Broken Soul

I kept the relief off my face. Any anger left in my system at Bruiser was gone. It might make me a wishy-washy woman, but I wanted Bruiser alive. If only so I could torture him for being an ass. I said, “Fine. Get me a healer—Gee, or a priestess, or someone.” I left the deadish Leo on my floor and went to rinse and dry off and dress in something more formal than a damp, bloody towel. I also weaponed up in case anyone else had issues with Leo’s current condition.

I was standing in the foyer, braiding my wet hair with pelted, knobby hands, trying to keep the sickness at bay, when the first visitors arrived. Katie entered through the side door like she had been fired through a cannon, which meant she had leaped over the brick fence in the evening gown and heels she was wearing. I wished I’d seen that. But the clothes and her presence meant that she hadn’t been kept safely in HQ. Nor had Leo.

It also meant I needed a new side door. She stalked over the splinters of the old one in her stilettos. Gee DiMercy walked in behind her. I figured he had flown. Neither looked happy. I dropped the braid and stood my ground with a silver stake in one hand and a steel blade in the other. Before I could explain or defend myself, the most nutso vamp I’d ever met showed up at the front door with Bruiser over her shoulder. She didn’t need an invitation to enter. The door blew off its hinges. Again. This time, crime scene tape blew in with it.

The priestess Bethany Salazar y Medina was in my house. Her gaze was empty and fathomless, but her body oozed the scents of rage and vengeance. Bruiser rested across her shoulder as if he weighed no more than the shawl on her other side. He was breathing. He was also out cold, dangling like that shawl, with artful repose. And he was bleeding, his blood soaked through Bethany’s clothing.

The pain in my gut twisted and went hot. I pressed my middle with one hand, the blade pointed away from me. Not now. Not now!

Beast cannot stop it, she thought at me. Price must be paid.

“Who injured my George?” Bethany hissed. She cocked her head in that snake-way vamps have and settled all her magics on me. They prickled over my skin like lightning, ready to strike. She was nothing like the other priestess, Sabina. The power that surrounded Bethany was sharp and pitted, piercing and ephemeral. Her magics carried a scent similar to witch power, but with the bitter sting of shamanism and the yellowish tint and tang of cardamom. She was old, among the oldest vamps I had ever seen.

I took a breath of icy air to speak but she beat me to it. “I smell you on him,” she said. “I will rip you to small shreds of flesh and cook you over my fire. I will eat you and your power—”

“Not me.” I backed away fast, toward the kitchen door that hung open. Unfortunately, that put me near Katie, who was on the floor beside Leo. A quick glance told me she was the lesser danger at the moment, along with Derek, who stood in the kitchen area, weapons drawn and uncertainty on his face, as if he wasn’t sure what to do in this FUBARed mess. “Is Br—George going to be okay?” I asked as I scuttled like a crab, my toes spreading and aching, growing and changing shape, starting to look like puma paws.

“He is my George. I made certain that he is always well when I remade him.” Bethany looked at Leo on the floor. “You staked my Leo. I smell the stink of silver. You would kill him true-dead?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Not my intent. He attacked and, umm, I happened to be holding silver stakes.” Stupid answer.

Her eyes bored into me as she advanced, her cerulean skirts swirling, her dark-skinned flesh looking smooth and oiled in the lamplight, the toes of her bare feet spread wide on the floor. And Bruiser’s blood dripping steadily behind her. “I made certain that my Leo would forever be well when I gave to him my finest and most deadly gift.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. Whatever. Leo hurt George,” I half lied, to keep Derek alive. His eyes went wide as he understood what I’d done. “How ’bout you put George down and help Leo?”

Bethany dropped George on the floor. His head hit first and bounced hard, his body hitting just after, the double blows making hollow, dull echoes through the flooring. Awrighty, then, I thought, my breath coming faster to deal with the increasing pain. She went to Leo and settled on the floor beside him. Katie and Bethany stared at each other across Leo’s body, and it didn’t take a mad scientist to tell that they were not the best of pals. Keeping their eyes on the floor grouping, Eli and the Kid lifted George and laid him on the couch in a boneless heap.

“What does the priestess mean, her finest and most deadly gift?” Gee DiMercy asked me. He was standing behind Katie, watching the scene with intense but inscrutable interest.

“Heck if I know. I’m just the hired help. Or I was the hired help. I quit.” I shook my head. “But I think Leo refused my resignation and decided to kill me instead.”

For some reason, that made Gee laugh, but my eyes were drawn away from him. Shadows and sparkles flowed across the wall of the foyer, reflected onto the living room walls, and into the kitchen. Prickles of magic burned on my skin. “Oh crap,” I whispered.

The light-dragon flowed through the front door, into the house, and across the ceiling. It moved like the shadow of a serpent, one with wings of dappled sunlight on springwater, and opened its mouth. It had teeth like needles and knives and the distorted fun-house-mirror face of a human female. Its—her—wings were fully extended and their span was wider than the house, seeming to rise and fall through walls and out into the street.

The last time I had seen it, the arcenciel had been fighting the vampires who attacked me. My eyes on it, I took a breath. “Eli,” I said, my voice soft. “I smell vamp.”

My hands ached as claws pierced my fingertips. Pelt rippled down my body. And everything seemed to slow again, just a bit. Even the pain began to ease, which should have been a good thing, but instead made me wonder whether delaying paying the price made it go up.

In the light of the overhead fixture the arcenciel went visible, still glowing, but with a darker line along one side where I had stabbed her. She had already healed, but not without cost. Can light scar? Her wings cast streamers of light, like the afterimage glare of a camera flash combined with the arctic lights in a night sky, an effervescent opalescence, green and gold and pale shades of the rainbow, a feathery luminosity sparkling with brighter motes. Her hair was white, striped with red and black and brown. Bethany screamed and raced at the arcenciel, reaching, trying to grab the light. To the side, I saw Eli drawing a vamp-killer and a small subgun, seemingly out of the air. Derek flashed hand signals to him, the two fighters moving as one.