Shadow Rites

“Got it.”

I got out and we closed the doors softly, simultaneously, though the sound of them slamming would have been swallowed by the fog. A form swept at us through the night and Bruiser was suddenly standing in front of me, a sword I hadn’t seen him strap on in his hand and held to the intruder’s throat.

The man made a small “Eeep” of sound, his arms out to the sides to indicate a lack of weapons, before saying, formally, “It is Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, the Enforcer’s primo.”

Bruiser dropped the point of his blade and Edmund moved to me. He was fully vamped out, fangs, talons, and the blown black pupils in scarlet sclera, but he was in complete control, calm, which was something I seldom saw a vamp do. His power sparked along my skin, frigid as sleet. “There are two witches, under strong multiple wards, obfuscation workings, keep-away workings, and something I have never seen before, which strikes fire and burns hot. I saw a rat incinerated and I backed away.”

“Did they see you?” I asked.

“No. They do not know any of us are here. But their workings are attacking inside the wards, and the Truebloods have not keyed their protections to me,” he added with a snarl. “I may only enter when they permit.”

“I’m going in.” I heard the men talking as I dashed to my house, but their voices were swallowed by the mist. I raced ahead, nearly tripping when a curb appeared where I hadn’t expected one. I ran through the ward, a heated zip of power. Silently I opened the front door. A pale greenish liquidlike gas roiled at my feet and out the door. I left the door open and it poured into the street. I slipped inside, and the smell hit on my first attempted breath. Something bitter and so pungent it stole my breath.

Poison? A magical equivalent of poison? I left the door open and the spell flowed into the street. Forcing my lungs not to cough and therefore inhale a deeper breath, I raced up the steps and into the kids’ room. I threw open the windows in their room, grabbed both of my godchildren up, Angie off the floor and Little Evan off his bed. Molly’s cell phone clattered to the floor. As it hit, I saw something in the shadows that didn’t belong there, but there wasn’t time to examine it. I raced back down the stairs, lungs burning, oxygen starved, fighting to take a breath. Desperate for air, I lowered a shoulder and shoved through the side door, banging it open, hearing wood splinter and snap. Through the ward again, I stumbled into the backyard, where I started coughing and sucking fresh air. The sound was dry and rough and I wanted to throw up, feeling weird, as if I couldn’t get enough air, though I was hyperventilating. I pulled on Beast to make it to Edmund’s car. I opened the driver door and laid the kids on the seats.

Edmund dropped from the air to my side, having leaped over the tall brick fence. As I practically coughed up my diaphragm, he said, “Poison gas. I have notified Leo, who is calling in Lachish Dutillet and a magical Haz Mat team to deal with the gas flowing into the streets. We have to get them all out, strip off their clothes, get them oxygenated, and wash their bodies.” While speaking, he had been stripping Little Evan and laid the child in the grass. He leaned over and began artificial respiration on the little boy while scooping Angie to him and starting to strip her as well. Part of me wanted to stop him—it felt wrong to see the adult stripping the kids, but he worked with almost military precision and there was no yuck factor. And I was pretty busy, hacking up my lungs, coughing with an awful tearing, wet sound, pulling on Beast for healing. It was surreal and awful and— “Jane!” Edmund barked. “You can breathe later. Get the others. Now!”

“I’ll drop them down to you,” I said. Turning, I raced back through the ward, inside, forcing myself to hold my breath. Breathe later. Right. Tears streamed down my face as the poison magic stung my eyes. My lungs burned as if they were melting, but I held the coughing in.

The wards were air-permeable. Therefore they were gas-permeable. Open to any spell that used air to attack, and with the brooches here, the witches had a focus to use to set the spell. Stupid, stupid, stupid, each and every one of us.

CHAPTER 12

Licked Alex’s Head

Halfway up the stairs, I had to breathe and sucked the gas into me. Beast threw herself at me in a panic, her claws ripping at me. “Fine,” I said to her between coughs. The Gray Between erupted out of me, my skinwalker energies started healing me, and I slid into the place where time slowed. The poison mist around me developed visible layers, much more pale and gauzy at the top of the stairway where the concentration of the heavier-than-air mist was beginning to clear. I managed not to breathe until I reached the second story, but I still went light-headed when I sucked in the breath.

I stumbled into Molly and Big Evan’s room, opened the windows here too, and grabbed Mol’s arm, rolling her into a fireman’s carry, to stagger across the hallway, through Alex’s room. Once again, I rammed the door with my shoulder, breaking the window glass, which started to fall as I shoved past, then hung in the air, as the Gray Between followed me through the broken door, between the striating energies of the wards, and out onto the second-floor gallery. If we survived this, there would be a lot of repairs.

I let go of the time change and alerted Edmund, by coughing, that Molly was on the way down. When he looked up from where he was washing the children’s bodies with the garden hose, I tossed Molly through her own ward. In a pop of displaced air, Edmund was suddenly below her and caught Molly. She was not going to be happy when she woke up naked in the backyard, but I could live with her anger as long as they all lived.