by Faith Hunter
“So,” I said. “How far along are you?”
“Almost eighteen weeks.” She bumped my head with hers. “I’ve been eating like a horse and gained a lot more weight than with the others by this time.” She patted the baby bump and molded her hands around the mound. “We get the ultrasound next week.” I felt her lips turn up against my shoulder. Hesitantly she asked, “Want to fly or drive up for the ultrasound?”
Deep inside, Beast stopped purring, her ear tabs high and her gaze piercing. Molly can see kits inside of Molly? Magic?
No, I thought back. White man medicine.
Beast hissed with displeasure, her thoughts on seeing kits inside of Molly containing blood and guts and dead kittens on the dirt. It’s not like that, I thought at her. But the vision persisted.
“Jane?” Molly asked, her voice hesitant. “Do you?”
A smile pulled at my own mouth, wanting but uncertain. “You mean me? In the ultrasound room? With you?” My happiness slid away. “What would Big Evan say to that?”
“It was his idea. He said that he wanted his baby’s godmother to be there.”
“Oh . . .” My lips stayed parted, and I blinked at the tears that had gathered all unknowing, in my eyes, but they came too fast. One rolled down my cheek. I sniffed and wiped the back of my wrist across my face.
Molly jerked away, twisted on the mattress, and extended her neck like a turtle, her eyes searching mine. “I made you cry,” she said, incredulous. She passed me one of my own tissues.
“Yeah.” I chuckled unsteadily and patted my face with the tissue. “Crying’s contagious, but this is ridiculous. All these teary-eyed females in my testosterone-rich house. The boys are seriously outnumbered.”
Molly grinned, lighthearted, showing teeth and wrinkling up her eyes, a smile that I remembered from the earliest days of our friendship. “So come and stay with us for a few days. We’ll have an estrogen-filled household there too, and we’ll eat fresh-baked bread with olive oil drizzled over it and fix fresh stuff from the garden and Beast can hunt in the woods on the hill nearby and we’ll shop—”
“Oh no. Not shopping.” I gave a mock shudder. “Girlie stuff. Next thing I know you’ll have me getting a mani-pedi and a perm.”
Molly fell against the pillows and put her head back on my shoulder. “Baby shopping. Once we know the gender of this hungry little munchkin.” She patted her belly harder, as if giving the kid a head slap for eating too much. “So, will you? Come and stay for a few days?”
“Yeah,” I said, the warmth still filling me, like heated air filled a balloon, rising from the ground, so much bigger and more powerful than it seemed. “I’ll come. Thanks.
“Now,” I said, “we need to talk about you staying here. The thing found you here and attacked, and there’s no saying when or if she’ll be back. Should you catch a flight back to Asheville? Should you move to a hotel?”
“And get knocked out of the sky by a rainbow dragon, killing us and everyone else on board? No. Doofus. Move to a hotel and try to get a ward around that? Again, no. Doofus. I’m safer here. You’re not safe here with me here, but I’m safer. And with the baby and Angie, I’m staying where I can ward and you can fight. Which is utterly selfish, but it’s the way I feel.”
“Not selfish,” I said. “Motherly. Understandable. And we’re honored.”
The talk degenerated then from friendship and kits—babies—to the arcenciel, and I explained my theories about the light dragon being able to see timelines. And about Molly needing to protect herself at all times.
Molly nodded. “There were stories, way back when, tales my grandmother told, and she said her grandmother told her, about one entire family of Everhart babies disappearing from the cradle, each time following a flash of light. I wonder . . . if witch babies are dangerous to arcenciels in general or if it’s Everhart witch babies in particular. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I could smell sleep coming. She yawned and asked, “What was I saying?”
I stood and pulled my BFF to her feet. “You were saying that it was bedtime. Go upstairs and go to sleep. We have stuff to do tomorrow, and the fight wore you out.”
“Yes. It did.” She yawned again, hugged me with one arm, and turned for the stairs.
I stood at my doorway and watched Molly climb the wide staircase, lifting her feet as though they weighed a ton each. She was exhausted and her balance was wobbly. I would have carried her if I thought she would let me. But as it was, it was time for her to go. Otherwise it might have occurred to her to ask what her baby might mean to the future. She might have begun go wonder why the arcenciel wanted the baby to have never been conceived. And I had no answer. And I might never have one.
When I heard Mol climb into the bed, I closed my door and turned off the light, wondering and worrying what might happen if Soul came into contact with Molly and her baby. Which was certain to happen at the Witch Conclave, if not before.
• • •
Just before dawn, the arcenciel attacked the wards again, with a boom so loud and hard it threw me from my bed, into a roll, and down. A big-cat move. The moment I hit the floor, I dashed on hands and knees into my closet, where the long sword was kept with the steel-edged, silver-plated vamp-killers. As I drew the weapons, I felt Beast rising in me, lending me her strength and power, her vision of silvers and greens and charcoal shadows where before there had been only shades of blackness. And this time a border of gray energies spun around me, close to my skin.
Eli and I met in the foyer and I steadied him when the house shook. Showers of red sparklers fell in front of the house to the street. Opal was concentrating on the upper story and I didn’t know why. Or even if there was a logical reason.
“Molly?” I asked him. My voice was a hint lower, a Beast growl caught in the single word.
“In the hallway, working her magics.”
All this stress and magic couldn’t be good for the baby. “Alex?” I asked. And this time my voice was a full octave lower, an unmistakable growl in it.
Eli’s eyes pierced me, evaluating even as he answered my question. “Told me he had a work-around to keep coms up. He hasn’t been to bed.”
“In here, guys,” Alex called from the living room. Just as the arcenciel rammed down again on the top of the hedge of thorns ward, possibly its weakest point, assuming the ward had a weak point.
The arcenciel slammed down on the top over and over, the attack physical as well as magical, and I heard Molly yelp softly. Already she stank of fear. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold the ward. Kitssss, Beast hissed deep inside.
At this rate, the house would be a pile of matchsticks in no time. Dark humor welled up in me with Beast. “I hope the insurance is paid up. And that it covers acts of magic.”
There was a trace of humor in Eli’s tone as well when he said, “Yes. And no. We’ll claim that a tornado came down and hit just this house. That is if we can’t get it stopped. And if we don’t get eaten.”
In the living room, Alex was at his small desk, lit by the faint lights of batteries and electronic stuff. He said, “No cells, but we can text out on a tablet. I piggybacked on Katie’s Wi-Fi. Plus Evan wasn’t able to figure out a way to shackle the creature, but he sent us a melody that he said would work on the ward, would help Molly, if Opal came back tonight. And we have enough battery power to last a few hours if you unplug the fridge again.” Eli was already moving to the kitchen to follow his brother’s orders.
The arcenciel hit again. I lost my feet for a moment, and Alex’s table and chair scudded across the wood floor with deep scratching sounds. Molly shouted, “Jane! I can’t hold the ward!”
Kitssss, Beast thought at me. Save kitssss. And she pushed against the gray energies that were swirling about me, drawing on more of my skinwalker magic. I looked to the kitchen table where the skull still rested, glowing with energy in Beast-vision. It h
ad been double warded by Molly and Evan, and the arcenciel shouldn’t be able to sense it, but it seemed that no one had told the rainbow dragon that. I raced to it and carried the skull and the tiny charm that contained the hedge of thorns spell back to the closet. Not that it would do much good. If the arcenciel could break through the house ward all it would have to do is look for the bit of magic in the matchsticks, pick up the warded skull, and carry it off someplace safer, where it could dissect the energies undisturbed. Being handcuffed to the hedge by the built-in shackles would probably present little problem to a creature made entirely of light and magic. And that would be the end of everything.
Opal hit the house, the attack rhythmic as a jackhammer, if slower and far more powerful. I could hear the house creaking beneath the battering. Without the ward, the house would be splinters and dust by now. After a dozen blows, Opal backed away, her rainbow lights filling the house from outside. I had to wonder why the neighbors hadn’t call the cops yet. Or maybe they had, and the cops had decided not to get involved with this particular situation. Not that I could blame them. Or maybe only we could tell that there was a problem at all. Magic is freaky weird sometimes.
“Evan’s song, coming up, Miz Molly,” Alex shouted.
Music flowed out of the speakers that the Kid had wired into the entire house, a haunting yet jagged-edged melody played on one of Evan’s wooden flutes.
“Yes,” Molly said, gasping. “That helps. But it isn’t going to be enough, y’all. This thing is figuring out my magics as fast as I can alter them. I need Evan here, with me, if we’re going to beat it.” Opal hit again, this time from near the front door. The windows rattled. Molly said, “Jane?” her voice wavering with uncertainty.
I remembered my worry about what might happen if Soul came into contact with Molly and her baby. But we had no choice. “I got this, Mol,” I shouted. “When I give the word, drop the ward, take a break, and then try to get it back up.”
“Okay,” she said, breathless.
Softly I ordered Alex, “Get in touch with Soul. Tell her we’re under arcenciel attack. Tell her to get here. Now! Tell her that I’m going out to fight it and if I have to kill it to save us, I will.”
“That’ll get her here,” Eli muttered.
Alex started keying in the text. “No armor?” Eli asked me.
Outside the arcenciel hit the side of the ward, at the second-floor gallery. Red sparks of broken energies scattered through the yard. The reek of scorched paint and burned wood and desiccated herbs came from the sparks. The ward was close to breaking. I was almost out of time.
“No. Beast is close. I’m going out in half-Beast form.”
Instantly Beast shoved through my skinwalker energies, pushing and pulling. Which was crazy because my life wasn’t in danger at this particular moment. I had plenty of time to shift. Like, whole seconds, which was unusual for me. Pelt roiled out of me; my bones popped. Pain that was more than physical slammed me to the floor. I landed with a gasp, spine arched. I wasn’t sure why it was so painful to shift sometimes and so pain free at others, but this was one of my more painful times. My hair tumbled around me; it had come unbraided, which happened from time to time in a painful half shift.
When I could breathe, I levered myself up off the floor with the fist that still held the vamp-killer. My knuckles were knobby, my feet were wide paws, my claws were all out and glinting in the dull light of Alex’s tablets, grinding and tapping on the wood floor as I found my balance. My hips were lean, my belly narrow and flat, my shoulders too wide, my clothes hanging at the waist, stretched tight across the back. I was pelted all over, my amber eyes glowing. Unbraided black hair flowed to my hips, in the way. But I was energized with Beast’s power and strength.
Eli pressed my shoulder, turning me until my back was to him, and gathered my hair into a tail. His fingers awkward, he slid three elastics onto the ponytail, at neck, shoulder length, and midback. Then he tucked it all into my collar and down my T-shirt, out of the way. At my ear, he said, “To be a really good second, I need to learn how to braid hair. But being a ladies’ maid would get me laughed out of the special forces, so this will have to do.”
I chuffed with amusement and tossed the vamp-killer into the air, the blade whipping and shining with greenish light. I caught it by the hilt. I felt strong and swift and a bit reckless. “Keep them safe,” I growled to Eli as I stalked through the side door onto the side porch. And I screamed out a challenge.
The arcenciel stopped its attack on the second-floor front gallery as I leaped out onto the damp earth where we had fought earlier. The partial shift had healed me, and the dull pain of the elbow to the gut was gone. “Come and get me, you dumbass lizard! Now, Molly!”
The arcenciel rose high in the air over my house, her body a snaky, tessellated, whipping light, her tail barbed and coruscating, flashing with scales and tasseled flesh, her wings held wide and thrashing forward as she hovered. She darted her head in, her horned skull frilled and patterned with bony plates of light, all in shades of copper and bronze and browns. Her teeth, like long, curved tusks of pearls and diamonds, chomped at me. Her tail whipped and snapped. She was seriously ticked.
The ward fell in a shower of light and power that burned where it shattered over my pelt.
Opal reared back and came at me, striking cobra fast.
I bent my knees and leaped, steel sword high in the air, an upward lunge, whirling, cutting, in motions that were still unfamiliar and graceless. The vamp-killer to the side, I aimed for the tail-like body that slashed at me. I scored two long gashes, one in her belly and the other in the side of her tail. Opal screamed, lights boiling from the wounds, clear goop splattering out.
I landed in a bent-kneed crouch, weapons circling over and around me in the vamp’s version of the Spanish Circle method of sword fighting. The blades a glittering cage of death.
Opal spat at me. I leaped to the side, a big-cat move, my sword whirling slowly, doing the job of a puma’s long tail in the leap, keeping my body stable, my balance rooted to the ground, and keeping the movement itself steady and controlled. The saliva—acid? Poison?—which was surely a weapon, missed me.
The arcenciel back-winged, her eyes glowing. I had no idea how to read the body language of an arcenciel, but I’d have said for an instant that she looked triumphant. She pulled her frills tight and her wings closed. I landed and leaped again, to the top of the shattered rocks near the back wall.
Faster than I could follow, Opal slammed into the ground where I had stood and vanished. I was heaving breaths. The fight had lasted perhaps five seconds.
“What the—”
“Jane!” Eli shouted.
Lights prismed off the walls. Inside the house.
I raced to the porch and inside, to see the light coming from the kitchen. A long, narrow beam of coiling, writhing snake made of light. It was now much smaller, perhaps two inches in diameter, bright as a torch beam and pouring out of the kitchen like a sea serpent. Eli was cutting at it, but it moved faster than he ever could.
The arcenciel had gone into the ground. Now it was in the kitchen, in a different form. “Molly,” I screamed. “Ward yourselves! She’s coming inside!”
Molly raced to her daughter’s bed, and I felt the magics snap into place above me.
And I felt the Gray Between again, a yank that pulled on time and space and matter. And me. I screamed as Beast forced me into a second shift. I fell to the floor, dropping the blades. Which hung in the air, even as I landed in a writhing heap. Gagging and strangling, unable to breathe. And I was tasting blood in the back of my mouth. Beast bubbled time. Dang cat. The internal bleeding that seemed to be a part of this state had started earlier than before. I coughed and covered my mouth. Blood filled my cupped hand. I spat to clear my mouth and throat, and wiped it on my shirt. Trying not to think about the four big tusks that made up a large part of my lower f
ace.
I stood slowly, carefully. My gut cramped as if a huge fist gripped it from inside and twisted. Ripping . . . something. I pushed up from the floor and took the hilts that were still hanging there. Tugged the swords into the bubble of time with me, their weight transferring, the swings they were in before pulling my arms into motion. I stalked into the kitchen.
Eli was standing, his blades high, in the act of cutting Opal’s elongated face, nostrils and horns twisted and trailing, her frill still captured within the drainpipe. But Eli missed the narrow ribbon of light. Not the right size for an arcenciel, more snaky than dragony, long and lean, like an LED cable, and a brilliant dark red. This red light was coming from the kitchen sink. As I moved closer, it pulsed once. A moment later, in time as I understood it here, it pulsed again. The light shifting from deep red to paler red, and paler again, into orange, light going through the prism in slow motion. It was Opal, coming up through the sink’s drainpipe. Or trying to. She was moving slowly through stopped time, not speeding through time as she could in her normal dragon form.
She must not be able to manipulate time while shifting to a form like this, one abnormal to her natural state, stretched out and . . . Suddenly I understood. This house was old and so were its pipes. Old enough to have lots of iron in them. Maybe even made entirely of iron, rusted and corroded. They had to be causing the arcenciel pain.
I studied the shape of the creature, how the light flowed through it, a rippling, ripping, singing note of light. Its cells were weren’t like a mammal’s, one cell touching others, but more like the neurons in a brain, bulbous and spiked with long, linear filaments that shifted with light. Light that came from them and flowed through them.
I could see everything about her. She looked like sunlight, as if her light was created, stored, broken, then reflected. As if Opal got her power and her body from the sun alone. I wondered how long she could even stay alive in the dark. As I watched, her wings were pulled through the drain, a glistening rainbow, so thin that I could see through the membranes. She was beautiful. And she was deadly.
