A flash of light hit the hedge of thorns like lightning, pure and brighter than the sun. I shrank back, covering my eyes with both forearms. The images burned through my arms, my bones, my lids, into my eyes, into my brain, into my soul. I saw a winged being attacking the demon. Light and darkness. The light of an exploding atom bomb, the light of the sun’s core, the light of the center of the universe. And the darkness of a black hole, empty beyond all understanding, full of nothingness. The sound of bells, high winds, roaring waves. Echoes and echoes of a perfect, pure note sung for eternity. Screams of agony. Trapped for a long moment together, in combat.
In the glare, Molly stood and dipped her fingers into the blood in the crystal bowl and flung the mixture over the hedge. Above it all, I heard Molly start the binding words, “Hayyel, bíodh sé daor, le m’ordú agus le—” The light went out. The burn on my retinas leaving me blind. After a stutter, Molly finished the binding. “Mo chumhacht, Kalona Ayeliski.”
But the light had disappeared. The fighting angel and demon were both gone. Just . . . gone. The dead body was gone. Hedge of thorns was gone. The blood was gone. The salt composing the circle was gone. The black paint on the floor was gone, leaving a circle of concrete, seared pure white. And silence. No one moved except to blink against the retinal burn.
A werewolf lay on the floor in wolf form, asleep or dead; not the wolf he had been, not reddish brown and wild, but a huge, pure white wolf, with only a hint of gray in his ruff. Kem was on the far side of the room, in cat form, blacker than night, none of his spots visible after the blast of light. Rick was holding my hand in his, crushed against me in the corner, his eyes unfocused and wide. He smelled of cat, wild and musky. If he knew how to shift, he’d be a black leopard right now, only his tats holding him to human form. Everyone two-natured was affected. Except me. I just felt curiously . . . empty. I reached for Beast . . . Beast?
Upstairs, a door slammed. A door? Dazed, I shook my head to clear it. “Crap,” I said. I shoved away from the wall and raced up the stairs, stumbling over Evil Evie’s skirt, blinking away the afterimage of holiness and evil.
In the living room, Pickersgill was skewered to the floor with a stake in his belly, bleeding like a stuck pig. Evangelina was no longer asleep on the floor. And Lincoln, who had torn out of the basement, was missing as well.
An engine raced. The sports car fishtailed out of the drive. I landed on my knees and shoved the couch over to get my bike key and go after her. It landed with a heavy thump. There was nothing underneath the couch. My travel tote, torn jeans, and the pink blood-magic-diamond were all gone. I raced outside, but the night breeze off the French Broad River was already carrying the scent of her car away. I went back inside, standing in the corner, staring at the chaos.
Pickersgill was bleeding out, the witches were falling all over themselves, panicked, and Angie Baby was crying. Pickersgill, hissed between his fangs, furious and scared, “My own master staked me!”
“Yeah, but he staked you to keep you alive or he’d have aimed higher and to the left,” I said. I bent at his side, one knee on the floor. “I’ll pull out the stake. Try to bite me and I won’t be so nice.” I pulled the stake from his gut and he disappeared to feed. I figured he’d live, if the undead can be said to live. Wiping Pickersgill’s blood from my fingers onto the rug, I took Angie in my arms and stood in the corner, hugging her to my chest, her legs wrapped around my waist. The reek of vamp blood and magic polluted the air.
Evangelina had the diamond. And Beast—Beast? The word echoed through me.
Big Evan asked, “Did the banishing work? Did we bind the Raven Mocker?”
“I don’t think so,” Molly said. “I think Evangelina disrupted the spell.” Which was her right as coven master. Then she ran away. With the diamond.
I wasn’t thinking right. Not thinking clearly. Not thinking much at all. Because the disrupted spell and the appearance of the angel Hayyel had stolen my Beast. I was alone inside my own head. “Beast?” I whispered. I rocked Angie, holding her close.
The weres left together, Rick, silent and acting like a twitchy cat, driving fast. Having a first encounter of the third kind with an angel had to be a major wakeup call for a lapsed, or at least lackadaisical, good Catholic boy. The white wolf and Kem, stuck in black leopard form, were both sleeping in the bed of the truck, in cages borrowed from Evangelina’s back room. I didn’t know what would happen to the wolf. I wasn’t even sure what the wolf was now.
Cia drove off in her car, leaving her sister’s car in the drive. She mumbled something about needing to see Liz and Carmen in the hospital. Big Evan packed his family into the van with unseemly haste and drove off as if demons were nipping at his heels, leaving his rattletrap in the drive. None of us talked. We didn’t even make eye contact. I don’t think we could.