In the light of the overhead fixture the arcenciel went visible, still glowing, but with a darker line along one side where I had stabbed her. She had already healed, but not without cost. Can light scar? Her wings cast streamers of light, like the afterimage glare of a camera flash combined with the arctic lights in a night sky, an effervescent opalescence, green and gold and pale shades of the rainbow, a feathery luminosity sparkling with brighter motes. Her hair was white, striped with red and black and brown. Bethany screamed and raced at the arcenciel, reaching, trying to grab the light. To the side, I saw Eli drawing a vamp-killer and a small subgun, seemingly out of the air. Derek flashed hand signals to him, the two fighters moving as one.
A stranger I knew only from the shadows of a fight stepped through the front door. She was copper-skinned, like me. And like me—or like me when I was prepared—she carried more weapons than a small army. She was dressed in the leathers of an Enforcer, but with an old-fashioned design and enough slices and cuts in the tanned hide to be risqué. The stink of old blood was on the leathers, hers and her opponents’, ripe and dense with the reek of old pain and death. She smelled like the sniper, and the bomb maker. And she was carrying two long swords. With a single, smooth, backhand cut, she struck Bethany in the neck. The priestess dropped, falling with the blade. She hit the floor, her dark blood spattering the wall.
Before I could blink, Gee had drawn two swords and raced at the swordswoman. He was moving nearly vamp fast, but time had slowed. I could see each movement, see his body flex and contract. “My challenge to blood duel was never satisfied,” he shouted, his voice low and his words slurred. “En garde!”
The woman tipped her body forward and raced at Gee, but slow, sluggish. The two met at the juncture of the foyer and the living room. In an honest-to-God sword fight. Steel clashed. A cut appeared in the wall as if by magic. A small table split in two with a crash. I had really liked that table. Not so long ago, it had been blown over when an angry air witch came visiting. Now it was nothing but splinters, like the side door. And the front door.
The Kid, who had been hiding behind the couch, grabbed me by the arm and dove to the floor with me. We landed in a painful heap; I yelped and so did he. The smell of mixed blood rose on the air and I found my feet. I was still holding the stake and the way-too-small blade. The smell of blood was grounding me fast. Adding Beast’s blood to the gray place of the change had reinforced my reactions.
“Jane,” Alex said, his words a laborious jumble in the slo-mo of time. “The people in the rental house and with the rented SUVs, who were following you, they moved. Eli went to check them out and they were gone and the vehicles were turned back in, but there were at least twelve people living there and they had taken photos. That’s one of them.” He pointed to the sword fight.
My house was full of nutso vamps, two nearly dead vamps, an injured Onorio, various sentient beings, and a stranger with swords fighting a storm god. The two with swords were moving almost too fast for sight, even my enhanced time-sight, a flashing, ringing, crashing of steel, dual circles of reflected light and the spatter of scarlet and sapphire blood on the pale walls.
Into the doorway stepped a man, dark haired, black eyed, beautiful as a dying angel. He wore jeans and a white shirt that hung open to reveal a necklace of a raptor in flight, boots and wristbands tattooed with blue birds. He shouted something but the words were lost beneath the ring and clash of steel. He was the frightened boy from the painting and the unchanged man with the crystal from the warehouse. Peregrinus. Grégoire’s brother.
He carried a sword, a double-edged blade with a hand-and-a-half hilt. He raced in and stabbed up at the arcenciel, then tossed what looked like a length of rope over it, a rope tied with something shiny on the end. The quartz crystal. In this light I could tell it was quartz, not diamond. The light of the dragon rippled through it. Eli and Derek fired at the vamp in three-shot bursts. I smelled vamp blood, but Peregrinus didn’t falter. He backed out of the house, pulling the arcenciel with him. As he moved, the light of the dragon flickered, dimmed, shrank to half its size, and went out. The arcenciel writhed once, a snapping, supple movement, and dropped to the floor. It threw out sparks of brown and black, like a dirty fire, the flames dying.