Shadow Rites

Gee’s face was blistered. Neck and hands raw. Burned before he opened whatever magics he had used to shield himself. Magics that had let me in. Another thing to think about later. His burns weren’t quite as bad as my own, but they were bad enough. There were slashes in his throat. Two fang slashes.

I remembered Ming’s bloody fangs. She had clearly attacked him. He wiped both hands through the blood of his throat and onto me, on my face and my injured hand. The pain instantly eased and beneath the blood I saw actual skin on my palm. “What—?”

Beneath Marlene’s screams, Gee said what I had thought only moments before. “We two are the only ones burned. We two who are goddess born. My blood, a drop of Ming’s blood, and your blood upon the weapon made by your friends.” He closed my healed fist around the blob, which appeared in his bloody fingers, stolen from my pocket as if by prestidigitation. “You are protected now. You must protect the children. Always.” His eyes closed as he slumped on the piano.

I turned back to the ballroom. Marlene’s anger had fueled the green flames all around her. Red fire danced over her body, licking but not burning.

Beyond her, Tau pulled something from her bodice, but her back was to me, and I couldn’t see what it was, except it was small. She said what sounded like “Meus es tu.” And she struck down with her hand. Down onto Grégoire, who still lay on the floor. Magics ballooned out around him like a black flower blooming through the green.

That couldn’t be good.

Tau turned to the witches and pointed at them, accusing. “You didn’t help us when we asked, when we begged.”

Marlene hunched in, her angry screams echoing away. Tears had tracked down her face, leaving black mascara trails in her makeup. In Cajun patois, she said, “You. You di’n’ stop the fanged devils when we show you proof of they evil. You done hid you heads in de sand and let dem take our young, you did. My Antoine, him die because you refuse him help. Now you pay.”

“Now you pay!” Tau echoed. She clapped her hands together twice and said, “Maintenant. Vous tuerez. Assassiner.”

I understood the last word, just as Grégoire stood. He moved the way a marionette did when a puppeteer pulled it upright on its strings. He was still vamped out. There was a peacock pin stuck into his chest, just inches above the stake I’d stuck in him. Grégoire opened his vamped-out eyes. The black of the pupils were filled with green flames. He had a sword in each hand. Face slack. He stared at the wall.

Tau smiled and twirled her fingers.

Grégoire spun and raised his swords to Tau like an offering. She slid her thumbs along the steel. Her blood slicked down across the blades. The vamp staggered toward the Truebloods. One sword lifted above Molly and Evan’s ward.

“Assassiner,” Tau repeated.

Kitssss. Beast reached inside and ripped her claws through the Gray Between.

The world swirled and roared around me. The gray magics erupted out. And then died. I lost my footing as an unfamiliar pain slammed into my chest, stealing my breath. I caught myself on the bar, not sure how I’d gotten there. Not sure what had happened. Except that my chest was aching as if I’d taken a hit. I glanced down and saw a scuff in the scarlet leather jacket. Yeah. Somehow, in the Gray Between, I’d been spell-stabbed. The leather/Dyneema/chain-mail counterspells had protected me.

Eli’s weapons were laid in a row on the bar, like a line of death, but nothing he had on hand had worked. He looked like death warmed over, face greenish, fingers trembling. I grabbed up my vamp-killer and raised it across my body in the Spanish Circle’s cross-guard.

Grégoire spun past me, knocking my clumsy block, sending my blade spinning across the room. His sword circled, a flashy move in preparation to cut Molly’s ward.

The blade fell and sliced through the energies like a hot knife through butter. The magics sizzled and spat and fell.

Lachish dropped her ward for half a second, and threw the orb of magics she had gathered once before. It wasn’t the tightly shaped weapon it had been, but it also wasn’t weak.

It hit Grégoire, cutting like a scissors through his marionette strings. He fell in a heap. The magics slithered like snakes up his body and inside, crawling through the hole in his belly where the stake still rested. I hoped Lachish hadn’t just killed Leo’s boy toy and best fighter, but I also didn’t have time to help him now, because Leo walked back through the door from the stairway. The stake was still in his chest. He too had a brooch in his flesh, pinned through his throat.

“Oh, crap,” I breathed. Leo had been left upstairs, incapacitated. With them . . .

Tau sidled up to him in a four-beat step, step-step-turning-step-step, as if she shared a dance with him. She yanked the stake out of him. Vamp blood splattered and Tau licked the stake. Leo looked at her and laughed.

Okay. Not good.

Ming slid off the small table and onto the floor, standing. Unlike Grégoire and Leo, Ming had no pin. Maybe she didn’t need one. Maybe she had been under the control of Tau for so long that she was biddable just by the pulse of magic. My bringing her as my ace in the hole suddenly looked a lot less brilliant. She walked with the snake-spine-slither of the vamp on the prowl, head swiveling too far to the left and too far to the right. Hunting.

Ming set her eyes on Lachish. Leo set his eyes on Molly. Grégoire mewled, where he lay on the floor, and tried to stand. There was too much magic. That’s what had happened to the Gray Between. I was surrounded by the green mist. It was on my clothes, on my skin, in my hair. It was interfering with everything. And if I couldn’t get to the Gray Between, I couldn’t shift, couldn’t heal, and for certain couldn’t bubble time.