barely registered it. Damnit.
I was waiting for his next move, and grinning to myself behind his back, when his entire body tensed. I couldn’t read which way he was going to go.
“Don’t move, Mack.”
Hmm. I tried to think. Was that a ‘don’t move so I can beat you to a pulp’ comment, or a ‘don’t move so that then you do move and I still beat you to a pulp’ double bluff comment? I was still working it out when I realised he’d called me Mack.
“Corrigan?”
He snarled. My bloodfire leapt in response. This wasn’t the playfight of a cat any longer.
“I mean it, Mack, stay behind me.” His face twisted round and I realised that he was in mid shift already, black fur springing out on his cheekbones. He leapt up into the air, tuxedo bursting off and the gigantic shape of black panther taking hold.
Without thinking twice, I stuffed the clutch holding the Palladium down the back of my dress, hiked up the hem, and crossed my arms to pull out the daggers from the sheaths under my arms. If something out there had Corrigan worried, then it had me worried. I moved over to the side, and then I spotted it.
Hovering in the air, and looking more like shadow than substance, was a wraith. This seemed too much like coincidence. My purse, with the Ancile stuffed inside it, felt heavy against my back. I stared at the thing in front of us. There hadn’t seemed to have been a flicker of doubt in Alex’s story about the Palladium that the vamps had caught Tryyl and tortured him to death. And yet…
“Where isssssss it?” The shadow rasped.
Corrigan, now in pure were-form, snarled again and launched at it, lethal gleaming claws outstretched. He leapt through the thing’s entire body, as if it were as insubstantial as air, appearing behind the wraith looking slightly dazed and shaken. He shook his giant panther body, muscles rippling under the sleek black fur and bright emerald green eyes flashing, then lunged forward again, this time jaws ready to clamp onto the wraith’s leg. His teeth snapped together, a hiss of black mist streaking outwards from where his mouth connected, then clouding back in to re-form. The wraith reached out and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, flinging him to the side, and knocking the large cat against the body of a parked car.
Alrighty then. Just to be doubly sure, I twisted my wrist and let one of my daggers fly through the night air on a direct collision course with the wraith’s head. As suspected, it didn’t even slow upon contact; it just cut through the shadow form and landing with a clatter on the pavement opposite. The wraith didn’t even blink.
“Giiiiiive me it,” it hissed again.
I dropped the other dagger, appreciating that it would be useless now. It might have been more helpful if it had been pure silver, but it wasn’t and I couldn’t cry about it now. Corrigan was staggering to his paws, wavering a bit with a slight concussion. Bloodfire heat tickled at me from the bridge of my nose and behind my eyes.
“You’re going to need to tell us what it is you’re after,” I said calmly, although I had a pretty good idea of what it might be. “Otherwise how can I fetch it for you?”
The wraith quivered in the air. “You. You haaaave touched it. Where issssss it?”
I clenched my fists for a heartbeat then outstretched my palms, knowing without looking that the now familiar flicker of green fire was back. From behind me, I heard the door to the vamps’ house that we’d only just exited opening and the sound of running feet coming out to join us. I didn’t hesitate, however, and sent out a stream of flame right towards the looming shadow.
The wraith screamed and clutched its stomach where my fire had connected. Yahtzee. I shot out another and another. It fell down, half collapsing. I was about to combine both hands together to create a stream of double impact, when I was abruptly shoved out of the way by something cold. Blinking, I stared forward and saw that a vampire was hurtling himself forward. Unfortunately, the wraith was also starting to recover and threw out a dark arm, pulled on the vampire’s hair and ripped its head clean from its shoulders, then tossed it away with a sickening thump. I tried not to notice that the head bounced several times, with