The red motes pierced his skin, entered through his mouth. They zipped around inside him. And as he began to shrivel, they bunched up, in the areas of his heart and brain, spinning like tops. When he began to shift and sift into a pile of gray ash, they were still spinning. And I realized that they had to go somewhere when he died. I leaned forward and tossed the thing I had grabbed from the staked second to the grass at Shoffru’s feet. And then I rolled quickly away.
Looked back. It was a gem. Not a diamond. Maybe an opal. A fire opal. Red and glowing with inner heat. The motes dove toward it. Inside it. Leaving their host. And Jack Shoffru dusted to death.
I stared at the gem. Reached over and lifted Jack’s shirt out of his pile of granular ash and shook it clean. And wrapped the opal in it. From the ash, the lizard scampered across the grass and right into the hand of Gee DiMercy. Who winked at me.
I was pretty sure no one saw either of us as we confiscated Shoffru’s magical implement and his familiar. All attention was on Leo, who had made a miraculous recovery. He was standing on his own feet. And he had a vamp in each hand, forcing them to their knees. “Your master is forsworn. Surrender all rights and power or die,” he said. I looked at the second floor and saw Evan. He held out a thumb to me and disappeared back into the room where Eli had been dying.
My partner was alive.
We had won.
Leo was gonna feed.
Oh, goody.
In the far distance, sirens sounded. Lights were on in houses up and down the street. The neighbors had waked and called in the cops. I needed to get Leo into the house or the backyard. I thought of the bodies upstairs. The blood everywhere. This had FUBAR written all over it.
Knowing that the young vamp would hear, I called, “Shiloh. Get our people out of the tree in back, and take Molly and get out of here. Tell Alex to tell all our people to get out of here. Move it.”
With a pop of air, she was at my side. “Yes, Jane,” she said. “This was . . . interesting. Aunt Molly-Lolly said it would be.” I had no idea what she saw on my face, but she laughed. “We’re going.” With another pop of displaced air, she was gone.
I looked over at Leo, with no idea of how to get him to a safer place, one where law enforcement wouldn’t try to arrest him for what he was doing. Human cops wouldn’t understand the dominance, neck biting, and bloodletting taking place. From the corner of my eye, I saw Derek with something over his shoulder, carrying it to Leo’s car down the street. I hoped he got to it in time. Cops would arrest a brother in a heartbeat for carrying a headless body. Arrest first, convict later, ask questions never. I looked up at the window where Eli was. War Women were fairly useless when it came to saving people, but I wanted to be with him anyway.
Bruiser walked across the dark yard to my side. As if reading my mind, he said, “The healers are with Eli. They have him stabilized, but it won’t last. I’ve called for the priestess to help heal him.” The sirens I had been hearing turned in, drawing closer, the combined wails heralding at least four cruisers, maybe as many as six. We had a circus on our hands. “I’ll get Leo to the back,” Bruiser said.
I looked at the MOC. He currently was drinking from a male vamp, and one woman was kneeling in front of him. I did not want to know what she was doing. “Yeah. That might be a good idea.”
He grinned, teeth gleaming in the night. “Remind me to tell you later how splendid you are. How extraordinary. And how beautiful.”
“It would have been even better in the mud, dude,” Derek said, jogging past. “But for chick-on-chick fighting, it wasn’t bad.”
At which point I looked down, to see that I’d fought the last battle in my ripped bra and a pair of bloody jeans. Go, me.
CHAPTER 24
Some Kind of Whammy
The hours before dawn sucked. My people got away just in time, taking with them the guns and ammo, the dead vamp and the human I had killed, and the human Shiloh had shot. Leo took his new people to the backyard. Derek tossed me a black T-shirt as he drove past, so I wasn’t bare when the police arrived, though I smelled strongly of Derek for hours after.