“Crap on crackers,” I whispered as little sparkles of black light power flickered and a small tuft of the Gray Between opened in the cup of Angie’s fingers. I walked to her as the arcenciel went through the blue and green spectrum of light, throwing the kitchen into lovely colors of sky and water. Another foot of Opal’s energies had flowed into the kitchen. Her wing tips were still inside the drain but the upper portions had partially unfurled.
I stopped at Angie and watched as her fingertips spat tiny ribbons of black light, moving slightly faster than the arcenciel. I studied the tattered robe of magics she wore, the energies broken and frazzled but still active. If I weren’t in the Gray Between, in the no-time place where magic was visible as pathways of power and interactive energies, I couldn’t see where the breaks were. But since I could see it maybe I could also fix it? I had never been able to create magic, but I could sometimes disrupt the magic of others. And once, not long after I came to New Orleans, I had manipulated magic by accident. Molly had later told me I shouldn’t have been able to do that at all, and I had never been able to do it again, but maybe when I was in this state, I could do magic . . . mechanically.
I set my blades at Angie’s feet on the bottom stair and slipped my knobby fingers into the tattered energies. I began to tie them off, one by one, using the tiny spurts of black light, Angie’s own magic, to secure each of them. It wasn’t pretty, like the knitted energies of the Everhart and Trueblood workings. The knots I was making were downright ugly, the way a painting I had done would look when held up next to a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. Childish and inept. But it was working; the binding was coming together.
I didn’t know what the effect of my actions would have on Angelina Everhart Trueblood and her magics. Out of fear, I didn’t tie her as tightly as I might have, stopping when the garment of bindings was connected to her own magics but wasn’t constraining her in any way. When there were no more black light energies spurting from her fingertips, I tied off the last stray thread of bindings and stepped back. If she figured out that I had done it to her, would she hate me? Something to worry about later.
I returned to the kitchen trying to figure out what do, how to fight Opal away without killing her outright. I couldn’t kill a sentient child, not even the child of another species. But my body was spasming tightly, an electric charge of pain that shivered along my nerves and burned in my fingertips. Eli was at her side, so I positioned myself where her head was growing wider, back into its real shape and form. And because the pain was growing so fast, I reached for real time, knowing that if I made a mistake, Opal might kill me. But because Angie was watching, I had to get the fight back in real time.
I whirled my swords and forced the Gray Between to fracture and split around me. The fight slammed back into real time. The arcenciel slithered through the drainpipe and into the kitchen in scant seconds. Her wings billowed open. Knocked by a wing, the kitchen table and everything on it went flying or sliding across the house to crash into the back wall. The kitchen window blew out into the street as the other wing encountered it.
Eli cut the dragon in a half dozen places. Clear goop splattered. She roared, mouth open, long tongue lashing. I lunged with the long sword. Stabbed her in the mouth with the sword, the blade piercing her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She jolted back at the last instant. The steel missed her brain, if her brain was located in her skull.
The arcenciel screamed. In a single flash, she flew through the broken, unwarded window and into the street. Taking my sword with her. I grabbed a frill and leaped with her. Slamming my shoulder into the window jamb on the way through it. I heard and felt the crack of my collarbone. My right arm went numb. I lost my grip on the rainbow dragon.
That’s not good.
Jane bad hunter. Stupid kit to ride prey through small hole.
I landed in the street, tumbling. Rolling over the injured shoulder with a pain that screeched through me like a predator’s fangs. As I rolled, Beast sent a blast of pain-deadening adrenaline through me, and I caught a single breath that didn’t hurt. I made it to my feet fast, still holding the vamp-killer, left-handed.
Molly rushed through the front door, throwing jagged bars of blue and green power-bolt bombs at the dragon. They quickly went from sharp-edged energies to crumpled slags of dying power. The bombs that didn’t bounce off her, the rainbow dragon seemed to simply absorb, taking in all the magical attacks.
Eli joined the fight with a steel sword, but the arcenciel hit him with her tail, sending him flying. My sword was still pinned in her mouth. Steel keeping it in the present flow of time, which was what I had hoped. Guessed. Whatever.