burden and glanced at the hedge, his eyes saying, Let it down. Let’s go. Aloud, the words urgent, he said, “My Queen.”
The hedge didn’t fall. Bruiser was wavering on his feet. Monique Giovanni was equally exhausted, her purple dress sweat-stained, but she was clearly older, more experienced and more powerful. She was going to win. The vamps still standing still had guns. The lizard flew in a flashing, stuttering circle around the room, Shimon’s eyes following. Another vamp fell, this one bleeding from her mouth. The Flayer turned his eyes to his people and, oddly, he looked uncertain, as though he hadn’t realized that his people were falling.
Bug creature has not seen his children fall, Beast thought. Has not seen lizard fly. Has not seen half-form of Beast. Bug creature is confused. Is not used to being confused.
Ahhh, I thought. “Put down your weapons and we’ll leave in peace,” I said, urging his momentary indecision. Shoot us and we’re all dead. Didn’t say that.
The woman at the Flayer’s side began to bleed in a scarlet stripe down her left side. I realized that the flaying of the vamp’s flesh was the result of the Flayer of Mithrans using her brain. He took his title from the act of using his magic. What a peach.
Beast pawed to the front of our minds and peered out at her. Is not fruit. Woman vampire smells ugly. Like smell of sick flashlight. Same as vampires killed in snow at sweathouse.
Bad batteries. Acidic. Yeah. Though I’m not sure what it means or if we can use that.
Shimon, his eyes locked onto Molly’s face, waved a negligent hand. His vampires’ weapons disappeared. Their hands reappeared in front of them and clasped together, like some bizarre synchronized dance of parade rest.
Edmund’s hands twitched too. I wondered if Shimon had left a listening/control bug in Edmund’s brain. Crap.
The Trueblood hedge fell in a showy shower of red sparks. The lizard flashed through the air to Gee’s shoulder and curled his striped tail around the Mercy Blade’s neck. Bruiser staggered.
“Have your people call my people,” I said, somehow pulling off the ironic, mocking tone I was going for. “We’ll do dinner. Parley. Talk politics. Religion. Killing people. The usual.”
Shimon and the bleeding woman laughed together, sounding eerily exact.
Gee carrying Ed, Evan steadying Bruiser with a hand on his arm, Molly breathing hard and fast, we backed out the door and into a blowing, black night, storming with sleet. The city power grid went off, leaving us in total darkness for too many heartbeats. It flickered on and off a few times, and steadied in the on position. Lightning lanced across the sky. The wind and ice cut through my pelt like frozen knives.
Shaddock eased up to my honeybunch and offered his sliced wrist to the drained Onorio. Bruiser took the wrist in shaking hands, pulled the MOC’s wrist to his mouth, and drank. I turned my attention to my partner and listened in.
“Say again,” Eli said into his mic. He cursed, soft, succinct, savage. To me, he said, “Our transport is in a ditch. We’re on our own.”
“How does a transport vehicle end up in a ditch?” I asked, because I knew Eli and Shaddock had planned for all eventualities.
“Apparently the driver had a snort of liquid warmth and drove off the road. His backup is—was—a pair of four-by-fours and they’re buried beneath a ton of plowed snow, for which we can thank the city of Asheville’s snowplows.”
Do not like sleet! Beast thought.
In the distance I heard the sound of snowplows, brining trucks, and the fainter sound of a police siren. Then more sirens, closer to us, and I feared for a moment that the vamps in the Regal had called the cops. Even in North Carolina it would probably result in days of paperwork to have so many weapons on hand and dead bodies in the hotel, but the units turned away.
Eli said, “Follow me,” and ducked into the driving storm. We trailed him. Eli tapped his mic and went onto a private channel for a discussion with someone, likely the Huey pilot, and oddly, he left me out of the loop. As we raced across the street into the protection of a covered doorway, I thought about being left out for a good dozen steaming, ragged breaths, my small clouds swept away by the icy wind. I’d been sick for months. Eli had, in the way of command structure, moved on. I was proud and sad and