Chapter Nineteen #2
He struggled across snowdrifts, between two buried cars, and got a clear view of the street.
The ice created by compressed snow and car tires was slicker than owl snot.
To his side, his sister stood upright from her crouch, her cloak sealed tight, her staff in the air, held in one hand, a silver-plated shortsword in the other.
He had no idea how long they had before the stasis effect of the rocket let the demons loose.
He hoped—
From the side, a soft note tingled on the air. EJ crouched, one hand outspread for balance on the ice-covered street.
He opened Delta Mode. Wide. Complete. His own bio-chemicals flooded his system. Hyperaware. Time slowed. Battlefield awareness at a level few could achieve. Witch powers hummed through him.
Something tapped hard against his hedge, a flash of steel in the streetlights.
An amulet. A flat note sounded as the amulet released a disruptor working.
His hedge wavered. A vampire popped toward him, displacing air.
The vamp impacted his damaged hedge, as if expecting it to be gone.
The vamp rolled across the weakening energies to the side and into the dark.
The hedge fell. Snapped back against EJ.
Expecting it, he directed the energies toward where he thought the vamp landed. A blast of sound, like a horn section, all blowing different keys, erupted. Snow exploded upward.
EJ ducked and darted to his left.
Fired at the second vampire coming at him. Three shots. Silver-lead shredder rounds.
But the vamp was popping through the air at hypersonic speed. EJ missed. Threw himself to the side. Snapped out with his legs. Caught the vamp in the side of his knee.
Momentum carried the vamp forward. His broken knee crumpled. His other foot slipped on the slick ice. Toppled.
The vamp oofed out a breath.
The breath marked him as young.
EJ whistled. Hit him with a sleepy-time working. The vamp stopped. Black eyes wide. Fangs slender, less than two inches long. He blinked once. His pupils started to constrict, revealing a pale iris, barely visible in the red sclera, shades of gray in the night.
EJ stabbed him in the gut with a stake. Followed it with a single shot to the chest with a standard round. They could question this one later, if he survived.
He whirled to the vamp who had rolled across him. Older. Bigger. Already shaking off the energies EJ had directed his way. Terenzio Marrazzo.
Why would the big guy be here?
Walter…They want Walter.
In Delta Mode. EJ fired six shots, mid-center. Terenzio stumbled and popped away.
“Guard Walter!” he shouted into comms.
EJ spun, evaluating the scene in an instant.
Angie was safe beneath the hedge. Staff at the ready facing the bot. Angie’s magic—harps, woodwinds, clashing cymbals—echoed down the street, all heard by only him.
Nyoka was behind the bot, clothed in green. One hand bandaged. Fully vamped out. Her wide black pupils glowed orange-green, the EEB’s energies sounding of boulders crashing down a mountain, falling trees, the crackle of flames. In an instant she was gone, hidden beneath her shadow working.
EEB attack has not begun. Time available.
He spun to the bot. It was mostly debris. Metal, split and twisted, its outer skin torn, its frame exposed and smoking. Tracks ripped. Its payload looked intact from the side but its top had taken a direct hit. The composite null material was rolled inward.
Stasis cannot last. He whipped his head back to the apartment.
Peg had managed to move closer, but Villetti’s containment vessel was still too far away to collect all the demon energies.
He needed that staff. Except he couldn’t use it. Only Ange could activate it.
Which meant he’d have to take on a demon-possessed vampire-witch with his own magic.
Even in Delta Mode, his magic levels measured at half of Angie’s.
The only good thing—Walter had said Nyoka wasn’t a warrior so her weapons and armor would be inferior to his. Her magic and her demon, however, would more than make up for any lack. EJ caught the first whiff of brimstone. She was close.
Stasis is falling, his Delta awareness warned him.
Evaluation complete.
Gliding too fast for observers to see, he slipped around the little red car.
Holstered his weapon. Pulled a set of palillos and a shortsword with a wooden hilt.
Gathered himself. Took two running steps.
Threw himself over the car in a hands-free somersaulting leap.
In midair, he sang a single wyrd. “Bruciare!”
As he came down, his sword glowed a superheated red. He stabbed into Nyoka’s shadow shield.
Heated steel and silver pierced her shield. It fell.
Fire slashed down her arm. She dodged to the side. Screaming.
EJ landed.
Nyoka hit him. Her good hand in an upward thrust to his nose.
He hadn’t been expecting a physical attack. He went down. Landed on one knee. Hard.
Nyoka swiveled to Angie. A blade in her hand.
Angie dropped her hedge. Lifted her staff and pressed the trigger to begin collecting EEBs. Defenseless.
EJ lunged from his low position. His elbow rammed into the ice.
The heated blade sliced through the vampire-witch’s Achilles tendon.
Cut through her flesh about three inches too high.
Above the perfect disabling strike. He landed on his knees, sliding on the ice.
Hand rotating, he sliced up, at the back of her knee.
The stench of burned vampire smoked into the air.
She wailed and jumped. One-legged. Injured. Not able to pop away, limping, yet still fast.
Silver-burned vampire flesh and brimstone scorched his nose.
A foot away, Angie stood, her staff high. Small demons swept into the air toward her. Into the tip of the staff.
His elbow was bruised, knees injured. That could wait.
EJ made it to his feet. He had seen what Villetti had done to steady Angie, his hands over hers, her spine against his chest. That wasn’t what she needed now.
He stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.
He felt an instant of surprise. His big sister was shorter than he was.
A demon wail rose on the air. Angie’s entire body quivered beneath his hands.
Still in Delta Mode, EJ pulled up the old memories of the night Angie had twined their magics together to save their parents.
He had been a toddler. She had been working on instinct, handling raw power.
She had used their magic and her angel’s magic to create something more, something other witches couldn’t access except in a full-coven circle, and often not even then.
Raw magic, raw energies, from elsewhere.
Mind like a spearpoint, he sank-rushed-dropped into that memory.
Daddy had shouted to Angie, “Do it! Use all you got. I know you can.” Big strong Daddy had wanted Angie to take care of them. Daddy had known Angie could.
He had glanced over his shoulder.
Daddy blew a long, piercing note full of magic on his flute, creating a personal ward for Mama, a strange hedge EJ had never heard before, notes like metal clashing.
Wrapping Mama in the hedge, he tried to protect her from the attack coming from outside the house, loud booms, and clangs in the night, just up the dead-tree-covered hill.
Daddy was red-faced and breathless. Mama was panting. Fear crawled up EJ like poison ivy vines, like brown snakes, like spider-nightmares in the dark.
Using her hands, Angie pulled the bindings off EJ’s magic, removing their parents’ protective shackles. As his magic was freed, it sounded like water falling in the stream near the house. The music of his energies splashed around his sister, coating her fingers.
Released from the ties, free for the first time ever, EJ’s magic sang like wood flutes on the wind, hollow sticks tapping against a log, soft and clear, the sighing of the wind, all at once. “Ohhh,” he said. “That feels good.”
Daddy stumbled. His face and red beard sparkled with sweat. Daddy’s magic sputtered as he started a personal ward for himself.
To EJ, Angie said, “I learned how to do this in magic camp. You trust me?”
Always!
EJ had tackled Angie, his arms around her waist. They fell, tripping over George, their Basset Hound. All the outside magic gonged and sang and hummed and buzzed, too loud, no melody, no rhythm. It hurt his ears. But Angie’s magic combined with his was a melody that made his heart race with joy.
The attack from the hill increased.
Angie looped and twisted her magic with EJ’s. Angel magic sang in the middle, high and piercing, ringing like silver bells, more magic than he had ever heard before.
Angie did…something.
The gonging attack was so loud EJ screamed, his head in her middle. Their magics snapped into place.
They were safe. Safe. As long as their magic was connected, maybe they would always be safe.
EJ hummed softly, taking a few of the angel’s notes into himself, and then he hummed another note, adding his own loop of magic with Angie’s. Forever. And he had never told her.
In the middle of the ice-covered street, EJ let that soft note of claiming hum through his mind again. He sang it softly. And poured himself and his magic into her.
“Ohhhh,” Angie said softly, a note of grief in the word. “Little Evan. What did you do…?”
Little Evan. The name so many in the family had called him when he was a child—Big Evan was their father. A soft smile pulling through him, he sang the note again, and their energies stabilized, the way concrete hardened over rebar.
Angie stood firmer, her staff towering.
Demons, clanging broken notes like cracked brass bells, rushed into the tip of her staff. It was the sound of a freight train, twisting steel, no harmonics, no rhythm, no grace or life purpose to the noise. But…small demons. Why such a large collection vessel?
Minutes went by. Angie’s breath labored. Her heart beat too fast, too hard, her body reacting to the horrible dissonance of demon power rushing up the staff and into the pocket universe beneath the trigger.
He pushed more power into her. His own energies, draining.