He gripped the vamp’s elbow. Stepped-bent-whipped forward. Snapped down. One-handed judo throw.
Fangs scraped across the skin at his throat.
EJ released the elbow. Reversed the flute and stabbed the vamp. Cutting into the bloodsucker’s groin. He bent his wrist and cut up, pulling the sharp blade through undead flesh.
The vampire screeched. Wounded, not a death wail. But he released his hold.
The vamp was gripping a small disk. Like a hockey puck.
The sound of broken bells and screaming poured from the disk. The crack of fracturing bones and claws rending flesh. The music of demon power.
Angie’s warning.
Everything happened in slices of a second.
EJ’s magic roared into him. He clicked the palillos once, activating them.
The vamp dropped the disk. Toward the pool of blood.
EJ tossed the battle castanets at the disk. As they flew, he tried to speak. But his windpipe was damaged. He forced air through his throat. Spoke, a guttural sound. Awyrdof power. “Smachdachadh. A ribe.” Gaelic for “Control. To trap.”
Still in Delta Mode, magic roiled out of him, into the castanets. He broke the vamp’s neck. But the vamp didn’t fall. The sound of hell’s orchestra filled the air as the EEB erupted from the disk.Holy hells.It was a powerful mother. Not aBes. Something bigger. EJ shoved all his magic, all he was, out with thewyrd, repeating, “Smachdachadh. A ribe.”
His sight telescoped closed, black around the edges.
He dropped toward the floor.
The vampire, head to the side, attacked him.
Angie
I drew my cloak around me as I dove from the el-car.Too late. I’m too late.
Villetti was crab-walking across the side yard, toward the back of the house. Holding a transparent multipurpose shield in front of him, as if that would stop anassaultworking.
I darted around him. Into the front door.
“Damn it, Everhart! Douglas, Piedmont. Cover her!”
Footsteps entered behind me.Humans. Idiots.
I raced in, gathered myself to leap over the bodies in the hallway. Following the blazing light of the magic.
Energies buzzed across my cloak as I shoved off with one foot, leaping over the cop and the vampire. The power of multiple workings sizzled along the null Agric. Burned along the wood moldings and casings on the walls. Brilliant and multicolored. My brother’s magic, blue and gold. A demon’s magic, orange and black. Mixed together. Inseparable.
I landed. Slowed. With one hand, I pulled the cape’s hood up to protect my head. I held the staff in front of me, my left thumb hovering above the activating trigger. I took a step. My foot landed in a tangled skein of power, the magics trapped in a strange type ofstasis.
I studied the magics around my foot. It was a tangle of EJ’s magic and a demon’s vicious darkness. The flesh of my left hand sizzled and froze. If I pressed the trigger, the demon would be sucked away. But so could EJ’s magic. EJ’s soul.
I pulled my foot free. Rounded the corner.
Took it all in with a single glimpse.
EJ, one hand in the air as if frozen in mid-working. His body was draped over a vampire, a big thug with a powerlifter’s muscles, a mohawk, and tattoos from the eighties.
The vamp and EJ were motionless but bleeding—my brother a little, the vamp a lot.
The vamp’s head was on backward. Should be a paralyzed lump on the floor. But one arm was in the air, fingers clawed, coated with blood.
