In an instant I understood what I should have comprehended earlier. Way earlier. The usual methods of vamp killing wouldn’t work because this thing wasn’t a vamp and never had been. A vamp hadn’t turned a skinwalker and brought it in to a blood-family. If Immanuel had done that, Leo would have recognized my blood scent. Instead, a skinwalker had eaten the liver of a vamp and taken his place, subsuming his native scent; he had eaten Immanuel, Leo’s son, and taken his place. The reek of rot filled the hallway.
Statue dust rained down. The marble pedestal exploded. The rogue/skinwalker was drawing more mass. I back-tracked through a storm of stone projectiles. Immanuel lashed out. One massive paw. Claws fully extended. They ripped through my leather jacket. Sliced flesh beneath deeply. I sucked in a scream.
“Stop!” The word echoed with power. Witchy power. The walls rippled at the purpose and intent of the single syllable. Power bombarded me, hot prickles of pain, stealing my breath. Off balance, I fell to the floor and bounced, muscles frozen, stopped.
Immanuel, on one knee, at the apex of his swipe, stopped. I realized it hadn’t been Immanuel’s command. The alarm died. Lights flickered. A human I hadn’t seen stood at the end of the hallway, immobile, panicked. Footsteps trod up the stairs, soft in the carpet. I remembered the cars I passed, people inside. Crap. The cavalry had nearly been here when I arrived—witches. “Stop,” the voice said again, softer, closer, strengthening the spell. Beast raged in me. I held her down, resisted her need to move. To fight.
My hands sizzled with heat and electric agony. I’d been hit with a spell before, and I understood that to resist was to make it stronger. I ceased fighting against the compulsion and released my grips. My hands fell open. My body relaxed. The Benelli thumped softly to the carpet; the charm lay exposed in my palm.
“Stop! ” Power flowed from the word like silvered light.
The rogue/skinwalker began to slowly sink to the floor, fighting the compulsion, his body moving a fraction of an inch at a time as his own kinetic energies were used to bind him. I looked around, able to move only my eyes. I couldn’t even breathe beyond a shallow intake of air, not nearly what I needed in the interrupted aftermath of fighting. But at least the rogue was similarly trapped. Neither of us could move with conscious choice. The footsteps grew closer. I heard others behind them. One, perhaps two more witches.
“Stop,” several said together.
The command was much more than a set of letters arranged into a single syllable. It was an intricate spell, a general, all-purpose, spoken word—a wyrd—wrapped around a spell, intended to stop all kinetic energy, except the speaker’s own, within a predetermined radius. And it did. I lay on the floor, trying to relax, trying not to fight for the breath I so desperately needed. Everything around me took on a shimmering hue, bright and sharp, amplified by the spell’s power. It was brightest around the rogue, where the silvery energies began to tighten and constrict as he fought the forces bearing down on him.
The witch moved into view. Antoine. Behind him was the woman I had seen in the Royal Mojo Blues Club in the secret meeting. They walked up the last three steps, moving easily, human slow. The woman stopped at the landing, her long skirt swaying. Antoine stood before her, his locks tied back, curiosity on his face. He was wearing sneakers, a button-down shirt open at the collar, and threadbare jeans. A half dozen or so wicked-sharp blades were strapped at his belt, blades with steel and green stone handles. His cooking knives. I wanted to giggle but I didn’t have the breath. My sight was growing darker at the edges, a sign of oxygen deprivation. I needed to breathe. Soon. A glance at the liver-eater showed his face ashen. His eyes livid.
Antoine pulled a knife as he advanced on the rogue, who still wore the beautiful face of Leo’s son. But, like the walls that had rippled at Antoine’s wyrd, and the air that held too much power in check, his flesh rippled slightly. The rogue was tiring, his exhaustion draining his control; he was losing his focus. The rot stench intensified. His skull bones took on an odd fusion of features, part human, part lion, while his skin slipped from hue to hue, a coppery, olive, pale, tawny pelt patchwork underlain with sickly, yellowed skin and pustules. His hair slid from blond to ashy brown to black with scraps of pelt. His flesh—the snake in his bones—wanted to return to its Cherokee form, seeking the original pattern, while his intent and fear pushed his body toward other forms.
His skin darkened, lightened; his hair flowed black and long. His eyes went from a tint so dark they looked black, to a softer tone, yellowish, like mine. From above me, kneeling, he turned those eyes, those so-familiar eyes, to me. Recognition again flared there. He saw Beast within me, close to the surface, barely harnessed. He hissed in a breath so hoarse it sounded as if he breathed in through glue.
Antoine moved through the kinetic energies trembling in the air. He knelt beside Immanuel, one knee on the carpet, close to my face. I could see the frayed seam in the denim, and the two men just beyond.
In an instant I put it together. The rogue was trying to take over Leo’s position of power, using Grégoire’s form and monies to buy land for his new clan. In a perfect position to carry out his plan, he was the one creating instability in vamp politics. Like I said before, could I be any more stupid?
“We thought it might be you,” Antoine said. Immanuel’s eyes flitted to him. “But when Clan Arceneau was buying up all the land, we thought it was the woman Mithran, little Dominique, seeking control of her clan, or seeking to begin a new clan-family and expanded hunting ground.”
Antoine shifted, blocking my view, his back to me, his body standing within the outstretched claws of the rogue. “Or, we think perhaps it was Blood-master Arceneau, eh? You lead us to think that, yes? The ‘traveling in Europe’ was ruse? You have him, Arceneau, bound in silver, stash him somewhere?” He chuckled at whatever he saw in Immanuel’s expression. “And then Anna join us. Tell us something about you become strange. . . .”
The rogue, the liver-eater, twitched a claw. Only a fraction. At the movement, the charm lying in my palm grew hot, burning. Oh crap. The charms. They were reacting to my fear and Antoine’s spell. They were intended to protect me. Clearly at least one of them had identified a threat to me and was trying to react. The burning increased, gathering, intensifying in the center of my hand. I wanted to scream. As my skin blistered I managed a gasp, soft, almost silent.
Neither of the two looked my way. Antoine reached out and touched the rogue’s paw, one finger on the tip of a claw. “I don’ know what you are, mon, but you not Immanuel. Not Immanuel, long time pass. Decades, maybe. You steal Immanuel shape, yes? And this sabertooth shape. How you do that? You kill a witch and take her power? Yes? No? No matter. Your time here done. I no miss de heart, like dis petite chat.”
With a quick flick of his wrist he jerked the stake out of Immanuel’s chest. Blood flew. Splattering me. A droplet landed on the charm. The crimson drop bubbled and spat, releasing the heating stench of rotten meat. It mixed with the reek of my burned flesh as the charm bristled with power. I gagged on the pain. Tears blurred my eyes. I wasn’t supposed to hold it once it was activated. I was supposed to throw it at the danger. It was supposed to detonate, but only on the cause of the danger, not on me. Holding the charm was having an unexpected effect on the incantation embedded in it. My hand is burning.
Antoine flipped his knife, lowered it to Immanuel’s neck. The blade pressed in. More blood spurted. I managed a strangled scream as the charm fully activated. Burning a hole into my palm. My fingers spasmed closed. Increasing the pain tenfold.
The charm detonated. Taking with it Antoine’s kinetic spell. Everything happened fast, in overlapping images. The concussion of energies was a backwash of agony as I sucked in a breath, filling my air-starved lungs.
The liver-eater’s outstretched arms ripped inward, closing on Antoine’s body. The liver-eater slashed through Antoine’s thin shirt. Tearing deep into the witch’s back at waist and neck. A deadly embrace. With a violent jerk, Antoine’s spine gave way with two distinct popping sounds. I grunted out a choked warning. Too late. The liver-eater fell forward onto four legs. Shimmering. Shifting. Fangs and pelt and massive musculature ripped through his clothes.
The female witch, half forgotten, screamed and rushed forward. The liver-eater slashed at her with one massive paw. Took off half her face, throwing her away, out of sight.
I gripped and raised the Benelli in my uninjured hand. Pulled an arm under me and levered my body up. Gathered my legs beneath me.
He roared. Leaped at me. The half man, half sabertooth landed over me, the weight a jolt I felt through the floor. Moves and fights like a human, Beast thought at me. Not like Beast.
I had no time to react. Except. My finger squeezed the trigger. Shots boomed.
Silver-shot impacted the beast’s chest, neck, and face. The fléchettes tore through him with brutal efficiency. Blood and gore back-splattered over me. The liver-eater jerked to the side. I stopped firing, watching as he fell, slowly. He hit the carpet, his body encased in silver energies, black motes of dark power dancing, red flames of heat whirling and gusting.
Belatedly, I threw the other charm at him. It hit him in the center of his chest. The explosion rocked me, rolling me, shoving me against the wall. Fire erupted out of the beast’s chest. Witchy fire. He roared.
Statues along the hallway exploded. He shifted fully into the sabertooth cat. Striped tawny coat, with short, powerful legs, a stubby tail, and six-inch upper canines. His lower canines were shorter, only a couple of inches, if the word “only” ever applied to a sabertooth. Round, human-looking pupils stared at me, glinting with vengeance. He stood a good five hundred pounds of cat-fury, and . . . he was drawing in power from my charm, pulling it inside him. Using it. The fire of the spell went out. The charm plinked to the carpet, smoking, its energies used up. The sabertooth attacked.
Fights like human! Beast is better! Beast roared into my head, into my eyes. But there wasn’t time to shift. No time to draw mass so we could fight on equal terms. The sabertooth leaped. I rolled against the wall. Gripped two vamp-killers. The sabertooth landed, jarring the house. Beast rolled me onto my back. Exposing my belly.
