Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(105)

They had the twins to force Grégoire to do what they demanded, hurting the boys until he complied. I looked back at the twins. The spell over them was a strangely geometric haze. The motes that were present in most magics were random. This working was regular, evenly spaced, and . . . herringbone, like the magics on the Deadly Duo’s clothing. “Brandon and Brian are behind some kind of weird ward. I have no idea how to break it.”

“Okay, so we do the next best thing. Stay close.” He edged in behind Grégoire and beneath the sword in the vamp’s back. Feet scuffling, I followed. With a flick of his hand and blade, Eli cut Louis’ wrist. The blade, though sharp, barely sliced the flesh.

“That ‘yada yada, physics,’ thing?” I questioned. “You have to press hard. Things in the Gray Between appear to be more dense.” Eli repositioned his grip and shoved the tip against the wrist. This time it penetrated and Eli rocked the blade back and forth, widening the wound. Blood appeared at the edges of the gash and I leaned to sniff. The blood smelled of fear and Grégoire and Sabina. And the stink of vamp blood meeting silver—acrid, burned, and vile.

My stomach rolled, sick.

Inside me, Beast thought, Half-shift. Fighting form. Now.

Not till Eli’s done, I thought back.

She snarled but didn’t insist.

Eli patted my hand as if reminding me to grip harder and applied more pressure to the tendons beneath the skin. After a few nonmoments we both realized that incapacitating them was not going to happen fast enough. Bile rose up my throat. I gagged. I needed to half-shift. “Oh to heck with it. This is taking too long.” I pulled a vamp-killer, handed it to Eli, and pointed at Louis’ throat. “Cut deep. He’ll heal faster than we want, but we’ve bought ourselves some time.”

“You want it off?” He meant the vamp’s head.

“Not until we know where all the prisoners are.”

“Look at you, being all ‘Think first and kill later.’” Eli hefted the blade and turned it to a backhand. He swung. Cut an inch or so into the neck on one side, into Louis’ jugular and his carotid artery. The blade stuck in the time-hardened flesh. Eli waggled the blade, yanking it at the same time. The tissue parted and blood appeared. Not spurting yet, but that would come. However, Louis was Naturaleza and had fed well on blood. He was capable of healing most anything. Eli took another backswing and hacked into the cut, widening it. Removed his blade and gripped my hand with one of his, holding it on his shoulder. His hand was cold. Too cold.

“Eli?”

“Not yet.”

He maneuvered back under the sword in Grégoire’s spine and did the same thing to Le Batard’s head. Then he went to Grégoire. With the smaller blade he cut into the flesh around Grégoire’s thumb, the one holding the switchblade against his stomach, the weapon Grégoire intended to kill himself with. “Maybe he’ll feel it and know he isn’t alone,” Eli said.

He looked back at me. “You’re pale. Sweating.” He touched my face. “Clammy. Bleeding?”

I shook my head, the motion jerky. “You’re cold. You okay?” I asked.

“Not really. The GB is a onetime deal. But let’s finish it. We need to free the twins and the caged witch.”





CHAPTER 19


    Hung in the Sleet like a Sad Sack of Potatoes



I looked at my own hand to make sure it was empty. I vaguely remembered drawing a weapon. Or three. I had no idea where the weapons were. I patted my rigs and discovered I’d replaced them without even noticing my own actions. Muscle memory was a good thing. I was feeling woozy and put an arm around Eli to hold us together. “Okay. Let’s do this.” In our three-legged walk, we moved back into the larger room and up to Brandon and Brian. “We have a herringbone magical pattern. I don’t remember seeing that before, but at the moment my memory isn’t so great. Can you see magic?” I asked. “Can you see the pattern?”

“Babe. Human here.”

“Yeah. Right. I’ve seen a lot of funky magic.” I lifted my eyes to the wires that originated at the lightning rod. “This is all geometric. I think I need to . . .” I looked at Eli. He was so close it was hard to focus. “I think we need to cut the wires to the lightning rod.”

He looked up. “We have multiple wires. Which ones do we cut?”

“All. Why not.”

Eli was holding my vamp-killer. I wasn’t sure when I’d given it to him. I was losing bits of time. Not good. “Hang on, Babe.” He positioned his feet for a stable balance, took two test swings like a batter at the plate. And swung at the wires. Unlike vamp tendons, the copper wires parted. And nothing happened. “Hunh,” Eli grunted. “Babe, you strong enough to take the twins into GB with us?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” I shrugged and the gesture hurt, a sick muscle ache, like after a major beating. “We could die.”

“That would suck. You got a better idea?”

“We need them away from the pole.”

We inspected the wires Eli had sliced through. As we talked, the wires separated a quarter of an inch, leaving a stationary light connecting the space between the ends. The herringbone pattern on the boys had begun to thin. “Wait,” I said. I dropped to one knee and eased the blade of a vamp-killer through a space in the magical mesh pattern. The blade sparked on the working, throwing light even Eli could see. I sawed through the straps holding the boys to the pole. It took a bit of no-time, but the blade eventually worked through.