Chapter Thirty-Eight
I got off half a dozen spells in the space of a few seconds, silent casting because there was no time for anything else.
That caused a couple to go awry as I’d fishtailed the end of one onto the beginning of another and screwed them both up.
But enough got through to send the mage slamming back against a counter, hard enough to rattle him even through his shields, and then I was pounced on by what had to be a dozen more that came out of nowhere like a torrent of black smoke.
“No!” I heard someone yell, but didn’t know who. Didn’t care as I was already coming out of my skin. Out of several skins, because my wolf couldn’t handle this.
But its big sister could. We were only at maybe sixty percent of normal strength, but that was enough. That was more than enough, as it turned out, with spells sizzling harmlessly over our nobby hide as mage bodies went flying.
One expired in our maw before my counterpart shook her head and sent him slamming into another, so hard and fast that the second mage died on contact, his internal organs rupturing at the force of the impact because he lacked protection.
And who the hell attacked the Pythia in her own home with no shields?
I thought, amazed. But I didn’t have time to ponder it, because the rest of the mages were now shielding and coming back for more.
So I painted the kitchen red with their blood, a glorious, beautiful carnage that only lasted seconds before I ran out of attackers. And was then fallen upon by a whole phalanx of vampires, who were better fighters than the mages. Far better.
I didn’t understand where they had come from, either, or why they were targeting me, but my alter ego didn’t question it, nor did she seem to have the trouble fighting vamps that the Corps usually did.
I’d had the required classes, but our two groups had been at peace for centuries, and there was rarely a chance to practice that knowledge.
Not to mention that you never knew what kind of abilities the masters, which these definitely were, might be hiding.
I quickly found out.
The blond from the foyer—presumably one of the traitors who had let the mages in—had unbelievable speed, moving so fast that I couldn’t track him with my eyes.
But then, I didn’t need eyes. I could smell him, and caught him a blow as he came at me that broke his neck, leaving his head flopping around in a less than dignified manner, even as he tried to keep attacking.
I was about to snatch it all the way off and beat him with it, but the redhead intervened.
And caused even my counterpart to stop for a split second and stare, because we hadn’t seen that before.
Bony protrusions like a couple of extra spines suddenly shot out of his back, only these were far thicker than a spine and as long or longer than his body, rising up behind him like a pair of skeletal wings.
Or, more accurately, as we soon discovered, like two thick, bony, extra arms.
They hit hard when they and the vamp’s fists suddenly began pummelling us, and then stabbing us when we broke off the bones, only to have the jagged ends come back for more.
It hurt, and we screamed because he’d stabbed us where we’d already been injured, unerringly finding our most vulnerable spot.
But that was the wrong move because it made my counterpart mad.
It made her very mad. She usually enjoyed combat so much that joy was all we felt, but this was not joy. This was fury, and I realized it was because of me.
She was protecting me like I was a helpless cub, when I was her, so how did that work?
Inexperienced drifted through my brain, which pissed me off. I was not inexperienced! I was a fully vetted war mage, for God’s sake!
Who was getting schooled, along with the redheaded vamp and the five or six others who had now piled on, even as someone screamed at them to stop.
They did not stop, and neither did she, shredding our attackers, ripping off limbs, and sending them and the bodies they had once been attached to flying in a bloody whirlwind of flesh.
And would have finished them, except that there was no wood to be found anywhere.
So she slammed the bony redhead over and over and over against a countertop, until there was no more countertop and he and his bones were scattered everywhere.
And did it one-handed, while searching through a utility drawer for—
Nothing, because there was nothing there of any use. She bellowed in rage, even as our eyes scanned all those gleaming surfaces. Before settling on a canister on the far counter by the stove, where—
Yes.
A wooden spoon stuck out of the top of the container, round and nonthreatening, and slightly stained from the various meals it had helped to create. Yet it would do. We dove for it, the only scrap of wood in the place, but suddenly something was in the way.
Or to be more precise, someone with a huge body, shapely, tree trunk legs, and Hawaiian print shorts. Carales, I thought blankly. Was he part of this, too?
And then we were flying, our giant body thrown across the room and back against the wall next to the door where we’d come in, as fast and hard as if we’d been shot out of a cannon.
But we didn’t slam into it helplessly. We twisted in mid-air instead and sprang off the tile, using the momentum to fly back across the room and—
Got it.
We turned, spoon in hand, and a snarl on our lips—
And met Carales’ fist, which was more like a pile driver.
Fists usually slid off our hide even easier than spells, but not this one.
We absorbed a blow that could have punched through solid rock, and then shook it off before breaking his wrist and batting him across the length of the room.
And immediately snatching up the stove and sending it flying after him with enough force to have punched through the wall if he hadn’t been in the way.
And then the refrigerator, yanking it out of the tasteful cabinet in which it had been camouflaged, but not well enough to fool our nose.
It followed the stove, and we leaped after it, hopped on top, and started to jump up and down, trying to send it and him plunging through the floor. However, the floor was well-built, and it was taking a minute. A minute, as it turned out, that we didn’t have.
“Get behind me!” someone bellowed, just before we were hit with something we didn’t recognize.
It wasn’t a blow like the rest, but a spell, although not one I knew. It was comprised of magic so strong, so strange, and so alien that my counterpart and I paused for a second. Pretty, she thought, as she had at HQ when Hargroves’ spell had hit.
But that one hadn’t hurt, whereas this—
“Aughhhhh!”
Our scream echoed around the room as the spell ignited, and I mean that literally.
We were suddenly on fire, with flames running across our body and eating away at our flesh like acid.
They immediately consumed us, blocking out our view of the room and burrowing straight to our very soul, as if we’d been turned into an ember.
We couldn’t see past them, couldn’t smell, couldn’t—
Couldn’t smell?
“Hurry, while she’s distracted!” someone said. A woman. To be more precise, the matriarch from the living room, I thought, snarling.
And she was right, wasn’t she? This was a distraction. An illusion cast to give our enemies a chance to regroup, which was why there was no smell of burning fur, or cooking fat, or charred bone.
And that meant—
Shit, we thought, and started laying about blindly with everything we had, before anybody could jump us while the damned spell impacted our senses.
Dagger-like claws on one hand kept back the witches, and the spoon in the other scared off the vamps.
Because, round and silly-looking as it might be, we could easily shove it through a heart.
If only we could find one.
But that was becoming easier, because while we couldn’t smell cooking meat, we could smell—
“Scent! Scent! It’s going by—” A panicked voice yelled as we grabbed somebody. Somebody who was screaming and then shrieking as we lay about with him instead of our claws, using what we assumed was a vamp since he didn’t immediately die to pummel the others.
And, okay, my counterpart was starting to enjoy herself again, with the scent map in our head as good as sight, pinpointing the combatants we had left to deal with.
Including a small, slightly built one, who had gotten knocked to the floor at some point, but was now getting up, reeking of spilled mint chocolate chip. And raising a hand.
A second later, our body froze in place, with no amount of effort enough to budge us so much as an inch, and even our thoughts...
Slowing...
Way...
Way...
Down.
◆◆◆
“—so sorry,” somebody was saying. “I’m really so very—”
“Well, you damned well ought to be!”
I didn’t know the first voice, but the second was Sophie’s. And it sounded like she was about to lose her goddamned mind. And considering what could happen if that occurred—
I started fighting my way back to consciousness.
It was hard. It was really hard. It felt like my whole body was caught in a tar pit, one that had half-solidified in winter and was threatening to ice over me. And where the hell had that image come from?
I’d never even seen a tar pit!
And then I was opening my eyes.
I spotted Jen first and wondered what the hell she was doing there. Her eyes were neon green fire, brighter than I’d ever seen them, bright enough to stain her cheeks, which were flushed and furious. She had a hand out, I didn’t know why, and then I followed her gaze and realized—
She was somehow holding the vamps—all the vamps—along with the pieces torn off their bodies, against the far wall with the tasteful prints, as if making a hideous, but eye-catching, piece of modern art.