I glanced at the duel. Eleven seconds.

Our witches were farther back on the sand, not close enough to help. This one had gotten inside the hedge of thorns. Had to be in the moments when the hedge was dropped so we could come and go. She had walked over the outline of the hedge of thorns without Molly seeing her, which meant she had come in with Titus, her witch energies absorbed among the vamps.

A thump sounded. My eyes flew to the battle. Grégoire was on his back. Aloisio stood over him. My heart fell through the sand beneath me.

CHAPTER 19

It’s Poisoned

Grégoire rolled away, swift as thought. Aloisio bent over. His guts spilled out onto the floor in a bloody, reeking, gagworthy slither. Black and scarlet, like eels and raw meat. Aloisio dropped to his knees. Grégoire rose and whipped his sword in an arc. Aloisio’s head rolled to the side.

Grégoire bowed to Sabina. He was a bloody mess but still standing, his enemy’s intestines in a coil around his ankles.

“Golden,” the camera wolf muttered.

“Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios,” Brandon said, his voice emotionless. But I could see the strain on his face. He had sworn to Grégoire. The twins loved Blondie. This had been the hardest one he had watched, knowing that if his master died, he could not avenge the true-death.

I stood and pulled the knife from the wooden support. It was the length of my hand and fingers from tip of blade to tip of hilt. It was old and not well cared for, dried blood in the crevices. I sniffed it and caught the stench of humans and vamps and magic. Death spells in it? I looked around but couldn’t spot the witch anywhere. I regripped the rubies. Nothing. She had moved.

Sabina clapped her hands three times and said, “The Sangre Duello will recommence one hour after dusk. For now there are food and beverages here and below for the humans. The Mithrans who wish to sup before sleep or before departing must hurry. Dawn is nigh.”

Grégoire, stepping gracefully out of the intestines, walked off the octagonal and toward the stairs to the beach mansion. His footprints were bloody and as he passed me, I realized I was smelling his blood. A lot of his blood. I swept an arm under his and supported him to Leo’s room. The MOC followed me and there was a lot of harried French, staccato orders, too fast for me to pick out words. I eased Grégoire onto the bed and Leo fell on his friend, tearing his own flesh to heal him. The bottle of healing blood potion was on the mattress beside Leo’s knee. It was nearly empty. I had no idea if there was another bottle or not.

Grégoire met my eyes with his blue ones and said, “My people have bound Dominique in silver and placed her on the sand for the dawn. You will not save her this death by taking her head.”

“I won’t save her.” I moved away and went looking for the witch.

* * *

• • •

I didn’t find the witch, but I told Lachish what I had seen and she was searching the house and grounds with a version of a find-it spell. Molly was in bed, grumpy but resting, only because I picked her up and carried her inside, to bed, and set a guard over her. She could get up to pee. She could have food and fluids delivered. That was it.

Dawn was breaking and the screams of Dominique could be heard across the island and far out to sea probably. I’d never heard such horrible screams. But I didn’t go look. And I didn’t shut my ears to the sounds of wails. I found the courage to check on our own dead and wounded. Del was on Dacy’s bed with her mother, one of the Robere Onorios, and three humans, her naked body cradled against Sabina, the outclan priestess doing some witchy shamanistic thing over her that looked vaguely familiar and totally scary. Sabina’s eyes were closed and she was speaking in a language I didn’t recognize.

Del wasn’t undead. She wasn’t alive either, not breathing, no heartbeat, her body gray and mottled all over, rigor mortis setting in. Her fingernails and toenails were perfect, a blaze of scarlet. All I could think was that she had gone for a mani-pedi without me. And that thought brought tears to my eyes. I pulled off the chain with the two rubies and carried them to Sabina, holding them out. Saying nothing. The gems dangling, twirling. They were batteries. Maybe they’d help Del.

The twirling slowed. Stopped. Without opening her eyes, Sabina reached out, taking the gems. They sparked and the motes within took on a different formation. “They will be returned,” Sabina said, her voice a monotone.

I shrugged helplessly and backed out of Dacy’s room to look in on Grégoire. Leo had him on the bed with a dozen humans. It was a big naked mess of blood and sex. Ditto on the backing away.

Edmund was cuddled between Gee and Katie and three humans, asleep, Ed’s arm in an inflatable cast, his thumb wrapped in gauze and supported by shaped metal strips. They were all naked. Something else I didn’t need to see. I shut that door and went to feed my face. I was starving. Deon had changed into short-shorts tight enough to fit a small child and his wife-beater T-shirt was stretched across his torso, sequined in rainbow hues with a unicorn on the front.

I stole a serving platter and loaded it up with enough bacon and eggs to stuff a great white shark, took a place alone at the long dining table, grabbed some utensils from a basket of knives, forks, and spoons all standing upright, and started eating. A brown arm and hand reached around me and placed a teapot and an empty mug beside the platter. Eli took the chair beside me, holding a tiny cup of espresso. I gave him the stink-eye at his lack of food. I knew what that meant. He’d eat mine.

He stole a piece of bacon. Ate it. I said nothing. He stole another one. Ate it too. Then a third. Around the slice of bacon he said, “They couldn’t turn Del.”

I stared away from the food and out the windows at the pink sunrise, my appetite temporarily throttled. Tears gathered in my eyes and then dried. They were trying to make her an Onorio. Very few survived that transition, and the ones who did were never really the same after. The transformation was mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. I liked the changes in Bruiser. A lot. But that didn’t mean that Del, if she lived as Onorio, would like herself.

Eli took another piece of bacon. “You’re letting me steal your food,” he said.

“It’s poisoned. I’m letting you get your comeuppance.”

“So we’ll die together?”

Del wasn’t dead. Not yet. Maybe she could be saved. I ate a few forkfuls of eggs, forcing them down, thinking. “Okay. Not poisoned.”

“I love you too, Babe.”

I frowned. Deon brought me a plate of pancakes with butter on top and syrup that drizzled down the sides. Protein and pancakes. Heaven on earth. “I might have to marry you,” I said to Deon.

“You and me? Oh! Let’s include Ziggy. We’d make beautiful brides! A threesome walking down the aisle together.”

He sashayed off.

Eli shook his head, bemused. “You do know how much you’ve changed my life, don’t you? And you’re the smallest part of the weird that my life has become.”

“Weird is fun. Keeps you on your toes.” Weird might keep Del alive.

He stole another piece of bacon. I turned the platter to make it easier for him to eat from. Eli smiled. Took a knife and fork from the upright basket and started eating. “Beast okay with me eating from your plate?” he asked.

“Beast thinks of you as her kit. I’m surprised she didn’t take the fork and feed you.”

Eli burst out laughing.

* * *

• • •

    Five minutes before the Europeans landed for the night, I was in my whites again. Edmund had insisted on directing my dressing, and because he was in so much pain that he had woken before sunset, I let him—though I put on my own undies, a white uni, and my boots all by myself. He worked with Deon and Ziggy in the rest of the dressing experiment, including a gold turtleneck under doubled gorgets, Queen Bitch’s makeup (too much and all of it glittery, I was sure, though I hadn’t seen myself yet), and weapons (lots of them). Edmund, working mostly one-handed, had braided my hair into a fighting queue with a crown of stakes. I wore the Mughal blade in its scarlet-velvet-covered scabbard, two long swords, and blades all over me.

“I’ll clank as I walk,” I complained.