And up until now, excluding the broken collarbone, the fight was going the way I had hoped. From the uptown side of the street, lights glided into long streamers. Soul. The cavalry to the rescue.
She whipped faster than my eyes could follow, wrapping Opal up in her much greater energies. Molly saw what she was doing and turned in a circle, her arms wide, both hands open, sketching a circle in the air around her, and then around Opal. Together the witch and the mature arcenciel wrapped the juvie arcenciel up in magic. When the writhing, angry rainbow dragon was secured, a light flashed and Soul appeared in the street in human form, her long skirts flowing in a breeze I could see but not feel. Deftly she pulled the sword from the creature’s mouth and tongue and tossed it toward me. The captured arcenciel made a keening sound of anguish and woe.
I stepped back, hitting solidly against Eli’s chest as he caught the sword out of the air. My partner secured my arm at my waist with his, wrapping himself around me, holding my sword upright at an angle near us in his free hand. “Broken collarbone,” he said into my ear as Molly and Soul stood together in the street, studying the tangle of energy that was Opal. The two magic workers walked back and forth, speaking in low voices. I didn’t particularly like the way Soul’s eyes kept dropping to Molly’s baby bump, clearly outlined in the pajamas, but there was nothing I could do now. The water droplets of time would have to figure it all out themselves.
Opal stretched and bit at the energies. Acid rose in my throat at the thought of having to fight again right now. “Yeah,” I said, struggling against the nausea of the broken bone, time bending, the fight, and now, the fear. “Kinda figured that.” My words were slurred by the tusks. Shivers wracked through me, making the pain much worse for a moment. When I got a second breath I smelled Eli’s blood.
“You’re hurt.”
“Just a scratch.”
I pushed him away with my good hand and caught a spurt of blood into my face. “I don’t think so,” I said, blinking fast. I followed the blood to his upper arm and wrapped my knobby, über-strong fingers around his biceps and tightened them into a pressure bandage. Then I chuckled, though it wasn’t anywhere near my usual laugh. He was holding my injured arm in place. And I was holding his.
Soul walked over, her arms crossed over her ample bosom, her gauzy, flowing gowns no longer fluttering in a breeze I couldn’t feel. She looked me over, and I realized it was the first time that the PsyLED agent had ever seen me in my half-Beast form. Some people might have been taken aback, but Soul seemed composed in the face of pelt and big-cat fang tusks. She said, “Thank you for making the right choice.”
I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but I had never been very good at that. “So . . . ,” I said. “You had been sitting around watching the fight between Opal and me for . . . a while.” Though bubbled time makes that term insubstantial at best, I thought. “Watching and probably judging.” I frowned at her, wondering what Soul would have done had I taken another road. As part of PsyLED and also as an arcenciel, she had a wide scope of power. If I had killed the arcenciel, would she have had the rule of some arcane, possibly prehistoric law to kill me? Or go back in time and kill me before I killed Opal?
Soul pulled a scarf from a pocket and pushed my bloodied good hand away from Eli. She tied the scarf around my partner’s wound and immediately the pulsing arterial blood stopped. Eli’s face, which had held a hint of pain, eased back to its neutral, natural mask of nothingness. “This scarf has a healing working in it,” she said, adjusting the knotted scarf. “It’s self-renewable and powered by the sun, so when you finish with it today, simply wash it out and hang it in a window.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“I haven’t a thing for broken bones or timesickness. Your skinwalker energies will have to help you there.”
The fact that she knew I was sick from bending time reaffirmed that Soul had been watching the whole fight. I pressed against Eli’s helping hand and wrapped my bloody good hand around my own elbow, keeping it close to my side. I could take care of myself. Eli was holding my unsheathed sword. Not the smartest thing to do while in close proximity to another person. That thing was sharp.
Soul walked to Molly, who was now sitting on the low steps of the front porch, her sock-clad feet on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry Opal attacked you,” Soul said. “Free will is something my kind believe in, and I will make certain that she doesn’t repeat her actions against you and yours. But you should know that the child you carry has the potential to change the timelines for Opal and her progeny, and the closer that timeline gets, the harder it will be for her to restrain her survival instincts.”