According to all the legends, if the sliver of wood touched a vamp, the fanghead would explode in flames. I had seen it happen, though never to a vamp as old and powerful as Sabina or Joseph Santana. This was why Beast had taken over and forced the time-shift onto us. In about five seconds real time, Molly would be dead. So would I. I had resisted Sabina once and lost. Santana was stronger than she was. We were all dead . . .

My gut started the now-familiar gripping, a twisting, tearing, grinding agony. I ignored it. If my body worked this time as it had the last time I/we had folded time, I had a few more real-time moments before I was incapacitated. I walked to the outer circle. I could reach just outside the circle and grab my weapons. I could. It would destroy the wavering protective ward instantly, but that was a real-time instantly. I could take up a blade and be ready when the snare of thorns fell, and try to cut out the Son of Darkness’ heart. Decisions, decisions . . . I reached through a gap in the wavering energies and drew out a vamp-killer, lifting it through the energy gap and across the circle. Instantly I felt a snap of pain and knew I’d destroyed the ward.

Trying to breathe through the gathering pain, I stepped to the priestess’ side and eyed the terrain, the stability of the inner and outer circles. They were both dropping. The snare of thorns wall was falling, spaces opened between the flames, as if the energies were burning away. There was no place to hide. I reached one arm inside the cage, angling my arm through the flames, careful to not touch the stressed energies, hoping to ease the vamp-killer through another opening and cut out the heart of the Son of Darkness. But when my jacket brushed the edges of the energies, fire leaped through my arm and along my nerves. It felt like my flesh had ripped from my arm in one long, exquisite pain. Hissing, I lifted myself away from the contact and smelled burned flesh. Crap. I’d cauterized a wound, like a brand. Gasping, I stepped back and reconsidered.

Okay. Plan B. There was always a Plan B, right?

Delicately, I eased one arm back through an opening and took the tip of the wooden weapon, the sliver of the Blood Cross, in my fingers. I pulled the splinter of wood away from Sabina. The velvet bag around it was soot and ashes, and a flake was falling in real time, hanging an inch away. I eased my arm back through the trap wall and snagged the wood through my collar to hold it in place. The back of my upper arm twinged and pulled and I felt wetness gathering inside my leather sleeve. Best not to let my blood touch the energies of the snare again, I thought.

The abdominal pain hit like a colossal fist, doubling me over. I gagged, the retching deep and ripping. My guts snarled and twisted. My breath stopped. I retched again and I tasted blood on the back of my tongue, salty and vile, mixed with burning stomach acids. “Not yet,” I whispered. Not yet. I measured the distance from the falling outer circle to Sabina with my eyes as I walked back to her and snagged the silver stake from the back of her robes. With no other planning, I forced myself upright, reached in, and, one by one, I broke Santana’s fingers to force him to release her. The bones broke with deep, cracking sounds, like a bass drum hit four times. It took muscle to accomplish anything when time was folded, but I managed to separate Santana’s hand from Sabina’s wrist.

I grabbed her nonburning arm and threw my body into a judo move, heaving the priestess up and over. For an instant Sabina’s energies merged with mine and I could sense her disconcertment, a nearly spiritual vertigo, but she left my grasp so fast that it didn’t last, and I turned away, leaving her hanging in the air, angling toward the pond nearby, robes flapping out like wings. Oddly, the fire that coated her didn’t feel hot. It was one good moment in an agony of bad ones, and I retched again, this time spitting blood. Not good.

I went to Molly and hefted her up and over my shoulder, coughing on my own blood. I carried her through the dying energies of the witch circle and away, into the dark. I lay her down in the shadows of the brick building, in the opposite direction from Sabina. Molly didn’t wake. As I stood, something inside me tore and I fell against the side of the building, unable to breathe. I wouldn’t be able to lift the other witches still inside the circle, not now. But I couldn’t stop. I still had to deal with the big-bad-ugly in the trap, a trap that was clearly falling apart, leaving him able to kill us all, because I wasn’t going to be able to stop him. Not like that. I pressed a fist into my middle hard enough to touch my spine, if the knotted muscles hadn’t stopped me.

The pain only increased, choking me, doubling me over. I hadn’t prayed in a long, long time, and there wasn’t time now to make things right between God and me. I said, “Need a little help here. Just let me get back to the Son of Darkness long enough to stab him.”

God didn’t answer. I didn’t really expect him to, not with a prayer like that. And the pain wasn’t going to ease up. I pushed myself upright and stumbled back toward the circle, walking like I was on a three-day drunk, and lurched through the crashing energies. Halfway to the inner circle, my guts rippled and twisted. I hit the ground with both knees and gagged, blood in my throat. “No,” I whispered as tears of agony gathered and fell, dripping off the tip of my nose and collecting around my mouth. “Not yet.” The tears tasted salty, and I licked my dry lips as I pushed up with both hands. I got one back paw beneath me before my abdomen wrenched and I threw up. Like the last time I had spent too much time outside of real time, it was pure blood. “Not good,” I whispered as the world reeled around me. I supported myself on splayed toes and fingers to keep from falling.

My right hand looked reddish in the witch-light and night shadows. Pain started in my fingertips and spread up, joint by joint. Bad, really bad, but not something I could deal with right then.

From that position I saw something dark on the ground. I remembered the thump I had heard when Santana first appeared in the rift of space. Over the stink of my own sweat and sickness, I smelled a human. Santana’s dinner. I needed to get him or her an ambulance. Right, I thought. First thing. As soon as I finish dying myself.

From the corner of my eye I saw a mist in the darkness beyond the outer circle. The mist was moving toward me. No. It was racing toward me. Moving inside the folded space of time. Coming fast.

It was Brute, the werewolf stuck in wolf form. Brute, who had chased Santana out of vamp HQ. Brute had probably been keeping tabs on me . . . or Santana. I remembered the reports of him racing through New Orleans. The white werewolf stuck in wolf form had bitten Joseph Santana. He could, therefore, probably track the Son of Darkness.