On the floor some twelve feet away, Fernand was feeling around with one hand and touching his facial bones with the other. There was nothing left from ear to ear and from eyebrows to the top of his neck.
He was making little sounds like, “Ih ih. Ieeee.” I was pretty sure part of his tongue was gone as well his face. But he was still moving and it looked as if the flesh of his face was starting to heal. Near us, Amitee’s throat was starting to regrow. They had been drinking from an old vamp to be this strong. Or . . . Or they were more powerful than they appeared. Just how old was the Rochefort clan in France? Was it possible to hide vampire power when a master vamp, Leo, drank from them? And how long had they been planning Leo’s overthrow? And . . . Immanuel, Leo’s supposed son, had been a crazy skinwalker. It was all tied together, but I was missing something. Who had the power and the time to do all this? Plan all this? Set it all in motion? Le Batard? Louis? Or was there someone else on shore with the power here? I remembered the vamps in the photos, the ones where vamps were coming ashore in dinghies. Who would be smart enough to make all this happen? Crap, crap, crap. What was I missing? The wigged-up woman. The vamp with her. Were they the ones attacking HQ?
Eli fired. Fired. Shouted, “Jane! How bad are you hurt?”
Chuffed. Stupid human. I am Beast. Am hurt bad or would be fighting. Tore vampire flesh and drank more vampire blood. Goooood vampire blood. Eli cursed. Fired. Fired.
Inside Beast, I worried. Even after drinking healing vamp blood, I/we could feel Beast weaken. The round must have taken out something important, a major blood vessel. I/we dropped down, flatter, and pulled the body closer, over us. We were lying in a pool of cooling Puma concolor blood. The unmoving undead body was both food and protection. Beast was eating. I concentrated on the fight and on trying not to gag.
I smelled Sabina but she wasn’t in sight. Her blood-scent came from near the garage door at a chair, one with a length of chain across the seat, near a small rod with an electric cord attached, an instrument like an electrician might use, a soldering iron. I caught a whiff of burned vamp-flesh. They had tortured her.
I took in Brandon and Brian. They were secured back to back. The only evidence I had they were alive was . . . nothing. No evidence at all. Until one took a faint, shallow breath and mewled again.
In the corner was a large silver cage. Inside was a vamp in rags. He was sitting on a three-legged stool, hunched over a rounded boulder, tangled hair trailing down over it. It was hard to be sure, with the degree of emaciation and scraggly beard and hair, but I thought it was the man from the mural, Adan Bouvier, the male witch-vamp who could call storms. Which he was doing, but clearly not by choice. He was mostly skeleton, his feet bare, burned where they touched the silver cage, his hands like bird claws. His talons were buried in the stone.
No. Not just a huge stone, but a massive geode. One end had been cut open and the inside was filled with crystals of pure, clear quartz. I remembered the saw outside. And the forklift. They’d have needed both to maneuver all this equipment. This wasn’t a room that had been quickly thrown together. This room, this scenario, had been in planning for a long time. Fernand and Amitee had been busy.
Eli fired. Fired. He raced from the protection of the trunk, toward us. He took cover behind the silvered cage, which on first thought was foolish, but then I realized it had to be warded. That was part of the glow on the bars. Eli was standing near the door to the cage. He was trying to get it open. I wasn’t sure that was wise, but I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Beast ripped part of Amitee’s upper arm away and chewed it. I remembered a time when the thought of Beast eating from a human had made me ill. Now she was eating a vamp who was still alive (undead) and all I could wonder was how long it would take the vamp to regrow the musculature and wonder if Beast would throw up the vamp flesh.
Around and within the silvered cage, surrounding the vamp, a nimbus of power bloomed, a burning, spitting corona in a shade of yellow like Beast’s eyes. Outside, lightning cracked, hitting nearby. The silver cage lit up with power. Tilting Beast’s head up, I followed the cage walls high. They weren’t sterling, they were plated with a heavy coating of the stuff, but underneath the coating and above the cage, they were steel. Which would conduct power really well. The cage rose to the top like the spines of an umbrella, to the center, where they met and formed into a rod that went straight up into the roof. The lightning rod up top was attached to the steel and silver cage. Oh crap. The cage itself was a spell. With a witch-vamp inside it. With the quartz geode. In a storm that was affecting time magic.
Quartz was the best crystal to catch and trap arcenciel. And with a such a massive amount of quartz crystals, vamps could imprison the rainbow dragons easily. They wanted to ride the rainbow dragons and move through time, changing the future, and maybe the past.
I felt it before I heard it. Before I saw it. That hair-raising moment before lightning strikes. The instant between life and death by Mother Nature, when everything stands still. And then lightning struck the rod atop the roof. In less than a heartbeat of time it raced into the building and exploded down the silver cage. Lightning so hot it melted the silver off the steel in places, in an acrid sizzle of molten metal. And into the body and hands of the imprisoned vampire-witch. His head arched back, hair flinging and standing high, back warped in unbearable pain. Mouth open, he screamed in what sounded like an orgasmic moment. The nimbus of magics around him glowed and went white.
Beast took back over and turned our eyes away to protect our vision.
Outside, in the storm, I heard a scream, a sound I had never heard before but instinctively knew. Magic was calling arcenciels, trying to trap them in the crystals within the geode. To take them as slaves for use in stopping and altering time. Lightning transformed into magic, I thought. In the hands of Leo’s enemies. Oh crap. We’re in so much trouble.
A weak growl vibrated through me/us. Pain shuddered through with it.
Beast dropped her head and tore out the shoulder of the vamp she clutched in her claws. She lapped up Amitee’s blood. The agony in my/our hip and side decreased. I/we were healing. But too slowly.