As the vibrations hit me, I realized that the pulse wasn’t just shock, but was part of the word I’d been hearing. Joses Bar-Judas was speaking that word. That wyrd. A spell of darkness encoded into a single word, the power released when it was spoken.

The first syllable slid along my blade, heating it red-hot. Before I could react to the heat starting to burn where I gripped the hilt, it rolled up my arm, singeing the leather, heating the silver-over-titanium chain links between the outer leather and the silk lining. Over my shoulder and neck. The wyrd of power slammed me in the face like a sledgehammer.

Even in the time bubble, I was knocked backward, hard, my head whipped forward and back, my arm shoved down. I struck the wall, spine and back of my head first, then my limbs, ricocheting. My whole body shuddered at the impact of the power.

The time bubble popped.

I was rammed down into the marble floor, feeling my whole body hit and bounce. Just before everything went dark, I saw Joses Bar-Judas skitter out the door. Into the dusky . . . sunlight.

* * *

I woke slowly, with a headache pounding like I had been tucked into a fifty-five-gallon drum and someone was beating on it with a mallet. My gut was twisted, a gripping torture that felt as if I had swallowed a nest of live rattlesnakes and they were attacking me all at once. “Holy crap on crackers with . . .” I gagged, retched, doubled up on the floor, as my adnominal muscles contracted and my lungs forgot to breathe. The bout of pain and nausea lasted forever before it began to ease. After too long a time, I was able to force a hand between my chest and thighs and press against the knot that used to be my belly. I licked my lips, unable to think, and not remembering what I’d been saying.

“Jane?” The voice was tinny and far away. Oh yeah. Someone had been calling me.

I managed to inhale, my ribs protesting. Strongly. But the smells that hit my nose were of nitrocellulose, burned gunpowder, blood. Lots of blood. Battle. I had to get better, fast.

“Jane!” the tinny voice shouted.

I grunted. Managed to slit open my eyes. The light was blinding. I scrunched them shut and waited out a dozen of the painful mallet-pain-heartbeats. When the ache seemed to be abating, I tried opening them again. I was lying on a white marble floor, on my side, with my back against a gray-white wall and my head turned at a painful angle. Over me hung a painting, crooked on the wall. I blinked groggily at it to see a blond woman with grayish hazel green eyes, wearing some kind of gauzy evening gown, her shoulders bare, her décolletage mostly bare too. I knew her. Katie. Katie the vampire. I knew vampires. I worked for vampires. Right. And I was sick because Beast had taken over and forced me to fold time. At least this time when the bubble of time popped, I wasn’t throwing up blood.

Using one hand and both feet, I shoved myself upright, to a sitting position, knees bent up to my chest. The other hand fell, limp, pain ripping up my arm as it landed on the floor. There were blisters on the hand, the kind you get if you accidently pour scalding-hot tea on yourself. I’d done that at my sensei’s dojo when I was a kid. It had required a trip to the emergency room, but the blisters had healed really fast. Because I was a skinwalker. It was all coming back.

The hand hurt when I tried to open it, and I sucked air through my teeth as I released the thing I was holding. It clattered to the floor. It was a knife, scorched, ruined. The blade, once silver-plated steel, was warped, the edge wavy, the silver blackened where it had melted and formed runnels before cooling again. The leather-wrapped hilt was blackened except for the shape of my hand. A vamp-killer. I kill vampires. It’s what I do. Right.

“Janie! Answer me or I’m calling the cops!”

The memories finally started moving, a slow cascade that morphed into an avalanche. Alex. Coms. Eli. Derek. Joses. Holy crap. The Son of Darkness.

I raised the unblistered hand and tucked the headset back in place in one ear. “I’m here, Alex,” I whispered, my throat so dry it hurt to breathe. “How long have I been out?”

“Ninety-seven seconds out totally, another hundred forty getting your wits back.” He cursed foully and didn’t apologize for it, so I knew he was scared. The four minutes, plus or minus, didn’t seem like a long time, but in battle that could feel like forever, especially to the people watching and not taking part, unable to help.

“Update,” I said.

“Eli and Derek and three security guys are running through the Quarter, chasing a smoking fanghead-zombie thing. I guess no one told the zombie-vamp that the sun was up and he needed sunscreen.” Alex made a sound that could have been an attempt at laughter but fell far short. His levity was a crack at sounding macho, when he was really in panic mode.

I decided to not respond to it, saying instead, “Tell them to be careful. Joses has a wyrd of power and he knows how to use it.”

“I know.” Alex’s voice went grim. He sounded harder, older, than he had only this morning. “We all know. Debrief,” he said, ready to catch me up to date on the missing four minutes. “Eli put a mag and a half into him as you went all Jedi knight and attacked. In the next half second, Joses used the spell on you. Eli jumped behind the half wall. He wasn’t hit. Derek appeared from the hallway and filled the zombie with silver. He took a spell-hit too, but not near as strong as yours. He dropped back through the doorway and out of line of fire. Then Eli put nearly a full magazine into the zombie’s back. The vamp didn’t use the spell this time, but the rounds didn’t even slow him down.

“He took off outside, leaving a trail of smoke. Eli and Derek’s men followed. Derek, when he could stand again, pulled you against the wall, out of the way, and went after them.” He took a breath that sounded suspiciously tearful. I didn’t comment on it. Just waited.

“Jane?” Before I could reply, he went on, his distress deeper. “Next time there’s trouble at an entrance, stay behind the damn wall. It was built to protect you from every single thing that hit you, vamps, magic—”

“Eli’s okay,” I said, softly.

“You don’t know that. He isn’t answering on coms.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding why he was so rattled. “He’s probably busy,” I said gently. “And he’s off premises, so they’ll be communicating by talkies or cell. And they probably haven’t had time to sync their phones into your system.” Then, to give him something to do, I said, “Tell me what’s happening on the other floors.”