“No,” Sabina said, her brow creased in concentration. “My sister priestess lost much from your blood. Seeing dark memories.” As she spoke, her magics strengthened, coalescing around her. Sabina was buying time as she gathered herself. The gobag at my side flamed, and I dropped it at my feet, gripping an ash-wood stake with my good hand.

“I watched as she fell deeper into the madness of your mind, a loss of self. Instability followed, for long years after.

“I did not drink of you, only of others. But after a time, the poisons that tainted you were there, in the collective blood, shared among us all, though weakened, so that we did not all succumb. But I tasted of the venom, and I perceived how to remove the poisons that had infected you, that came from you, and how to absorb only the strength of your holy blood. Then”—she smiled, a grisly expression, and her power swept around her, dark and intense—“then I gained much. I gained all that you were and more.”

She extended her left hand toward the inner circle/trap/cage. “Foramen clavis,” she said, and she touched the sliver of wood to the cage. The energies parted as the point of the wood passed through. The ground beneath my feet shuddered and tilted. I bent my knees to catch my balance, my hands out to the sides. The ground moved again and I saw the tips of Sabina’s fingers touch the scarlet energies. Flames shot out. Oh crap.

The fire whipped across her shield and shot beyond it, to cover the walls that held Joseph Santana prisoner. From his hand ice emerged and coated the cage. The two went immobile as the flame and a coating of ice met and smoky-toned energies sparked out. I lifted a shoulder to protect myself from the heat and flames, watching the contest of wills and powers. It didn’t look as though it was going anywhere fast. Still crouched, I crab-crawled the inches toward Molly, who was staring at the confrontation, slack jawed, drying blood on her face. Behind me, the gobag was in flames.

As I neared her, Molly’s head tilted toward me, and her skin paled. Her eyes widened. Slowly, she focused, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the flaming gobag. Molly held out her hand, palm up. “I can make this stop,” she said, her voice toneless. “I can make him go to sleep so you can take his heart. I can pull the life out of him. I can take his power and make it mine. And save us all. Give.”

“Molly? What—”

“Give me the amulet.”

I stopped moving. The gobag flared, golden flames licking upward as the stench of cotton and plastic rose on the air. The hedge of thorns protecting Molly glowed brighter; she was drawing on the diamond. Crap. Her death magics were extracting power from the diamond, even though she wasn’t physically touching it. And the energies were changing Molly into something that wasn’t the Molly I knew.

Beneath my skin Beast screamed, Predator!

She meant Molly. “Give,” Molly said. The dark power was changing her right before my eyes. Reaching down, she started to swipe away the hedge of thorns she was hiding behind.

The gray place of the change, the Gray Between, erupted from inside me, gray and silver clouds of energy, dancing with blue and silver motes of pure power. Beast shoved through, her claws piercing the skin at the tips of my fingers. Pelt sprouted along my arms and the backs of my hands. Pain scraped across me like a knife flaying flesh from my bones. My spine bowed with the pain, then arched back. I threw back my head and screamed with my Beast. My paws burst through my boots, my claws shredding the leather. My body bent back and slammed forward, somehow ending up with me on all fours, close to the outer circle ward, but facing both Molly and the inner circle. I snarled at what I saw.

Molly dropped the hedge of thorns, keeping the circle open, ready to reactivate the instant she got the diamond. She laughed and crawled forward, toward the gobag. Predator, Beast screamed. Strike now.

I fisted a huge knuckled hand and drew back. I hit her jaw, full on, at about a third of my usual strength. Molly’s head whipped back and her body fell, unconscious. Physical strength and sneak attack against magical energies? No contest.

To my side, the outclan priestess was leaning against the fiery wall of the snare of thorns, the sliver of the Blood Cross pressing the inverted ward inward, the energies bending and giving. Inside, Santana was growling, a hulking nightmare creature, any pretense of humanity ripped away.

Softly, Sabina said again, “Foramen clavis.” The energies of the snare gave way and her arm disappeared inside the trap. In the same millisecond, Sabina caught on fire.

The creature inside the trap, the thing that used to be human, so long ago, the thing that—by his own volition and his foolish and selfish actions—had created all the fangheads, reached around the sliver. He grabbed Sabina’s flaming wrist with his clawed fist. He jerked her toward him.

I knew, between one heartbeat and the next, that this was the end. The Son of Darkness was breaking free. There was no way I could control him. And if he bested me, he would have the blood diamond. Around me, my energies—Beast’s energies—took over.

Time altered, decelerating as if someone had put on the brakes, as if they had gelled every movement, every thought but my own. All I had time to think was, This is gonna be bad. Beast didn’t disagree.

The Gray Between was my greatest weapon, when it gave me the ability to shift shapes—and my greatest danger, when I used it to bubble or fold time. Something about using the gift, about folding time, caused me to bleed internally. And when I shifted back, I didn’t heal like I should. But it was too late to halt the process now.

Around me the world had almost stopped, the dance of my own silver motes of power slo-mo-ing, seeming to vibrate in place. At my feet—my paws and ruined boots, rather—Molly lay on the ground, her hedge of thorns gone. She had fallen across the remains of her protective circle, and she was vulnerable to anything inside the circle with us.

Within the inner snare of thorns, Sabina was being yanked into a physical battle with the big-bad-ugly. Her clothes were burning, her skin was burning, her lips were snarled back, her left hand leaning forward, aiming at her prey. Her other hand was behind her at her belted robe, reaching for a silver stake partially visible there. If she had time, if silver hurt a vamp as old as Santana, Sabina might have a chance. But her best weapon, the sliver of the very wood that had made Santana’s father, was being twisted back against her. Santana versus Sabina was going to be a no contest in the wrestling arena. And what would silver do to the energies massed between them? Would we all go bang?