Lightning struck the earth about two feet from the limo. The blast was so bright it seared my eyeballs. The sound so loud it deafened me. It fried the cell’s electronics, burning my hand and adding the stink of burned plastic and ozone to the air I gasped in. The light and thunderclap went on and on as the Gray Between opened up around me. I dropped the ruined phone and it hung in midair.
I clutched the Gray Between energies to me and shoved the limo door open on the far side of the vehicle. Dashed through the stationary drops, getting soaked, refusing to see the future possibilities in each. I sped through the riot, taking away a gun from a furious-faced teen, tripping his adversary, knocking a bullet from its trajectory toward the ground. I didn’t stop all the violence, but since time was no longer an issue, I made a circuit of the riot area and helped where I could.
By the time I finished, the lightning bolt had nearly completed its descent and I was having trouble controlling the Gray Between. I was growing claws, and golden hair was sprouting through my skin. Beast was trying to push her way through. Sometimes it didn’t hurt, but this time it hurt. Bad.
I need hands to pull a trigger and hold a stake and a vamp-killer, I warned her.
Beast is not doing this, she said back.
I sprinted toward the church and the revenant. What then?
Storm. Light from clouds. Magic.
Something else is pulling my skinwalker magics to the surface? Just like it’s bubbling time.
Yes.
Well, that sucks.
Something moved in my peripheral vision and I looked around, seeing nothing at ground level. I glanced up into the storm. Above me, in the Gray Between, an arcenciel hovered, her wings out and her tail caught in the moment of lashing. It didn’t look like Soul, rather, the other one I knew of, the juvenile arcenciel named Opal. The light dragon was horned and frilled, her long hair copper and brown, her body scaled with red light and a hint of sapphire. She was half human-faced, half dragon. Her teeth were eight inches long, sharp and pearled. The scales of her snake body glistened like the opals for which she was named. Her wings were pearled bronze, marked by small feathered flourishes here and there.
The Gray Between usually allowed rainbow dragons to see me working outside of time, and since they could bubble time, they could trace my whereabouts through it. This one, though, was not using the ability to bubble time, but was still in normal human time. Dancing in lightning. Magic. Magic was affecting them too. The storm was magic, and more so than I had guessed. It was a good thing humans couldn’t see magic, or the locals would be firing handguns and automatic rifles up at them, hoping to bring down a trophy-dragon.
The church was white adobe-like stuff on the outside, rain-damaged palms and small trees along the outer walls. Broken concrete and shell-based asphalt paving the parking lot. I dashed into the darkness. The entrance walls were white plaster, recently painted.
The Gray Between flickered, my joints popped and expanded, and my hips narrowed. Pelt grew down across my face and over my limbs. I darted into the sanctuary, though Catholics probably called it something else. The altar area was a huge arch. Plaster dead saints stood on stands, and plaster angels held up candelabra. Stained-glass windows were pictures of Bible stories. The ceiling had been repaired, and scaffolding was still in place. The smell of paint and age hung on the air, mixed with fresh blood and old death. I passed by a life-sized crucifix. Two church pews hung in the air as if levitated, caught in the moment of no-time. They had been thrown by the revenant.
She stood, arms raised in fury, about halfway down the center aisle, feet braced to either side of a body. It—he—was dressed in black and might have been wearing a clerical collar, though the blood that drenched his shirt hid that. His bald head was sitting atop the gold cross behind the altar. He looked vaguely surprised.
The revenant was wearing a dress of rags and one shoe without the heel, the other foot bare. She was scorched, and smoke curled up from her, spiraled and coiled. She was half on fire, burned, psychotic, and a lot rotted. She stank like last week’s roadkill. She had been called from the grave, she had been out in the daytime, and she was the dead undead, so she had good reason for the poor fashion sense and the stench. It had probably been decades since she bathed.
I pulled the unfamiliar silver-plated vamp-killer and tested its balance by swiping it through the air, loosening up. It was hilt-heavy and was too lightweight for what I wanted. But it was what I had from the cache in the limo. I pulled it into a backswing. Rushed her.
The lightning dimmed. Thunder reached its highest pitch. The pews dropped several inches, starting to fall as time unbubbled. I leaped. Vamp-killer high. Screaming.
Time took a jump, paused, and caught up with me.
The revenant saw me, heard me, turned her head to me as I left the ground. Opened her mouth to reveal the dog fangs. She leaped at me. Inside my swing. The pews fell with twin crashes and splintered wood flew. Wood shards stabbed me. The vamp and I met about three feet off the ground. Slammed together in midair.
Her head twisted, a snakelike, inhuman move. Fast as a shark. She bit down. Catching my right shoulder in her fangs.
We landed hard, her on top, shaking me like a dog. My hand went numb. It dropped the vamp-killer. The weapon and a longer reach were a detriment now, anyway. This was close-in work.
Left-handed, I pulled a shorter silvered blade from my belt. Gripped it tight in my knobby hand. Stabbed up under her ribs, at her heart.
Which in a revenant didn’t work. My training and experience were working against me. Muscle memory a hindrance.
She grabbed my head in clawed hands. Rammed it against a pew. I had a moment of blackness, shredded away by the pain. She shook me again, teeth in my shoulder, hands on my head. She was ripping my arm off. My blood sprayed across the room and up, to spatter on the newly painted ceiling far overhead. I adjusted my grip and stabbed under her left ear. Cut toward me. Severed her carotid and jugular, her trachea and esophagus. Nothing changed. Except my blood pooling, spreading under me. The sound and vibration of her growling into my shoulder stopped.
I stabbed again, working the blade back and forth, severing tendons. They were old and tough and it wasn’t easy. I was screaming in pain, in battle fury. Her head lolled forward. But her jaws didn’t unclench off my shoulder. I sawed. Panted. Mewled in agony. She shook me, my whole body sliding on the wood floor, through my blood. Things tore inside my shoulder joint. Blood shot into my right eye. Into her face. Her eyes opened and she stared at me. She started drinking; the sucking sounds were just eww. Even if it hadn’t been my blood she was drinking.