Her head twisted, a snakelike, inhuman move. Fast as a shark. She bit down. Catching my right shoulder in her fangs.

We landed hard, her on top, shaking me like a dog. My hand went numb. It dropped the vamp-killer. The weapon and a longer reach were a detriment now, anyway. This was close-in work.

Left-handed, I pulled a shorter silvered blade from my belt. Gripped it tight in my knobby hand. Stabbed up under her ribs, at her heart.

Which in a revenant didn’t work. My training and experience were working against me. Muscle memory a hindrance.

She grabbed my head in clawed hands. Rammed it against a pew. I had a moment of blackness, shredded away by the pain. She shook me again, teeth in my shoulder, hands on my head. She was ripping my arm off. My blood sprayed across the room and up, to spatter on the newly painted ceiling far overhead. I adjusted my grip and stabbed under her left ear. Cut toward me. Severed her carotid and jugular, her trachea and esophagus. Nothing changed. Except my blood pooling, spreading under me. The sound and vibration of her growling into my shoulder stopped.

I stabbed again, working the blade back and forth, severing tendons. They were old and tough and it wasn’t easy. I was screaming in pain, in battle fury. Her head lolled forward. But her jaws didn’t unclench off my shoulder. I sawed. Panted. Mewled in agony. She shook me, my whole body sliding on the wood floor, through my blood. Things tore inside my shoulder joint. Blood shot into my right eye. Into her face. Her eyes opened and she stared at me. She started drinking; the sucking sounds were just eww. Even if it hadn’t been my blood she was drinking.

I yanked the knife out, movements clumsy, and placed the tip of the blade into the jaw joint. Temporomandibular joint. Yeah. Odd the things I think and remember when I’m probably dying.

I shoved it in and cut backward. Her bite decreased, but she was healing. Focusing on me. Aware of me. Gaining sanity. I had to end this now. Or die. I turned the blade. Stabbing back into the vertebrae. They were brittle and they cracked. Her bite softened more. Using my legs, I rolled her over. Pushed at her and her fangs pulled through my flesh with a slow, sickening sound. Her eyes dulled.

Silver caught my eye. Swinging down. Fast.

Her head separated from her body. She collapsed beneath me.

Eli stood above us, looking down. There was a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “Babe. Shift. So I can kill you at my leisure.”

“Kill me?” I whispered.

“For taking her on without me.”

I laughed, or tried to. Pain zinged through me. Lightning boomed. Beast ripped the Gray Between open and I shifted. The last thing I saw before the change took me was human-shaped fingers. I was changing back from fighting half-form to human, which was a good thing, as it was still daylight-ish. If I’d changed to mountain lion, I’d have been stuck in that form until nightfall, an irritating glitch in my skinwalker energies.

CHAPTER 9

Sword of the Enforcer

“You want to tell me why you took her on alone?” Eli’s voice was low, almost a whisper. The way he sounded when he was seriously ticked off.

I licked my fingers, cleaning the burger juices off them, thinking. He had sent Shemmy to get me a dozen burgers and fries and a couple of two-liter Cokes. He had waited until I ate every single bite to ask me anything at all.

I almost said, I came alone because you were nearly drained of blood last night and were weak. But I figured he might just shoot me. I almost said, You were busy. Ditto on the shooting. I settled on, “I was stupid?”

“Very.”

“Thank you for the clean clothes? And the food?”

Eli grunted. He was sitting on an undamaged pew beneath the crucifix, bent forward, forearms resting on his thighs. His hands no longer held a weapon but dangled between his knees. He skin was very dark in the church’s shadows, his hair buzzed close, brown scalp showing through, gray eyes looking charcoal. Eli was a seriously pretty man. And was seriously ticked.

I was on the floor at his feet, eating like the calorie-starved person I was after so many shifts and half-shifts in quick succession. Oh. And nearly dying. Nearly dying is hungry business. Plus my hair was a mess and I didn’t have lipstick with me. Not that I’d ever say that to Eli. No freaking way.

Though I might look a mess, the magics coursing through me, the ones that now formed a star, and were so different from my usual skinwalker magics, felt steady and smooth and relentless. So that was good, right? Except, Eli. Ticked. Dangerously ticked.

“Babe. Don’t do it again. Even disabled I’m better than nothing.”

He said it as if he’d been disabled and had still held his own. The scar on his collarbone shone white above his black tee, which was rain soaked, though no longer dripping. He had acquired more scars since coming to work for me, pale streaks on his neck and across his chest, but I seldom noticed them, not in competition with the white, puckered scar on his collarbone.

His dress pants were soaked. His skin was covered with chill bumps, gleaming in the church lights. The jacket he’d worn to HQ was gone. When he breathed, steam blew from his mouth. It was unexpectedly icy in the old church.

“I won’t. Pinkie swear?” I held up my little finger, crooked.

There was an instant of silence, then Eli laughed. An actual out-loud chuckle. “Babe.” He shook his head in resignation.

“I know.” I dropped my hand.

Behind him, NOPD detectives and crime scene techs were working up the scene, which was hard to do with the bodies being in several places, scattered all over the church. With the perpetrator crumbling to ash. And with her being dead three times now. The paperwork was gonna be a disaster, I thought. Fortunately not my problem. The crumbling to ash was the weirdest part. I’d never seen such a thing, but then I’d never seen a thrice-dead vamp out in daylight and then dead on holy ground. I was expanding my horizons and not in a good way.

“We need to talk and you need to know something before we go back outside,” he said.

“That sounds ominous. Not as ominous as a revenant chewing on my shoulder, but bad enough.”

“Alex asked a question. One I hadn’t thought through.”

I nodded for him to continue and wadded up the garbage.

“Why are all these vamps buried with their heads? It’s common knowledge that vamps killed with silvershot, blades, or stakes can rise as revenants.”

I thought back to the only buried vamps I’d seen, in a mausoleum in the vamp cemetery. The vaults had been raided and the bodies tossed around. I honestly couldn’t say if they’d had their heads or not. “I don’t know. That sounds like a very important question for Leo.”

“Another one, then. Why were these suckheads buried in human graveyards instead of the vamp cemetery?”

“Huh. More questions for the MOC. That it?”

“No. Bruiser is outside, dealing with the media and with law enforcement for the riot and for the crime scene here.”

“And that’s important because . . . ?”

“Law enforcement includes PsyLED.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Another moment for my brain to catch up to my suddenly speeding heart. He didn’t mean Soul. He’d just have used the name of the Senior Agent. Eli meant someone else. I stood up from the floor, slowly, carefully. Just as slowly, I weaponed up in the gear Eli had set aside when I shifted. Nine-mil. Vamp-killers. I wished I had the Sword of the Enforcer. It had a scabbard and looked important. So did the blade Bruiser had given me. That one would work too. I needed more weapons.

“Jane?”

I pulled my hair back and up into a tail, then tied it in a knot and twisted it around. “Phone,” I said, holding out my hand.

Eli placed his in my palm. I dialed HQ, the direct line to Scrappy, Leo’s newish assistant. “This is Lee, Mr. Pellissier’s assistant. How are things progressing, Eli?”

“This is Jane. If I’m arrested, I recommend Eli Younger for my replacement as part-time Enforcer. Derek will need help, at least until this EuroVamp crap is handled.”

“Arrested?” she squeaked.

I hung up. Handed Eli his cell. “Keep outta this,” I said to him. “It’s personal.”

“Got that. Still gotchur six.”