When I could breathe, I levered myself up off the floor with the fist that still held the vamp-killer. My knuckles were knobby, my feet were wide paws, my claws were all out and glinting in the dull light of Alex’s tablets, grinding and tapping on the wood floor as I found my balance. My hips were lean, my belly narrow and flat, my shoulders too wide, my clothes hanging at the waist, stretched tight across the back. I was pelted all over, my amber eyes glowing. Unbraided black hair flowed to my hips, in the way. But I was energized with Beast’s power and strength.
Eli pressed my shoulder, turning me until my back was to him, and gathered my hair into a tail. His fingers awkward, he slid three elastics onto the ponytail, at neck, shoulder length, and midback. Then he tucked it all into my collar and down my T-shirt, out of the way. At my ear, he said, “To be a really good second, I need to learn how to braid hair. But being a ladies’ maid would get me laughed out of the special forces, so this will have to do.”
I chuffed with amusement and tossed the vamp-killer into the air, the blade whipping and shining with greenish light. I caught it by the hilt. I felt strong and swift and a bit reckless. “Keep them safe,” I growled to Eli as I stalked through the side door onto the side porch. And I screamed out a challenge.
The arcenciel stopped its attack on the second-floor front gallery as I leaped out onto the damp earth where we had fought earlier. The partial shift had healed me, and the dull pain of the elbow to the gut was gone. “Come and get me, you dumbass lizard! Now, Molly!”
The arcenciel rose high in the air over my house, her body a snaky, tessellated, whipping light, her tail barbed and coruscating, flashing with scales and tasseled flesh, her wings held wide and thrashing forward as she hovered. She darted her head in, her horned skull frilled and patterned with bony plates of light, all in shades of copper and bronze and browns. Her teeth, like long, curved tusks of pearls and diamonds, chomped at me. Her tail whipped and snapped. She was seriously ticked.
The ward fell in a shower of light and power that burned where it shattered over my pelt.
Opal reared back and came at me, striking cobra fast.
I bent my knees and leaped, steel sword high in the air, an upward lunge, whirling, cutting, in motions that were still unfamiliar and graceless. The vamp-killer to the side, I aimed for the tail-like body that slashed at me. I scored two long gashes, one in her belly and the other in the side of her tail. Opal screamed, lights boiling from the wounds, clear goop splattering out.
I landed in a bent-kneed crouch, weapons circling over and around me in the vamp’s version of the Spanish Circle method of sword fighting. The blades a glittering cage of death.
Opal spat at me. I leaped to the side, a big-cat move, my sword whirling slowly, doing the job of a puma’s long tail in the leap, keeping my body stable, my balance rooted to the ground, and keeping the movement itself steady and controlled. The saliva—acid? Poison?—which was surely a weapon, missed me.
The arcenciel back-winged, her eyes glowing. I had no idea how to read the body language of an arcenciel, but I’d have said for an instant that she looked triumphant. She pulled her frills tight and her wings closed. I landed and leaped again, to the top of the shattered rocks near the back wall.
Faster than I could follow, Opal slammed into the ground where I had stood and vanished. I was heaving breaths. The fight had lasted perhaps five seconds.
“What the—”
“Jane!” Eli shouted.
Lights prismed off the walls. Inside the house.
I raced to the porch and inside, to see the light coming from the kitchen. A long, narrow beam of coiling, writhing snake made of light. It was now much smaller, perhaps two inches in diameter, bright as a torch beam and pouring out of the kitchen like a sea serpent. Eli was cutting at it, but it moved faster than he ever could.
The arcenciel had gone into the ground. Now it was in the kitchen, in a different form. “Molly,” I screamed. “Ward yourselves! She’s coming inside!”
Molly raced to her daughter’s bed, and I felt the magics snap into place above me.
And I felt the Gray Between again, a yank that pulled on time and space and matter. And me. I screamed as Beast forced me into a second shift. I fell to the floor, dropping the blades. Which hung in the air, even as I landed in a writhing heap. Gagging and strangling, unable to breathe. And I was tasting blood in the back of my mouth. Beast bubbled time. Dang cat. The internal bleeding that seemed to be a part of this state had started earlier than before. I coughed and covered my mouth. Blood filled my cupped hand. I spat to clear my mouth and throat, and wiped it on my shirt. Trying not to think about the four big tusks that made up a large part of my lower face.