Gray Between. My skinwalker energies burst out and, just as fast, merged back inside, sliding into the star-shaped magics, the scarlet star in my abdomen, visible even in Anzu form. I reached into the Gray Between and bubbled time. Inside the shield, everything stopped: the Flayer had half lifted EJ and was now frozen, unmoving. I had done it!
Pain sliced through me. My bird heart beat fast, too fast, a pounding, racing agony. My wings drooped. My breath strained, not enough to fill my lungs. “Crap,” I whispered. I’d been in Anzu form all day, adding Anzu magic to my own, and therefore to any remnants of Dudley. The pain spiked.
Beast dropped time. Inside the shield, the Flayer repositioned EJ on the stone floor.
Jane is sick even in Anzu?
Looks like it. Holy crap on a cracker. This makes it a lot harder.
My skinwalker energies misting around me like a silver veil, I thrust off the tree and flapped my exhausted wings, gaining altitude, banked in a tight circle. Set my eyes on the Flayer of Mithrans. Before reason could suggest I stop, I bent time and folded my wings tight to me. Aimed my beak at the back of the Flayer’s head. And dove toward the cave.
Pierced the shield. It shocked across and through me. A blinding glare as if lightning had hit me again, sparking and flashing. Sizzling along my beak and face. Pulling on my feathers in hot tugs of power. Pain like a spear through my middle. And then I was through. Dropping fast. From above.
I dropped the bubbled time.
Slammed into the Flayer of Mithrans. Beak rammed into the back of his neck. At the base of his skull. Perfect raptor kill.
Still moving forward, my wings went out, claws swung up. Gripped his head. Crushed down. Sweeping him forward. Wings spreading.
I crashed him against the back of the cave. Back-winging, sweeping hard, I hammered his head into the stone. Crushing his skull in claws and rock.
Dropping, I slid down the uneven stone wall, taking him down with me. I landed on the stone floor on top of Shimon Bar-Judas, his body a bloody heap beneath me. Twitching. Still alive. Healing even as I looked. Because the Flayer of Mithrans was truly immortal.
I settled beside him, wings folding, claws holding him steady. Setting my beak in the middle of his neck, I ripped off his head, tossed it high, and caught it in my beak, holding him by one ear. Blood pulsed hard from the ragged stump just above the exoskeleton shoulders, slashing across the cave wall, painting swathes that almost glowed to my Anzu eyes. The body twitched, the hands clenching and unclenching, the feet pointing like a ballerina’s. The pulsing slowed and stopped.
I tossed the head against the far wall. Gray matter was visible in the openings I’d made in the crushed skull. The body kept twitching but there was no control, no intent behind the movements. It was like a decapitated snake twitching its tail. I figured it would take a long time for the Flayer’s head to heal and figure out what had happened, and—horror movies aside—since his head wasn’t attached to his body, I didn’t think his parts could go independently searching for each other and put himself back in place.
Hopping around, I checked out the skinned vampire and the witch. The vamp was familiar. I stared at the skinless, unbreathing, but undead corpse. It was Tex. I stopped. Tex had been missing, taken from New Orleans before Shiloh, probably by Legolas-Melker. I hadn’t even thought about him, neither him nor Roland, also taken. I needed to find out the whereabouts and condition of all my people. I was a terrible clan leader. I sucked. Later. I’d be a better person later.
The witch was an unknown.
Both of them were silent, eyes empty and haunted. Neither reacted to the presence of a hundred-plus-pound sapphire bird. Threats eliminated or ineffective, I stared at my godson. He lay in the center of a witch-type circle, sealed with an ongoing working. The dome of the circle was low, and I hadn’t disrupted it when I dive-bombed Shimon.
I wanted to race in, breaking the circle working, grab EJ, spread my wings on the far side of it and leap through the shield as we fell into flight. But at some point, Shimon had closed the circle. Because it was still active, it might explode if I broke it improperly. The ward would surely react to EJ trying to