Page 3 of Demon's Bluff
That was all the warning I got.
She lunged for me. I fired three shots off before she grabbed my wrist and squeezed.
Pain lanced through me. Images of Ivy flickered through my brain,and then I yanked on the ley line, funneling enough raw energy through Brice to fry an entire henhouse of chickens.
Brice shrieked and let go. A fisted hand swung, liquidly fast. I hardly saw it before it smashed into the side of my head and sent me reeling.
“Brad, help Rachel!” Pike shouted, and then Brice swore as Brad rammed into her, headfirst. The two of them hit the chair and flipped it over, arms and legs askew. I couldn’t see straight yet, and I got to my feet.
“A witch can’t rule a city!” Brice snarled, and with a quick lunge, she grabbed Brad and dragged him to her mouth.
“Pike!” I shouted as Brad went slack, utterly overwhelmed. The monster of a woman had him, mouth fixed to his neck as she dragged him to a corner.
Brice couldn’t hold him and fend us off at the same time, and as Pike abandoned Victor to help his brother, I imagined a circle around the mousy undead vampire to pin him down. No one liked being downed by witch magic. Too bad.
“Rhombus!”I shouted, more to tell Pike what I was doing than to trigger the spell. Energy flowed, and a smut-tinted, gold and red barrier of pure energy rose up, encircling Victor. The circle wasn’t drawn, so it wasn’t foolproof, but it would be enough.
Pike exhaled, a thankful slant to his brow as he ran for his older brother. I was right behind. A single bite from a master vampire had the potential to bind the victim, turn him or her into their shadow—a brainwashed-and-abused blood whore as opposed to a lovingly maintained scion. But I’d seen a flicker of fear in her. Brice didn’t have the chops to be a master vampire. If we could get her off Brad in time, he’d be okay. That is, if she didn’t just snap his neck.
Please let him be okay,I thought, remembering the ecstasy of a vampire bite, the pain, the need for it to continue. I had taken away Brad’s ability to protect himself. If I couldn’t keep him safe until I could return it, then I had failed. Twice.
Hunched and ugly, Brice took her bloody mouth from Brad. “Stayback,” she practically hissed. “I will drain his last blood from him, and then I will take both of yours,” she added, dragging the slack man in her grip to the stairs. “I will not be ruled over by a witch and an incompetent, chip-fanged half-bite who was sent to die at your hands. I will not!”
“Let Brad go,” I said as Pike inched closer, eyes on his brother. I had the power to stop this, but he had the best chance of matching Brice’s supernaturally fast reactions. I’d wanted to see how Constance was going to handle this. Too bad the erratic woman was late.
“Fine,” I muttered.
Pike glanced at me at the single word. I might as well have said “go.”
Silent, Pike lashed out a fist at the woman’s head.
Brice predictably jerked away. I was already moving, going in low since I’d probably end up on the floor anyway. Dropping, I swung my foot to knock her feet right out from under her. Brice blocked Pike’s first punch, but his follow-up hit the same instant as my leg swipe and together we knocked the woman down. She shrieked as she fell, arms swinging.
Pike was right there, pulling his brother from the undead vampire’s grip. A smile found me when the woman landed hard. Her mouth was red from Brad’s blood, and her eyes were black from anger and an old hate—hate that I was living and she was not.
“You will both die for that,” she intoned.
My hip hurt where I had hit the old floorboards. We were both down, and I shook my head, uncowed. Oh, she was as scary as all shit and had the power to enforce her words. But I wasn’t a witch. I was a witch-born demon. And I had had enough.“Stabils,”I said as I drew a small wisp of energy from my chi and harnessed it with a curse.
Her pupils shrank in fear as I flicked the gold-and-red-hazed walnut-size curse at her.
It hit her square on the chest and she collapsed, unable to move but for her mouth and the smallest movements to keep herself alive. Or dead. Or undead. Whatever.
“You dare!” Brice shrieked as the spell soaked in and even her tremors stopped. “You dare use your magic on me?!”
I glanced at Pike gently tending his brother. “Yeah, I dare.”
“I will kill you,” she raved, and I got to my feet, slowly as everything began to hurt.When did I hit my elbow?I thought, flexing it. Thestabilscurse was not infallible, but there was no chance in two realities that Brice would figure it out. Until I broke it, she wouldn’t be able to move apart from her mouth. I’d gotten the joke curse from Al, and the demon apparently liked to hear his victims beg for mercy. “You won’t last the week!” she predicted.
“It’s possible,” I agreed, my gaze going to Ivy and Constance now making their dramatically slow saunter up the stairs. Ivy was svelte and competent in her working leathers, her long, enviably straight black hair pulled into a swaying ponytail. Her brow was furrowed in annoyance, and her very red lips pressed together. She moved like a dancer and looked like a model—and she was my friend. It wasn’t an easy thing when she was a living vampire: most of the cravings, none of the drawbacks, all of the hang-ups.
Beside her, Constance’s petite frame seemed almost childlike, her brown skin and chemically eased hair styled to the fashion of another century. A red scarf drew the eye to her neck, vampire-junky style, contrasting with her stark white business dress. She’d cut down on the jewelry, and only three strands of gold and one string of pearls draped around her neck, the latter a twin to the one that Ivy now sported. More gold hung from her ears like shimmering waterfalls, and every finger had at least one ring. Her grace was undeniable, her confidence beginning to appear real, not contrived and holding a hidden fear as when we had first met.
Constance was a long undead, and I still hadn’t figured out how she had survived without the pretense of love most of them cultivated to convince people to sustain them. She loved no one, and no one alive loved her. That we had found a way to work together instead of killing each other had really put a crimp in the DC vamps’ day.
My largest concern was that unlike Brice raving on the floor, Constance had more than enough ruthlessness to rule a city on her own, and the night she decided she didn’t need me might be my last. Jenks maintainedthat she already had, but that she was lazy and liked me doing her dirty work.
And as I felt the coming bruise on my hip, I prayed he was right.