Shadow Rites

I gagged again, and the tearing sensation in my belly doubled me over on the porch floor.

Leo smells wrong. Smells like meat, two days dead, Beast thought. Or like Son of Darkness with silver inside.

Which would be about right. To prepare for tonight, Leo had gotten blood-full, probably blood-drunk at one point. And he had surely squeezed out a few drops of the good stuff belonging to the oldest of all vamps to sip on. And now Leo was full of silver, just like the SoD.

I pulled the stake out of Leo’s belly and set it on the porch floor, careful to not let it tink or thump down, in a darker shadow. Just as carefully I extruded my bloody claws and cut the Morse code for SOS into the porch floor. Three dots, three dashes, three dots.

As I carved, Tau inspected the structure of the magical working ward, fingers running over the energies frozen in no time. In the Gray Between, the striations and overlapping flaps of the ward looked like geometric forms—triangles and polygons made of light. Tau pressed her fingers into a faint, narrow crack between two angles and ripped a small hole. She placed one hand over the hole. Black electricity blossomed out of her palm. The rent in the red ward stretched and pulled.

I twisted my body and scratched the SOS again, just in case Eli didn’t get it the first time. I wiped my bloody fingers over the porch, hoping that someone was around to smell what had happened and track us. Or they might at least see the blood and the SOS and figure out it was something bad. I went back to kneading my belly, feeling the torn muscle like mush beneath my fingers. It was bad. Real bad. But . . . I felt Leo’s weight shift, just a millimeter or so. His fingers tapped on my back. Tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Tap, tap, tap. SOS. Leo had seen me leave the note and was letting me know he was less incapacitated than the witches and I had thought. But how to use that?

With her other hand, Tau widened the hole, her palm sliding over the ward in a large oval, and pressed outward. A segment separated and fell into the yard like an egg-shaped door.

Leo was tugging on the bolo spell. How could he even do that? Then, Ooooh yeah. It was likely made with blood magic. Tau’s blood. Which was Ming’s blood. Ming had sworn to Leo. Ming’s blood was Leo’s blood. Ming’s magic was Leo’s magic. That would have been a great thing to understand before this. But . . . I was betting that neither one of us had had the time to figure that out or decide how to use it. The bolo loosened and slid on my body. I hissed with electric shock.

Marlene yanked on my broken fingers, the pain pulling me to my feet, and Leo with me, through the opening and into the night. The bright lights, flashing red and blue, streetlights, vehicle headlights, neon in windows, all seemed to smear across my retinas like lights in slo-mo camera footage, long swirling swaths of brightness on the dark of a New Orleans night.

There were police officers everywhere and Leo’s security people, including Derek, who should have been elsewhere, not that I blamed him for deserting one post for where the action was. We passed close to him, and I used my drunken staggering to get close. I flicked my good fingers at Derek’s face, seeing the blood fly from my fingertips and stop, hanging on the air. In real time, Derek would get hit and know that something was wrong.

Still in the Gray Between, we walked down the street, me weaving, the strength leaving my body along with a blood trail to follow. Leo’s hands bumped against my butt with each step, over and over, and I knew that he was enjoying the ride. I lurched off the sidewalk onto the street and landed hard on my heel, my shoulder ramming up at him. He almost gasped when my shoulder thrust into his solar plexus. But my gut tore just a bit more.

Jane, must shift back, Beast thought.

“I have to stop,” I said aloud.

“No,” Marlene said, jiggling my dislocated fingers.

My throat made a strangled noise of pain. “Then I’ll die, right here.” I let myself fall to my knees again. They were taking a beating tonight. “I have to stop . . .” I paused, thinking through what I was going to say, knowing it had to be something that didn’t let them start to figure out how to bubble time. No way could I let these two figure out how to do that. So I lied about one thing on my person that I could do without, lied to gain us some time. Lied to keep my secret. Lied to give Leo access to the one thing I could offer. The one thing I had refused to offer, ever. Until now. “I have to stop using the gorget. It only gets an hour of time per person. It needs . . . um . . . sunlight to replenish it.”

“What dis gorget is?”

“On my neck. The gold-and-citrine necklace. It’s what lets me change time. It has to spend time in sunlight to stay . . . charged.” Charged? I was so lame.

Marlene yanked the gold gorget, forcing me forward and down to my knees again with the violence of the ripping. The clasp broke and scored the nape of my neck. Blood welled to the surface of my skin. An offering, if Leo could figure that out. I felt Leo slowly lift a hand and wipe my blood. I knew he was licking his fingers. And for once I wasn’t irritated that he took my blood. I didn’t have much strength left and I needed him to be fast and strong. A master vamp who got the drop on a witch could bend her mind so fast she’d never see it coming. Leo took some more blood and I turned our bodies away from the witches so they wouldn’t see.

Deep inside, Beast growled, a low vibration of warning. I felt Leo’s mind near mine, a shadow in my soul home. My first thought was that he was trying to bind me again. My second thought was a realization that he was stealing power from my soul home. He had been there once, not that long ago, chained to me. And maybe that allowed him access to the spiritual power stored there. Or maybe the mere fact that I offered him my blood gave him access, the same way blood magic worked when the sacrifice was willing. The cavern space went dim and the flames in the fire pit lowered, growing cold.