Seeing all the metal put Bergman back in his seat. “I get your point,” he said.
Vayl rolled his cane between his fingers as if it helped him think. He said, “Then shall we move on?” We nodded.
Cole began. “Kyphas, drop everything and come flying.”
“Kyphas, do not delay, we require your presence, your visage, your favor,” said Vayl. He took the syringe off the table.
“Kyphas, rise quickly to our circle,” I said as I pulled Raoul’s blade across my forearm and let the blood drip on the ground between my feet.
“Blood to the hellspawn,” I murmured.
“Nema,” chorused Cole, Vayl, and Bergman.
We all spat over our left knees.
As we knew it would, the thrice-naming brought a feeling of electricity into the air that raised the hairs on our arms and made the backs of our necks itch. We rose together. Bergman and Cole strained to see into the night. Not a problem for the rest of us. Vayl and Raoul had natural abilities. Mine had come at a price I often questioned.
But it was almost worth it all to be able to see my blood and our separate puddles of spit merge and flow to a spot in the middle of the yard, like the driveway had tipped sideways, forcing all the liquid into the parched grass. The puddle expanded to the size of a manhole cover and Kyphas shot out of it. She landed badly, flopping onto the lawn like a beached dolphin.
Vayl threw the syringe into the middle of the summoning circle, shattering it. The holy water it contained boiled instantly, barring the gateway. But even our vampire wasn’t fast enough to prevent a few of Kyphas’s allies from flying through first.
“Slyein!” I yelled as I recognized the unlined faces of hell’s scum. The kid killers.
In life they’d been adults. Moms and dads, truck drivers and CEOs, fanatics who didn’t give a crap who died in the blast. In death they’d been doomed to the bodies they’d destroyed. Eternal youth screaming for the chance to grow up. Dream on. Fulfill.
The rage they brought to battle made them even harder to fight than their aerial capability, which could be awkward given the bloody rips they’d torn in their own wings. Self-mutilation. One of the sure signs that the creature you were fighting wasn’t hellborn. Only the originals weren’t subject to torture. Which made them harder to injure and, ultimately, destroy.
Still, we’d be lucky to survive the onslaught of the three monsters who’d followed Kyphas through the gateway before Vayl closed it. A girl with spiked black hair and eyes rimmed in purple, a blond boy whose reddened teeth showed he’d just been feasting on raw flesh, and a toddler with white curls and long black lashes who might’ve been a girl, except he wore a blue jumper with the words “I’m a good boy,” stitched across the front.
“No,” muttered Miles. “Can’t be.” He swiped his sword off the table. “Slyein?” His voice crept higher while he stalked toward Kyphas, who was halfway to her feet and already reaching for her hat. “You dare to bring those fuckers here?”
“Miles, no!” I yelled. “You need to run !”
We all do! Look, see? Raoul’s trying to lure them toward the trap. Follow him! No, you—this wasn’t the plan and you know it!
Ignoring me, he swung at Kyphas, who easily avoided his attack since he’d telegraphed it half an hour earlier.
I snapped, “Astral, protect Bergman!” fully realizing it might be an empty command. But my hands were full with the female slyein. With Vayl fighting the male and Cole trying to deal with the toddler, that left Raoul to save the crazed genius. And he’d only just realized nobody had followed him to the corner of the house.
As he rushed back to us, I slashed at the female’s wing, forcing her to abandon her first run at me. That gave me a second to check on Miles. Kyphas’s hat, which had done its boomerang trick, was just about to hit him. He turned aside, clearly forgetting that his shield still hung over his shoulder. The boomerang thumped against it, causing him to stagger backward, but doing no major damage.
Astral leaped into the air, snagging the boomerang between her teeth before it could return to its owner’s outstretched hand. At the same time, George Thorogood and the Destroyers began rocking “Bad to the Bone” out the sides of her mouth. Talk about multitasking! Those metal alloy jaws clamped down and refused to let go, even when George kept insisting he was “b-b-b-b-b-bad,” and her weight wasn’t enough to stop the spin of the weapon.
Together Astral and the boomerang slammed into Kyphas, making her screech as something snapped in her forearm. But even that crash wasn’t enough to stop their momentum. They spun into her chest, knocking the wind from her, and then bounced up into her face, bloodying her nose before flying off into the night like a demented whirlybird with kitty paws for landing gear.
Even Bergman recognized an advantage in a fight. While he pressed forward, slashing at Kyphas like she was an impassable jungle path and he wielded a machete, I ducked a dive-bomb designed to take off the top of my head.
I shoved my sword into the slyein’s side. “ ‘Hear, O Israel,’ ” I whispered as the creature who’d once murdered a teenage girl shrieked and yanked itself off my blade, “ ‘The LORD our God is one LORD.’ ” Don’t kill it , I reminded myself. Even though you want to. Even if you can .
Bergman’s satisfied grunt followed by Kyphas’s moan told me he’d struck at least one blow for the good guys. He bellowed, “ ‘And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might!’ ”
Beside me Vayl allowed his foe to slash into his forearm so he could gain the position he needed to strike. Scripture would probably singe his tongue if he quoted it, even the verses specifically designed to damage demons. Still he nodded sharply as Cole said, “ ‘And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:’
“ ‘And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children,’ you son of a bitch.” Sorrow twisted his face as he dodged the slyein’s grasping claws, its dripping fangs, and punched it so hard in the jaw you could hear the surgeons discussing how many wires they’d need to repair it from three days away.
“Aah!” Bergman’s cry of surprise brought me running. Kyphas had managed to disarm him and, despite heavy bleeding in her midsection, lift him over her head.
“Jaz!” Raoul yelled. “Behind you!”
I saw him begin his swing at Kyphas. Then I hit the ground, rolled and kicked as the slyein tried to tackle me. It missed its original mark, but slashed at my leg as it flew past. I only knew I’d been hit because the blood spattering the air like thrown paint couldn’t have belonged to anyone else.
Glad I wouldn’t have to deal with the pain until the adrenaline wore off, I leaped to my feet as the slyein spun away, momentarily stunned, its chest covered in blood, spitting something even blacker from the previous wound I’d given it.
I’d lost my sword in the fall, so I went for my bolo. In the time it took me to draw, Kyphas took Raoul’s blow square in the back. She arched, crying out in rage as she threw Bergman straight down to the ground. Hard. Blood spurted from his mouth.
I screamed, no longer rational enough to form the words to tell her what damage I’d cause if she’d ruptured anything he couldn’t live without. My throw, powerful and accurate, buried the bolo in her groin.
She dropped with an agonized shriek.
“Move!” Vayl bellowed, the urgency in his tone returning my reason.
Together Raoul and I reached for Bergman’s arms. “Can you run?” I asked.
“Yeah, I thig tho.” He stuck a finger inside his mouth as we helped him up. It came out bright red. “That bith made me bite my tug!”