I landed on the floor. Sprawled. A leg bent under me. With a sword, he batted away the shotgun, the sound clanging, the blow reverberating up my arm. He leaned toward me, cutting at my clothes. Buttons popped and flew. Cold steel cut me, a paper cut of pain. Air hit my bare skin. With almost balletic grace, incongruous against his bestial expression, he set the swords aside. He moved my shirt away, exposing breasts, wound, and blood from his cut. I drew another vamp-killer as he fell forward. Lips back, exposing killing teeth. Fixated on blood. I braced the knife on my belt. Angled up. And he fell onto me. Onto the blade.
I felt it push through his stomach and up, into his aorta. Blood fountained over me. Hot and fast. As if his heart beat. His eyes changed. Looking puzzled. Confused. The pink haze of spell coalesced on his chest, at the point where the knife entered. Red motes swarmed in his blood, stinging my hand where his blood gushed over me.
I put an arm around his waist. Drew him closer, his face against the silver rings of my defensive collar. His flesh sizzled, scorching. I angled the blade higher. Shoved. He tried to roll away. I hooked a leg around his and let him push us over. Until I was on top. My favorite vamp-killer was beside his head. The one with the elk-horn handle. I didn’t remember losing it. I took it in my left hand and cut into his throat. Severing windpipe, veins, arteries, tendons. I had never seen so much blood spray from a dying vamp, blood drenched in the pink light of the blood-diamond spell. It was a fountain, blinding me even as he tried to heal from the wound. The Naturaleza had fed fully and the power that much blood gave him was unexpected, startling. I kept cutting. Sawing. Knowing that to kill a vamp and not have him rise as a revenant, I had to take his head. The pink spell whirred and whirled, an angry buzzing, stinging my skin.
At some point, his embrace relaxed. His arms fell away from me. His blood slowed to a trickle, the pink light hazing to a dull glow. But it still was not enough. I cut until there was only spine left, the bony protuberances and ragged tissue and blood. Blood everywhere. I wiped my face. Stood and found his swords. They were nicely balanced, the edges a gray, swirling steel. Using one, I swept down and through the spine in a single cut that I barely felt. I kicked the head away and stood over him. Hearing only my breathing, the soughing of the wind through the broken window, the softer breath of the girl he had been killing. The pink light of the spell died.
I looked around the crime scene—yeah, crime scene: dead bodies outside, dying girl—not sure what to do next. Confused. Hurt. I looked down at my bloody gaping wound. Hurt bad. I needed to shift. Beast? Beast! Nothing. A hollow, echoing emptiness. The girl moaned. I needed to call her an ambulance. I felt for my cell, but the paddlers had it. I needed a phone.
I walked to the kitchen, opened drawers until I found one with dishcloths. I wiped my face and pressed a handful to my side. Took several clean cloths to the moaning girl, pressing them into her wounds, which were less deep than I had thought.
I rolled her until her own body would keep the cloths in place and covered her with a blanket from the couch. Unlike the drapes, it wasn’t dusty, and as I stood, looking around the room, I could tell it had been cleaned in the last few weeks. Weird, the things you notice when you were nearly killed while killing and beheading a vampire, and now were trying to make logical decisions while bleeding to death.
I spotted a phone on a small table. It was an old one, but did at least have push buttons and not one of the weird rotors telephones used to have. I picked up the receiver and leaned against the wall, weaker than I should be. I almost dialed 911, but couldn’t remember where I was. Did they need to know? Could they figure it out?
The room swirled about me. I was light-headed, dizzy. Shock spread through me, paralyzing. My hands felt cold, and the pain from my side cut deep, filling me like water fills a lake bed.
Surprised that I remembered it, I dialed Bruiser’s private number. Bruiser answered with a curt, “George Dumas,” sounding all British and uppity and snobby. “Hiya, Bruiser,” I whispered. “I just killed Thomas Stevenson, and . . . I think I’m dying.”
“Jane?” He sounded unsure, maybe just the unfamiliar number on his caller ID.
“Yeah. And there are two drained bodies in a car in the yard and a girl who doesn’t look too good on the living room floor.” I looked down. “I’m not doing so good myself.” I was bleeding. Pretty badly. Really badly. I pressed an arm to my side, the hand to my belly. Blood-soaked cloths squished under my hand. I slid down the wall to the floor. The phone slipped from my hand. “Oops.” My vision telescoped down, into tiny pinpricks. I was pretty sure I was passing out. “Beast?” I called, the word a pained whisper of breath. And then nothing.
I woke up with Dave and Mike lifting me. Carrying me to the couch. I was only half awake as they cut away my clothes, made makeshift pressure bandages out of kitchen rags, and attached them to me with duct tape. That was gonna hurt when it came off. They covered me with blankets that smelled of vamp and sex and blood, and disappeared from view. I knew they were working on stabilizing the girl. I could hear her breathing. Pain thrummed out through my skin with my heartbeat, too fast. My breath was shallow and rapid, like a dog panting.
Mike said, “I’ll go pick out a landing spot for the chopper.” He disappeared from view. Dave nodded and tucked the blankets tighter around me. Lifted my legs and shoved pillows beneath my knees. Treatment for shock, I thought. It had been a while since my emergency medicine course, but some things you don’t forget. I looked up at Dave, tried to talk. Had to moisten my lips. “You were supposed to go on down the creek.” It came out a whisper.
Dave’s blue eyes held humor and worry. “Your boss made an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
“Yeah. He’s good at that. I always turn him down, though.”
Dave chuckled breathily. “I have a feeling he makes you different kinds of offers. Ours was to come up here and get you stabilized. He’s sending a helicopter for you and an ambulance for the girl.”
“How much?” I meant how much to help me.
“A thousand each. On top of what you’re paying us each to deliver you here. Not bad for a day’s work, and I get to paddle too. It’s all good.” His tone was deliberately lighthearted, not that I believed it. Not a bit. I’d have laughed if I hadn’t passed out again.
The next memories were fractured. Men in uniforms. Stretchers. A siren sounding outside. One of the twins, his head turned so I couldn’t see his mole, pale-faced and stern. Mike squeezing my hand. A stranger inserting an IV with no regard for my pain. Me saying something not very nice about him. My phone ringing, Dave answered. Bruiser’s voice in my ear, telling me to hold on. An argument between the B-twin and the stranger. Money exchanging hands. A lot of money. Rain on my face, outside. Mike and Dave disappearing into the trees, Dave with a lifted hand of good-bye. And more blackness.
I woke when they pulled me from the helo, seeing the hotel in the background. Later, I woke in my hotel bed. So cold. Shivering. The gas fire burning bright, flames whispering and hissing. Not alone. Grégoire over me, his blond hair hanging forward. His mouth on my stomach. His breath heated across my skin. Young boy face and old lover eyes, experienced, watching me as his tongue laved my flesh from navel to sternum. His hands roamed me, featherlight. Demanding. Claiming. Healing.
Heat like a drumbeat though my veins. The sound of my moans. The smell of my blood, of human blood and the sight of Brandon’s face as his master fed from his neck. Blackness.