2 Death Rejoices (7 page)

“DaySitter,” Malas commanded, “bring her to heel.”

Old power avalanched into me, spreading chills like the cold fire of disease. Harry let out a soul-shearing noise around the wound in his throat, but I couldn't feel my way past Malas’ influence and the Hell-shadow that lurked behind it. The elder revenant's command, paired with his compulsion to feed, fried my wiring. As though the right hand path in me had simply dissolved in the mix, my intents began to trip along the left. I had to draw the line, manage this without the mantle of power that Malas was throwing at me.

Animal urges shifted to the surface through bone and quaking flesh; I bared my teeth at her. She crooked her fingers at me as if to say,
bring it
.

The Prioress saw me jerk and feinted with her dagger. My thug life, entirely in my imagination, saw me Mad Maxing the holy shit out of her; sadly, I lack a sawed-off shotgun and a bitching Interceptor, both entirely necessary to the task.

Fortunately, I had Chapel's tactical folder. Unfortunately, the knife was in an ankle sheath under a fursuit. She came for me. I tucked and drove my shoulder at her midsection, barreling up under her ribs and forcing her to double over. Scuttling toward the stage, I grabbed Harry's violin and, hearing feet thumping floorboards behind me, swung it full-circle. It shattered noisily in her face, a mess of bloody strings and splinters, breaking her nose with a crunch; the loosed strings lashing and flaying her cheeks with a discordant
spang
.

Harry scrambled to snatch her foot. There was a dull crack as her ankle broke under his titan grip. She slipped bonelessly out of his grasp, grimacing but still coming for me despite the pain. I wasn't sure she still had both her eyes.

I backpedaled on my palms and aimed a kick at her with one heel. It connected with her lip, which split and smeared sideways, blood streaming between her exposed teeth.

When she fell back, I whipped around to a sturdy, protective half-crouch near my Cold Company and warned her, “Stay down.”

“Malas,” Harry gurgled a plea. “Malas, end this.”

“Stay down,” the zebra echoed my order, far more authoritatively, repeating it several times before switching to, “Nobody move, everyone on the ground!” Disjointedly, I thought that cops were usually called pigs, and wondered if there were ever any who dressed the part.

“Enough!” Malas’ power was a whip-crack in the air as he thought-snatched Kitty off her feet and thrust her into the air. She arched violently, arms spindling to the sides as she cried out. She hit the ceiling with a thud, shaking the chandelier, scalding-hot candle wax spattering to the floor in noisy white droplets.

Her will stayed trained on her wounded prize: Harry's hanging head, her prey limping, struggling. Released, she fell to the mat, a madwoman ignoring a broken ankle, rebounded at Harry, bulldozing into him. Harry tore the dagger from her hand and tossed it aside, reaching for the Prioress with his bare hands to contain her, subdue her. Behind us, Malas drew energy from the room again in another rush, preparing another strike. Torn now between my need to shield Harry, my anger at her attack, and my need to defend this girl from further danger, I froze.

Kitty's hand came up over Harry's head. Something glinted in her fist and both revenants hissed and recoiled.

The gunshot rang out, shattering the brief tableau. Furries screamed and scrambled for cover, pressed against the walls.
Psychic vortexes and flying bodies, and nobody moves a muscle, but one little gunshot starts a stampede?
I thought in disbelief. The Prioress jerked once, her mouth opening in a gasp. Bodies hit the floor, mine under Harry's.

Surprise made Kitty list, clutching in astonishment at her Lycra-covered belly as a bright crimson hole bled through the bubblegum suit. She turned to frown blearily at the zebra, who had a Colt .45 trained on her in a teacup grip, propping himself on one elbow. His zebra helmet had been peeled back, and the deep-water blue eyes squinting at his target took my breath away.

Special Agent Mark Batten's hard jaw did the clench-unclench dance I was accustomed to ogling.

The Prioress took a last-ditch lurch toward Harry. Batten fired once more, demolishing her left shoulder in a spray of bone and gore. She brought her right hand in an arch through the air at Harry as she fell at us. I launched into motion with no plan. Chapel's tactical knife was in my hand and I didn't remember digging it out. With every intention of stabbing her, I stepped in front of my revenant, but Harry's mind bore down on mine in a way I'd never felt before. Through the Bond, his immortal command twisted my arm as though
his brain, not mine, was instructing my muscles. My forearm went up in a block in front of my throat as I put myself bodily in front of my Cold Company. My lack of physical control was alarming but I allowed it, hauled around like a puppet on Harry's strings.

Harry brought my defensive elbow up at just the right second, rounding into the side of her face as she closed in, hard enough to knock her aside. Injured as she was, she went over easily, giving in to the pain at last.

As she hit the mat, her hand fell open. A silver cross, filed into a point at the bottom and capped with a rowan wood insert, tumbled onto the floor.

C
HAPTER
5

IN THE OVERWHELMING SILENCE
that followed, my squirrel helmet burped static that sounded like a soft fart. Any other time, I would have laughed my ass off. The shock of being struck had worn off Ben, and he made grunting noises as his fingers played across the stake in his shoulder. Blood had begun to seep through his suit. Neither revenant paid much notice, though their nostrils flared.

I went to help Harry first, but he waved my hands away, snarling incoherently around sloppy, blood-thickened words that might not have been English. A retch brought a fresh gout of bitter blue revenant essence into his handkerchief; it bled through his clenched fist.

Batten groaned and eased himself into a sitting position against the wall. I didn't trust myself to walk, so I crawled rapidly to Batten's side.

“Chapel?” Batten asked.

“He's…” Mindful of the revenants, one of whom we were actively investigating, I sidestepped it. “Busy elsewhere.”

Batten jabbed a finger at the headset in my helmet beside Malas’ throne. “We need a bus or two,” Batten grunted. “Baranuik, check on your unicorn.”

We had Harry healing a gash in his throat, a kitty down, a unicorn down — bleeding and panting but not dead — and a hen with a crushed head, but I had to focus on keeping Chapel's juggernaut of a vampire hunter alive. Trusting Harry to handle his own wound, I brushed Batten's hands away from his knee, where one was hesitantly exploring while he hissed through clenched teeth.

Despite the costume, I could tell his knee was screwed; there was a lump there that shouldn't be. If I moved quickly, before the ambulance got here …

“Close your eyes, tough guy,” I said in his ear, leaning in close enough to smell a weird mix of gunpowder, Juicy Fruit gum and sweaty costume fur.

Batten wasn't listening to me, but his eyelids drifted shut on their own. I had to act fast before Chapel returned.

The Prioress’ abandoned dagger was nearby.
Mustn't touch the evidence
, I chided myself,
especially not bare-handed
, but hefted it, turned it over in my hand to determine the make-up of it. Silver. No wonder it had weakened Harry so badly. The handle was carved rowan wood, sharp at the end. If she'd used that end in Harry's throat, he'd be wearing a permanent scar tomorrow. If she'd used it on his heart, he'd be a pile of ash.

For a moment, I thought about how close I'd come to losing Harry and saw stars; Batten's half-conscious groan brought me back to the pressing matter. I lowered my voice, and summoned anything I had left in my arsenal.

“
Hail Hecate, mighty Crone/Flesh to flesh and bone to bone.”
I glanced at Harry to make sure he wasn't listening.
“Silver mend and blood sustain/Each to each be whole again
.”

I drew the silver blade across my naked palm until it drew a slim line of blood, then dug up the leg of Batten's blood-soaked zebra suit, tried not to remember some other, more enjoyable times I'd run my hands across his skin, wriggled my hand inside his jeans with the blade folded into my bloody palm.

The break was bad; exposed bone split his skin. Blood still sluiced down his calf. He sucked in a sharp breath as my fingers got close to the injury, an appallingly vulnerable sound that made my shoulders bunch up. Working in tight quarters, I slid the cold tip of the dagger into the wound, extracted it, then placed my bloody hand palm-down on it. I dropped my voice lower so that even Batten would not hear it. “
Lust for health and love for luck/ Hope my magic doesn't suck./Brimstone moon and witch's fire/Potent healing I desire
.”

Batten's head fell limp to one side against the wall.

“Please work,” I whispered, and glanced over my shoulder.

Harry was giving me the stink-eye. I gave it to him right back; after all the nasty shocks he'd given me tonight, he had no right to scrutinize me.

“Someone check on the hen,” Chapel demanded into his microphone. I jerked guiltily; my boss had returned and was right behind me. I slid my hand out from up Batten's pant leg.

“Ben's wound is shallow, Marnie. How's Mark?”

“He'll live, but he should see a doctor,” I said. “The girl?”

She was still breathing but barely, and her eyes were unfocused. She swung her chin to one side when Harry went on one knee beside her.

“You should never have been a part of this, child,” Harry said with regret. “Why have you come?”

“Rot in Hell,” the girl snarled, panting weakly.

Blood bubbled in one corner of her mouth. She wouldn't last long enough for an ambulance to get here. I crawled forward, but Harry warned me away with an upraised hand. He indicated to the ornate silver cross, and I picked it up for him, showed it to her.

“Where is John Spicer?” he asked her.

She horked a mouthful of her blood in his face, which seemed to bother him more than it should have, considering. “My father is a fool.
I
know who you are, Guy Harrick, and what you've done.”

She said it so ferociously, with such conviction, that Harry's head pulled back. “What is this thing you imagine I have done, child?”

“The true abomination…” She choked on a throat full of blood and spit. “I know who…I know who you…father—” Her lips slackened and her stare faded far away over Harry's falling shoulders.

“And I know you, Christina,” Harry said sadly, extracting from his pocket a crisp white handkerchief with which to dry her blood-tinged spittle from her chin.

When he stood, she was dead, and the puckering wound in his throat was already more than half healed.

“Well now, ducky,” Harry said to me, turning the hanky around to dab at the gob of spit on his face. “Whilst you have certainly been successful at failing utterly in a fair number of prognosticating attempts in the past, I am pleased to note that this was a more triumphant farce.” He swiped a handful of residual blue blood off his throat and flicked it on the floor mat. “Neatly done indeed.”

I folded my arms and gave Harry my very best glower.

“Have we met?” I asked. “Because I don't recognize you at all.”

“Then by all means, allow me to introduce myself,” Harry said, his easy playfulness returning. He stepped closer, straightening the blood-soaked black lace at his collar, backing me up with his soft, padding approach. “I am the icy push of immortality through your veins. I am the grave-wrought hand around your heart. I am the cold wind that blows up your skirt.” He crooked a brow at me. “Do you require a more tangible reminder, DaySitter?”

Hell, yes!
my privates rejoiced, the mutinous bastards. Harry always knew just what to say. He half-caught me in his preternatural gaze as a tease; the quickening of my pulse was no joke.

I said, “Come here often, do you?”

“Do try not to be absurd.” He smoothed one eyebrow with his finger until it got to the three platinum loop piercings, then repeated the gesture. “I have never before been in the viscount's society. I might ask how
you
could have possibly imagined it safe to come?”

“Harry, can it. What are you doing here… and with Agent Jerkface, of all people?”

“Serving,” he said, like it was a fair explanation. He glanced over my shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps, and fixed my boss with an arresting scowl. “What was your grand plan, Agent Chapel? I prithee, do not say it was to traipse into the manse of an ancient revenant and ask him to teach you to dance a gavotte.”

“Lord Dreppenstedt, I have three missing people,” Chapel started, but allowed himself to be interrupted by Harry's raised hand.

“I was given to understand that, regardless of the severity of your cases, my DaySitter would be in a safe laboratory and not active in the field, a demonstrably fallacious assumption on my part and an infuriating exaggeration on your own.”

Chapel's expression did not change, but inside he wilted; I felt it, and a protective urge kicked inside me on Gary's behalf.

“Hey, I kicked ass tonight,” I sniffled, pressing the tissue under my leaky nose. “I've got moves.”

Harry pursed his lips. “Oh, good heavens, you need hardly remind me of your so-called moves. Allow me to quote you, my love: ‘fuckshit, witchy-stuff’.” His eyebrow rings twitched expectantly.

My cheeks heated. “That worked.”

Chapel spread his open palms at Harry. “We needed her help this time.”

“Pray tell, what happens the next time you
need
her, Agent Chapel?” Harry's glare was Arctic. His voice sank like a collapsing ice shelf. “No, this simply will not do.” He went to his pocket for a fresh handkerchief, dabbed at his throat and checked it for weeping. It came away clean. “As always, when offered the opportunity for wanton mischief, my pet came perilously close to catastrophe and ruin.”

I squawked. “Don't I get a say in this?”

His gaze settled on me, the miserable weight of a thunderstorm across a late October sky; I must have only imagined the chill that followed, but goose bumps prickled up my arms all the same.