Yep, it was going to be one of those days.
I slid to a halt in the well-appointed, low-ceilinged, brightly lit room, half of it arranged as a dining room with a small kitchenette, the other half a comfortable living room complete with big TV and two couches. Ivy was rising from the man she’d just downed, her eyes full and black and her shirt torn. She grinned at the two men by the couch, beckoning them forward.
“Rache!” Jenks shouted in warning, and I ducked, falling to a crouch and spinning with my leg extended to hit the man coming out of the bathroom. He was good, stumbling to avoid contact and going down into a controlled fall and rolling free of me.
I stood up—right into the arms of another man. He smelled like cheese as his arms wrapped around me, pinning my back to his front. Bad idea; I flung my head back, breaking his nose. The man bellowed but didn’t let go, and my eyes widened as the first man pointed a handgun at me.
Adrenaline pounded. My head snapped back again as I broke his hold. Breath held, I spun him to stand between his buddy and me. The gun seemed to explode in the small room, and I shoved my living shield at the shooter, not knowing if he was shot or I was shot or we had both lucked out.
Arms flailing, my would-be attacker fell into the shooter and they crashed into the small dinette table. Drawing my splat gun, I shot them both. One last spasm, and they were still.
“Ivy!” I spun, then went down on one knee as another gun went off and fire engulfed my leg. My breath came in with a gasp and my free hand clamped over my thigh. A man across the room was pointing a gun at me. Shit.
Howling, Ivy blocked a swinging lamp to jam the palm of her hand into someone’s jaw. Hair swinging, she planted her right foot and plowed the other into the man who’d shot me, sending him pinwheeling back into the window. He hit with a thud, shaken but not out. The lamp hit the floor and shattered.
Agony crept up my thigh, throbbing to my skull as I hobbled forward, splat gun pointed. Two puffs of air to put him out—and then I fell almost as fast as he had, my hand clamped to my leg. Light-headed, I sat on the couch, not letting go of my gun as Ivy took a last look around the room and strode forward. Blood was a slow but steady leak from my leg. We’d gotten them all, but where was Landon?
“You okay?” Ivy asked, winding her hair back into a bun as Jenks dusted my leg. There was no exit wound. It was still in there.
“I don’t know.” I strained to see the other side as the pain retreated into a heavy throb.
Ivy reached to touch it, and I jerked away. “It doesn’t look bad,” she said.
“Well, it hurts like hell.”
“That’s good then,” she said, her worry lines beginning to ease. “Where’s Landon?”
“Look out!” Jenks shouted, and my heart thudded. One of the men I thought I’d downed was aiming another one of those stupid guns at us.
“Move!” I shoved Ivy and brought up my splat gun. Please let there be enough propellant, I begged. I lunged for the floor, aim never wavering as I squeezed. The bang of the man’s gun echoed, drowning out the puff of my weapon. I hit the floor, my shoulder taking most of the force as the ugly sound of the bullet burrowing into the couch slid through me.
Heart pounding, I lay on the floor, watching the man’s eyes roll to the back of his head. I’d gotten him.
Ivy stood as the man’s head hit the floor with a thud. “Should have double-tapped him,” she said as she extended a hand to me.
“I was a little busy.” With a heave, she had me back on the couch. Where was Landon?
Ivy wiped her hand under her nose as Jenks flitted over the room, verifying that they were all down. “None of them used any magic,” she said uneasily.
“You noticed that too?”
Jenks’s wings clattered as he rose up. A door slid open and Landon strode out, flanked by two men with guns. “Because very shortly there won’t be any and I wanted to be prepared,” Landon said. “Shoot them.”
Ivy lunged for the cover of a fallen chair. I yanked her back to me, tapping the line and throwing a circle of protection around us. Bullets pinged off it, and Landon motioned for them to stop. His lips were in a tight line, and I thought he looked ridiculous in his traditional robes and that stupid flat-topped hat. Newt could get away with it, but not him.
“Landon, you’re an idiot!” I shouted, the scent of spent gunpowder making it through the barrier where bullets couldn’t. “I’m not letting you do this!”
Ivy grimaced. “Let me out.”
She darted her gaze to the doorway, and I dropped the circle.
Ivy was a blur, leaping to the doorway to hide behind a wall as they sprayed it. I rolled to the broken coffee table, peeking out to see Landon standing alone as his men advanced on Ivy. I didn’t know where Jenks was. If you’ve hurt him, Landon . . .
Vampire fast, Ivy burst from hiding, diving between the men with guns. One man accidentally shot the other in the chest while trying for her. He froze in shock as his buddy went down in a spray of blood—and then Ivy was on him. A kick to the back of his knee sent him to the carpet, and she tackled him. One leg wrapped around the last man’s neck and she began to squeeze. The man fought back, sending them crashing into the walls and furniture.
My leg throbbed as I stood. I had to lean heavily on the couch, pointing to Landon, then me, as if in invitation. Ivy could handle two men with automatics. Landon was mine. Where is Jenks?
“Trent chicken out?” Landon said, and I lurched a step closer as the unfocused magic in the room began to build.
“He’s taking his daughter and ex-fiancée out to lunch.”
His lip twitched as he followed the ramifications of that. “Call your vampire off and maybe you live.”
“Oh, I’m dead already,” I said, ignoring the pain as I pulled myself up straight. “It’s just a matter of how much damage I can do first.”
“Call her off, and maybe she lives,” he amended, and in the split second my eyes flicked to Ivy, his hand flamed with a white-hot fire.
Again pain exploded, this time in my chest. Wide eyed, I fell to kneel before Landon as I struggled to breathe, to keep my heart beating. In his hand was a twisted mass of my hair, taken probably from my brush at the church. He’d made a target-specific spell, and I couldn’t fight it.
“Son of a fairy whore!” Jenks shouted, back again. “Ivy! Quit playing with that guy! Rache needs help!”
“No, I don’t think so,” Landon murmured, and I heard Ivy hit the floor, groaning. The man she’d been choking rose, kicking at her as he screamed. I tried to move, but every muscle sang with fire. Breath fast and shallow, I gripped the carpet, pulling myself closer to him. I would not fail in this. I wouldn’t!
“If you’re going to be a demon, you should be a demon,” Landon said softly, and I twitched, my back arching as I fell, looking at the ceiling, trying to get a clean breath. Landon’s hands were glowing, a haze of purple hanging between them. Slowly his hands came together. Struggling, he pulled them apart to show a spiderweb spool of glittering gold hanging in the air. And then he blew it at me.
I could do nothing as it settled over me, seeping in past my aura, winding its way to my core. My heart pounded as it begin to search, little darts of magic moving through me like a parasite. Groaning, I rolled over, but it clung, soaked in. Tendrils wafted out past my skin and then fell back as if the curse was looking for something to use to invoke. A soft, insidious chanting came from Landon, along with the sounds of Ivy’s frustrated struggle and Jenks’s swearing.
My eyes closed as the chant spun into the humming of my blood, settling into me like water, expanding my mind until it was unable to string two thoughts together. I recognized the spiderweb pattern. It was the curse that tied the demons to the ever-after, ages old and unbreakable—and Landon was trying to fix it on me.
It glittered in my thoughts like a living spell, and as I struggled to keep it from invoking, the sound of the drums quickened until it was as if I had been there at the beginning, watching ancient elves craft in the hollows of a primeval forest, calling upon their Goddess to give it the strength to last forever. And now it was seeking to bind itself to me.
Power slipped around my mental grasp like sunbeams, and abruptly I realized the curse was connecting me to Landon. Until the elven curse fixed upon me for good, we were bound together. There, in the background of his thoughts, was the curse to break the lines. I can take control of this, I thought, but not when I was fighting to get this damned binding curse off me.
“Let go,” Landon whispered, and I felt his breath on my cheek as he knelt over me while I curled into a ball and fought it. “Submit. End the pain,” he taunted.
But to submit would bind me to the ever-after. How long, I wondered, how long had Al fought? Newt? My breath came in a ragged gasp as the winding wisps of the binding curse seemed to find my soul. “No,” I groaned, even as it wove deeper.
The stinging slap of his hand meeting my cheek pulled my eyes open. Landon hung over me, sweat beading on him. “Let go!” he demanded. “Be a demon. Die with them.”
My eyes searched until they found Jenks and Ivy, held at bay by my torture.
“No,” I forced out between clenched teeth, then screamed when he leaned on my shot leg. Agony arched through me. “Get off!” I shouted, flooding him with a jolt of power.
Landon fell back with a cry of outrage, but the second of inattention cost me, and I gasped again, scrambling to catch the binding curse before it settled in any deeper. It didn’t have me yet, but the feel of it was familiar, and with a shock, I realized that it drew its strength from the Goddess’s will. Can I use this?
“Son of a whore!” Jenks shouted, and Landon laughed as Ivy began to struggle as well, held down by Landon’s last man, bloodied but still intact.
Jenks was free, darting madly and scoring on the incensed man. “Jenks, no,” I tried to shout, my voice failing. Ivy was down. We were losing, losing badly, and my heart leapt into my throat when, with an ugly snarl, Landon got a lucky strike in and Jenks was flung into the wall.
“Jenks!” I staggered to a kneel, and the binding curse dug deeper. It was the Goddess’s magic, but Jenks was in danger, and I didn’t have time for it. Lurching to Jenks, I sent a wave of force through me, driving the binding curse to my chi where I bubbled it, the hateful thing hissing and black like living tar. I might not be able to get rid of it, but I sure as hell could capture it—hold it in limbo.
I fell before Jenks, hands reaching. He was breathing, and fingers shaking, I lifted him, wanting him to be okay. His wings sparkled, and his eyes were closed.
“You don’t know when to stay down, do you,” Landon snarled, and something hit the back of my head.
I reeled, clutching Jenks to me as I fell. Landon hit me again, and I let him, curled into a ball to protect Jenks.
“Get your hands off Ivy, you sons of bitches!” Nina screamed.
“Nina!” Ivy called out in panic. “Help Rachel!”
But it was Trent who pried Landon off me, his smooth unworked hands glowing with a power I could feel. A great boom of sound pulled my head up, and Nina dove at the man holding Ivy, wrenching her free and snapping the man’s neck.
“Jenks,” I whispered, then cowered, one hand holding him to my middle when a second boom of sound shook the room. Dust shifted down, and a wall fell, showing a bedroom.
“Rachel!” Ivy was shouting. “Go help Rachel!”
But the half-crazed vampire went for Landon. He stood in a circle, fire dripping from his hands. Trent was poised between us, energy licking his feet and sparking from his hair. Nina howled, and as Ivy reached to stop her, the woman dove at Landon.
“No!” I shouted, and with a sneer, Landon pushed a silver-rimmed ball of energy at her.
It hit Nina with the sliding sound of chains, and with a jerk that snapped her head forward, she was propelled backward into a far wall. She hit with a sickening thud and slid down, arms and legs askew.
“Oh God, Nina . . . ,” Ivy whispered, coughing in the dusty air as she crawled to her.
Trent stood between Landon and me, shaking in anger. “You use borrowed power, Landon. I want it back.”
Ivy looked up from Nina, hatred in her black, black eyes. Landon met them, and I swear he quailed. Everyone he had used to protect him was down. “Right,” Landon said, spinning to mark a circle.
“He’s jumping!” I shouted. The sparkle of power rose up as if in slow motion, and I lurched forward, Jenks still in my grip. Trent tackled me, and I hit the carpet, my fist holding Jenks jamming into my solar plexus. Tears sprang up as I tried to breathe, and with a nasty smile, Landon vanished.
“Not this time,” I groaned, eyes clamped shut as I sank a tendril of thought deep in his mind. That curse he’d tried to bind me with was still in my soul, and we would be connected until it became a part of me and was fully invoked. I distantly heard Trent shouting my name, and I smiled as I felt the real world swallowed up by the imagined, but no less real, world of the dewar. I was on the floor in the hotel, but my mind was elsewhere, surrounded by elves.
Thoughts not my own beat at me, and I hid my mind behind Landon’s as he sent a wave of emotion and domination over them all, collecting the rising power to bend it to one will. He didn’t know I was there in his soul. I could feel his fear of what had happened and his relief because he thought he had escaped.
The dewar was exactly like the demon collective or the witches’ coven—there but not a joining of minds yet, each one remaining an individual. The sound of drums shifted the beat of my heart, and the chant tickled a memory I’d never had.