Shadow Rites

“Roger that. Alex?”

“Spell had no effect so far as I can tell. I’ll bring him down.”

I smelled more than heard Eli move down the stairs, a faint change in the potency of the scent patterns. By one arm, I pulled Leo out of the small room and into a bathroom. I rolled him over and into the tub, and double-checked the stake’s placement, midabdomen, where the descending aorta was, in a human. I gave it a little push to secure it and wiped his blood off along my wounded, skinless hand. Residual pain decreased and the oily-looking flesh seemed to grow more opaque in the first hint of healing. I rubbed every drop of the leftover blood into my skin and then wiped off on a fancy, tasseled hand towel and tossed it over the currently dead vamp, hiding the stake.

Leo was strong enough to get free if someone came in and pulled the stake loose, or if the magics in the house made it happen, or if it worked free somehow. I didn’t carry silver handcuffs. Note to self. If I survived this, I’d get me a pair of them. I locked Leo in the small room and wedged a chair under the knob. He could get out of the bathroom easily, but at least I’d hear him do so.

Back in the security room, I bent into the gas, careful to keep my face above it, and rolled Alex up onto my shoulder. I paused to look over the security console, which was now little more than shattered plastic, broken screens, and fried wires, dancing with green flames. So much for knowing what was going on throughout the house. I raced back down the stairs, through the six inches of spell that was flowing down them like a river and pooling at the bottom of the stairway, hearing the sounds of furniture breaking and shouts. I dumped the Kid—still breathing—onto a champagne-toned sofa in the Louis XVI Room at the front of the house; the settee was above the floor enough to have him breathing real air. I rose upright, feeling unexpectedly breathless and a strain in my thigh muscles. I huffed a breath and stepped to the entrance. Brandon stood there, back to the door, staring at nothing with much the same expression as Bruiser wore upstairs. I had a feeling Brian was out of it too. I scanned the wide foyer and up the stairs and back toward the ballroom, taking it all in.

Some smaller part of me was analyzing and adding up the factors: Skinwalker burns. Vamps go crazy. Onorios freeze. Minor witch charms fizzle out. Humans and witches had to be in there somewhere.

Green flaming magics roiled across the floor from the stairs, but also were in free fall through the stairway opening and straight down. It clung to the ceiling and across, to slide down the walls. The spell was growing in speed and in volume, seemingly feeding on itself. Or feeding on the people in the house. Skinwalker burns. Vamps go crazy. Onorios freeze. Humans and witches . . . Yeah. The magics had to be getting their power from somewhere and we were as likely a source as any. I was too tired for the minimal exertion. I had a feeling that we could be used up and left drained. Maybe that was the intent of the spell. Tau had become a senze onore . . . and that might be a psychic and metabolic vampire. She was stealing the life and energy from us all.

I waded through the mist toward the ballroom entrance. The witches were screaming incantations in English, Celtic, French, and Latin, a jumbled auditory mass. The burn of their magic was heated and icy on the skin of my hands and face, a dozen workings flying at the same time, skidding and skipping over the green mist like flat pebbles over a pond. But the spell was still flowing in around my knees, unchecked. My strength was failing, despite Beast shooting me full of the good stuff. But her gifts, even added to my normal skinwalker powers, wouldn’t be enough. Not for long.

I took in the ballroom with a single breath. Beast filled my head and my senses and evaluating as only a predator can, by scent. And she smelled blood. It was spattered in arcs and small pools on the parquet wood floor. The stink of the mixed blood was witchy, human, vamp, Onorio, and Mercy Blade, tasting acrid on my/our tongue as I tried to figure who was hurt. The reek of mixed-species blood bubbled in the green spell as if heated, the stench cooking up a miasma of terror and rising anger in the melee.

Visually the place was a wreck. Tables and chairs had been overturned and scattered. Witches and the human plus-ones were huddled under wards and hedges. Green energies encased ceiling, floors, and walls, licking out and up. I stepped just inside the opening and slid my back against the wall, behind Brian, where he stood, unmoving, a sword pointing at the floor, his face slack. I studied the long room. Locating prey and predators. And I didn’t see attacking witches anywhere. What I saw was vamps fighting.

Grégoire was closest to me, vamped out, whirling like a dervish through the rising magics, his sword keeping a wide swath of room open around him. But he didn’t seem to have any opponents at the moment. Gee DiMercy was bleeding, a smeared trail of evaporating, floral-scented blood leading to his hiding spot under the baby grand piano. I smelled his flesh burning, the stink of singed feathers, and his magics were glowing with some kind of protection, but he couldn’t heal himself and I couldn’t tell how bad he was injured. I had no idea why the green spell burned Gee and me and not the others, but when I got a long vacation I’d try to figure it out.

Beast chuffed at the thought.

Ming, also vamped, had bloodied fangs. She had bitten someone. Not good, if it was a witch or human. She was holding two knives, like short swords. Standing atop a small table in the nook called the Chaperone’s Alcove. She was barefoot now, beneath the scarlet dress, which was hitched into the feathered train.

Evan and Molly were huddled together beneath her hedge 2.0 ward, in the narrow place between the fancy bar and the liquor cabinet behind it. Their heads were, so far, above the rising mist, their hands working their magics, probably trying to use the filter magic Evan had come up with to stop the vapor working from entering. They were safe. Safe-ish. For the moment.