Ed gave me a look that disagreed. “You will be perfect.”
“No. You will be magnificent,” Ziggy said earnestly. “And though QB will be dreadfully jealous to have competition, after seeing you, I may create a JY ensemble for the next drag queen competition. I’ll show a lot more breast, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
“And my pants will be a G-string under leather chaps.”
Ziggy was currently wearing crinkled gray linen pants and a gray hoodie out of some slick slubby material like flax. Unisex clothes. Lots of makeup. Blinged-out flip-flops. I shook my head. He kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll look stunning, Legs. I promise I’ll do you proud.” He held up a mirror to me. I looked like a different woman.
Ziggy had applied golden and sapphire shimmer to my lids, a sparkly gold eyeliner over Cleopatra-style black liner, mascara that made my lashes look a mile long. A dusting of golden shimmery cheek color, red lipstick, and the pièce de résistance, lines back from my eyes and cheeks like whiskers, drawn in shimmery gold. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that none of it would matter when I fought. “Thank you. I look amazing.”
“Of course you do, honey chile. Everything I do is amazing.”
* * *
• • •
I didn’t go in for the first two rounds, instead sitting with the Kid and Champ in the production/security room, studying the low-light and infrared cameras for evidence of a witch. The two rubies had been returned by Sabina when she woke, returned without comment. I hadn’t asked if Del lived or died. I was too chicken. But I’d placed the rubies onto the chain at my neck and they had realigned to my magics the moment I held them. Batteries. Maybe boosters too. We didn’t spot a witch under an obfuscation spell, but what we did see was grim.
Katie stood in the center octagonal ring on the sand, her bastard sword held in a backhand stance. She wasn’t the Katherine I met when I first came to New Orleans, a confused, olden-day vamp lost in the modern world, nor was she the Katie who had risen nearly insane from a box of blood. This Katie was vibrant, steady, her power shooting throughout the room, so electric that Titus himself winced in surprise. So strong that I could feel it in the cramped room below.
Katie said, “I accept the challenge of Postumus, who seeks the head of my love and my master, Leo Pellissier.”
“Who is Postumus?” I asked, not remembering the name in the long list of combatants.
In a dead voice, Alex said, “Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus. Founder of the Gaelic Empire in 260 or so.”
He would be old. Skilled. Devious. My heart tightened in my chest.
The bell dinged. A bearded vamp stepped forward, muscular, short, a powerful barrel of a man.
Four seconds later, Katie was down, her foot nearly severed, her throat sliced from ear to ear, and a stake in her chest. Her opponent was dead, both arms severed and his head across the room, but Katie was in bad shape. She was carried up the stairs in a dripping bloody sheet. Leo’s people won the first match, but with Katie down and out, we may have lost the Sangre Duello.
“You okay?” I asked the Kid.
“I’m finer than fine,” Alex answered, eyes on his cameras, his kinky hair sticking to his sweaty face. It was hot in the closet, with all the equipment running and no AC. “Or as good as I can be without energy drinks, mainlining espresso and Clif bars.” I said nothing. As Sabina talked to Titus and Leo, their voices coming through the windows and not the system, Alex said, “You let Eli fight.”
“Your brother didn’t leave me a choice. He said yes.”
“You coulda coldcocked him and carried him from the line of fire.”
I nodded slowly, knowing that Alex could see me from the corner of his eye. “I could have. I didn’t.”
“You wanna tell me why?”
“Eli wanted that fight. He chose a good weapon. Something she wasn’t likely to have fired. I had read the dossier on the woman.”
“Not an acceptable reason.” He turned his head and met my eyes, his brownish ones darker in the night. “You. Let him. Fight.” It was an accusation, the words widely spaced and venomous.
“He misses it, misses the adrenaline rush, the heightened senses. You know it. I know it. I thought this was a good choice. The safest choice.”
“That asshole coulda shot him in the head, not the chest. Eli coulda not worn a vest. My brother could be dead.”
“I know. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”
Alex nodded, a minuscule gesture much like one Eli would make. “Don’t let it happen again, Janie.”
I smiled, my lips stretching for the first time since Eli was shot, knowing that I had no control over Eli’s actions at all, but not wanting to say that to Alex. “I’ll do my best.” I tapped one of the screens. “Soul. On the outer edges of the island. What’s she doing?”
“Walking the periphery of the island. She’s been doing it since the EVs came ashore.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what Soul was doing or planning, but there wasn’t much I could do to stop her.
“Anomaly.” He stabbed a different screen. “There.”
A slender shimmer moved up the stairs to the second floor and proceeded to the third floor.
Alex said, “Go.”
I pulled on Beast’s stealth, gripped the rubies, and raced after the Cym-shaped shimmer.
A camera wolf caught my movement and followed.
The smell of magic hit the air, faint but harsh as tar—a curse being cast. As the scent blazed out, I could see Cym, standing on the landing at the third floor, glistening beneath the obfuscation spell, which she couldn’t hold strong while casting a curse. I was ten feet from her and at least six feet below her. She raised her arms. The prickle of magic blazed out. There wasn’t time.
Time . . . I could—
Beast took over. Shoved up with my back legs. I leaped. In midair, I/we drew a fourteen-inch vamp-killer from a sheath at my calf. Spun that arm back, winding up. And took her through the neck, near her head. I landed fourteen feet beyond her, in front of Sabina. A bloody blade in my hand. My mind thought, Thank you, Beast. She hadn’t let me bubble time. I started to stand upright. Stopped. Unable to move.
A dozen swords were at my throat. Carefully, I set the blade on the floor. “Intruder,” I whispered. And sucked in breaths I hadn’t taken while I leaped through the air.
“Golden. Absolutely, fucking golden,” the camera wolfman said.
Cym’s death had broken her spell. Her body, blood, and partially attached head were visible. Her lemon scent filled the room, drifting from her body and blood. The wolf moved the camera along her body and up to her head. Cym was dressed vaguely as a pirate, with embroidered vest, a white shirt with full sleeves, thigh-high boots, tight pants, and gaudy, mismatched jewelry. “Sorry ’bout the language, Champ,” the camera wolf added, not sounding at all apologetic, “but that was fuc—fricking fabulous.”
“She was under an obfuscation spell,” I said. “Witchcraft in the Sangre Duello is disallowed.” Only in La Danza could it be used.
“She wasn’t dueling. You killed her?” Titus asked. “For using a spell? Isn’t that what witches do?”
With a vamp-killer I turned her head to expose her fangs. “Witch. Also a Mithran. Also a member of Clan Des Citrons, who are sworn to Titus Flavius Vespasianus.” With the tip of the blade I snagged Cym’s fancy white shirt and pulled it from the vest. On the front was the emblem of a lizard eating its tail.
Titus looked momentarily nonplussed that I knew all this. Then he got over it. “One acting on her own. Or a traitor to my cause.”
“She threw this at me last night.” I held up two fingers to show I didn’t have a weapon and slowly inserted them into a throwing knife sheath. I removed the knife and extended it, hilt first, to Leo.
Leo, no weapons drawn, hands clasped behind his back, walked slowly to me and sniffed along its length. “Magic and the mixed blood of humans and Mithrans. A blade improperly cared for. Or coated with a death curse.” He accepted the blade in one palm, holding it so the light fell on it. “Steel, double-sided blades, set in an olive wood hilt.” Leo’s eyes drifted to Titus. “For Christmas in the year 1702, you gave me a set of throwing knives made from olive wood.”