Shadow Rites

Really? I thought. Dr. Edmund Hartley. But why not? He was old enough to have taken out a few years of his very, very long life to go to medical school. Of course, he might have attended in the seventeen hundreds. And of course, he didn’t need medical training to heal.

Pushing outward with his compulsion, he said to the medical personnel, “Lachish Dutillet is a witch, so you’ll want magical protection while you assess her and secure her for transport to Tulane University Hospital. The beautiful Ailis should be able to provide you with that assistance.”

Ailis gave him a look that would have cured leather, but he ignored it. The two might have had a history. Interesting.

Tulane University Hospital was the only hospital in New Orleans that kept paranormal medical experts on contract. They also had medical and technical personnel who dealt with the needs of supernats and their injuries. And they had, on at least one occasion, allowed vampires into the ER to treat dying patients.

Edmund turned to me. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a burgundy hankie and cummerbund, and very shiny patent leather shoes. There was a faint five o’clock shadow along his jaw, which I thought might be the first time I had ever seen a vamp with ungroomed facial hair. Fangs dropping with a tiny schnick, he said, “I haven’t fed tonight.”

“Noted,” I said, and pointed at Evan.

“As my mistress requires.” The words were quite clear, despite being spoken around the fangs. He offered me a tiny bow that managed to come across as mocking.

Something that smelled like cinnamon with a hint of anise and . . . maybe chocolate mint wafted from Edmund. He smelled like a bakery. I said, “Alex and the Robere brothers will draw up the primo papers tomorrow. I’ll approve them and get the signing witnessed.”

“Agreed, my mistress. And then they may be stored at the Mithran Council Chambers along with all such legal writs.”

I narrowed my eyes and answered without agreeing to that, “Heal your other master. Please.”

Edmund gave a deeper bow and actually clicked his heels together, a military tradition that went back centuries, though no one but me might have heard the patent leather tap. He knelt beside Evan and pulled off his tux jacket, tossing it to the grass. With deft motions, he rolled up both sleeves of his pristine dress shirt. As if just seeing her, he offered Molly a truncated bow and, at the same moment, bit into his own left wrist with a quick, tearing action that almost seemed graceful. Or ritualistic.

He lifted Big Evan’s head off the ground and held the bloodied flesh over Evan’s mouth, allowing several ounces to dribble in. Vamp magic and witch healing magic grew on the air, competing and blending, like spices that weren’t usually used together, but that somehow worked. The air took on a piquant tang, with a hint of red peppers.

Evan swallowed. His hands glowed green.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“No!” The Gray Between exploded out of me. I threw myself at Edmund. Faster than the speed of sound. Faster than time. In the instant of the leap, in the moment of no time, I took it all in.

Edmund halted in the act of turning to me. Eli was swiveling with the subgun, pivoting on one heel, the other foot held up, stationary in the air. The green magics around Evan’s hands were an unmoving cloud of gas and icy sparkles. Molly was frozen too, her hands reaching for Evan’s face, her brow crinkled as if she knew something had just gone wrong. Really badly wrong. There were green clouds of gas on her hands as well, but on Molly, the spell was shot through with blackness. Her death magics had been activated.

As I leaped through time, my belly was already cramping, tearing, ripping along my side where something had never healed quite right. I caught Edmund by the shoulders, jerking him into my arms, into the bubble of time, with me. Whatever was happening, whatever spell had been activated in the instant before I leaped into the Gray Between of time, was still happening. Edmund’s eyes vamped out. His taloned hands reached for me, gripped the back of my head. Jerked me to him. His head tipped back. Fangs struck at me, like a snake striking at prey.

CHAPTER 14

Deader Vampire

I whipped my body back and busted him in the mouth with my elbow. Not the best way to strike an opponent, but at close quarters it was all I had. The blow slammed his lips against his teeth and fangs. Ripped the inside of my elbow on a fang, mixing our blood. Magic wrenched through us both. His eyes went wider. He snarled.

Still moving, I threw Edmund away from me, my hands in his blood and mine. He slid from the bubble of time, into the night, hanging in thin air. I tumbled forward, beneath him, and came up on my hands and knees. Vomited blood in a scarlet gush. Nothing new there, not with Gray Between and its nasty during-effects and aftereffects. My belly cramped in a molten fist of agony. Normal. Dying again . . .

I pushed to my feet and wiped my bloody mouth on my wrist. And looked at my left palm. A green eye was glowing in the center of it, the lid open and smeared with vampire blood and my blood. Mixing us together in the dark working. This was bad. But the vampire was now in real time and I wasn’t. The spell was stuck in real time, in Edmund’s time, not whatever bubble of time the rest of me was stuck in.

“Crap.” I had guessed right, in that singular instant before I grabbed my primo. This part of the layered and multipurpose spell was triggered by vamp blood and my blood at the same place and the same time as witches. Though the attacking working had probably been constructed with Leo in mind, not Edmund. Edmund, the only vamp here, had now been spelled to attack me, just as Gee had been.