Le Bâtard wore a gold chain around his neck with trinkets on it: a red heart, an old key, a small stoppered glass vial that might have held blood. The necklace was flying in the air. His partner in murder wore earrings in each ear and a good dozen rings on his fingers, each one bright with gems and worth a fortune.

The pretty vamp—Louis le Jeune—had the point of a foil, a dueling sword, buried in the middle of Grégoire’s back. There was blood on Grégoire’s clothes. I didn’t know if Louis was killing Grégoire for running away or herding Grégoire into the room to kill us, but I was betting on the latter.

Grégoire was wearing dark slacks and a dark wool sweater that clung to his boyish frame. He was crying, blue eyes brimming with tears. More tears glittered on his cheeks, streaked back across his face. He wasn’t vamped out. He looked . . . afraid. In the V of his sweater, I could see burns and unhealed fang marks, some still bleeding. Grégoire’s old master and sire had resorted to torture to get his scion to do his dirty work.

“Jane.” Eli pointed to Grégoire’s other hand. It was holding a small black instrument. “Switchblade,” he said, “blade placed to penetrate his own chest.”

“Blondie’s planning to kill himself before he does whatever they want him to do.” That was the epitome of sacrifice. I wanted to hug Grégoire.

Le Bâtard and Louis were Naturaleza vamps, and Naturalezas wanted power, power of all kinds. So . . . My mind kicked into gear. They wanted Sabina to drink from, Grégoire to fight for them, and for Le Bâtard to have bloody kinky sex with him, sexual torture—trying to make Grégoire fight to win. They wanted Leo for his land. The SOD for power. The arcenciels for time bending, and, if I was right, to carry them into the past so they could change history.

They wanted to own the world. And they needed the storm to call and capture the rainbow dragons to get it all. The European emperor had sent them ashore for a first strike, suggesting that Adan Bouvier couldn’t do big magic on a boat. He needed dry land under him for anything major.

Grégoire was the linchpin. It was possible that Grégoire could defeat Gee DiMercy. And Edmund. And Leo. All the EuroVamps needed was to get him to fight his own people, and that alone would throw any defensive plans to the winds. They needed motivation.

They had the twins to force Grégoire to do what they demanded, hurting the boys until he complied. I looked back at the twins. The spell over them was a strangely geometric haze. The motes that were present in most magics were random. This working was regular, evenly spaced, and . . . herringbone, like the magics on the Deadly Duo’s clothing. “Brandon and Brian are behind some kind of weird ward. I have no idea how to break it.”

“Okay, so we do the next best thing. Stay close.” He edged in behind Grégoire and beneath the sword in the vamp’s back. Feet scuffling, I followed. With a flick of his hand and blade, Eli cut Louis’ wrist. The blade, though sharp, barely sliced the flesh.

“That ‘yada yada, physics,’ thing?” I questioned. “You have to press hard. Things in the Gray Between appear to be more dense.” Eli repositioned his grip and shoved the tip against the wrist. This time it penetrated and Eli rocked the blade back and forth, widening the wound. Blood appeared at the edges of the gash and I leaned to sniff. The blood smelled of fear and Grégoire and Sabina. And the stink of vamp blood meeting silver—acrid, burned, and vile.

My stomach rolled, sick.

Inside me, Beast thought, Half-shift. Fighting form. Now.

Not till Eli’s done, I thought back.

She snarled but didn’t insist.

Eli patted my hand as if reminding me to grip harder and applied more pressure to the tendons beneath the skin. After a few nonmoments we both realized that incapacitating them was not going to happen fast enough. Bile rose up my throat. I gagged. I needed to half-shift. “Oh to heck with it. This is taking too long.” I pulled a vamp-killer, handed it to Eli, and pointed at Louis’ throat. “Cut deep. He’ll heal faster than we want, but we’ve bought ourselves some time.”

“You want it off?” He meant the vamp’s head.

“Not until we know where all the prisoners are.”

“Look at you, being all ‘Think first and kill later.’” Eli hefted the blade and turned it to a backhand. He swung. Cut an inch or so into the neck on one side, into Louis’ jugular and his carotid artery. The blade stuck in the time-hardened flesh. Eli waggled the blade, yanking it at the same time. The tissue parted and blood appeared. Not spurting yet, but that would come. However, Louis was Naturaleza and had fed well on blood. He was capable of healing most anything. Eli took another backswing and hacked into the cut, widening it. Removed his blade and gripped my hand with one of his, holding it on his shoulder. His hand was cold. Too cold.

“Eli?”

“Not yet.”

He maneuvered back under the sword in Grégoire’s spine and did the same thing to Le Bâtard’s head. Then he went to Grégoire. With the smaller blade he cut into the flesh around Grégoire’s thumb, the one holding the switchblade against his stomach, the weapon Grégoire intended to kill himself with. “Maybe he’ll feel it and know he isn’t alone,” Eli said.

He looked back at me. “You’re pale. Sweating.” He touched my face. “Clammy. Bleeding?”

I shook my head, the motion jerky. “You’re cold. You okay?” I asked.

“Not really. The GB is a onetime deal. But let’s finish it. We need to free the twins and the caged witch.”

CHAPTER 19

Hung in the Sleet like a Sad Sack of Potatoes

I looked at my own hand to make sure it was empty. I vaguely remembered drawing a weapon. Or three. I had no idea where the weapons were. I patted my rigs and discovered I’d replaced them without even noticing my own actions. Muscle memory was a good thing. I was feeling woozy and put an arm around Eli to hold us together. “Okay. Let’s do this.” In our three-legged walk, we moved back into the larger room and up to Brandon and Brian. “We have a herringbone magical pattern. I don’t remember seeing that before, but at the moment my memory isn’t so great. Can you see magic?” I asked. “Can you see the pattern?”

“Babe. Human here.”

“Yeah. Right. I’ve seen a lot of funky magic.” I lifted my eyes to the wires that originated at the lightning rod. “This is all geometric. I think I need to . . .” I looked at Eli. He was so close it was hard to focus. “I think we need to cut the wires to the lightning rod.”

He looked up. “We have multiple wires. Which ones do we cut?”

“All. Why not.”

Eli was holding my vamp-killer. I wasn’t sure when I’d given it to him. I was losing bits of time. Not good. “Hang on, Babe.” He positioned his feet for a stable balance, took two test swings like a batter at the plate. And swung at the wires. Unlike vamp tendons, the copper wires parted. And nothing happened. “Hunh,” Eli grunted. “Babe, you strong enough to take the twins into GB with us?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” I shrugged and the gesture hurt, a sick muscle ache, like after a major beating. “We could die.”

“That would suck. You got a better idea?”

“We need them away from the pole.”

We inspected the wires Eli had sliced through. As we talked, the wires separated a quarter of an inch, leaving a stationary light connecting the space between the ends. The herringbone pattern on the boys had begun to thin. “Wait,” I said. I dropped to one knee and eased the blade of a vamp-killer through a space in the magical mesh pattern. The blade sparked on the working, throwing light even Eli could see. I sawed through the straps holding the boys to the pole. It took a bit of no-time, but the blade eventually worked through.

“Plan B,” Eli said. “They get away by themselves.”

We three-legged it over to the silvered cage. In the Gray Between I could see how the magical lock worked. It was tied to the security of the cage, the twins’ bindings, and the lightning rod. It was slightly out of sequence with both real time and Gray Between time, making it fuzzy and hard to see. “It’s slightly out of sync with real time.” I looked at the crystal inside the geode.