hard to take down. Though maybe I was wrong. Weasels could be pretty tricky.
Eric lunged toward the vamp first. Jake went next, and I followed. Moving faster than the eye can see, the Dark Donna jumped into the air and hovered out of reach, looking down on us with contempt as we jumped on our hind legs, snarling and teeth snapping in our failed attempts to reach her.
Damien’s attack came next. A crackling blob of magic the size of a basketball hit Bernadetta in the chest, exploding with blue light. She flew upward, tumbling head over heels, and crashed against the wall. I expected her to fall, but instead, she clung to the stones, her claws digging in.
Damien set to working on another spell, and we ran toward the wall to wait for her fall. But before the mage could release another volley, the Dark Donna crawled upward like a spider, and with her bare hands tore away a section of roof, and crept out of sight, leaving us dodging the falling roof tiles and staring at a sliver of moon through a ragged hole.
A moment later, quick steps echoed outside the church. I whirled expecting to see the Dark Donna charging back in for another battle. Instead, I watched with my jaw hanging open as Rosalina rushed in, wearing a badass leather outfit, a rifle with a huge scope slung over her shoulder.
“Is it over?” she asked. “Did we win?”
Shut the front door!
I gaped, seriously starting to doubt I’d healed from my spinal injury. Maybe I was still under the hybrid, lost in feverish delirium because I knew Rosalina wasn’t a leather-wearing, scope-rifle-toting badass.
And if I was wrong, then the world had really gone mad.
Chapter 31
The next evening, everyone was crammed in the tiny lobby at the agency. Me, Rosalina, Jake, Damien, and even Eric Lone himself.
There was a metal bucket filled with ice on top of Rosalina’s desk, and a nice bottle of champagne that Eric had provided. I had bought clear plastic cups that looked like wine glasses and a tray of hors d’oeuvres that included tiny quiche pies, cold cuts, and bite-sized crab cakes.
“We make a kickass team,” I said, picking up the bottle and raising it high.
Damien shrugged one shoulder and sat on the small sofa, gathering his cloak to one side and setting his top hat on the coffee table.
Eric joined him and sat, crossing his leg. “Fill my cup to the brim, please.”
I huffed. “Fill it yourself!”
Trying to have a celebration with this bunch was sad.
I poured myself some bubbly and paraded in front of Eric, sipping the champagne and making pleasure sounds in the back of my throat.
“Women these days,” Damien said, rolling his copper eyes.
“This is not the eighteen hundreds, grandpa.” Rosalina got her own champagne and, after tasting it, said, “good choice.”
“Grandpa?” Damien said, sounding offended. “I’m nobody’s grandpa, and, for your information, I wasn’t born in the eighteen hundreds.”
Rosalina made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “You were born around 1905 or thereabouts, so same difference.”
The mage’s eyes narrowed, and he didn’t argue, which probably meant that was a close guess.
Jake poured his own champagne, too. He knew better than anyone that expecting me to play the dutiful female was pressing all the wrong buttons. I was glad to do something for anyone as long as I didn’t feel they were taking advantage of me or being sexist. Otherwise, I turned hostile. In my opinion, everyone had to pull their own weight.
But enough of that. I wanted to celebrate that we were alive and that we’d stopped Bernadetta and Stephen’s evil scheme and there were no hybrid monsters loose in the city.
After our battle, we had all left the temple, taking the couple of werewolves who were still alive with us. Damien had patched up their worst injuries, doing a fairly good job despite the fact that he wasn’t a healer. We offered to take them to a hospital afterward, but they just wanted to get as far away from St. Louis as they could. The ordeal had left them terrified as well as packless. It turned out that the ten werewolves had all belonged to a small pack that occupied a reduced territory outside the city limits, and they had nothing to go back to.
Afterward, we’d anonymously called the police. The massacre at the temple would raise a lot of questions from law enforcement, and they would be looking for someone to blame for all those deaths. To