Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
In the broken seconds it took Grizz to change mags and pull an offhand weapon, Pretty Thang scuttled back against the rear wall.
Fired again, emptying his clip. Changed out for a fresh.
He was trapped. No place to go except outside.
He spun up on one hand and somersaulted out the broken door into the night.
Nyoka stepped inside the circle and back out, fighting the possession.
She tripped over one of the tiny containment vials.
The top cracked and splintered off. A chort emerged and wrapped itself around Nyoka’s left leg.
Nyoka’s eyes blazed with orange and green and darkness as the EEB inside her reacted to a second energy.
The succubus in her didn’t seem inclined to share.
Nyoka looked down and swatted with her damaged hand, the one with two amputated fingers.
The chort receded to the witch’s knee, uncertain, facing Nyoka’s elixir and Nyoka’s demon.
The succubus spoke, its voice like flames and the dark of space: “It is for you, girl child.”
Asshat leaped to his feet, shook his head. Sword outstretched, he charged me.
EJ appeared, almost as fast as a vamp, in front of Karson, both of them outside the circle. EJ fired into Karson’s midsection, the weapon pressed deeply into the vampire I had once loved. “Pugno di vento,” EJ sang. A working blazed from his other hand. My brother threw Karson across the room.
EJ stalked to Karson, unsheathing a vamp-killer. In a single cut, he beheaded my ex-husband. Asshat’s blood drenched the wall, not the circle.
I pressed the trigger on my staff. Sprites flew from Karson and were sucked into the staff. My hand screamed in pain. In the scant second Asshat fought and died, I knew. New potential futures opened for me like photos. Flashing like pages turning, telling a dozen stories.
None of them good.
Someone will get away.
I need to be inside the circle.
My hand was frozen and yet roasting in an oven. Agony, freezing fire, lit something inside. My magic welled like a flood. Battle magic. Precog. All my magic. I took the staff in my right hand. Placed my left palm on the floor, dead-white fingertips in the circle of blood. Whispered, “Bruciare.”
A flash of flame shot out from my dead-white fingertips. The blood burned to char, smelling of overcooked meat and brimstone. The demon circle weakened, thinned.
Hand still on the floor, I opened a gauntlet hedge. The shield rose outside the demon circle, just touching it. Bell-shaped, centered over me.
Shiloh, blood-soaked, popped into place inside the demon shield. Her eyes were blazing silver. But she was fighting the demon’s energies. Stubby fingers poked from a secure pocket in her psychedelic armor, real fingers, amputated, a macabre trophy. Her eyes flashed black, silver, manic.
I caught a glimpse of Konstantin, stepping into the night, cradling a bloody hand. Somehow still undead.
Terenzio was crawling to his feet.
Shiloh shook out one hand and pressed it against the inner circle’s energies near my face.
Black lightning spat at her touch. Shiloh laughed, her mask of glamour and the smeared blood on her face and in her hair a horror show all her own.
Crazy eyes met mine. She grinned through her gilded fangs.
Le Vampire Sauvage in all her mad, battle-frenzied glory.
“This comes down. Now,” she said.
Responding, battle magic flamed. Time slowed as the fighting raged around us.
I placed my dead-white hand against the energies, matching Shiloh’s position, finger for finger, and pushed through my own protection, to touch the demon circle. My power met Shiloh’s, like oil and water, shimmering. Together, we pushed against the demon circle. Around us, the warfare raged.
Nyoka growled. Glowing orange, her EEB attacked the chort. Darker energies of the chort wrapped around her calf, swirling. Pressing to get inside her.
I concentrated on the potential futures, blocking out everything as milliseconds passed. Shiloh’s hand and mine, sizzling on the shield. The witch circle flickered.
Futurefuturefuturefuture…
Our enemies were now two or three vamps short of the bodies needed to release the contained demons and use the power of their circle.
Unless Konstantin came back, undead, with replacements for Ravensport, Willim, and Asshat.
Maybe he’d given up.
The futures may as well have spat on that hope. No chance. This wasn’t over.
Konstantin had access to Nyoka, four of us: Walter, Shiloh, EJ, me. Probably any combo of six would do, especially if…“Son of a witch,” I whispered
He could access the Everhart coven through our bloodlines.
If that potential future became real, any blood demon could track our family.
Worse, our parents would come hunting us because monsters and demons would never be allowed to keep us or our cousin.
And Mama and Dad would lose in a battle against their own possessed children because they would never kill us.
That…would give the child of Prince Oleg, one of the masterminds of the Witch War, access to Mama, to Molly Everhart-Trueblood, and her own hidden, dark, death magics.
All choices were bad. A gunshot sounded, a slow roar. Another.
My magics glowed, blue, green, golden. Shiloh’s in psycho shades, matching her armor.
Someone had released EEBs.
On all sides, a black mist and dark motes of death and demons pressed against Shiloh. Pressed against our shared hedge. Encircling. The stench of brimstone and death filled my lungs. Shiloh’s eyes flashed silver as she fought off possession, surrounded by the energies of demons.
Shiloh’s eyes sheened to pure silver.
I felt the dark joy, the abundant power offered by the demons. Any of them could take me. I knew that. They knew that. They wanted…They expected me to open myself to the power they offered.
EJ took a hit of…nothing. Something. Gunshot? He rolled away. Away from me.
EJ down. Out. Unconscious. Limp.
Dark power coiled, twisted toward EJ. Sliding from the tendrils free in the room. More than one EEB. I grunted, raw dark magic everywhere. Unfettered magic.
Use my power, it whispered.
No.
Konstantin reappeared at the doorway. Vamped out, his eyes were silvered over, marked by the effects of the elixir.
One-handed, he opened a small containment vessel and pressed it to his mouth.
An instant later, he was demon-ridden. His bullet-riddled body took a step inside, pushing on the doorframe with a bleeding, fingerless hand.
Shiloh and the fingers in her pocket. Nyoka with missing fingers too.
A hysterical bubble of laughter chuffed and died.
Konstantin took a step toward my brother, EJ limp on the bloody concrete floor, tangled limbs.
The chort reaching toward him was a dozen shades of orange and flame.
It stopped and turned to the vampire. Konstantin halted, his damaged hand outstretched.
Power hammered from his mangled palm. Slammed into EJ’s body.
Utterly dark, raw death energy, strengthened by sacrifice and demons.
But at some moment before he went out cold, EJ had covered himself with a hedge.
Again, Konstantin battered EJ with death. The dark energies rebounded. Konstantin snarled. Bent and lifted EJ. Threw him.
Into the battle between Willim and Walter. Knocking Walter to the side, he crashed between them. Rolling, boneless.
An emotion I couldn’t name detonated.
My body arched. Shoulders drawn back.
I took my second breath since my hand touched the circle. I screamed.
Dug my fingers into the shield of death magics. Curled my fingers in, clawing. My index finger pushed through the energies. Shock waves of death magic rolled up through my hand, up my arm. Impacted the horror of…EJ. Down.
Screaming, screaming, screaming.
My fingertips touched Shiloh’s. From my little finger, a thin strand of blue trailed out, so pure it was nearly white. Straining against the demon energies powering the circle.
Willim raised the hilt of his longsword, blade pointed down. At my brother. His lips moved. He laughed.
Multiple gunshots sounded. Willim staggered, but caught his balance. His eyes glowed the bright green of sprites.
My voice broke. My scream cut off.
Walter threw himself between EJ and Willim’s blade. Hard. Fast. His shortsword knocking the blade to the side. Willim’s longsword swept around and clanged against Walter’s. What should take fractions of seconds, too fast to see, took seeming seconds with my magic opened.
Shiloh’s talons cut through the shield. Fingertips meeting, our power struck together. A million lights of energies. She was so much more than she claimed. Fractured lightning, armies clashing, roaring storms. Wolves howling in a blizzard-cloaked night.
Walter’s sword led Willim away from EJ. Cage of death, blades circling. But Walter was injured, one leg blood-drenched. He tipped. Fell forward. His wounded leg collapsed.
As he fell, he lifted the point of his long blade.
Pierced Willim mid-chest. A hair below his sternum. He rammed the longsword home. Deep. The blade cut through and out Willim’s back.
The thin shining strands of my magic twined through Shiloh’s magic of wildly patterned lights.
Willim punched his shortsword deep inside Walter. Cutting. Carving down.
Their eyes met. Held.
His own shortsword rising, withdrawing, Walter stepped closer to his former owner. Sliding his own body along Willim’s blade, deeper into his own chest. They fell. Landed in a heap, Walter half straddling Willim. Their longswords buried in each other.
Walter slashed across his abuser’s throat. Again. Again. Blood gushing from them both. Drenching them both.
His hand slipped in the blood. Walter regripped his shortsword. Cut. Cut. Sawing through Willim’s neck.
Willim’s blade carved through Walter’s chest. Slow motion, to me. But vamp-fast.
I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t speak. My voice broken.
EJ twitched. Took a breath.
Willim’s head rolled. Blood surged.