It was odd and disorienting. To feel both sides of a motion. Beast’s and mine.

Okay. Let’s do it, I thought at her.

Beast opened her mouth and showed her fangs. Her breath was hot and rich with scent patterns. Meat and milk and kits and blood. Gently she placed her fangs against my throat. I knew what needed to happen if we were to live the next second. I reached to my waist, finding the hilt of a knife. The hilt was large and coarse, crosshatched for a better grip in a sweaty hand, but too big for my small fist. It was familiar to my childhood. My father had used this knife to clean fish. He had put it into my hand, teaching me how to behead a fish, how to skin a catfish. How to scale a black bass. Fillet it for cooking or drying. It felt real, that hilt of carved bone, though the knife had been lost long ago. It felt as real as my own heartbeat, as my own lungs pulling in breath. I drew the knife and placed it at Beast’s throat.

So. We both have to die, together, here, in the gray place of the change, in our soul home, to get this stronger, faster thingamajig?

Yesss.

And then we have to pay the price.

Yesss.

Fine. Now!

Beast bit down. I thrust into her throat. Pain shivered through us both. Our blood gushed out, hot, spurting. Death blood, from death strikes. Like the two rivers, our blood mingled. And became one. Fire and ice rushed through me with the pain, molten lava and glaciers calving, all of nature held in a single moment of time that wasn’t. A bubble of not-here, not-now, a time of its own, potent with life and possibility, outside of other reality. That moment had a sound, like a huge bronze bell, a note that reverberated through my bones. It had a color, the dark blue of deep ocean water, full of life rolling with power. The color of a sunset, burning through the sky. And the scent of blood.

A snippet of scripture came to me. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood . . . for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” I lifted my hand, which was coated in hot blood, and licked my fingers, smelling/tasting the life force of Beast. I swallowed, her fangs caught in my throat an electrified torment at the motion. Her own throat moved against the blade buried there, as Beast swallowed my blood.

The gray energies and black motes of power vanished.

The scalding shower spilled down. Leo roared, diving toward me. Shouting, “—not released from me!”

I dropped to the wet tile floor, grabbing up the dropped stakes. My hands were tawny-pelted. My fingers knobby and strong. My claws were extended. My clawed feet scratched into the wet and slippery tile as I rose, fastfastfast, thrusting up with the silver stakes. Hard. Directly into Leo’s heart.

CHAPTER 17

Deadish Leo on My Floor

He fell at my feet, into the shower, his head bouncing on the tile. His blood was a pinkish wash into the drain. I jumped back, slapping my body against the cool shower wall. Stared at Leo’s back, his black tux soaked. Holy crap. What just happened?

Over the roaring of the water I heard the schnick of a round entering the chamber of a semiautomatic handgun. I looked up into Derek’s face over the barrel of the weapon aimed at me. He was breathing hard, face slick with sweat, his nose bleeding. His finger tightened on the trigger. Another schnick sounded, and the barrel of a weapon was placed tight against Derek’s head. It gave his head a little push and Derek’s mouth turned down in a snarl worthy of Beast. All I could see of the second gunman was his hand and wrist, but it was Eli.

“Hey, my brother,” Eli said, sounding friendly and casual. “Let’s chat about this first, before I hafta kill you and then figure out where to bury the body. Though I’m thinking out in a bayou, somewhere close to gators, you dig?”

“I didn’t kill Leo,” I said, over the sound of the shower. “Or not yet. We have options if we act fast. Unless you kill me. Think about it.”

“I smell silver and vamp blood,” Derek said, breath still heaving. He must have run all the way from the St. Philip Apartments. “Silver will kill a vamp. Even a vamp like Leo. If you weren’t trying to kill him, why use silver?”

“It was all I had at hand. And not if he gets fed by his maker. Or a priestess. Like I said. We have options if we act fast.

“I’m reaching behind me to shut off the shower. Then I’m going to grab a towel and we’ll haul Leo out and figure out what happened and how to handle it. I was not trying to kill him. He chased me down, not the other way around.”

I turned off the water. The bathroom was loud with the sound of Derek’s breathing and water dripping. I was acutely uncomfortable with the two men in my bathroom and the nearly true-dead vamp at my pelted but mostly human-shaped feet in my shower, but I was more worried about getting shot than my embarrassment. Healing took time that this situation might not give me.

From the top of the shower stall door I pulled a towel and wrapped it around me. My hair was sticking to my skin, I had soap on me, which itched, and I smelled like a bordello from the soap, but at least I was covered.

“Eli, Derek, enough with the Mexican standoff. I’ll heal from most anything Derek can do to me, but Derek won’t heal. He’ll be dead. And I’ll have to clean up the brains, which is messy and sticky and pretty ick. Now, help me get Leo out of here.” I bent and slid my hands under Leo’s shoulders. I heard the appropriate—though far too slow—sounds of rounds being removed from chambers and guns being holstered.

My gut began to cramp. Nausea rose up in me. Not now, I told myself. Not yet. I breathed deeply, forcing down the pain and sickness. It didn’t seem inclined to go away, but it stopped increasing, more a low ache than a twisting of my entire abdominal cavity’s contents.

Derek helped me roll Leo and together we lifted him and carried him, dripping, from the bathroom, placed him on the kitchen floor, faceup. Leo usually looked dead. He didn’t breathe except to talk, and his heart beat only from time to time. But lying on my floor, wet and bloody, his eyes open and human-looking now that he was sorta dead and not vamped out, he looked really dead. I bent and closed his eyes. “I’m going to get dressed. Don’t touch the stakes. Derek, call Del and tell her to get a healer over here. Eli, call Bruiser and get him over here.”

“Can’t do that, Jane,” Derek said, his voice cold as stone dust. “I left him in bad shape.”

Fear shocked through me. “Do I need to call an ambulance? The cops?”

“He’ll heal,” Derek said shortly.