Broken Soul

Laughter started in the back of my throat. We raced past the records room I had seen from the elevator, a room I recognized by the smell in the dark—old paintings, papyrus, vellum, heavy cloth paper. Inks. Wood. Bethany was right. The bad guys hadn’t spent any time on sub-four. We tore down stairs I couldn’t see. I saved myself a nasty fall hearing the echoes of bare feet slapping and the click of Brute’s claws leaping down several feet. Holding the Judge in my right hand, the wall against my left palm, I followed, falling behind. Ahead, my enhanced nose caught the stench that had nearly buckled my knees the first time I smelled it, a combination of decaying blood, rotten herbs, vinegar, sour urine, and sick sweat. We were near the boo room.

Bethany rounded a corner. There was a huge crash. Another. Light stabbed into the dark. Light and dust and the sound of voices chanting and sobbing and the stench of blood. And silver. I rounded the corner only half a second behind Bethany. Air popped around me. The wolf was racing through the door, his body a gray-and-white smear on my retinas, fast as a vamp. Faster than me.

I had seen this sight before, the wolf racing-leaping into battle. Stupid dog. Yeah. I had thought that before. Stupid dog. And stupid me to race in after him. But I did. Screams sounded as I leaped through the opening. Screams and laughter. And the pong of something rotten and burning. The stink of ozone.

The light of dozens of candles stabbed my eyes. I squinted to protect them, seeing the room in front of me through Beast-lashes. Time slowed, stuttered, stopped. I was in midair, midleap, hanging as if gravity no longer existed. From this vantage, I took in the room as if I had all the time in the world. And maybe I did.

Chained to the wall to my right was a skeleton, a blackened thing, like twigs held together with twine. It had skin like rotten cowhide, hair in tufts, limbs splayed out like a bug. It was wrapped in heavy, tarnished, silver chains. Pocket watches dangled from smaller chains interwoven through the larger ones. Which seemed important, but something for later. The creature was fastened to the wall with spikes. It had been crucified. Silver spikes at its widespread wrists, a spike through its crossed feet. It was naked.

It was alive.

Its mouth was open with laughter, or a scream. It was bleeding from a hole in its right side, nearly black blood, thick as tar. Its eyes glittered with horror and insanity.

Beneath the thing on the wall lay Grégoire. I was pretty sure he was dead or would be in seconds. Across the way, entering from another door, was a bloody apparition, teeth bared, body in midleap. Derek. Forms were behind him. I counted three. The cavalry was here. Between us, as if in a pincer move, lay the rest of the players. Everyone, including me, was halted in midaction.

Three yards or so from the feet of the chained being lay Leo and Katie, naked and bound, bodies posed toward the ceiling but their faces turned to the thing crucified on the wall. All of the downed vamps were bleeding at necks and wrists, and their torsos had been split from neck to groin—wide, gaping wounds, slick with congealed blood. Skin pale in the candlelight, bodies unmoving, unbreathing. Undead, close to true-dead. So close. From my vantage point near the rough ceiling beams, I could see their eyes were open but glazed, their veins flat and dark like blue tracks drawn on parchment-thin, too-white skin. Weak, watery blood had dried on their white, white flesh.

Above them stood the vampire known as Peregrinus. He was dark haired, dark eyed, with a bloody mouth and three-inch-long fangs, hugely big around, some of the largest-in-diameter fangs I had ever seen. Power emanated from him like from a live wire, a glowing, humming power that lit him up from within, like a lantern in a window on a moonless night. His very skin glowed. Peregrines were tattooed on his wrists, wings out and up, legs and claws spread and reaching, beaks wide and screaming.

Peregrinus was wearing a plain loincloth, the front and back draping, much like the men of the plains tribes of North America wore theirs, but without decorative porcupine quilling or beads. And I knew the moment I saw it that it wasn’t animal hide, not deer hide. It was made of skin, though. He was wearing human skin. Or vamp skin. Yeah. Vamp skin. He had tanned the skin of an enemy and was wearing it around his privates. Something told me the skin had once belonged to a female vamp who had insulted him in some way, but maybe I was projecting. Behind him lay a pile of bodies. The human soldiers he had brought with him. Looking dead.

In front of me, fixed in the moment of attack, was the white wolf, Brute, jaws wide, all three hundred plus pounds of werewolf in midleap, going for the human woman who was fighting Bethany. The Devil was dressed in black, so dark and matte that no light reflected anywhere except from her spinning blades. Though time seemed frozen, I could make out motion on the part of the human’s weapons, this time the long and short swords of the Duel Sang. They were moving faster than I was, the swords coming together in one of the scissor motions Grégoire had tried to teach me. The movement was a stepping-forward, crosscutting, kill-move that was intended to behead or cut an opponent in half. Neck or waist, either body site was a way to die.

The swords and the fighting method had one purpose, according to Grégoire. They were made for killing Mithrans. And Bethany was about to be beheaded. Faster than I could shove either of the opponents out of the way. Faster than the wolf could stop it. At least in regular time.

Batildis stood to the side. Close to the action. Watching. Expressionless. Her fists on her hips, arms akimbo. She wasn’t dressed for fighting. She was dressed for something else entirely in a long dress with full skirts, pale petticoats beneath and showing at the hem, full sleeves on a peasant blouse that left her breasts partially visible in the candlelight. Just three of them against the entire vamp HQ. Their magic and the arcenciel’s were that strong.

The Devil’s swords moved again. This time nearly six inches. Then another half foot. Time was speeding up. I wondered if—

There wasn’t time to figure it out or to determine the chances of it working. And I had no way to calculate the physics of the possibility, even if I had taken higher maths in school. Beast, on three, I thought.

Beast can count to three, she chuffed.

One. Two. Three.

Still in midair, I pushed through time, reached up, and removed the fishhook-shaped amulet. Hooked Batildis with the small charm, passing it through the flesh of her neck above her gorget. Time sped up for a moment, with a crash of sound, movement, and a blur of candlelight. Still in midair, I whirled and kicked the vamp. Hard. Paralyzed by the charm in the fishhook, Batildis fell toward the Devil’s blades. And all hell broke loose on earth.