Angie lay down, her scent confused, her face scrunched up in the way that George had learned meant she was thinking dangerous bad thoughts. He licked her face. She pushed him away and he thought she didn’t even notice the lick.
He followed Angie’s gaze to the top of the magics that protected the house. The hedge of thorns ward of energies. The energies had spiraled up to the high center of the hedge’s dome in whirls. The energies looked like something KitKit made when she got into the yarn basket.
Angie sighed, smelling of sadness, but her eyes focused something dangling from the top of the dome.
George followed her eyes to see a small strand, glowing yellow with magic. On the other side of the ball of magics was a lightless strand of death. He didn’t know why, but he thought this was a dangerous thing for her to be looking at. He nuzzled her hand and she petted him, which made him happy but also worried him.
The darkness of the death magic strand wiggled slightly and grew just a little.
Angie frowned harder and her scent changed again, smelled like she did when she was going to do something that the Biggers thought was foolish and bad.
From high on the hillside came the sound of gunfire. Then someone screamed and stopped. Edmund’s fury-smell came to them on the wind with dead-human smell. Good. They are dead, he thought at KitKit. Much evil human blood.
George heard the back door of the house-den open. Evan the Bigger, smelled of his own blood and the scent of…shock? Bitter and sharp like bad cheese. George had never smelled such a smell. The Bigger had been bleeding when he crawled away. But if the Mama Bigger was still in the frozen ward with KitKit, what did that mean about the Daddy Bigger being free?
“Evan,” Edmund said.
“My children?” the Bigger gasped.
“Safe.”
“Update me,” the Bigger gasped.
George raised his head. He smelled witch blood. Evan Bigger was damaged. Angie said he hit his head. George had not noticed. He had been derelict in his duty. KitKit would be mad. Worse, Lincoln Shaddock would be disappointed.
Edmund told the Bigger everything.
Evan Bigger, his voice harsh and parched and tired, said, “They were…going to kill us.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not a violent man,” Evan said, “but…”
“They will not trouble you again,” Edmund said. “My military and tech team are analyzing the people and the device. They will be dealt with.”
“Good.” Mixed scents of self-loathing and satisfaction came from Evan Bigger on the steady wind down the hill, tart and acerbic. “What did he tell you?
“He is with a group called DTP. Death to Paranormals. Starting with the Everhart/Trueblood family. There are two more warriors and two ‘suits’ over the hill in a van. We must assume they will be along presently.”
Gunfire rang out. George smelled more blood. Vampire blood.
He heard the sound of bodies falling. He whoofed softly.
Gunshots echoed from the hill.
Too fast for him to react, Angie broke the warming ward and reset it, leaving EJ and George safe. George barked, but no one noticed. He barked and yowled and howled. No one noticed or cared. Angie scrambled around the car and froze at the sight of Liz and Cia on the ground, twitching beneath magics that writhed like red snakes. They had been attacked and George hadn’t noticed this either.
Melodie struggled to get loose from the straps on her ankles.
Angie raised her hands and hit the evil witch with sleep. Melodie fell over.
George whuffed, proud of his human. So very, very proud!
Angie ran to her twin witch ants who smelled just alike underneath, and on the surface of different soaps. She studied the energies trapping them. To George’s eyes the trapping working was all squiggle lights, but witch Cia was turning blue. She wasn’t breathing. She was dying. So was Liz.
George whuffed again. KitKit! Witch twin is dying!
Get me free. She sounded faster. KitKit the familiar was making progress in breaking the death magics, but not fast enough.
I cannot get to you! You are trapped, he thought.
Idiot dog!
Angie took a deep breath and shoved her hands into the energies all around her ants. She jerked as if she had been hit with a human fist. She shook. Bit her tongue.
George smelled Angie’s blood. He raised his head, panting. Worried.
Angie directed the energies attacking her ants down into the earth. He had no idea how, but she drained the magic into the ground. She fell over. Cia sucked in a breath. Liz groaned and sat up, coughing.
George barked and barked and fought out of the blanket until he was on top of EJ, protecting his small human witch.
Behind the house, George heard Edmund speed up the hill. He tackled a human that George had not smelled. Downwind. Danger! The sniper’s rifle skittered off a rock, firing a shot into the sky.
George heard a crack as Edmund broke the shooter’s neck. Like a human wringing a chicken’s neck. Vampire and human blood carried on the wind. George knew that Edmund was feeding from the paralyzed human’s neck to heal. The sound of his footsteps burdened by extra weight told George’s beautiful ears that the vampire carried the still-breathing human down the hill. He dropped him. By the smells, Edmund then healed the Bigger. The Daddy Bigger was still alive; his blood smell was strong.
George heard as Edmund called Lincoln Shaddock. Finally, they called the Mama Bigger’s sire. Though the Mama Bigger did not know she was part vampire because she did not have a Bassett Hound nose.
Evan Bigger staggered around the house to Angie and sat heavily on the inside of the ward. “We don’t have good options, Angie. You, EJ, and I will go home with your aunts, and we’ll try tomorrow—”
“No.” Angie crossed her arms over her chest just like Daddy Bigger did when he was being alpha. “Mama’s death magics are growing. They’ll kill her and the baby by morning.”
George asked KitKit if that was true and KitKit said, Yes. I am dying.
Daddy Bigger smelled of tears. “We have to stop it now. But none of us knows how, Angie.”
“I do.” She pointed up. “We have to find a way to get up there and unravel the knot of death and heaven.” Daddy didn’t reply. He just shook his head.
Edmund said, “Evan, you have a concussion.”
Whatever that was.
Edmund also said, “Shaddock is taking care of the bad guys on the other side of the hill.”
George lifted his wonderful nose into the air and sniffed. Lincoln Shaddock was here! Lincoln Shaddock should kill and eat the bad guys, though no one asked him. But things were not fixed yet. KitKit was dying. He hated KitKit. But he wanted her back.
This was confusing.
“The top of the hedge is twenty feet above the roofline,” Edmund said.
George thought Edmund must be seeing through the Daddy Bigger’s magic blood to know this.
“The hedge of thorns feels slightly warm,” he said, “with a faint vibration. I can leap and climb to the top, provided the hedge is as solid at the top as here.”
“Even if you got up there, over the house, in the air,” Cia said, her voice rough and hoarse, and her body smelling of exhaustion from the spell Melodie witch had hit her with, “even if the hedge held your weight and didn’t fry you like bacon, you aren’t a witch. You can’t unravel the working.”
“Hell,” her twin said, “I don’t think we could.”
“The hedge won’t hold more than two hundred pounds,” the Daddy said.