowing that if I had to defend him, if someone got past Bruiser and I had to let go and take up a weapon, Eli would die. Right then. “If you die”—I snuffed up the mess on my face and wiped it on the shoulder of the fuzzy purple shirt—“I’ll tell all Derek’s men you weren’t as tough as they are. I’ll . . .”
Fuzzy purple T-shirt. I repositioned my entire body and held the blood-soaked wad of compression material over his neck with my knees as I ripped off the T-shirt. It was stupid to remove the compression bandage. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whispered. But I eased it slowly back. Blood had pushed past the clot that had formed from the charmed stake. I hesitated for half a second, grabbed the stake from my pocket, wiped it cleanish on my jeans, and pressed it back into the wound. Instant clotting. I wrapped the T-shirt over the wound and tied it all off with the T-shirt’s arms, not tight, loose enough to let him breathe. I repositioned Eli’s legs up high, a mound of pillows under them. I pulled all the linens off the bed and tucked them around his body to treat the shock. I was thinking now. At last.
A hand touched my shoulder. Bruiser leaned down to me and said, so softly it was less than a breath against my cheek, “Someone is in the hallway. Shiloh has a shot. Stay down.” I saw the vamp fall before I heard the rifle shot. It didn’t echo far, not on the flat land, but the echo in the midst of the houses was fast and tapping.
On the front lawn, swords clashed. I heard Leo shout, a sound of pain. I smelled vamp blood, and had been smelling it for a while, what seemed like hours, though it couldn’t have been more than two minutes. From the back of the house, I heard a scream and the faint snap of a whip. Go, Bliss and Rachael. Just hope it wasn’t one of ours.
“Molly says she can’t draw the life from Shoffru without drawing it from Leo too,” Alex said, controlled panic in his voice. “They’re moving too fast and she can’t figure out how to separate them in the spell. Jack is pulling through the bond he has on her, using Molly’s magic against Leo. And Shiloh can’t help you. She says Leo is pulling from her and her new servants, but it isn’t enough. She says all of Shoffru’s vamps are on the front lawn. They’re closing in on Leo.” His voice in the earpieces went emotionless and low. “They aren’t going to honor the Blood Challenge. They’re just gonna kill him.”
I cursed. “Okay. Tell Evan to get up here any way he can. Tell Bliss and Gee to help him get in through the back door. Tell them all to get to Eli and save him—I don’t care what it takes.” I yanked the mic off me and tossed it across the room. To Bruiser, I said, “Cut the light.”
“What are you doing?”
“Flying by the seat of my pants.” I yanked up the chains from the blood-soaked floor. And stalked out onto the porch.
Below me, Leo and Jack Shoffru fought in a ring of vamps and humans, like a couple of homicidal kids on a playground, both bloody, scored by dozens of cuts. They were surrounded by a nimbus of magic, sparking and red. The reddish magic around Jack was a haze that glittered with black and red motes of pure power. Motes that stabbed at Leo. Burrowing into his skin. It was death magic, Molly’s magic. And I knew I could survive it.
Jackie Boy wanted the blood diamond. If Shoffru ever got his hands on it, all hell would break out. Hell on earth. That could not happen. I had to find a way to destroy that thing. Somehow. Later. For now, I had to endure. And suffer Molly’s death magics. Again. Deep inside, Beast growled, more vibration than sound, the reverberation echoing through my soul home like a slow-beating drum. Below me, Leo seemed to take heart from the sound and in a move so fast I couldn’t follow, he cut Shoffru three times: groin, kidney, and face. Blood splattered across the lawn, black in the security lights. Leo shouted, and I felt the shout through the binding, holding me close to Leo.