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 Bâtard 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 Bâtard 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.
I remembered the painting on the wall in Leo’s office. The eyes in the shadowed face, the woman watching Katie and the king in the bed. Bethany. Bethany’s eyes. They had Bethany, or Bethany was a spy for the Europeans in Leo’s city. Had Katie hung the painting as a warning? A way to get us to notice the power structure and the old relationships that might be affecting the current EuroVamp political climate? Bethany had healed me and tasted my blood the first time we met. She knew what I was. She had to. And Bethany was certifiably insane. Or was she? What if she had been faking the crazies? God only knew what she was up to. They had Sabina prisoner. And maybe Katie was now a double agent. I wanted to bang my head at all the possibilities.
It would be best to consider and plan for the worst-case scenario and hope for something better. Worst case? They may have killed Sabina for her blood. Bethany and Katie were behind door number one. Or, Le Bâtard, Louis, and Grégoire were. I sniffed the air, but the scents hadn’t reached us yet and the air just smelled stale.
I looked down at myself and my star-shaped magic. The silver and red motes were different. Moving slower, the speed uneven. The motes were zipping a bit and slowing, zipping a bit and slowing. It was as if there was some kind of interference. As if something was attacking and breaking, or worse, deciphering, my own magic. That couldn’t be good. I needed to get out of the arcenciels’ time bubble. “I need to let you go,” I said.
“Not yet,” Eli said.
He had the door open, and I wasn’t surprised to see Grégoire just behind the door, his body positioned as if running, one hand out to shove the door open, the other holding a sword. Behind and to his sides were two other vamps. I got a good look at Le Bâtard and Louis le Jeune, king of France. Louis was as pretty as his portrait, with soft curling brown hair and a delicate face. He also looked cold and totally without emotion, a serial killer of humans, intent on his work. Le Bâtard was a man full of hate, his mouth pulled back in a snarl, fangs exposed, vamped out. There was also something excited in his eyes. Fever pitched. I’d seen that look before once. Feeding frenzy. He was looking forward to killing prey. A lot of prey.
They were wearing modern clothes. I had subconsciously been expecting pantaloons and waistcoats and big buckled shoes. Maybe powdered wigs. Instead, the Big Bad Uglies were wearing dark fighting leathers spelled with a geometric pattern, the energies looking like herringbone. Each carried two swords. Dang.