Page 44 of Deck the Skulls

With shaking hands, the woman pressed the knife tip to her throat.

“That’s not something we're doing yet,” Rissa said, plucking the knife from the woman. The woman looked shocked that Rissa took the weapon, but didn’t try to get it back.

“You don’t understand, I’m a landless nymph. They’ll never leave me alone,” she said.

“Who won’t?”

“Vampires,” she whispered.

“There are vampires in this reality, good to know,” Rissa muttered. Then something the woman had said earlier came back. “Salt! You said something about salt.”

“These durmin were made with earth and blood magic. They can’t regenerate if you sprinkle salt over them while they’re in pieces,” the woman said with a nod.

Rissa crawled a little further down and pulled out the three-pound tub of salt stored there. It was the bulk salt Zan used to refill the container on the bar top for salting the rims of glasses.

“Salt!” she declared triumphantly. Then she frowned. “Does it have to be special salt? Like kosher or blessed by priests or anything?”

The woman blinked, and for the first time, looked hopeful. “It only needs to be salt!”

Holding the tub against her with one arm, she scurried down the bar and looked around the end of it. The fighting was still going on, but as the woman had predicted, she could see some of her people were getting tired. The mountain lion and wolves were bleeding from several places. The gargoyle was moving slower, and Anatoly and Kimble were battling several of the nonuplet each.

Getting to her feet, she rushed to the nearest nonuplet. He was using his single arm to drag himself closer to where his legs and other arm lay flopping like fish out of water.

Swallowing back bile, she pulled off the top of the tub and grabbed a handful of salt. Her first toss did nothing because she was too far away. Getting closer, she rained a second handful of salt right over his lower half, trying to get the stumps.

She didn’t know what to expect, so when he screamed, she screamed with him. Flipping over on his back, the thing kept shrieking and flailing. Not far from him, the skin on the severed limbs melted away, leaving lines of heaped up bones. Theyweren’t even human bones; they looked like they came from something small, like rats or squirrels.

Then the rest of him started doing the same thing. Starting at the stumps, his solid form melted away, leaving piles of little bones in the rough shape of his thighs, pelvis, and stomach. It was a relief when his head turned to a collection of tiny bones because he stopped screaming and went perfectly still.

“That was trippy,” she muttered. A crash reminded her she had to do this eight more times. “Right, time to earn the big bucks!”

Chapter 15

Zan

When eight of the durmin were nothing but piles of vermin bones, Zan knew the remaining man must be the human a warlock used to model the rest. Standing in the ruined doorway of Sanguine, he tried to look cocky, but Zan could see he was terrified.

“Skyler,” he shouted. “You can’t hide forever. You should come to McConnel. Don’t make him find you.”

“Let’s see what's inside of you!” Mason growled and took a step toward the human. His massive gargoyle foot scattered a pile of bones in all directions.

The human made an “eep!” sound and ran. The moment that last threat was gone; Mason shifted back to his human form. Unlike Zan, Mason had invested in spelled clothing that shifted with him, so he was still dressed when he shrunk down.

Zan and the three wolves from the Lobo Gris Pack shifted back to their human forms. Because shifters were the most common supernatural creatures, everyone was used to their nakedness.Still, maybe he should look into getting some of his clothes spelled like Mason.

“First of all, is everyone okay?”

Zan turned to find Rissa standing with a tub of bar salt in her arms and a worried expression on her face.

Fear shot through Zan. This was not how he wanted to introduce Rissa to his world. “I can explain everything.”

Rissa shook her head. “You and Anatoly will be answering a lot of questions, but later. First, I want to know if anyone needs a hospital.”

Her question caused laughter among most of them.

One of the Lobo Gris wolves answered her. “This was only a little dustup.”

She eyed the ragged wound across his chest. “Sure, and that’s a mosquito bite.”