I stepped back to Conlan. He’d stayed exactly where I’d dropped him, hugging the floor. Thank you, whoever you are upstairs, for the miracle. Thank you.
Conlan sat at my feet. I stood still. My right arm burned with pain. She was damn fast, and her daggers were razor-sharp. The bleeding wasn’t heavy. I could seal it, but it wouldn’t last. The moment I used the arm, I would bleed. That was fine. I could use the blood.
The fog flowed back and forth, shifting in shimmering patterns. I waited, every sense straining for a hint of movement, a whisper of sound. Something.
Moments crawled by.
Conlan turned his head slightly to the left. I kept my gaze on the mist, watching him with my peripheral vision. He turned more. A little more.
My son was a shapeshifter and a predator. With supernatural hearing.
I kept looking to the right, toward Luther.
A moment.
Another.
Another . . .
She charged out of the mist to my left, leaping. I took a quick step with my right foot to pick up momentum and hammered a sidekick into her. My foot connected with her ribs. Bone crunched. The impact knocked her back into the haze.
I waited. Conlan was turning to the right now. That had to hurt. She’d try to cover up that side now.
A low, animalistic grunt came from Luther. It sounded half-bestial, half-obscene. The grunts kept coming. Noise screen. She was trying to muffle her footsteps.
“I can still hear you, worm.” I raised my hand and beckoned, loading every drop of arrogance I had into my voice. “Come to me. Accept your death with grace.”
Luther fell silent, but the sahanu stayed hidden. Damn. For some reason the jeering worked for my aunt much better than it did for me. I needed more practice.
Conlan turned right. I had no idea how I knew the strike would come low. I didn’t see it or hear it, but something told me he was the target. I dropped into a crouch, clutching him to me, shielding him with my body. The dagger shot out of the dust and sank into my left shoulder, barely an inch in.
Moron. Throwing only worked in movies.
I jerked the blade out and spun to my feet barely in time to block her slash as she came charging into the circle. She stabbed, and I sliced across her arm. Blood wet my dagger. Thank you for the knife, asshole.
The sahanu erupted into a flurry of slashes and stabs. I closed the distance, working her, fast and fluid.
The colors, the noises, her movements, her blue eyes; everything became so clear and sharp, it almost hurt.
When I was eight, Voron took me to a man called Nimuel. His name meant “peace” in his native Tagalog, and that was exactly what his opponents found when they came at him with a knife. As I worked her, blocking her arms with my own, wrapping my fingers around her wrists, using my wrists to channel her strikes, cutting her forearms, I heard his calm voice in my head. Under the bridge, on top of the bridge, over the bridge, inside, outside . . .
She would not touch a hair on my son’s head.
The sahanu snarled, stabbing and stabbing, and finding only air. I nicked her a dozen times, but she was so fucking fast.
Over the bridge . . . Open the window.
I countered a moment too slow. Her dagger painted a bright red line on my left arm. While she was busy cutting, I drove my dagger into her side.
She tore away from me, taking the dagger with her.
I clamped my arm on my wound and hurled my blood at her, the drops turning into needles midflight. They sank into her face.
She dashed to the mist. I charged after her, but she dove into the green. Shit.
Behind me, magic shifted.
“Not in my house!” Luther roared.
Magic exploded out of him and tore through the room, freezing the green smoke screen. The dust exploded, each emerald dot blooming into a tiny white flower. They floated down in a shockingly beautiful rain, stirred by the slightest draft, and I saw the sahanu ten feet from me, her face stunned, her mouth with sharp inhuman teeth gaping open.
Teeth.
I charged, swiping a heavy microscope off the lab counter.
It’s very hard to stop someone charging at you full force, especially when your back is against the wall.
She slashed at me, and I smashed the microscope against her dagger. The blade clattered to the floor. I reversed my swing and drove the microscope at her jaw. Blood flew. The blow knocked her back. She reeled, clawing at me. I hammered the microscope into her face. That one dropped her. I landed on her before she had a chance to roll to her feet and brought the microscope down like a hammer. Blood flew, thick and red.
Eat this, you bitch.
I hit her again and again, with methodical precision, driving the weight in my hand into the strike zone between her eyes. Her face was a mush of bone and blood, but I had to make sure she was really dead.
“Kate!”
Another blow. The red spray of her blood stained the tiny white flowers swirling around us.
“Kate!” Luther barked next to me, his voice sharp. “She’s dead.”
He was right. She was dead. I hit her again, just to be sure, straightened, and handed him the bloody microscope.
Conlan cried.
Oh no.
I sprinted to him and scooped him up off the floor. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Mama’s got you.”
He wailed. I realized my hands were bloody. I got sahanu blood on his clothes.
Conlan cried, his voice spiking, tears wetting his cheeks.
“Shhh.” I rocked him. “It’s okay. It will be okay. I’ve got you. Mommy’s got you. I won’t let anyone eat you. I’ll kill every last one of them.”
He couldn’t possibly understand that she had been about to eat him. What the hell was coming out of my mouth?
I rocked back and forth. Conlan wailed and wailed, tears falling from his gray eyes. Oh dear gods, I’d traumatized my child. I’d beaten a person to death in front of him. He would be scarred for life.
“Do you have any food?”
Luther ran over to the fridge and flung it open. Salad, a pitcher of tea, a jar of honey.
“Honey,” I told him.
He brought the jar over. I held Conlan’s hand out. “Pour some on him.”
Luther got a spoon and scooped a big dollop of honey onto Conlan’s hand.
Conlan sniffled and licked his hand. For a moment he wasn’t sure it wasn’t a dirty trick, and then he stuck his hand into his mouth.
“Babies shouldn’t have honey,” Luther said, his voice slightly wooden. “It can contain Clostridium botulinum. It’s a bacterium that causes—”
“Botulism. I know. He’s a year old. It’s safe. Also he’s a shapeshifter and his werebear grandparents have been feeding him honey since he could hold a honey muffin in his hand, no matter what I said, and then lied to my face about it.”
“How do you even know about botulism?” Luther asked.
“When I was pregnant, I couldn’t do much, so I read all the books. I know all of the bad things that can happen.” I hugged Conlan to me. “I know about roseola and RSV and gastroenteritis. His biggest problem isn’t catching whooping cough. It’s that his delusional megalomaniac grandfather is trying to kill him.”
I kissed Conlan’s hair. Nobody would touch my son. Not a hair on his head.
Conlan leaned against me and pointed at the body. “Bad.”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “Bad. Very bad.”