I pulled on Beast’s hunting attributes, moving up the street, my bare feet silent on the sidewalk. As I moved, I considered weapons, should I need one. There wasn’t a round in the 9 mil’s chamber and Gee would hear if I readied the weapon for firing. And the H&K was loaded with silver shot. Molly had said steel would probably disrupt Gee’s magic better than silver, so I pulled the vamp-killer. Though the back and the flat of the blade were coated with heavy silver plating, the cutting edge itself was high quality steel.
I stood three feet in front of Gee and I might as well have been in Mexico for all the notice he paid me. He seemed somnolent, his breathing easy, as if he was sleeping, sitting, his body relaxed. The blue mist lay thick on his skin and seemed to swirl slowly with the energies of his spell, growing thin and gossamer away from his body, denser, and tight between his cupped hands. The mist was shaped like a sphere, dissipating entirely beyond the borders of his body, and I realized that the energies themselves formed a working circle that covered his whole physical form. I didn’t know a whole lot about magic, but I did know that most forms used circles to contain the energies, kinda like a force field, to keep anything nasty from escaping, and to hold the energies in place. I wondered what he looked like under his glamours.
I hefted the vamp-killer, moonlight glinting on the silver and steel. I positioned my feet, left foot forward, right foot back, pointed at ninety degrees. Knees bent, my weight evenly distributed, I held the blade point forward and slashed down with a single hard, fast cut, through blue mist. Down toward the stone on which he sat, breaking the circle of his spell.
Time dilated and slowed. I could see the passage of the blade through the mist. The way the steel parted the strands and swirls of the spell. The way they fell away, as if recoiling from cold iron. Light exploded out around the blade. Blue and downy, soft and bright, like sparklers in the night. And still the blade descended. The mist had weight and texture. Like flesh, the thought popped into my mind. Heat billowed up my arm, warm and moist. And the smell of cauterized blood. The reek of burned evergreen. The stink of charred jasmine. Oh crap. The spell hid his body. I’d cut Gee himself instead of his spell.
The mist retreated, almost a flinch, and snapped back hard. A punch of power hit me. Electric and solid. Muscle, claws, and something soft, hit me, like a bronze, spiked fist in a down glove, the fist supercharged with electricity. I felt/heard a sharp, sizzling hiss. Stumbled and fell back. Barked my heels on the concrete.
Gee was awake and focused on me, his blueblueblue eyes stabbing. Something billowed out and up and over me in a wash of wet, steamy heat. Dark bloodred wings unfurled, beat down. I curled as I dropped, falling. Saw a dark-sapphire feathered beast with crimson breast and wings. Claws like spear points, glinting at wingtips and feet. A splatter of liquid flowers, perfume like rainbows hitting the ground. Sparks shooting up where the blossoms landed.
And he was gone. A raptor scree echoed into the night.
I landed on my butt, half rolling, half skidding across the concrete. My elbows took a bounce, ripping a layer of skin away. I rolled off the sidewalk into the street. And lay there, gasping. “Crap,” I whispered, wincing at the ragged rips of pain. “Cah-rap.”
I had never seen such a thing. Not in person. But I knew exactly where I had seen an image of one before. And Leo Pellissier had a lot of explaining to do. I eased to my feet and gathered up my stuff. Gee’s blood had nearly dissipated, evaporating like pure alcohol rather than drying and leaving a residue of ruptured cells like, well, like blood. I found a patch larger than the others and dipped a finger into it. Sniffed. It didn’t smell like human blood, but like pine and jasmine and heated copper. Big surprise. It was gone, evaporated, before I could figure out how to save any of it.
I limped to the house. Slammed back inside. Stared down Evangelina and Bruiser as I entered, throwing my sandals down in the foyer as I passed through and my weapons onto my bed. I went to the bathroom and turned on the shower, sticking my heels, then my arms from elbows to hands under the stream, cursing under my breath at the liquid’s cleansing burn. I pulled out a first-aid kit and applied salve to the wounds, covering them with bandages. It would have to do until I could shift. Then, ignoring the two standing in my bedroom doorway, I opened my closet and yanked out my vamp-fighting clothes.
The stink of my anger and my blood and the burned smell of wax and pine coiled inside me with each breath. Ignoring the audience, I ripped off my blood splattered, torn pants and tossed them to the floor, not caring if I flashed an audience. I pulled on the silk long johns and slid into leather biker pants, the zipper ripping the silence. I stepped into socks and the butt-stomper boots. Opening the weapon safe in the closet, I began loading for vamp, sliding each vamp-killer into place, checking to see that each was snug, yet pulled freely. The knife used to stab through Gee’s glamour had a nick in the blade a quarter inch deep, blackened as if by fire; the steel edge around it was shattered. I touched the blackened steel and it flaked away like ashes. It was useless. I could repair the blade, but I’d never trust it again. I could maybe replace the blade into the old hilt, but that would cost more than simply buying a new one. I hefted it into the garbage where it thumped hollowly, steel against plastic. I slid the M4’s soft leather harness over my T-shirt. When it was comfortable, I reached into the safe and pulled out the soft velvet bag holding the vamp weapon Sabina had lent me. The priestess had asked for it back; I’d tried to return it once. Maybe she would be there this time, and I could ask the old vamp some questions about vamps and Mercy Blades and old grudges against Leo and Bruiser without getting my throat torn out. And maybe she knew something about weres, because sure as angels sing, every problem I was seeing started with the appearance of the weres, even before I knew they existed. I stuffed the velvet bag into the leather jacket’s breast pocket.