Batildis fell into two pieces with a fountain of blood that shot toward the unfinished beams overhead. Horror crossed the Devil’s face. The swordswoman hesitated for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for Bethany to fall on her, fangs buried in her throat. The blood-servant and fighter of legend fell back, dropping her arms, her swords pointing to the clay floor. Her mouth opened to scream. Brute leaped over them, raced to the thing on the wall, and bit its foot.
Derek, coming through the doorway, raised a weapon and shot Peregrinus. Like a hundred times. With an automatic gun that crushed the silence, that echoed against the walls. Rounds missed and ricocheted. I landed, my back paws firm and stable on the clay floor. But Derek hadn’t seen me enter, leaping through a bubble of space and time given to Beast by an angel.
I took a round midcenter, just right of my navel. Another penetrated my left shoulder. Beast screamed. I fell at Derek’s feet and he leaped over me, still attacking Peregrinus, firing the weapon that shattered the stillness of the room and boomed against my eardrums. Bethany rose from the Devil, the priestess’ face and clothes covered with blood. The Devil stared sightlessly at the beams overhead, her swords out to the sides, her legs bent and limp, like a fallen angel of death on the clay of the earth. She no longer had a throat, just the bones of a spine. She was no longer a threat.
Bethany stood beside me, her arms out to the sides, screaming. Or, I was pretty sure she was screaming. Her head was back, her mouth was open, and her eyes glittered with fury. But the gun ripped into the air, stealing the sound, and then there was a flash of light, the scintillation of smoky wings, a flash of blacked snake tail. Peregrinus pulled reality around him in a wash of flashing energies. He was gone, the bodies of the Devil and Batildis with him, shadows on the move. Derek raced after, his men chasing behind.
I lay on the floor, cradling the Judge, the weapon that I hadn’t even fired yet, as Derek’s men raced after their boss. I was feeling too weak for the wounds—unless a round had hit something important, had bisected or ruptured something. Like the descending aorta or the big artery that feeds the liver. Funny. I couldn’t remember the name of the artery. The cramps that resulted from playing with time hit me and I curled tight in the fetal position, gasping.
Beast? I said.
She didn’t answer, which could mean something good or could mean something bad. I was facing the front of the room, and I saw Bethany stop screaming. She ripped the silver chain from Leo’s wrists and ankles and picked him up, placing him below the thing on the wall, holding the MOC’s head like a baby’s or a lover’s. As she raised back up, she paused and tore the thing’s leg open. With her teeth. A trickle of black blood fell from the fresh wound into Leo’s mouth. He shook as if an electric pulse had hit him. He vamped out and swallowed.
Bethany wiped her thumb through the black trickle and placed it into Grégoire’s mouth. He didn’t respond and she slapped him hard, rocking his head, before adding another trickle. And another. He took a breath, a wet, grinding sound like rubber over sand. She repeated the action with Katie. All three vamps were stirring. Bethany then ripped her own wrist and offered it to Leo, who latched on and drank. Grégoire, looking like an ill, bloodless child, took her other wrist. Katie crawled up Bethany and bit into her throat. Three mostly naked and blood-smeared vamps, all with their torsos cut open and gaping, feeding on the priestess. Ick. If I’d had breath, I might have said so, or laughed. Instead, the candlelight fluttered and telescoped down into a pinhole of vision, centered on the thing on the wall. It was staring at me. And I had a bad feeling that it knew what I was and that it wanted me. For dinner.
My last sight was of gray and black motes rising to obscure my vision. Took you long enough, I thought to Beast.
Beast was busy, she thought back.
And then I remembered the arcenciel. It had been here. Bethany hadn’t taken her or ridden her or whatever. But the pocket watches that were hanging on the crucified thing . . . Yeah, pocket watches. I’d last seen them in use in Natchez. And all the ones I’d managed to get hold of were in my safe-deposit boxes.
Now some were hung on the wall in the dungeon of the Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast. I had to wonder, as the last of the light shriveled down to a bright pinprick, where Leo had gotten his pocket watches. From Natchez? Or from my bank? Which would imply that the MOC had way more power in the human and financial world than I had known. I needed time to check all that out. Because if Leo had gotten into my boxes . . . that would totally suck.
The last of the light disappeared.
CHAPTER 21
A Bucket Full of Snakes
I came to in a room I didn’t recognize. A chandelier hung over me, one of the expensive ones, lead crystal and real gold gilt, polished and so brilliant that the light reflecting back from each facet hurt my eyes. The ceiling overhead was painted like the Sistine Chapel, or another fancy cathedral in Italy, with angels and humans sitting on clouds, faces etched with ecstasy. Vampires with wings flew among the happy group, fangs out. Weird. Vamps were weird. Their art was weirder.
I took a breath. It hurt so bad that I groaned, then coughed, which hurt even worse. I wrapped my arms around my middle, feeling cold blood on my flesh. Oh yeah. Right. I probably died. Again. This was getting old. Cats had nine lives, but I had already pushed that score into unknown territory and I had to wonder how many times I could die until the one time I didn’t get shifted in time.
Time.
I blinked, remembering. Beast had done something with time. Not just speeding me up, but taking me outside of time. A time bubble that let me do stuff inside it while the world didn’t go on without me. Folded time. My guts twisted into a knot and then yanked tight. I pressed into my middle, kneading, but the charley horse only seemed to get bigger.
I tried to stretch out and thought my insides would rip in two. Beast?
Jane must lie still. And wait.
Wait? I can’t breathe. I’m dying here.
Breast chuffed at me. Jane is not dying. Jane has air. Jane should think of time.
In the deeps of my soul home, Beast looked away, bored. She was lying in front of the fire pit, flames casting light and leaping shadows across her.
Time. Great. I fought to relax, to not panic, and closed my eyes.
I had actually seen a time bubble once, or maybe a time loop. I had been working with Molly way back when, and we had found a time loop in an old house that had been diagnosed as having a poltergeist. Wrong. It had a vampire stuck in a time loop, in a time bubble, with a witch. I had always been aware that time slowed down in battle. Soldiers had reported that phenomenon from time immemorial. But this was different. More distinct. More intense. Longer lasting. Now Beast and I had more control over the experience. Now Beast could do something like slow down time, fold time, at will. Or place us in a bubble at will. Freaky stuff.