“I know what you meant, my love. And no, I kept the Boone’s Farm for our celebration when we are safely back home.”
I shoveled in meat. Drank the Shiraz. It was okay. Bruiser seemed to like the Merlot. “I thought there was supposed to be only beer on the island. Nothing the EuroVamps would approve of.”
“Officially. I brought a few bottles of my own. May I?” he asked, gesturing with the wineglass at my tureen.
I offered him my fork. He waved it away and took some of the pulled pork in his fingers and ate. My heart melted. And melted again when he licked his fingers and took another portion. This. This was why I loved him. Bruiser was powerful, elegant, and rich, but there was nothing pretentious about him.
I set aside my fork and we both ate with our fingers and drank wine, watching the night’s distant storm on the ocean, lightning flickering through the clouds and down to the crashing sea, miles away. But growing closer. The breeze picked up. Stunted trees danced in the wind, leaves flying away with the approaching squall.
Bruiser asked casually, “Is it a magical storm? Like something that Adan created?”
“No,” I said. “Just a nightly gulf storm. Mother Nature getting in the last word.” I let a pause fill the space between us, as the gulf splashed and the wind soughed. I took Bruiser’s hand and his fingers wrapped around mine. We sat that way for some time.
We were still sitting when the tramp of feet alerted us. I set aside the huge bowl and leaned over Bruiser. Kissed him gently. He tasted of pork and fancy wine. And love.
Battle wasn’t made for quiet moments or relaxing. It was made for the kind of focus that narrowed down to life and death and survival. This break from that intensity and emphasis and single-minded concentration was probably stupid. But I felt the tension flow out of me at the touch of his lips. I breathed into his mouth, and he smiled, his lips moving against mine. And it was exactly the short, peaceful break I had craved without realizing it. I pulled away slightly. “Thank you. I needed that.”
“As did I.”
I tilted my head, thinking about the way I had just relaxed. “Did you just share your Onorio magic with me?”
“It’s proscribed. I would never do such a thing in the midst of a Sangre Duello.”
My honeybunch just lied to me. It was so sweet I wanted to cry. Instead I said, “If—When Titus loses, that ship can just sail away.”
Bruiser’s lips pulled up slightly, though the smile never reached his eyes. “So it seems.” His tone said that he knew or guessed that Leo—or I—had that eventuality covered. “However, there are any number of treacherous strategies that the passengers on the ship might attempt. And you have made certain that most of them will not succeed.”
That meant that Bruiser knew about the plan I had put in place with my one cell phone call from the island. Interesting. Gee had spilled the beans. Or Alex had been listening in when I made my call and told my sweetcheeks. Or . . . something. “Okay,” I said just as softly, thinking about all the people on that ship. “Okay.”
* * *
• • •
We stood twenty feet from the surf on the flat sand. A long, undulating wave train rolled in, over and over, off the gulf. The storm was coming ashore, thunder a constant, disorganized, booming echo, lightning striking down in blasts of light that illuminated the tossing sea, rain in heavy sheets, visible in the flashing bursts. The wind picked up, carrying with it the ozone of lightning and the faint scent of dead fish on the otherwise clean and salty air.
It wasn’t a magical storm. I knew how to recognize those. But . . . lightning. And Brute was here, which suggested that Hayyel, the wolf’s angel, had eyes on the proceedings. Soul in dragon form zipped through the storm clouds, in human sight looking like cloud-to-cloud lightning; in Beast-sight a light dragon, filling herself with power. I didn’t know why, but the vision made me itchy, worried, anxious. Soul could see and alter the future when she wanted. I knew that. She knew the possible outcomes of this final duel. I shivered in the cold wind. There was something circular and cyclical about this fight beneath this storm. As if it encapsulated everything that had happened since I arrived in New Orleans.
Leo took to the beach, carrying one longsword and a small sword shaped like a Gurkha kukri, the blade roughly twelve inches long and slightly curved. Titus was similarly armed, but with straight blades. Both wore armor. Leo’s hair was back in a bun that secured it from whipping in the wind.
Bruiser touched my shoulder and went to stand with Brandon and Brian, the Onorios all in one place. The outclan priestess stood across from them. They had been in that configuration all through the Sangre Duello. Arbiters and judges.
Leo’s people stood closest to the house. Titus’s people were on the water side of the imaginary ring. The scent of lemons was faint but present, riding atop the smell of salt and vamp. The moon still shone overhead, days away still from the full phase, scudding clouds obscuring her light from time to time, casting shadows on the white sand. I took the Glob in hand and stuck it in my pocket, holding it. A good-luck talisman. Its magic shocked my hand, magic captured from the lightning storm that had made it.
I held the rubies and the gold nugget I never took off in my other fist against my chest. I was armed. Heavily armed. But my arms and ability wouldn’t decide this fight. They were useless.
The combatants tapped their sword tips to the sand, though I hadn’t seen that before. Maybe a remnant from the Greek fight they had both relished.
The bell toned.
Leo struck. Titus blocked with his short blade. It wasn’t the elegance of La Destreza. It was something else. Something cruder, older, battlefield coarse. The swords clanked and clanged. Thunder rumbled. Lightning struck the water out at sea. The moonlight flicked beneath rushing clouds. A storm wave crashed on the shore, foamed up around us all. We spectators danced back, away.
Not Leo and Titus. Feet in the rising surf, they fought.
Cut, cut, cut, stab, block, block. Cut, cut. Rain shattered down and stopped. Wind gusted and fell still. All in the space of a dozen heartbeats.
Both combatants were bleeding, the blood black in the moonlight. My hands tightened on the stones, the Glob in one hand, the nugget and rubies in the other. Leo was injured. Titus was favoring his left leg. Titus dropped to one knee. Sprang away. Leo was winning. Hope, deadly foolish hope, sprang up in me. Rain pelted down, fat, heavy drops that marked the sand like stars. Beast peered out through my eyes, watching everything. Spotting something out in the surf, something dark and silvered, standing there. Vamps from the ship, waiting to attack. Smelling of lemons.
Lightning hit the water, far off, but close enough to feel electricity in the air, heated as angel wings along my body. Fear of lightning quivered along my nerves, unresolved. The strike illuminated an image of Leo, his arm whipping forward, one knee forward, back leg outstretched. Steel sword high and swooping. Killing strike.
But Titus stepped to the side. Faster than vamps can move. He was simply . . . not there.
I felt the magic within me shiver and sing. The magic that formed a five-pointed star, a near perfect harmony of time and place and purpose. It pulled and twisted. Time thickened, a turgid, icy weight in the air. The Gray Between opened, a slice in reality, dove gray energies with black motes of darkest power.
I stepped outside of time. The noise of the surf and storm deepened, basso thrum.
Titus was on the outside of the sword strike. His longsword back. Titus had . . . timewalked.
So had I, though not by choice. He had pulled me out of normal time with him, but he hadn’t noticed me. His attention was intent on Leo. Raindrops glistened, hanging in the air. A thousand possibilities, caught in the storm. Beast growled. Reached out a paw.
Time snapped back. Normal. Crashing loud.
Titus lunged forward. Straight and true. The blade taking Leo high on his chest.
Lightning touched down. Blinding, dazzling. Only feet away. Magic captured in the Glob reached for the energy in the brilliant bolt. Sucked it inside, to fuel its own might. Power exploded in the air. Sizzled through the sand. The Glob broiled, roasting my palm, and Glob magic flashed out and absorbed it, faster than the lightning could die away. Rain blasted down, drenching, scarring the sand.
I was soaked through with the possibilities of the future. Half-blinded.