Shadow Rites

Leo’s fine-boned fingers were still in Alex’s hair. Bloody but unmoving. As if pressed gently against the perimeters of the wound to slow the bleeding.

“Jane?” Bruiser asked. He was standing at the door, weapons out, including a sword I seldom saw him carry. He hadn’t been carrying a sword in the limo and I had to assume he’d secreted one on the premises. “You’re hurt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I triggered something, but this put it out.” I showed him the hand holding the blob. “Unfortunately it’s still active. Can you see it?”

Bruiser shook his head. “No.” But there was a strange look on his face, confusion, maybe. And he sniffed as if something smelled unpleasant.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“I . . . I don’t know.” He knelt by Leo, into the green, low-lying spell-mist. Tilted his head.

“Jane?” Eli called.

I heard more sizzling. My brain clicked back on. The anti-DNA charms were going out all at once.

There was no way that anyone could have known that I would be the one to trigger the spell. No way to know when the targeted spell had been put in the closet, but under ordinary conditions, it wasn’t a place I should have even entered. The chance of me entering the closet, even with Alex injured, was minimal. I was missing something. The green spell was still pouring out around my feet, filling the room. I was missing something. Something big.

“Jane!” Eli called, soft, but edgy. “Leo?”

Leo lifted one hand to his face. Opened his mouth. And he licked his bloody fingers. His head swiveled from Alex up to me, that inhuman oddly jointed way they move when they don’t care if they look human. From his place on the floor Leo’s gaze swallowed me. Fastfastfast, he vamped out. Eyes bloodred with pupils blown, huge and black. Green flames danced in his eyes. Leo’s fangs schnicked down. He rocketed up, talons reaching for me.

I’d been wrong. The spell hadn’t been aimed only at me.

CHAPTER 19

A Billowing Gust of Fiery Death

With no thought at all, I bonked Leo on the head with the hilt of the vamp-killer. Hard. Leo fell like a human. Into the rising, flaming cloud of glowing green vapor-based spell that was rising all around me, but wasn’t touching my skin again. Yet. Not through the spelled leathers and with the blob in my hand. “Bruiser, what—?”

But he was kneeling exactly as I’d seen him last, head down and tilted. Staring at Alex. Not moving except for a slow, shallow breath. And he hadn’t reacted to me putting Leo down. So to speak.

I whipped my head and took the working in, Beast-sight making the magics glow in brilliant greens and silvers, now flowing out of the room and into the hallway like a slow-moving, developing flood. Heading for the stairs. Understanding came in an instant.

This spell, whatever it was intended to do, other than burn me to death, make Leo bonkers, and freeze Bruiser, was being carried on flaming green air, a vapor that would pass through my clothes eventually, and burn me alive. And it could pass through all defensive hedge wards where any witch who used the protection would breathe it. Even vamps had to breathe to speak and would inhale the spell, which was likely how Leo got hit. He had breathed in to speak to me. So had Bruiser, who was breathing normally when he dropped into the mist. The spell was multifaceted and multipurpose and I had no idea what all it might do or what it was based on. We were so screwed.

Worse. I had done this. When I stuck my head in the closet, when I touched that spiderweb stuff. I had somehow ignited the green magics. Like det cord, flaming too fast to catch. Like an explosion out of the closet, a billowing gust of fiery death.

A small, rational part of my mind told me that something so sophisticated probably had a dozen possible triggers. But the rest of me wasn’t listening. And the working was still flowing out of the closet. I closed the closet door, but the spell raced through the cracks, barely slowed.

“Jane!” Eli shouted this time, and I heard his feet on the stairs.

Beast flooded me with another shot of adrenaline. “Problem,” I said softly, not wanting my voice to carry to the ballroom. “Spell. Stay put.” Eli halted, but I could smell his tension, a rising tide of violence that had nowhere to go.

I tried again to put the blob away and this time my hand stayed flameless. But as I released my grip, I ripped the flesh off my palm, leaving it clinging to the blob. I made a choked sound of agony. Beast shot painkilling endorphins through me, damping the pain and making me weirdly euphoric, while standing in the middle of a spell with a skinless hand. I rubbed the peeled strip of flesh off the blob and onto my leathers, tucked it all into my pocket, and sheathed the vamp-killer. Pulled a wooden stake with my good hand. Leo was already moving, trying to wake. His body was submerged and encased in green flames. His eyes popped open. Green pupils, face mad with rage.

I staked him. I’d done it before and he had lived. This was only wood, not silver, so I figured he’d be ticked off but would live to undeath again and without the drama of the last time. He went still, his eyes glazed over in what looked like real death. The magics crawled all over him, writhing, trying to wake him.

I spoke again to Eli, loud enough to carry, forcing my voice to be calm and controlled, despite the pain. “Spell activated. Booby trap in the closet. Minor injury to my hand. Made Leo unstable. He’s out of commission. Bruiser is motionless. And—” I took in the second story. The hallway was filling with green gas, low down, heavier than air. “Tell the witches a dark magic spell is on the way down the stairs. To do some magical whammy and put it out, and ward against air.”