Lucky groaned and rolled over, clutching his side and ribs. He activated a healing spell, one I could see in the dark of the bar, which was probably red and orange, but in big-cat vision looked green and silver, shot with blue, in the weird colorblindness of the feline.
Edmund made a quick whip/slash motion and sheathed his swords. Elegant and beautiful. And if I was guessing right, he was a better swordsman than Leo Pellissier’s Mercy Blade. Better than Leo. Maybe even better than Grégoire, who was known to be the best swordsman in the entire United States. Edmund had been hiding things from us all.
The clatter/roar of the front-end loader changed to a cough and went silent. The plasticized glass door opened, and Eli stepped out of the loader cage and dropped to the floor, where he caught his breath and held it for a space of heartbeats. He moved away from the machine, his body stiff and slow. He was badly wounded to be showing any sign of weakness.
“Honest to God,” he said as he stepped to the wall where the bucket was stuck. His voice was just a hint breathy as he went on, “I thought Vin Diesel as Riddick had it all wrong, but there are movie mud monsters. And worse. This one melted on a wood floor and disappeared.”
“It’ll be back,” I said. “Its maker or controller, or both, didn’t get what she wanted. And she got away.”
“Who?”
“The person in the homemade ghillie suit. Margaud.”
Eli frowned, pulling the name out of his memory, making associations with a demon and a bar fight. “The sister of the two Hulk wannabes with the Amazon this afternoon? The one that made all this small-town, love-triangle, witch-vamp shit happen?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t argue about the estimation or the language. Sometimes shit is the only word for a particular situation.
He looked around the burned blood bar. “Margaud. Makes sense.”
“Questions to ask Solene if we can break the circle. Or in the morning, if we live that long. You need vamp blood to heal. Edmund?” I called, looking around. He was gone.
“You need to shift back,” Eli said, as if we were debating. “And I don’t know where the slimy little bloodsucker is. I never saw him in the battle.”
“He was there. We’ll talk about him later. How long?”
Eli frowned, a downward quirk of his lips. “It lasted one-twenty-seven seconds.”
One hundred twenty-seven seconds. A little over two minutes. It seemed like an hour. But my partner was right. Where was my vamp helper? Why had he taken off after facing a mud demon and fighting our way out of a mess?
Clermont snapped his arm away from the healing vamp, licked his wound to constrict the fang holes, and stood. He walked over to Lucky, still lying half under the burned pool table. He knelt close to the witch and said, “We been played. Our children been played. Or entire peoples been played, by a human what can call her up a demon. We been enemies a long time. We been friends only since our families join. I say we stronger dat little time when we joined. I say I sorry I din’ see what happening to my boy and to your girl. I say I sorry I such an ass, even if you don’ take my sincere apologies.”
Lucky put his hand into Clermont’s and let the vamp pull him to a sitting position, his legs stretched out and his back resting against a blackened pool table leg. “I accept. And I offer you my own, how you say, sincere apologies.”
“We not much leaders we not able to see a common enemy.”
“Divide and conquer work best on dem what blind to dangers,” Lucky agreed.
“We not some dumbass politicians. We leaders. And right now, we need our strength. I offer you, Lucky Landry, father of my daughter-in-law, gran’father of my—of our—gran’boy, Clerjer, blood of my veins, to make you strong to fight.”
“Long as I don’ got to kiss you, I accept.”
“I’m told I kiss real good. Maybe I’m insulted, yeah?”
Lucky chuckled and his face wrenched in pain. “Okay. I kiss you. Hell, I kiss dat ugly frog demon if it fix my ribs. And I thinking I got lung problems.”
“Got you pneumothorax, you do,” Clermont said. “I hear air leaking and blood gurgling.”
I remembered the vamp leader was a surgeon, back in his human days.
“To fix you, I gone stick a needle like a tenpenny nail in you side right here”—he touched the witch’s side—“and den I’m gon’ drain my blood inside. Heal you fast. Den you drink some my blood and be heal for real.”
“I not gon’ wake up dead, am I?”
“No. You still be pain-in-de-ass coonass witch, what walk in de day.”
“Do it, den, wid my thanks.”
“Lucky? Clermont?” We all turned to the stage door where Bobbie stood, holding her grandson on her shoulder. “The vampire you sent to protect us says the fight’s over.”