Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(45)

She grabbed my head in clawed hands. Rammed it against a pew. I had a moment of blackness, shredded away by the pain. She shook me again, teeth in my shoulder, hands on my head. She was ripping my arm off. My blood sprayed across the room and up, to spatter on the newly painted ceiling far overhead. I adjusted my grip and stabbed under her left ear. Cut toward me. Severed her carotid and jugular, her trachea and esophagus. Nothing changed. Except my blood pooling, spreading under me. The sound and vibration of her growling into my shoulder stopped.

I stabbed again, working the blade back and forth, severing tendons. They were old and tough and it wasn’t easy. I was screaming in pain, in battle fury. Her head lolled forward. But her jaws didn’t unclench off my shoulder. I sawed. Panted. Mewled in agony. She shook me, my whole body sliding on the wood floor, through my blood. Things tore inside my shoulder joint. Blood shot into my right eye. Into her face. Her eyes opened and she stared at me. She started drinking; the sucking sounds were just eww. Even if it hadn’t been my blood she was drinking.

I yanked the knife out, movements clumsy, and placed the tip of the blade into the jaw joint. Temporomandibular joint. Yeah. Odd the things I think and remember when I’m probably dying.

I shoved it in and cut backward. Her bite decreased, but she was healing. Focusing on me. Aware of me. Gaining sanity. I had to end this now. Or die. I turned the blade. Stabbing back into the vertebrae. They were brittle and they cracked. Her bite softened more. Using my legs, I rolled her over. Pushed at her and her fangs pulled through my flesh with a slow, sickening sound. Her eyes dulled.

Silver caught my eye. Swinging down. Fast.

Her head separated from her body. She collapsed beneath me.

Eli stood above us, looking down. There was a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “Babe. Shift. So I can kill you at my leisure.”

“Kill me?” I whispered.

“For taking her on without me.”

I laughed, or tried to. Pain zinged through me. Lightning boomed. Beast ripped the Gray Between open and I shifted. The last thing I saw before the change took me was human-shaped fingers. I was changing back from fighting half-form to human, which was a good thing, as it was still daylight-ish. If I’d changed to mountain lion, I’d have been stuck in that form until nightfall, an irritating glitch in my skinwalker energies.





CHAPTER 9


    Sword of the Enforcer



“You want to tell me why you took her on alone?” Eli’s voice was low, almost a whisper. The way he sounded when he was seriously ticked off.

I licked my fingers, cleaning the burger juices off them, thinking. He had sent Shemmy to get me a dozen burgers and fries and a couple of two-liter Cokes. He had waited until I ate every single bite to ask me anything at all.

I almost said, I came alone because you were nearly drained of blood last night and were weak. But I figured he might just shoot me. I almost said, You were busy. Ditto on the shooting. I settled on, “I was stupid?”

“Very.”

“Thank you for the clean clothes? And the food?”

Eli grunted. He was sitting on an undamaged pew beneath the crucifix, bent forward, forearms resting on his thighs. His hands no longer held a weapon but dangled between his knees. He skin was very dark in the church’s shadows, his hair buzzed close, brown scalp showing through, gray eyes looking charcoal. Eli was a seriously pretty man. And was seriously ticked.

I was on the floor at his feet, eating like the calorie-starved person I was after so many shifts and half-shifts in quick succession. Oh. And nearly dying. Nearly dying is hungry business. Plus my hair was a mess and I didn’t have lipstick with me. Not that I’d ever say that to Eli. No freaking way.

Though I might look a mess, the magics coursing through me, the ones that now formed a star, and were so different from my usual skinwalker magics, felt steady and smooth and relentless. So that was good, right? Except, Eli. Ticked. Dangerously ticked.

“Babe. Don’t do it again. Even disabled I’m better than nothing.”

He said it as if he’d been disabled and had still held his own. The scar on his collarbone shone white above his black tee, which was rain soaked, though no longer dripping. He had acquired more scars since coming to work for me, pale streaks on his neck and across his chest, but I seldom noticed them, not in competition with the white, puckered scar on his collarbone.

His dress pants were soaked. His skin was covered with chill bumps, gleaming in the church lights. The jacket he’d worn to HQ was gone. When he breathed, steam blew from his mouth. It was unexpectedly icy in the old church.

“I won’t. Pinkie swear?” I held up my little finger, crooked.

There was an instant of silence, then Eli laughed. An actual out-loud chuckle. “Babe.” He shook his head in resignation.

“I know.” I dropped my hand.

Behind him, NOPD detectives and crime scene techs were working up the scene, which was hard to do with the bodies being in several places, scattered all over the church. With the perpetrator crumbling to ash. And with her being dead three times now. The paperwork was gonna be a disaster, I thought. Fortunately not my problem. The crumbling to ash was the weirdest part. I’d never seen such a thing, but then I’d never seen a thrice-dead vamp out in daylight and then dead on holy ground. I was expanding my horizons and not in a good way.