if I’d dropped an anvil on it. There was a rippling, crackling sound as hundreds of bones shattered all together, and a splatter of sludgy liquid that splashed all over the cars around the vampire—mostly upon the Beetle, really.
The effort of gathering and releasing so much energy left me gasping. I was out of shape when it came to earth magic. It had never been my strongest suit—too slow, most of the time, to seem like it would have been worth the bother. As I hauled myself out of the ground, though, I had to admit that when there was enough time to actually use it, it sure as hell was impressive.
I padded to the car, watching the mall entrance, but there was no outcry and no sudden appearance of Drulinda or the other vampires of her scourge.
The vampire was still alive.
Un-alive. Whatever. The thing was still trying to move.
It was mostly just a mass of pulped, squishy meat. In the cold, at least, it hadn’t begun to rot, so that cut down on the smell. One eye rolled around in its mashed skull. Muscles twitched, but without a solid framework of bone to work with, they didn’t accomplish much beyond an odd, pulsing motion. It could probably put itself back together, given blood and time, but I didn’t feel like letting it have either. I held the plastic cylinder over it.
“Nothing personal,” I told the vampire. Then I dumped powdered garlic from the pizzeria in the mall’s food court all over it.
I can’t say the vampire screamed, really. It died the way a salted slug does, in silent, pulsing agony. I had to fight to keep my stomach from emptying itself, but only for a second. Absolutely disgusting demises are par for the course when fighting vampires. A few wisps of smoke rose up, and after a few seconds, the mass of undead flesh became simple dead flesh again.
One down.
Three to go.
I stalked toward the mall, moving with all the silence I could manage. After years working as a private investigator, and more years fighting a magical war against the vampires in the shadows, I knew how to be quiet. I slipped up to within thirty feet of the entrance and spotted the second vampire before he noticed me, right where Keef’s people said he was.
He stood facing the door of the bistro, apparently intent on what was happening within. I could hear voices inside, though I could make out no details over the continued, repeated playing of “Only You,” beyond that one of the voices was Drulinda’s leathery rasp. There were no sounds of fighting, which wasn’t good. Thomas certainly wouldn’t have allowed them to hurt anyone without putting up a struggle, and given the mutual capabilities of everyone involved, it would have been noticeable.
A second’s thought told me that it might also be a good sign. If they’d killed him, they would have made a big mess doing it. Assuming he hadn’t gone down without getting to put up much of a fight—and I refused to assume anything else. I knew my brother too well—something else had to be happening.
My brother could go toe-to-toe with a vampire of the Black Court, if he had to, but the last time he’d done it, the effort had nearly killed both him and the woman he’d had to feed from in order to recover. There were two of them inside, and though Thomas was as combat capable as any of the White Court’s best, he wasn’t going to start a slugfest if he thought he could get a better fight by biding his time, doing what the White Court did—looking human and using guile. My instincts told me that Thomas was stalling, choosing his moment. Hell, he was probably waiting for me to show up and help.
I looked down and found his birthday present, untouched by the flying debris, lying in its bright red and pink paper where Molly had dropped it on the sidewalk outside the doors.
I found myself smiling.
Twenty seconds or so later, I tossed the present underhand. It tumbled through the air and landed on the floor directly outside the bistro’s entrance. The head of the vampire on guard jerked around, focusing on the present. It tilted its head to one side. Then it whipped around toward me, baring its teeth in a snarl.
“Gravitus!” I thundered, releasing a second earthcrafting.
Once again, everything jumped up—but this time, it wasn’t quiet. The circle of nullified gravity embraced every shop