Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (81 page)

Music flowed out of the speakers that the Kid had wired into the entire house, a haunting yet jagged-edged melody played on one of Evan's wooden flutes.

“Yes,” Molly said, gasping. “That helps. But it isn't going to be enough, y'all. This thing is figuring out my magics as fast as I can alter them. I need Evan
here
, with me, if we're going to beat it.” Opal hit again, this time from near the front door. The windows rattled. Molly said, “Jane?” her voice wavering with uncertainty.

I remembered my worry about what might happen if Soul came into contact with Molly and her baby. But we had no choice. “I got this, Mol,” I shouted. “When I give the word, drop the ward, take a break, and then try to get it back up.”

“Okay,” she said, breathless.

Softly I ordered Alex, “Get in touch with Soul. Tell her we're under
arcenciel
attack. Tell her to get here.
Now!
Tell her that I'm going out to fight it and if I have to kill it to save us, I will.”

“That'll get her here,” Eli muttered.

Alex started keying in the text. “No armor?” Eli asked me.

Outside the
arcenciel
hit the side of the ward, at the second-floor gallery. Red sparks of broken energies scattered through the yard. The reek of scorched paint and burned wood and desiccated herbs came from the sparks. The ward was close to breaking. I was almost out of time.

“No. Beast is close. I'm going out in half-Beast form.”

Instantly Beast shoved through my skinwalker energies, pushing and pulling. Which was crazy because my life wasn't in danger at this particular moment. I had plenty of time to shift. Like, whole seconds, which was unusual for me. Pelt roiled out of me; my bones popped. Pain that was more than physical slammed me to the floor. I landed with a gasp, spine arched. I wasn't sure why it was so painful to shift sometimes and so pain free at others, but this was one of my more painful times. My hair tumbled around me; it had come unbraided, which happened from time to time in a painful half shift.

When I could breathe, I levered myself up off the floor with the fist that still held the vamp-killer. My knuckles were knobby, my feet were wide paws, my claws were all out and glinting in the dull light of Alex's tablets, grinding and tapping on the wood floor as I found my balance. My hips were lean, my belly narrow and flat, my shoulders too wide, my clothes hanging at the waist, stretched tight across the back. I was pelted all over, my amber eyes glowing. Unbraided black hair flowed to my hips, in the way. But I was energized with Beast's power and strength.

Eli pressed my shoulder, turning me until my back was to him, and gathered my hair into a tail. His fingers awkward, he slid three elastics onto the ponytail, at neck, shoulder length, and midback. Then he tucked it all into my collar and down my T-shirt, out of the way. At my ear, he said, “To be a really good second, I need to learn how to braid hair. But being a ladies' maid would get me laughed out of the special forces, so this will have to do.”

I chuffed with amusement and tossed the vamp-killer into the air, the blade whipping and shining with greenish light. I caught it by the hilt. I felt strong and swift and a bit reckless. “Keep them safe,” I growled to Eli as I stalked through the side door onto the side porch. And I screamed out a challenge.

The
arcenciel
stopped its attack on the second-floor front gallery as I leaped out onto the damp earth where we had fought earlier. The partial shift had healed me, and the dull pain of the elbow to the gut was gone. “Come and get me, you dumbass lizard!
Now
, Molly!”

The
arcenciel
rose high in the air over my house, her body a snaky, tessellated, whipping light, her tail barbed and coruscating, flashing with scales and tasseled flesh, her wings held wide and thrashing forward as
she hovered. She darted her head in, her horned skull frilled and patterned with bony plates of light, all in shades of copper and bronze and browns. Her teeth, like long, curved tusks of pearls and diamonds, chomped at me. Her tail whipped and snapped. She was seriously ticked.

The ward fell in a shower of light and power that burned where it shattered over my pelt.

Opal reared back and came at me, striking cobra fast.

I bent my knees and leaped, steel sword high in the air, an upward lunge, whirling, cutting, in motions that were still unfamiliar and graceless. The vamp-killer to the side, I aimed for the tail-like body that slashed at me. I scored two long gashes, one in her belly and the other in the side of her tail. Opal screamed, lights boiling from the wounds, clear goop splattering out.

I landed in a bent-kneed crouch, weapons circling over and around me in the vamp's version of the Spanish Circle method of sword fighting. The blades a glittering cage of death.

Opal spat at me. I leaped to the side, a big-cat move, my sword whirling slowly, doing the job of a puma's long tail in the leap, keeping my body stable, my balance rooted to the ground, and keeping the movement itself steady and controlled. The saliva—acid? Poison?—which was surely a weapon, missed me.

The
arcenciel
back-winged, her eyes glowing. I had no idea how to read the body language of an
arcenciel
, but I'd have said for an instant that she looked triumphant. She pulled her frills tight and her wings closed. I landed and leaped again, to the top of the shattered rocks near the back wall.

Faster than I could follow, Opal slammed into the ground where I had stood and vanished. I was heaving breaths. The fight had lasted perhaps five seconds.

“What the—”

“Jane!” Eli shouted.

Lights prismed off the walls. Inside the house.

I raced to the porch and inside, to see the light coming from the kitchen. A long, narrow beam of coiling, writhing snake made of light. It was now much smaller, perhaps two inches in diameter, bright as a torch beam and pouring out of the kitchen like a sea serpent. Eli was cutting at it, but it moved faster than he ever could.

The
arcenciel
had gone into the ground. Now it was in the kitchen, in a different form. “Molly,” I screamed. “Ward yourselves! She's coming inside!”

Molly raced to her daughter's bed, and I felt the magics snap into place above me.

And I felt the Gray Between again, a yank that pulled on time and space and matter. And me. I screamed as Beast forced me into a second shift. I fell to the floor, dropping the blades. Which hung in the air, even as I landed in a writhing heap. Gagging and strangling, unable to breathe. And I was tasting blood in the back of my mouth.
Beast bubbled time. Dang cat.
The internal bleeding that seemed to be a part of this state had started earlier than before. I coughed and covered my mouth. Blood filled my cupped hand. I spat to clear my mouth and throat, and wiped it on my shirt. Trying not to think about the four big tusks that made up a large part of my lower face.

I stood slowly, carefully. My gut cramped as if a huge fist gripped it from inside and twisted. Ripping . . . something. I pushed up from the floor and took the hilts that were still hanging there. Tugged the swords into the bubble of time with me, their weight transferring, the swings they were in before pulling my arms into motion. I stalked into the kitchen.

Eli was standing, his blades high, in the act of cutting Opal's elongated face, nostrils and horns twisted and trailing, her frill still captured within the drainpipe. But Eli missed the narrow ribbon of light. Not the right size for an
arcenciel
, more snaky than dragony, long and lean, like an LED cable, and a brilliant dark red. This red light was coming from the kitchen sink. As I moved closer, it pulsed once. A moment later, in time as I understood it here, it pulsed again. The light shifting from deep red to paler red, and paler again, into orange, light going through the prism in slow motion. It
was
Opal, coming up through the sink's drainpipe. Or trying to. She was moving slowly through stopped time, not speeding through time as she could in her normal dragon form.

She must not be able to manipulate time while shifting to a form like this, one abnormal to her natural state, stretched out and . . . Suddenly I understood. This house was old and so were its pipes. Old enough to have lots of iron in them. Maybe even
made
entirely
of iron, rusted and corroded. They had to be causing the
arcenciel
pain.

I studied the shape of the creature, how the light flowed through it, a
rippling, ripping, singing note of light. Its cells were weren't like a mammal's, one cell touching others, but more like the neurons in a brain, bulbous and spiked with long, linear filaments that shifted with light. Light that came from them and flowed through them.

I could see everything about her. She looked like sunlight, as if her light was created, stored, broken, then reflected. As if Opal got her power and her body from the sun alone. I wondered how long she could even stay alive in the dark. As I watched, her wings were pulled through the drain, a glistening rainbow, so thin that I could see through the membranes. She was beautiful. And she was deadly.

If Opal stayed alive she could come after Molly at any time, past or present or future. Anyplace. If Opal lived, Molly or her child, or both, might die. I flipped the long sword, thinking, my blade catching the light of Opal's beauty. Thinking about time and memory. About changing time itself, both in the future and in the past, like plucking one bubble of possibility out of the timeline and breaking it up into molecules and atoms of nothingness. Could Opal also change a memory of the future, of an event yet to be? Was changing the memory of a future event even possible? And if she could, would that be an evil of the worst sort? Or would it be worse if I killed her, a creature so beautiful she had to make even God weep? I didn't know what to do, but I had a bad feeling that no matter what I did it would be the wrong thing, ruining everything for everyone in the process.

I slowed the movement of the sword and held it low, tip near the floor. Took a breath. Smelled Molly's panic, stagnant on the air. I turned to the stairs and saw Angie Baby, peeking around the corner of the stairwell. She had slipped free of Molly's warding. The little girl was watching, her eyes on me. I had stood still long enough for her to focus on me, even bubbled in time.

In this state, I could see the energies that once bound her magic. They were nothing more than a broken magical garment that she could put on and take off. Worse, as I watched, Angie reached out, her little hand moving faster than she should be able to. Her fingers threw tiny sparks of raw magic, and they raced away from her, as if searching. My breath caught.
Holy crap.

Angie was seeking the Gray Between.

She must have seen me bubble time. And learned how by watching me.

If she figured that out, Angie would be more than dangerous. If she learned how to enter the Gray Between, she could be deadly to herself, or to me, by accident or in a fit of anger. She was a little girl. Little kids had no control or wisdom to know when to use, or not use, a gift or ability. Worse, if she figured out how to bubble time and alter it as the
arcenciels
could, there was no telling what that ability would do to her morality and ethics. She could abuse and alter timeline probabilities at a whim. Angie could easily become a weapon of mass destruction.

My choices were limited, and all of them were dangerous to Angie. She could see me kill the
arcenciel
. See me die at the jaws of the rainbow dragon. Then get eaten herself. See her mother die. Then get eaten herself.

“Crap on crackers,” I whispered as little sparkles of black light power flickered and a small tuft of the Gray Between opened in the cup of Angie's fingers. I walked to her as the
arcenciel
went through the blue and green spectrum of light, throwing the kitchen into lovely colors of sky and water. Another foot of Opal's energies had flowed into the kitchen. Her wing tips were still inside the drain but the upper portions had partially unfurled.

I stopped at Angie and watched as her fingertips spat tiny ribbons of black light, moving slightly faster than the
arcenciel
. I studied the tattered robe of magics she wore, the energies broken and frazzled but still active. If I weren't in the Gray Between, in the no-time place where magic was visible as pathways of power and interactive energies, I couldn't see where the breaks were. But since I could see it maybe I could also fix it? I had never been able to create magic, but I could sometimes disrupt the magic of others. And once, not long after I came to New Orleans, I had manipulated magic by accident. Molly had later told me I shouldn't have been able to do that at all, and I had never been able to do it again, but maybe when I was in this state, I could do magic . . . mechanically.

I set my blades at Angie's feet on the bottom stair and slipped my knobby fingers into the tattered energies. I began to tie them off, one by one, using the tiny spurts of black light, Angie's own magic, to secure each of them. It wasn't pretty, like the knitted energies of the Everhart and Trueblood workings. The knots I was making were downright ugly, the way a painting I had done would look when held up next to a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. Childish and inept. But it was working; the binding was coming together.

I didn't know what the effect of my actions would have on Angelina Everhart Trueblood and her magics. Out of fear, I didn't tie her as tightly as I might have, stopping when the garment of bindings was connected to her own magics but wasn't constraining her in any way. When there were no more black light energies spurting from her fingertips, I tied off the last stray thread of bindings and stepped back. If she figured out that I had done it to her, would she hate me? Something to worry about later.

I returned to the kitchen trying to figure out what do, how to fight Opal away without killing her outright. I couldn't kill a sentient child, not even the child of another species. But my body was spasming tightly, an electric charge of pain that shivered along my nerves and burned in my fingertips. Eli was at her side, so I positioned myself where her head was growing wider, back into its real shape and form. And because the pain was growing so fast, I reached for real time, knowing that if I made a mistake, Opal might kill me. But because Angie was watching, I had to get the fight back in real time.