I pulled on my gloves and said, “Let’s move.”
I clattered over the ridgeline and skidded toward the hole in the roof, my boots sliding on the old roof tiles. The hole came at me fast. It was big enough for me to swing through. Big enough for me to fall through. If I misjudged, I’d be chopped up by the hedge and hit ground far below on what had to be a pile of rubble. I twisted fast in a one-eighty turn and dropped toward the attic. Grabbed a roof joist. It gave. I’m falling. My stomach slapped against my throat. The joist caught, yanking at my shoulder as I swung into the attic and landed.
The floor of the attic—loosened by the C4—fell through into the room below. I barely caught myself on my hands and hauled myself up, my breath fast, a heated sweat starting. Below, in the house, I could hear the sounds of fighting.
Soul landed beside me with that flowing, blurring motion that was in no way human. She didn’t bother with the innocent look this time, no longer caring that she had proven herself some kind of shape-shifting supernat. She gestured for me to lead the way. I didn’t argue, but this time I tested the joist before dropping my weight on it.
I landed on the floor just as the first rays of the sun burst across the horizon. Pinkish light filled the sky, brightening everything. Including the fight in the center of the house. In a single eye blink and inhalation, I took in the scene and found pattern in the madness. The stench was awful—death and a miasma of dust and rot. And two monstrous things were fighting Bruiser. One looked like a wasp with human legs and arms; the other like a spider. Spidey vamp, for real. And Bruiser was standing over Rick, who wasn’t moving at all. Crap.
Bruiser’s swords moved so fast I couldn’t follow, cutting, cutting, a whirlwind of steel, the center of the double-edged blades silver plated and catching the pink glow. It seemed important for half a second until one thing whirled and lashed out at me.
I leaped to the side, into a ray of light. The spidey-revenant-vamp-thing didn’t follow. I drew my M4 and braced it against my shoulder. Aimed at what looked like a stinger, two-pronged and wicked sharp. I fired. And fired again. The stinger was gone, leaving a drooling stump and a wash of greenish goo. All I could think of was the old movie Ghost Busters until, off balance, the thing reeled to me and I got my first good look. This was no Casper.
The carapace that seemed to grow out of its back looked like a huge hornet—not human at all, though it had only vestigial wings. It had a human jaw and vamp canines. Its eyes were multifaceted. Its shoulders, torso, and legs were human, though furred and striped like a hornet. And on its chest hung a pocket watch. I didn’t bother aiming for anything that might kill it. I aimed at the amulet and fired. The vamp jerked to the side as if it knew what I aimed at. I fired. And fired. Hitting the creature, knocking off chunks, but seemingly doing little damage. It came at me. Rushing on its human legs.
Backpedaling fast, I fired again. This time I hit the amulet. The spidey vamp stumbled. I had one shell left and braced my feet. Took careful aim at the amulet hanging on the thing. Fired my last shot.
The silver fléchettes smashed the amulet. The creature fell. But it was still twitching. I pulled my vamp-killer and started hacking at the neck. Its flesh was hard, with a carapace just under skin. But I kept at it until the head separated from the rest of the misshapen thing and rolled a short distance, hit a brick from the fireplace, and stopped in a ray of pinkish light. An eye seemed to be looking up to me, as the head started to sizzle and burn. The stink of rotten, burning meat filled the air.
The body was still in shadow. I leaned down and gathered up the remains of the amulet. Stuffed it into a pocket. And pulled the spidey vamp across a black arc painted on the floor and into the sunlight. It weighed a ton. The body started to smoke. Good riddance.
Reloading from my handy-dandy belated birthday present was a whiz. It was only six rounds, but it was a lot faster than pulling them from an ammo bag. I was breathing hard as I readied the weapon and took in the room.
Bruiser was still fighting, but now Soul stood over Rick, her arms doing something witchy with blue sparks flying. It looked like a ward, but it didn’t seem to be doing much. “Go for the amulets!” I shouted, pressing the stock against my shoulder. “Bruiser! Drop and roll!”
As if he understood perfectly, Bruiser folded his blades and threw himself into a somersault, over the blades and behind me. The spider he was fighting spun to follow and saw me. I didn’t waste time evaluating it; I just spotted the amulet in a patch of spiky hair, aimed, and started firing. I must have hit it, because the spidey thing fell. I had no idea where its head was located. Bruiser pulled a shotgun and fired four rounds, two into each eye. It went still. He reloaded and started firing again. Soul raced into the back of the house, into the shadows.
I bent over Rick. He was bleeding from the mouth but was breathing, and I could see his pulse in his throat. I checked his pupils, which were equal and reactive. But his earpieces were gone. Not good. Even though the moon was over the horizon, it was still full—even more than last night. As I released his eyelid, his hand slammed into my side with all the power a were-animal can muster. Knocking me to the side.
I rolled with the force of the blow and ended up with Rick on top of me, his eyes a brilliant golden green. He growled and hissed and showed me his teeth. Soul appeared behind him and placed her hands on his head. Rick went still as a block of ice. His partner was holding the earpieces. The glow of his eyes faded, and he took the earbuds and inserted them. He drew a deep breath and stood, pulling me to my feet.
My ears were mostly gone from the concussion of the explosives and shotguns, but the shadows on the walls told me we weren’t finished. The wolf was in the back of the house, fighting for his life. I pointed and Rick sped past me into the back room, Soul on his heels.
Eli had made it inside at last, and he and Bruiser raced through another doorway on the right. That is when I realized. There were no witches here. Not one.
“Son of a freaking gun,” I muttered. “We’ve been conned.” On the run, I picked up the parts of the amulet that I could find and stuck them into another pocket.
The front part of the house had been a kitchen, dining, and living room. Now the roof and ceiling sagged, and the space was full of brick and debris from the exploded chimney, green goo, and smoking and burning bodies like aliens out of a horror movie. No furniture. No nothing except a weird black painted arc on each of the floors.
The back of the house was much darker, divided into two bedrooms and a bath, all damp, with wallpaper hanging off the walls and furniture debris scattered everywhere—parts of a bed and mattress, parts of tables and chairs, a busted bathroom sink and toilet, and human bodies, clearly drained and left to rot or rise as vamps, as nature and the intent of the master intended.
Two of them were children.
My Beast couldn’t take the sight of more dead children. She roared inside me, screaming, Kits! I dropped the empty shotgun as power struck through me like a battering ram and I/we leaped for the back of the thing in the room. In midair I drew a nine-mil. The thing was seven feet tall and had pinchers, which I ignored. I landed on his back, reached around, grabbed the chain holding the amulet, and fired repeatedly into the pocket watch, the bullets and ricochets hitting the creature or bouncing off.
It roared and I/we pushed off with back legs. Sprang to the floor. As I fell, I ripped the busted amulet from his neck. Dropped and rolled. Eli emptied his sub gun into the thing’s head. I put the busted amulet into a pocket. I was gonna run out of pockets soon. Which made me laugh. Eli looked at me like I was crazy, and then he laughed with me.
He pointed to the front of the house and grabbed a pincher. I looked at the iron-covered windows and understood. I grabbed a human-shaped foot, and together we dragged the thing into the sunlight. When we trotted into the last room, we found Rick and Bruiser hitting the last creature with swords, trying to decapitate it.
I bent over and braced my hands on my knees, cussing under my breath. It was over. And all for nothing. No witches. Not one.
No one spoke as we tugged the last spidey vamp into the sun and walked out through what was left of the front door. We were met with cops and guns, all pointed at us. I held up my hands and dropped to the porch floor, glad to see I was sitting in a spot clear of smoking bodies and goo.
These were city cops and they were strangers, men and women I might have seen after the debacle in the three-story building de Allyon had rented and refurbished. But I didn’t really know any of them. And they were yelling at us.
I was deaf from the fighting. We all were, so whatever they were ordering us to do, none of us could hear. I pointed to my ear and shook my head. “We’re deaf!” I shouted to them. I pointed to the house. “We killed the things inside. The things inside killed the people in back.” I figured that would buy us some time until someone who knew us got here.
Even as I had the thought, Sylvia arrived, no lights, no siren, because it wasn’t her jurisdiction. She wasn’t on duty, but whatever Syl said caused the cops to lower their weapons. They didn’t put them away, not then, but at least they weren’t pointed at us.
With Soul’s help, the cops found a torn place in the ward and entered. Three of them checked out the house, and two of them came out gagging. The other one was stone-faced, evaluating us in light of the death inside.
I looked at Soul and shouted, “Better than seventy percent.” She laughed and dropped down beside me, shaking her head, her platinum hair falling around her face. Her clothes were dirty and she had green goo drying on her face, but otherwise she looked as beautiful as ever.
Soul sobered. “The witches are not here.”
My own mirth dimmed. “No. And the ward is still going. I don’t understand it.”
“Me neither,” she said. And Soul looked worried. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her worried.
While the cops did the cop thing, I emptied my pockets of the three busted amulets and spilled the parts onto the porch in front of me. I had never taken a pocket watch apart, but figured the wheels and gears were part of it. Also the spring and the little button screw. But the discs were sort of a surprise. They looked like iron with a coating of bright copper. I turned one over and over, seeing nothing special about it, but nothing useful either. Until I pushed one close to another one. They ratcheted together like magnets, becoming one thing.
