The lion roared. I rolled as he bit. He caught my shoulder. His teeth punctured, cutting through leather into flesh. With my good hand, I shoved the hilt of the knife with all my might. Swiveling the hilt against and into his body. He shook his head. Rending and tearing. My entire body quaked and snapped. I thought my shoulder would rip free.
He slowed. Shuddered. Gasped, his nostrils fluttering. His eyes met mine, shock and understanding in the depths. His paws swept me up, claws piercing through my jacket, into my skin. Silver light blazed over him, the energies buzzing like sound waves, like the pressure of fast-moving water, over me. The black motes of power shocked where they touched me.
He was trying to throw off mass. He was trying to shift. He was trying to steal my form. Once again, Beast did . . . something. Deep inside my mind I felt her—saw her—an image of Beast twisting in midair, tail rotating, claws outstretched as if to grab prey.
Liquid gushed out of Immanuel’s mouth, out of his nose, out of the holes in his chest, thick and viscous. Smelling like rotten meat, like old death, rancid and fetid as an open grave.
He backed up, dropping me. I landed hard, knocking my head, unaware that he had lifted me so high. I managed to take in a breath. Pulled the last of the vamp-killer blades. And the last of Molly’s charms.
I rose to my knees in the slimy mess pooling beneath the sabertooth. Got one foot beneath me. And shoved with it, hard, shifting my weight, the power of my whole body, into the motion. Turned the blade point out as I moved. And pierced through his eye, into his brain.
He made no sound, just dropped to his belly, his legs gathered beneath him. But a back leg splayed free, sliding. He was losing control.
With my burned hand, I flipped Molly’s charm at him. It hit his damaged chest. I hadn’t wasted any of the spell’s energies this time by burning my own flesh. None of its power had dissipated into the air in reaction to a spoken wyrd spell. And the creature was too injured to take the power for himself. It was all there, ready and contained.
It exploded inward, into the lion. It took apart every organ, the shaped concussion shredding and bursting every blood vessel, tearing his chest cavity apart. A magic hand grenade. Flesh and bone blasted away. Fluid flooded out of him, foul and choking. His remaining bone and muscle shifted, grinding into a different configuration. His skin split and re-formed, the pelt shimmering away.
I scuttled back, cradling my injured arm, unable to take my eyes from him. The silver energies darkened, forcing a change on him, compelling the shift. They seemed to shudder; the black motes blinked away for an instant. The rogue fell to the carpet, his head in the foul mess that had come from within him. The silver light bathed him in a soft fog.
And then, even that wisped away.
On the carpet was a half-naked man. Or mostly a man. His scalp was still partly cat, his hands still paws. But his torso and limbs appeared mostly human, though the joints were oddly turned, his knees bent the wrong way for a primate. He was a huge man. Larger than he had been as a human, still carrying the mass of the unfinished shift. Three hundred pounds of pure muscle. One side of his face was Cherokee. The other half was Immanuel. Both halves had long killing teeth in upper and lower jaws.
I toed him with my foot. He wasn’t breathing. No pulse beat in his throat. There was no heart left to beat in the ruined chest. The liver-eater was dead.
I had exterminated a skinwalker. Perhaps the last one besides me.
I knew that I should feel grief. Shock. Sorrow. But for now, all I felt was Beast’s triumph. Killed Big Cat, I/we, together! Beast is victor! she screamed into my mind.
Standing over the rogue, in the ruins of the upper hallway of Leo Pellissier’s home, I stared into the face, noting the hair on its scalp had made the change to long black hair so much like my own. Noting the brown skin, slightly deeper brown than my own golden hue.
Beast said, Escape. Now. Details of the next few minutes, the next few hours, raced through my mind. First, stop my bleeding. I needed to apply pressure to my shoulder. Fumbling, I opened a pocket inside my jacket and pulled out my tourniquet. It took a moment to remember how to use it. Evidence of shock. With teeth and my good hand, I opened the loop and applied it above my shoulder joint, pulling it tight, securing the Velcro. The strap caught on the head of my humerus, exposed through the flesh. I nearly gagged with pain.
Beast stared at the blood running down my hand, off my fingers, onto the floor. Shift.
“I can’t,” I muttered. “Not now.” She growled at me. But the tourniquet was working; the blood dripping from my fingers slowed. I glanced at Antoine. Dead. And I’d killed him. I was too numb to feel grief or shame or anything beyond the momentary ecstasy of surviving, a joy already blurring with pain and shock. I knew my charm had killed him just as much as the liver-eater, but I’d have to deal with that later.