Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(73)

When he could speak again he said, “You’re a stone-cold killer, Janie. But you got morals. If this city survives, it’ll be because you turned the tide.”

“Your jaw healed already, didn’t it?”

“Close to eighty percent, yes.”

“Pretend to be unconscious when Derek takes you to HQ.”

“Will do.”

A heavily armored SUV pulled to the curb and the hatch opened. I dumped Troll into the back and pressed the button to close the hatch. I leaned in the passenger window to see Derek at the wheel. He looked like hell, wrinkled and rumpled, smelling of vamp blood, sweat, and gunpowder, a coms earbud in his ear. “Take him to Leo. He tried to kill me. He needs to be bled and read, and not by Katie.”

“You think she’s in with everything that’s happening now?”

“She’s in love with Leo. If she’s a traitor to him, then Leo’s enemies have to have some kind of leverage, forcing her.”

I spun away, through the rain. “Legs!” Derek shouted.

I did another one-eighty, back to the window. “Alex is on the coms channel. He said you forgot your cell and he has a message for you.” Derek put a finger to his ear. “Got it,” he said to Alex. “There was a bank robbery overnight and the robbers raided over a hundred safe-deposit boxes. He says you had boxes in the vault.”

Boxes that had previously been filled with my magical trinkets. Including le breloque and the Glob. But I had already removed the magical items and stored them in the closet at the house. Where Alex was, alone. The blood that wasn’t frozen in my veins plummeted to my feet.

Littermate! Beast growled.

“Alex,” I whispered. Louder I said, “Call Gee. Tell him to get to my house. To fly like a bird! Call Alex and tell him to get into the safe room! Now!” I whirled and raced through the rain and the water running in the streets and down the sidewalks.

“Jane? What? What? Alex?” he said. “Alex!” The SUV’s engine roared and tires splashed as Derek pulled the SUV around and headed back to my house. Troll was still in back.

I raced through the rain and water, feeling the pull on my waterlogged boots, splashing through water that reached my shins in places. Glanced up once. No arcenciels. Where were they right now? I tried to pull on the Gray Between, but it stayed stubbornly locked down. Fear did that sometimes. And of course, now that I needed to stop time, I couldn’t access it. No lightning to help me along, and Beast wasn’t responding. Without the time to center myself and meditate, my magic was not perfect. With the storm, it was downright undependable.

Taking the most direct route, I dove inside Katie’s Ladies, raced through it, leaving the doors open, the walls rattling, and out into the rain in the backyard, toward my home. I pulled on Beast’s strength. Gathered myself. Leaped.

In the instant of pushing off, Beast burst through me. Pelt sprouted on my hands and arms beneath my soaked jacket. My body wrenched, hips changing shape, feet trying to grow wider in the now-ill-fitting boots. Waist shrank, shoulders expanded, rounded, stretched. My upper teeth erupted with fangs, the bones rearranging. I grunted in agony, the sound part-growl. Hunger clenched my insides. Too many half-shifts, not enough food to fuel them.

At the crest of the brick fence, I shoved off with a reshaped palm and landed in a crouch in the backyard. The iron gate to the side of the house was broken and hanging open, the metal twisted back and over. The side door of the house was in splinters. Again.

Beast-fast, I pulled one of the mostly useless .380s and racked a round into the chamber. My knuckles were too large to handle a gun, and I held it slightly to the side, three fingers pointing away, as I slid my pinkie over the trigger. It was an unconventional firing grip and my fingers were likely to get smashed when it fired, but it was all that still fit.

With my left hand I yanked a vamp-killer free. It all took three steps as I raced across the yard and into the house.

Alex was nowhere to be seen, but there was a bloody shotgun pattern on the wall, the holes made by .30-.06 buckshot, with a head-shaped section missing. Below the pattern, on the floor, was a revenant, trying to get back up. Hard to do with no face, no eyes. I took his head with a single swing of the vamp-killer. The head slid across the room and spun on its ear, beneath the kitchen table, where it banged around on the table and chair legs like a macabre game of pinball.

Tearing into my bedroom, I took another head. Blood erupted into the air and over my hands. This one had fed more recently and . . . I realized I’d just killed a vamp and not a rev. I dropped the blade and grabbed for the head, whirling in midair. Missed, its hair flying.

Her hands went limp. The body fell. She dropped le breloque. It bounced and rolled across the floor. Her head bounced too, landing upright, facing me. Female, blue-eyed and needle-fanged. Blowback on her face from where Alex had shot the rev. She was a stranger, like the others, old and long dead.

Fear I hadn’t perceived released my heart.

I picked up le breloque, hooking the magical instrument over my arm, blood splattering. I also took the Glob and shoved it into a pocket, getting blood on it as well. That couldn’t be good. The Glob warmed me all over in an instant, as if it knew what I needed and sent it to me, part of its lightning magic. I picked up the vamp’s head by the hair. I’d carried them this way before, hair being the most expedient handhold.

As I moved through the apartment, I realized that sword practice with the vamps in La Destreza had given me a lot more skill with my blades. Not so long ago, taking a head was a multistrike proposition, sometimes ending with a little sawing or hacking—though the extra strength of my half-form helped.