Edmund spun his body in again and this time cut off one of the thing’s hands. Black blood bubbled out of the stump. The hand landed across the room. Lucky’s spell disabled it and the fingers melted, the hand liquefying into water and runny mud.
In the open doorway, I saw a form jump into the room, and time slowed. Not the Gray Between, the new power I had learned to use, not the one that was likely to kill me one day. No, this was the slow-down of time that warriors experience in the heat of battle, where the human body goes into overdrive and is able to see, hear, feel, and evaluate at hyperspeed. I studied this new thing as it leaped, while it was still in the air. Slight yet bulky. Small yet managing to appear hulking. Hairy, apelike. Weaponless. Not a threat. I ruled it from my attention before it landed.
Still with that battle speed upon me, I saw the demon on the table as it bent its knees and jumped to the floor. The old floorboards shattered beneath its weight, its bizarre feet buried in fragments and shards of wood that pierced its flesh. Its blood splattered into the room, reeking of acid, black as tar. The thing roared in agony, but it didn’t leap out of the hole it had made. It just stood there, ankle-deep in splinters of pain.
The other, smaller form had landed, flat-footed in the smoke, and was searching the room. And I knew who it was. If I hadn’t seen her in the camo uni before, I might not have recognized her. The ensemble was homemade, a one-piece, hand-tied, quilted outfit of green, brown, black, and tan strips of thin cotton cloth. Each strip was attached to the base garment with thread or knots. Irregular lengths of green yarn rippled from it in the hot wind of the fire, with rare pinkish, strawberry red, purple, and blue bits of thread interwoven. It was Margaud’s lightweight ghillie suit, made for wearing in the heat and wet of Louisiana, but this time it was soaked from the torrents pouring outside and hanging weirdly, the strips of cloth flapping wetly, her boots making muddy puddles. Around her was a glow of power, a pale reddish light of a ward, the kind witches sometimes make and sell to humans, a one-off spell contained in a charm. A miniward. Short-lived and weak, but better than nothing. And it also seemed to have some don’t-see-me properties, as no one looked her way but me.
Lucky shouted and threw a flaming blast of power at the frog thing. Nothing happened to it, the fire parting and rising to smack into the smoke overhead. Adding to the heat. Edmund crouched from the heat, his swords still flashing. Vamps were highly flammable. Ed had to get out, and soon.
Margaud lifted her legs and mimed stepping forward, without leaving the circle of the ward’s energies. The thing echoed her movements, but stepping out of the hole. And it all came together for me.
The first time I saw Margaud wearing the weird ghillie suit, I had wondered what she needed the suit for. At the time, I figured it was something she had made to celebrate her sharpshooter days, something she wore when hunting in the swamps and bayous, despite the occasional brightly colored bits of thread. Now I realized the uni was something more, something magical, a suit that she wore to protect herself and to . . . to call the thing in the bar? To control the demon?
Wondering if I could die from fire, from burning to death, I inhaled to shout, and started coughing. I hacked out the words, “Lucky, put out the fire.” And he must have understood.
The witch wrenched his attention from the swamp thing to me, then to the ceiling. His eyes widened in surprise. I don’t think he had noticed the flames until that moment. He pulled something from a pocket and threw it with one fist, up into the ceiling. It stuck and the flames twirled around it, whirling back the way they had come, toward the metal star stuck in the ceiling and the slight hole it had made there. Cool, wet air rushed into the room from the busted door. The roar of the fire diminished and was gone in seconds. But so was the light, the electricity ripped away, along with the flames. I saw the room in overlays of green and silver, and hot spots that continued to smolder.
The creature unsheathed claws from its muddy body and swiped at Clermont.
The vamp sidestepped the claws, the motion beautiful and neat, no wasted movement, no wasted energy. He cut again. Sidestepped. Cut. Sidestepped. The creature roared each time, but its wounds clotted over. Clermont stepped back and Edmund stepped in, cutting, cutting, cutting, lunging over and over. Just before each of the creature’s motions, Margaud moved, its body following hers in a peculiar, macabre dance.