hundred and fifty in her quest to kill us all, though she is not a Mithran, not a Naturaleza, and not a blood-servant.”
“Then what is she?” Eli asked, checking his weapons. “What is she doing here?”
“Aurelia is a senza onore. A dark form of an Onorio, and an outclan priestess,” Edmund said. “Flamma Scintilla means flame spark, and she has a unique gift. Pyrokinesis. She is a Firestarter, a very dangerous one. I did not know she was in the States. And I find it difficult to believe that she is working for the Flayer. She hates vampires. She has no master, and only drinks from the Mithrans she kills.”
“Unless the Flayer has something on her or has someone she loves.” I thought about the fire at the NOLA vamp graveyard, the stones themselves burning. “Does Sabina know her?”
“Yes. They hate each other. And Aurelia is a far more powerful worker of magic than Sabina. Or George. Or Grégoire’s boys. Perhaps stronger than them all put together. If they hope to drain her, they would have to work together.”
“The timeline for the fires in NOLA. Is it possible she started them and still got here?”
“Barely. But yes,” Ed said.
The last time we ran into a senza onore, Gee had rubbed the blob into my hand as if that did something mystical. He said we two were the only ones burned by the senza onore spells, as we were the only goddess-born present. So did that make me more susceptible to senza onore spells? A little more uncertainty in my life was really freaking great. “So why is she here, tonight, with a master vamp?”
Ed’s voice was right behind me. “I do not know, my queen. She was not with him while he was . . . flaying me for his use.”
I turned to him, his scars visible even in the uncertain light. “Because she was in New Orleans burning the vamp graveyard?”
Thoughts flashed behind Ed’s eyes. “Sabina?”
“Don’t know. She was trying to get away the last time she contacted us. But if she’s burned she’ll need to drink and regenerate.”
Alex said, “According to cams, there are twenty fangheads surrounding the property, plus the leader, for a total of twenty-one. The outclan. And four humans. That’s the ones I can see, and they just suddenly showed up on the screens.”
“How did they get so close?” Eli asked.
“Beats me. They avoided the sensors somehow. Sending locations to your tablet.”
Eli pulled his tablet and tapped it awake. The small screen was covered with camera feeds, and he swiped one that gave an overview of the sensors that were lighting up the security system. There were twenty-two different spots of light in a rough circle that correlated to the Everhart witch ward. Farther back were four smaller spots. The humans, probably out of the way, waiting to feed any wounded vamps after the battle. “How?” Eli asked again. “They were hidden under movable wards? Without a witch to open and maintain them? They came in over the trees? How? We have motion sensors. Lasers. Cameras everywhere.”
Alex said, “I don’t like this.”
“Senza onore,” Edmund said. “She is strong.”
“Then why hasn’t she burned us out already?” I growled.
If the ward failed under the onslaught, we’d have twenty vamps and a pyro inside with us. So of course it started to snow again, making vision difficult. The ward was permeable to air, snow, and rain. Lucky us. But something wasn’t right. I said, “Vamp speed? If they knew where the sensors were, could they speed through and the device think it was a glitch?”
“No,” Eli said shortly.
I spotted three of the twenty. Then a fourth. I moved through the snow to the witch ward and the Everharts. The witches’ sweat was strong on the night air, drenched in the reek of fear and the stench of anxiety and struggle, as if they fought a battle they had already lost. “If the ward falls,” I said to them, “stay put. I’ll keep you safe.”
“The kids,” Molly managed, her face running with sweat. The snow around her had melted down to the muddy earth. Earth magics warring with powerful death magics.
“Lincoln and Brute have them. They’re safe.”
She nodded, sweat staining her clothes and sticking her hair to her face. All the witches were showing strain.
“Hang on, Molly.”
She didn’t nod this time but I knew she understood, because tears started at the corners of her eyes. She had been through the wringer in the last bit. Her home had burned.