“Pretty sure.”
The silvered cage began to glow, brighter than the sun. Brighter than the last time by far. Lightning. Striking. A massive bolt was coming. Fear shocked through me like the lightning that had nearly killed me. Electric. Behind us, a door opened.
I grabbed Eli by the shoulder, my hands and claws sinking into the muscles and tendons and around the ball of his humerus. I leaped away from the cage in a move worthy of a mountain lion. Lifting his body as I jumped. Around me, the Gray Between opened, but it was not my own Gray Between, but the place of the Between that was all arcenciel, a bowing of space and time and energy that simply wasn’t a skinwalker place. I held it away, watching it bloom, thinking. Trying to make sense of it all. I landed, touching down to my toes and knees and one hand. Eli dropped beside me, knees flexed, taking his weight. In time outside of time. An arcenciel time bubble, one that was blue and golden all at once.
“Janie? What—?” Eli slapped his hand atop mine, as if to make sure it stayed in place.
“Lightning was striking,” I said. And my voice sounded odd. Empty. No echo, like the one in the warehouse. I hadn’t even noted it until it was gone.
Eli looked around us. Everything was stopped, frozen in time. Tonelessly, he said, “We’re in the GB, aren’t we? The Gray Between.” He was totally expressionless. Battle face.
“Yeah.” The GB. That was funny. The initials made me smile, but it didn’t last long.
My stomach heaved and I felt queasy. I watched as Eli acclimatized to the place outside of time, but he looked fine, not a hint of nausea. Maybe nausea is trained out of Army Rangers.
He took in the room and the movement of power down the lightning rod, the position of all the combatants, his hand holding mine down on his shoulder as if he understood that the moment we weren’t touching he’d be back in real time. “Sound is weird here, Babe. My ears hurt.”
“It’s the air pressure. Light moves fast, so we can still see. But sound through air molecules can move only at certain speeds.”
He stretched his jaw, trying to equalize the pressure in his ears. His gaze landed on the door. “Who’s coming through? And from where?”
“A closet? A small space in the wall?” I asked. “I’m guessing Grégoire and his old master, to kill us all.”
“Grégoire to kill—? Oh.” He looked around again. “Because Le Batard has the twins. The Royal Bastard has leverage, and you think he’ll use it to force Grégoire to kill us.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Or not. Le Batard and Louis may be at HQ. We could have another unknown witch behind door number three, the wigged-up vampire female, or a unicorn, or a leprechaun. I hear they’re mean little buggers.” I changed the subject. “You need to let go. I don’t know what being outside of time might do to your cells or your DNA. It might warp them.”
“No.” He patted my hand. “You look and sound not quite right. For the moment I have a strategical advantage. Hang tight.” Eli released my hand and drew his weapon, switching out the mag for a fresh one loaded with frangible silver rounds.
“I smell vamps on the other side of the door. They’ll be moving vamp-fast. They might be masters, old as the race. They might not die from silver,” I said.
“True, but silver direct to the brain box will slow them down enough for us to take back the field of battle. And take a few heads. We should start a collection. Mount ’em at HQ on the fence.” That was my partner. Always thinking about the high ground and how best to secure it.
But the image cleared my head and I shoved my reaction to the lightning down and away. I said, “Ick and ewww. The stink of vamp head in NOLA heat? No thanks.”
Eli grunted, this one more like snorting laughter. “Okay. Let’s move. Together.”
We stood straight and shuffled to the doorway, close enough that we touched, sorta like a three-legged race but without the grain bags or the messy amputation. Eli reached forward and pushed the door. It didn’t move. “Jane?”
“Laws of physics change some when we remove time from the equation. Things we have to reposition are more difficult. Sometimes. Not always.”
He released the door. “When I fire my weapon?”
“It probably won’t fire. If it does, the moment the round leaves Gray Between and enters real time, it just kinda hangs there,” I said.
Eli grunted. It sounded a lot like me. He holstered the weapon and drew two silvered knives, turning them blades-back in his fists. The steel edges were honed so fine it hurt to try to focus on them. “Hang on tight,” he said, and put muscle to opening the door. It moved two inches. His booted feet slid on the concrete floor. “You could lend a hand,” he said.
“Could. Learning stuff.”
“Glad I can be of help.” He sounded snarky. Put his free shoulder against the door and shoved again. I kept my hand steady on him.
“For instance,” I said, “I figured out why the whole door doesn’t enter the Gray Between with me when I touch it. In fact, the part I’m touching, or, in this case, you’re touching, does enter the GB. Makes me wonder what’s happening to the structure of the wood itself at the boundary.”
“You think too much. Yada yada, physics, yada yada.”
“Or lack of physics.” It also made me wonder what it was doing to my own cellular structure, as I entered it over and over. I knew it was changing me. But that was a problem for another day. For now, I was just glad I wasn’t vomiting blood, thanks to the pentagram-shaped magics inside me.
With a lot of effort, the door slowly shoved open, the hinges emitting a low-pitched hum that was probably a high-pitched squeal in real time.
As the door opened, I smelled vamps and their power, a bloody scent full of death and sex, the blood of the old and powerful ones. Sabina. Maybe another nearly as old. There were a few of the first-and second-generation vamps in NOLA: Sabina and Bethany and the Son of Darkness. Who was a skin-bag of bones and gelatinous goo.