The burning witch/vamp fell back, through the red light. Onto the forest floor. I whirled.
There were no more vamps standing. They all were down. The heat of the burning vamp was intense, and I covered my eyes against the glare.
The soldiers were all down too, screaming and moaning. Cutting their own flesh. Even Derek, who was grunting with the motion of his knife as it flayed a length of his skin away, the muscles of his arm exposed and bleeding onto the earth. His fingers raked into the exposed muscle, fingernails digging at a mote of red light. He was chewing the tissue of his mouth, his bloody teeth working at a mote buried in his lower lip.
I looked at the sliver of wood. It was the Blood Cross. The true cross? I didn't know.
But even if it wasn't part of the true cross, it was a powerful relic. I wiped it clean and pricked Derek. He screamed again, and the red motes burst from his skin and up into the night. Buzzing like bees, they rose in the air. Derek's spine jerked in a whiplash of agony. He eyes cleared. "Son of a - "
I turned and pricked each of the others, even Hicklin, who had died so quickly. The red motes left their skin, formed small clouds, and rose. Joining into a hive of angry red light in the sky above us. It didn't look like a safe place to leave them. I held the wooden sliver up at them. Nothing happened.
Angie sat up from the ground, bracing herself with one arm. "Aunt Jane, try the necklace. The one the mean man was using."
They'd all been pretty mean to my way of thinking, but I stepped to Baldy's smoking remains. In the center of his scorched rib cage, the bones curled up around it like protective hands, was the necklace, untouched by the heat, still bright red with blood. I wasn't about to touch it. I pulled a silver-bladed vamp-killer and reached through the ribs with the point. Lifted it from among Baldy's smoking vertebrae by the gold chain.
It was a lot heavier than it looked.
I stood there, surrounded by gasping, bleeding men, all but one still alive, holding a vamp-killer, a powerful amulet draped across its blade. And I started laughing. I couldn't help it. The motes in the angry cloud above me paused. I could have sworn they could hear my laughter and were responding to it. They formed a long, ropy shape, and spiraled down. Right toward the bloody gem hanging on the knife blade. They coalesced into a cloud around the now-scarlet gem. And melted inside it.
Their passage made the gem swing and pulse as if it were alive. And for all I knew, it was.
In my other hand, the sliver of wood glowed with a white light.
And in Angelina's hands danced a black light of might.
Chapter 24
Hot to trot?
We tramped out of the forest, a short line of blood-soaked humans and I. Angelina riding my back like a horsey ride, her heels kicking my hipbones. Little Evan, still asleep, was nestled in Derek's arms. Bliss was limp in a fireman's carry held by one of the soldiers whose name I hadn't learned yet. Hicklin was carried by the rest of his mates.
Faces unmoved, the soldiers had dispatched the ravening teenaged vamps and beheaded the rest. I hadn't let Angelina watch, which had made her pout. The vamp heads were in a pile in the center of the pentagram, gathered for the bounty they would bring Derek and his crew, all but Baldy's, Bettina's, and Adrianna's. Baldy was mine, confirmation of my completed contract, and my proof for payment. Bettina was still bound, too hungry to be released without a proper blood supply, preferably several of her own servants. Adrianna still had her head, though stakes pierced in her heart where she lay, faceup to the moon. I hoped that Leo might be able get something from her about the plot. Who knew what resided in a dead brain, that could be retrieved by a master of the city?
The bloody gem and the sliver of the Blood Cross were secreted in my pockets, though it gave me the willies to have the gem anywhere near me. It was still bloody scarlet and glowed, warm to the touch.
"It's Mama!" Angie screamed in my ear, her whole body quivering.
I flinched slightly, my eardrums still sensitive from the death keens of the vamps and the gunfire. "Yeah.