And Brute had been in the presence of the angel Hayyel . . . along with Beast. And could clearly fold time. Holy crap.

CHAPTER 17

Broiled Vamp-Flesh, Still Rare

The werewolf leaped high and stretched out, passing over and through the breaking energies of the outer circle. He landed with an expelled grunt and gathered himself, his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth. His teeth were enormous, bigger than Beast’s in her big-cat form, though not as large as my/our fangs in half-cat form. Brute turned crystalline eyes to me. In the glowing energies of the various walls of power, his eyes looked bright and clear and blue. He trotted up to me and stopped in front of the bloody vomit on the ground. He bent his nose to it and sniffed. Growled and hacked. He sat, front paws neatly together, and met my eyes, as if waiting for a treat.

“Sorry, dog,” I managed. “I don’t have a bag of rawhide for you.”

Brute chuffed, sounding a lot like Beast when she laughs. He turned his head to the disintegrating trap and back to me.

I ignored him, one hand holding my stomach, kneading the knot there, and headed back to the snare of thorns. “I ask God for help and he sends me a freaking werewolf?” The wolf yipped and looked again at the trap. Visibly, it was failing, the energies separating. Time wouldn’t wait forever. “Proof that God really does have a sense of humor.”

The creature that was Santana, caught inside the snare, had shifted position while I tossed my cookies and rearranged my friends and talked to a werewolf. Santana’s balance was now on his back foot, his head up, looking at the top of the failing trap, ready to jump. He was going to vault up and over the falling walls. I looked at Sabina, who was tumbling in the air, her clothing in flames. Her hand was blackened bone.

Lastly I looked at Lachish, who was staring through her weak ward at whatever was happening in her time. She looked terrified. She had to know that when the monster was free, he was gonna kill her and her witch friends, who were still sleeping on the singed grass.

I pinched the tip of the sliver of the Blood Cross that was hooked through my clothes. I couldn’t cut out his heart. If I grabbed him, he might time-sync with me, like Sabina had, and kill me on the spot. The sliver should kill him. Or at least hurt him bad enough to give me time to save the others. I laughed, the sound similar to Santana’s laughter—not nearly human. “Pop his bubble,” I muttered.

The wolf came to my side and braced his four feet.

I glanced down, surprised. “I have a service, werewolf,” I whispered. Brute chuffed again. I placed a hand on his back, over his shoulders, and pushed upright. Well, bent over, dizzy and retching, but at least now I had help. Moving slowly, keeping step with me, Brute helped me inch to the deteriorating cage. Once there, I used my free hand—pelted, knobby knuckled, part paw—and I gripped the wood tightly. It felt hot in my hand, as if it were about to burst into flame at the very touch of my fingers. I had a feeling that the sliver and whatever power it held didn’t like my skinwalker magics or the blood diamond magics being utilized in the protective circle, and would just as soon see me dead.

Brute stopped at the boundary of the inner circle / snare, and I pushed up against him, levering my weight higher. I eased my hand through a gap in the trap energies. My hand was shaking, but I managed to align the splinter of wood with a patch of bare skin just above Joseph’s tuxedo coat collar. The SoD didn’t teleport away or get beamed up to Scotty or fold time to fight me, the wyrd spell he was trapped in perhaps not letting him utilize that much of his own power.

I shoved the sliver of the Blood Cross into him.

His flesh was tough inside of folded time, like the rind of a watermelon. I put my back into it and shoved. For my efforts, I got another burn across the back of my arm, but higher up, near my shoulder. I hissed with pain but kept pushing. The wood point pierced him and I saw a blot of blood just as the first flame licked out. I jerked my hand away and fell, rolling back, vomiting. Pure scarlet blood. I tucked into the fetal position. Brute stepped over me, defending me. Dang dog.

Now, Beast, I thought.

Around me, time unfolded with a snap that I felt through the ground, more so than heard. Brute vanished, still caught in sometime else. The outer circle fell. The trap walls fragmented and collapsed. The Son of Darkness screamed, the sound a composite: the wails of a thousand humans wounded in battle, the high-pitched screech of tearing metal, and the deep, broken reverberation of rock rolling from a high place. The vamp death scream squared.

A huge splash sounded from nearby. Sabina hitting the pond. A whoosh of flame and heat scorched close to me. I looked between my elbows to see Santana engulfed in flames.

He reached up with a clawed, taloned hand. And he ripped out a gobbet of flesh. Dropped it on the ground, burning and bitter smelling, hotter than molten steel. He was still on fire, deep inside, his flesh burning even away from the air. He screamed and I covered my ears at the painful pitch. With a pop, he was gone, flames flashing, marking a path, fast, away from the park.

I lay where I fell and vomited. And vomited. And felt my body try to reshape with a burning-slicing torture of fast-mutating skin and muscle. A moment later, I felt a cool hand on my forehead. Healing energies flooded through me. To my side I spotted the bluish illumination of a witch-light. I smelled Lachish. And burned grass. And broiled vamp-flesh, still rare, along with vamp-flesh, well-done, cooked to a crisp. The stench did nothing for my nausea.

On the ground, only inches from my nose but out of the visual range of Lachish, was a charred hunk of something rank and foul. I reached out and pulled the sliver of the Blood Cross free from the hank of skin and hooked it back into my collar. So much for it being a weapon of vamp destruction. Santana had enough strength to get stuck with it and still run away to fight another day. I closed my eyes and let Lachish take away the pain. It wasn’t a complete healing, but her ministrations helped, a lot.

Only when Lachish had pushed the sickness far enough away that I could get to my feet did I tell her about Molly, still unconscious behind the building. Lachish wasn’t happy about what she took to be a poor decision on my part, but I didn’t really care. I wasn’t happy about Molly and didn’t really want to be anywhere near her when she woke. As the coven leader of New Orleans tended to her witches, I gathered up a handful of smoking flesh and the blood diamond, tucked them into the other gobag, gathered up my weapons as best I could, and walked away from the burned remains of the fiasco, into the dark.