“Brilliant security measure,” Eli said, sounding fascinated.
“Unh.” I pulled the former blood diamond out of my gobag. Hefted it in my fist. Reached over and tapped the lock. Nothing happened. “I figured that would be too easy.” I took the tip of the vamp-killer. Pricked my left little finger. A single drop of blood welled. Skinwalker blood. Blood capable of bending, bubbling time. I smeared the tip of the gem into the blood and tapped the lock.
The lock fell open. Which said something about my blood. Something else to think about later. On that tropical vacation, while sipping a drink with an umbrella in it.
I used the tip of the vamp-killer to lift the lock away and tossed it to the side. It hit real time and dangled, suspended in the air. Eli opened the door. We eased inside. Adan was a skeletal mess of sallow skin over bone, lank hair that was lifting into the air with static electricity, and fangs that looked brittle. Power was wrapped around his hands, thick as taffy, coating his arms and his upper body. He was vamped out, but the sclera of his eyes was pale pink, not red, proving that he hadn’t been fed recently. The vamp was starving. Starving meant insane and uncontrolled. I wasn’t real excited at the thought of freeing him or drawing his attention.
I bent and looked into the geode. The rainbow dragon, the arcenciel trapped in the large central crystal, tilted up her head. She spread her brilliant blue frill and hissed at me. “Well. That’s a surprise. But I guess you can see bubbled arcenciel time even when you’re being ridden.”
The arcenciel drew her head in, arching her neck. I might interpret the motion as surprise. Or not. Dragon body language was unfamiliar to me. “Yes, I see you,” I said to her. “And I know you’re being ridden. If I set you free, will you promise not to bite me?”
The dragon hissed and darted toward me as if she were free, biting inside the crystal quartz with her pearled fangs. She had a lot of teeth. Dozens. All of them finely serrated on the inside edges and curved in for tearing flesh. I rubbed my stomach. “Okay. So much for trust.” And I couldn’t risk setting her free while Eli was with me, couldn’t risk him being bitten. I said to Eli, “Back to the hallway. Just in case our damage to Louis’s and Bâtard’s necks heal too fast, you take position with guns ready and I’ll get back here and take care of the dragon. And we’ll hope for the best.”
“This Gray Between, bending-time stuff sounded like a superpower until I got inside it,” he said, his voice too soft, his breathing fast and unsteady. “I have to say, it’s got a lot of kryptonite.”
We shuffled out of the cage. My stomach twisted and saliva filled my mouth, nausea reaching a peak. I didn’t think I could speak without vomiting, so I just nodded and followed Eli beneath the sword in Grégoire’s back. He drew his weapon and placed it at Louis’ temple. “Go!” he said. I stepped away. Dropped my hand from his shoulder. Eli slid out of the Gray Between. His lips were pursed as if he were speaking, mouth tight, teeth together, the way he might say the first letter of my name. “J—” The Gray Between sliced through me, a slow, cutting change. Noise blasted my ears. Eli’s finger started to squeeze the trigger. Time bubbled back, the sound died, the shot didn’t come. Yet.
I slipped into the cage. I reached around Adan’s arms, threading my fingers through the striations of his magics and into the geode. I got my hands on either end of the quartz crystal that spanned the center of the hollow stone. The dragon inside was in a frenzy, darting in the confined space, banging on the crystal. I had never seen one active inside stone, only frozen in place. I had a feeling that this magic and this time bubble were different from anything I’d previously encountered. And that what I was doing was more dangerous.
Hands comfortably positioned on the crystal, the way I might situate them on free weights before beginning a dead lift, I got my knees under me, back straight, and took a slow breath, which did nothing to halt the nausea. I stood up fast. The crystal snapped cleanly away. But the arcenciel didn’t fly out either broken end. Not sure why she was still inside, I retraced my steps from the cage, set the crystal on the floor, and took more breaths. I was light-headed. The taste of acid on the back of my tongue. The dragon was bashing herself silly on the crystal walls. “Stop, you stupid flying lizard. I’ll set you free outside in a minute or two. Or whatever that amounts to in this no-time.”
She stopped and looked up at me, her pale blue lids blinking once.
“You understand English.”
She nodded, her frill wavering oddly, as if in a breeze, though she was still trapped in stone.
I chuckled softly. “I don’t trust you not to bite me or I’d set you free now. The moment I’m ready to reenter time, I’ll go outside and break the crystal. Four of your sisters are up in the clouds. You can fly straight up and get to them. Make them go away with you.”
The tiny dragon’s wings furled shut and her body shifted in a blur I could see. She lifted minuscule human-shaped hands to place them on the crystal, hands that hadn’t been there a moment past. Her head shifted to human shaped too, though she stayed blue, vaguely like a creature from the film Avatar, except in miniature and with exotic lustrous scales that cast back the light. She ducked her head, looking strangely suppliant, and there was a fine tremble along her body, back, lizard legs, and tail. She looked at her right hand and folded down her thumb, holding up fingers, spread.
“Four. Yeah. Four of your sisters. Two I recognize. We’re friends. Of sorts.”
Nausea rose in me like a tsunami. My balance failed and I slipped to the side, retching, but nothing came up, and at least I didn’t taste blood. My pentagram magics were still working. When I could stand again, I gulped breaths.
I was reaching the end of what I could do in this form. It was half-shift or die. But I needed to finish what I had started. I walked back into the cage. Pulled the small vamp-killer. And placed the eight-inch blade at Adan’s waist. Moving Beast-fast, I stepped behind the witch-vamp. Grabbed him in a sleeper hold. Stood upright, carrying his weight up with me, putting my back into the move.
Adan gasped, a sound that was instantly strangled off. His taloned hands gripped my arm. Feet kicked my shins.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said, “but I will.”
With the vamp not needing to breathe and not dependent on a heart-rate, the headlock wasn’t a deadly move, but it did hold him in place. He tucked his chin and saw the blade at his liver. Or whatever vampish organ was on the right side at the rib cage. His eyes darted around the room and down at the geode. His body slumped. He hadn’t bathed in a long time, and though vamps usually smelled like herbs and blood, he smelled of rot and bad breath and desperation.
“I have the arcenciel. Your buddies Louis and Le Bâtard are being disabled. We don’t have long to chat. If I ease off the pressure on your windpipe and let you talk, will you promise to be a good little boy and not try to get away? Because, you know, circling back to that whole ‘I don’t want to kill you, but I will’ thing.”
Adan nodded, the pressure of his jaw on my forearm jerky.
“Your conversational gambits are between two words. Yes and no. Anything else and I’ll cut you off. Literally. Understood?” I poked gently at his side with the point of the blade. I smelled the stink of vamp and silver instantly. Adan’s starvation had left him no immunity against the metal.
Adan nodded again.
I was getting good at this interrogating stuff. I eased off his neck and said, “Are you here and working with them of your own free will?”
“No.”
“Have you been working at optimum speed?”
“No.”
“Are you here because the vamps have someone you care about hostage?”
“Yes.”
“If I set you free, will they kill him or her?”
“Yes.”
“So you want to stay here and work?”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I needed to get Adan to stop working on the storm magic, and to do that I had to save his whoever. “Is the hostage on the ship in the waters offshore?”
“No.”