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Her forearm had received a compound fracture. I could see bone poking out through the flesh. But over the next few seconds, the flesh seemed to ripple and become more malleable. The bone withdrew, vanishing beneath the skin of her arm-even the hole that the bone had torn in the skin sealed slowly closed, and in ten seconds I couldn't even tell she'd been hurt.
She turned those empty white eyes to me and stared at me with an expression of focused naked hunger. For a second, I felt my body responding to her desire, even as woozy as I was, but that was quickly snuffed out by a surge of nausea. I turned my head and threw up onto the expensive floor while my head and neck screamed with pain.
When I looked up again, Lara had turned her head away from me. She picked up her fallen weapon-but the machine pistol had been bent into the shape of a comma by a blow from the skinwalker's sledgehammer paws. She discarded it, recovered her sword, and drew the matching weapon from her belt. She was breathing quickly-not in effort, but in raw excitement, and the tips of her breasts strained against her dirtied blouse. She licked her lips slowly and said, evidently for my benefit, "I sometimes see Madeline's point."
There was a feminine scream from somewhere close by, a challenge that was answered by a leonine roar that shook the hallway. The short-haired sister flew into the wall at the T intersection ahead, and collapsed like a rag doll. There were sounds of swift motion from around the corner, and a gasp.
Then silence.
A moment later, a blur came around the corner, dragging the axe-wielding sister's limp form by the hair. The veil faded as the skinwalker came closer, once more showing us its bestial, not-quite-human form. It stopped in front of us, maybe ten feet away. Then, quite casually, it lifted one of the unconscious vampire's hands to its fanged mouth and, never looking away from Lara, calmly nipped off a finger and swallowed it.
Lara narrowed her eyes, and her rich mouth split into a wide, hungry smile. "Did you need a break before we continue?"
The skinwalker spoke, its voice weirdly modulated, as if several different creatures were approximating speech at the same time. "Break?"
With the word, it calmly snapped the vampire girl's left arm in midhumerus.
Hell's bells.
"I am going to kill you," Lara said calmly.
The skinwalker laughed. It was a hideous sound. "Little phage. Even here at the center of your power, you could not stop me. Your warriors lay slain. Your fellow phages are fallen. Even the foolish pretenders to power visiting your house could not stop me."
I'd gotten enough of my head back together to push myself to my feet. Lara never looked at me, but I could sense her attention on me nonetheless. I didn't have time to gather my will for a magical strike. The skinwalker would feel me doing it long before it became a fact.
Fortunately, I plan for such contingencies.
The eight silver rings I wore, one on each of my fingers, served a couple of purposes. The triple bands of silver were moderately heavy, and if I had to slug someone, they made a passably good imitation of brass knuckles. But their main purpose was to store back a little kinetic energy every time I moved one of my arms. It took a while to build up a charge, but when they were ready to go, I could release the force stored in each ring with instant precision. A blast from a single band of a ring could knock a big man off his feet and take the fight out of him in the process. There were three bands to each ring-which meant that I had a dozen times that much force ready to go on each hand.
I didn't bother to say anything to Lara. I just lifted my right fist and triggered every ring on it, unleashing a pile driver of kinetic energy at the skinwalker. Lara bounded forward at the same instant, swords spinning, ready to lay into the skinwalker when my strike threw it off balance and distracted it.
But the skinwalker lifted its left hand, fingers crooked into a familiar defensive gesture, and the wave of force that should have knocked it tail over teakettle bounced back from it like light from a mirror-and struck Lara full-on instead.
Lara let out a startled whuff as the equivalent force of a speeding car slammed into her, knocked her back, and flattened her against the mound of rubble still filling the hallway behind me.
The skinwalker's mouth split into a leering smile of its own, and its bestial voice purred, "Break, little phage. Break."
Lara gasped and lifted herself up with her arms. Her white eyes were fixed on the skinwalker, her lips twisted into a defiant snarl.
I stood there staring at the skinwalker. It was hard, and I had to use the wall to help me balance. Then I took a deep breath and stepped away from the wall, moving very carefully, until I stood between the skinwalker and Lara. I turned to face it squarely.
"Okay," I said. "Let's have it."
"Have what, pretender?" the skinwalker growled.
"You aren't here to kill us," I said. "You could have done it by now."
"Oh, so true," it murmured, its eyes dancing with malicious pleasure.
"You don't have to gloat about it, prick," I muttered under my breath. Then I addressed the skinwalker again. "You must want to talk. So why don't you just say what you came to say?"
The skinwalker studied me, and idly nipped another finger from the unconscious vampire girl. It chewed slowly, with some truly unsettling snapping, popping sounds, and then swallowed. "You will trade with me."
I frowned. "Trade?"
The skinwalker smiled again and tugged something from around its neck with one talon. Then it caught the object and tossed it to me. I caught it. It was a silver pentacle necklace, a twin to my own, if considerably less battered and worn.
It was Thomas's necklace.
My belly went cold.
"Trade," the skinwalker said. "Thomas of Raith. For the doomed warrior."
I eyed the thing. So it wanted Morgan, too. "Suppose I tell you to fuck off."
"I will no longer be in a playful mood," it purred. "I will come for you. I will kill you. I will kill your blood, your friends, your beasts. I will kill the flowers in your home and the trees in your tiny fields. I will visit such death upon whatever is yours that your very name will be remembered only in curses and tales of terror."
I believed the creature.
No reflexive comeback quip sprang from my lips. Given what I'd seen of the skinwalker's power, I had to give that one a five-star rating on the threatometer.
"And to encourage you..." Its gaze shifted to Lara. "If the wizard does not obey, I will unmake you as well. I will do it every bit as easily as I have done today. And it will bring me intense pleasure to do so."
