The bitch shot me three times while I was drawing my gun. Even with my rubberband defenses active, I felt all three bullets ping off my forehead, one, two, three, knocking me back a step. I clapped a hand to my forehead, cussing through my teeth, and fired. Cat was moving before I finished swearing and I missed by a mile, the thundering echo of my concussion round deafening in the enclosed space.

I jerked in a deep breath, heart slamming in my chest from the shock of the attack, adrenaline surging hot and sharp through my veins, the shadow squealing in my head. Irish? Not scary anymore, but Cat? Apparently goddamn terrifying. Fantastic. I gave her a mental kick as I tried to track the blurred movement that was Cat, dodging around a stunned Michael and heading right for me.

I leveled the gun and Irish grabbed my wrist, shoving my hand upward and wasting another booming, deafening shot on the steel-reinforced ceiling. I couldn’t hear him, but in my thickening aura of darkness, I could feel the vibration of his words, a hoarse shout, No!

Jesus, now he was going all sentimental on me.

“Get off me!” I shouted, realizing he probably couldn’t hear me, either. I wrestled for a second, trying to free myself, and then Cat slammed into the both of us, firing. At me. Bullets plowed me right in the bread basket, knocking the breath out of me, shoving me back into Irish, and sending all three of us crashing into Gianna’s antique coffee table. Gianna let out a howl of indignation and snatched Cat by the hair while I struggled to breathe.

Gianna lifted Cat by the hair and Irish shoved me off him, without so much as a grunt of thanks over the four bullets I just took for him, the ingrate. I rolled to my knees and Gianna screamed over a trench spike to the face. She dropped Cat — on top of me, thanks so much — and Larry made it to his feet and promptly tripped over Irish in the dark.

Cat hooked an arm around my throat, choking off the breath I was just managing to get back and slammed the barrel of her gun up against my temple. My own voice sounded dull and flat and distant as I said, “I wouldn’t –” and she fired.

The rubberband bracelet went up in a hot slagged flash on my wrist, I squeaked in breathless pain, and the bullet bounced off my head. Cat’s gun went flying, Irish gave a gasping grunt as he hit the floor, and the shadow shared the flavor of his blood raining down all over Gianna’s pretty wood floor. He’d caught the ricocheting bullet in the shoulder.

“No!” Cat hissed, gaping open-mouthed at the sight of Irish slumping sideways down to the floor. Michael lunged, taking Cat off my back before she could fire again and decorate Gianna’s legs with my brains. I heard him yelling as Cat took her trench spike to him. My head was ringing, eyes watering, and I weaved as I got to my feet, staggering a step.

Amazingly enough, I still had my gun in my hand. The shadow told me where to aim, and I fired. The fucking gun clicked empty and I spat swears as I plunged a hand into a pouch, looking for more ammo.

Michael’s chest was hamburger, and Cat’s trench spike dripped a steady drizzle of blood as she stood, turning towards me. “You.” She pointed at me with the trench spike. “You’re dead, witch.”

“You’re not still pissy about that grenade trick, are you?” I drove another clip into the gun without looking to see what I had. Since my faithful companions here were proving about as useful as tits on a boar at the moment, I shoved at the shadow, and we sent the room plunging into solid darkness, the only gap a Cat-shaped hollow the shadow wouldn’t touch.

“Your demon isn’t going to save you,” she hissed.

I walked a short quarter-circuit of the large room, cloaked in darkness and silence, just so I wouldn’t be where she’d last seen me. My voice echoed out of the corners of the room as I said, “Well, never hurts to try.”

Cat took a couple of steps towards where I’d been standing a moment ago, and paused. I felt her tilt her head, like she was trying to track me by sound. Good luck with that, kiddo.

“Don’t hurt her,” Irish snapped. There was a little wheeze of pain around the edges of his words, but he was pushing himself up to a sitting position.

“Hurt her?” Cat snarled. “I’m going to fucking end her.”

I had the shadow start drinking the heat around her. It wouldn’t touch Cat, but for this it didn’t have to. “Sweetheart?” the shadows whispered to her in my voice. “I think he was talking to me.” Colder and colder, like we’d done with the deadbolts earlier. The strain cost the shadow a lot of the energy she’d been hoarding, but it was worth it to hear the bitch’s teeth start to chatter. She could be as magic-resistant as she wanted to be; this wasn’t magic. It was just very, very cold. Much colder than we’d been able to make her last time we met.

“Michael?” Gianna’s voice was a gravelly growl, and I could feel her standing there, one hand clapped over her right eye socket, where an eye was slowly growing back. “Get the fuck up off your fat ass, you waste. You’re letting the human make us look bad.”

“Ow,” Michael groaned in response.

The whole room was getting chilly, now, though the worst of the effect stayed centered on Cat as she staggered back against the stairwell. “What’s the matter?” I taunted her. “Can’t take the cold shoulder treatment?”

Something cold touched my neck, and Irish whispered in my ear “Stop it. Let her go.” I looked down at the sword, and stood very still. Wasn’t he on the floor a second ago? How’d he find me in the dark? How’d he get here so fast? Something plinked off the hardwood floor at my feet, and it made me raise my eyebrows in surprise.

“That’s a bad idea, Irish.”

“Who is this twat?” Gianna prodded at her mushy, half-formed eye, grumbling under her breath.

“Order,” I said. Cat had moved forward, towards my new position.

The vampires stilled, not even breathing. Robert was plastered against the wall, breathing hard, but still and quiet. Larry huddled behind the overturned table, shivering, and I could feel his heartbeat hammering away in his chest. Irish held the sword to my neck, raising his other hand to cover the wound in his shoulder. Blood leaked between his fingers.

Cat took another careful step towards me. How was she doing that?

Gianna pulled in a breath. “Another Inquisitor? How lovely. Perhaps, Alice, you ought to lead us out while the silly cunt stumbles around in the –” Her voice was cut off in a savage scream as Cat lunged her way, out of the cold spot, lashing out with the trench spike. Michael cried out and dead blood flew through the air as Cat carved Gianna’s chest open. I took the opportunity to elbow Irish and scuttle silently across the room.
Cat tripped Gianna with a leg sweep, sending the vampire crashing to the floor. She planted her boot in the vampire’s chest, blood squelching up around it, and leaned, pinning Gianna down.

“I’ll kill them all one by one unless you come out, witch.”

“Caitlin!” Irish barked. “You’ll do no such thing! They are innocent bystanders!”

“Vampires? Innocent?”

“Two of them are just people, Caitlin. You wouldn’t dare hurt them.”

Gianna burst into action, like an angry bobcat on meth. Claws lashed at Cat’s leg, wickedly-pointed shoes whipped up to  kick, and the crazy undead woman actually sank her teeth into Cat’s boot. Cat ignored the flurry of activity and stood there, laughing, as frost cracked on her clothing and bits of ice fell of her face. “I don’t think my new superiors would care. I’m under new management.”

“Really?” I aimed at the hollow spot, letting the shadow stroke the gun and taste the magic in the bullets to see what sort of ammo I’d grabbed at random. I winced. Tasted fiery, but not dragonfiery. Salamander rounds again? Gianna might go up like flash paper in the backwash. I chewed my lip, trying to decide if I was actually going to need Gianna for anything in the near future. “So you’re here to kill all of us? Even your dear old dad over there?”

I ducked as the trench spike whistled over my shoulder, embedding itself in the wall and quivering with the force of the throw. Ooo. I’d hit a nerve there, didn’t I?

“Bitch,” Cat snarled, drawing a second gun. She fired, but since she wasn’t aiming anywhere near me, I stayed put, and let the shadow drink the noise.

“Jesus, it must be fucking embarrassing to suck this hard with him watching.” I threw my voice randomly as I wandered around the side of the room and Cat fired twice more, before pulling in a hard breath. “Seriously, she just missed by twenty feet. You never missed, Irish. What are they teaching kids these days?”

“Alice, leave her be. Let me –”

Cat ran at me, at me, not where she thought I might be, and I missed the rest of whatever Irish had to say as I leaped to the side. I hit the floor and slid, and Cat was on top of me a second later. She tossed me over on my back, dropped a knee into my guts, and punched me so damn hard I didn’t even notice I couldn’t breathe. Stars shot across my vision. Hey, couldn’t breathe! That gave me an idea – I willed the shadow to thicken, to fill Cat’s lungs and smother her like she’d done to Larry and Robert earlier.

Nothing happened.

I felt her jerk her fist up, heard it whistle on the way down, and fired my gun into her stomach. Livid red fire rolled up in a hot bloom between us. I felt my hair crisp for a split second before the shadow was there to drink the heat away from me. Cat fell back off me with a grunt, but aside from the fringes of her leather duster and some of her clothing, she didn’t even have the decency to singe, let alone be dead.

I strained, trying to force the shadow down Cat’s throat, but the shadow refused. Never mind that she didn’t even want to touch the Inquisitor bitch, she also calmly pointed out that the smothering hadn’t affected Irish earlier.

Hey, that’s right. Why hadn’t Irish been suffocating?

I scrambled up, and Cat swept a foot out. I hopped it, but she was up as my toes hit the floor, and before I could react, she decked me. My knees went all wobbly, and I fired a second time. She rocked back with a hiss at the heat, and hit me again. I went down like a sack of bricks and the shadow screamed.

She kicked me in the ribs and I jerked the trigger by accident, hitting the floor at Cat’s feet. Fire rolled up, hot salamander red then orange as mundane fire caught Gianna’s silky rugs. Cat let out a little squeak and dodged back out of the flame.

The shadow reached for the flames, and I jerked her back. My head throbbed as I rolled away from the fire devouring the carpet. I batted at the shadow, urging her to break the darkness. She snarled at me, arguing, resisting, but I showed her what I wanted, and she relented.

The darkness broke up, drifting in tendrils and ribbons. The room was still dim and gloomy, but it wasn’t that solid wall of black. The second Cat could see, she leveled her gun at me, then froze as she saw my gun was already leveled.

At Irish.

Cat stared at me, her gaze narrowed and steely, an expression that reminded me eerily of her father. It was a bit off-putting.

“You won’t,” she said, but didn’t fire.

“Yeah?” I said, arcing an eyebrow at her and trying to look relaxed and poised lying there on the floor propped up with one elbow. “You think?” Everyone held still. Michael had made it up to his knees, his shirt in tatters, and blood soaking the front of his slacks. Gianna was standing again, holding both hands over her chest, presumably to hold the bits in until her skin sealed itself back together. Larry was quaking. Robert had his gun in his hand, but he was eying the two of us sharply, possibly wondering if it was worth his effort to shoot at us.

“You’ll be dead before you can squeeze that trigger.” She glared cold fury at me.

“She might be,” Robert said into the silence. “But I wonder if you can get us both?” He stepped away from the wall and leveled his gun at Irish, also. He inclined his head towards me as Cat transferred her glare to him. “All due respect, Miss, but while Alice might be bluffing. I most certainly am not.”

Cat stood there, shaking in fury while bits of her clothing smoldered and smoked and bits of ice and frost clung to other bits. I saw something black and half-melted tucked into her belt, and I laughed out loud. She looked back at me, teeth bared, and I pointed at her waist. “Somebody never learned not to bring a plushie to a gunfight. Sorry about your doggie.”

The stuffed plush toy from Irish’s storage chest was a blackened ruin. Cat’s face went pale, and when she looked up, it was Irish she was facing.

“Caitlin, honey,” he said, sticking his sword down into the hardwood floor and holding his hands out. Gianna winced. “Tanner lied to us both. He told me ye were dead!”

“Yeah. I figured that out.”

“You don’t have to do any of this! You don’t have to take their orders!”

She sneered, and put her guns away. “What, I should find a nice warlock and settle down? Make little hellspawn, raise them in a nice graveyard with a wrought-iron fence?”

I kept my gun aimed at Irish, and raised my eyebrows. “Irish? If she’d going to keep accusing me of stealing your virtue, I’m going to give some serious thought to doing it. At least once. For all this hassle, the least you could do is put out.”

“Not now, Alice!”

“Well, of course not. I’m going to make you buy me dinner first.”

Irish was blushing at me, when Cat got his attention again, saying quietly, “Why didn’t you look for us, Daddy?”

“What?”

“You were an Inquisitor. Nobody could hide from you. If you’d looked for us, you would have found us. Why didn’t you try?” Her voice was very soft, but her face was very hard. Very cold.

Y’know, most girls with daddy issues just go strip for a living. Why couldn’t she be one of those? She already had the leather outfit.

“Tanner and the other Confessors…” Irish stammered. “They do things to our minds, Cat. Enchantments. It never even occurred to me to doubt his word.”

“Liar.”

“Awww, that’s so sad. Mama?” Michael said. He’d drawn another of those big bowie knives in one hand, and had his gun in the other. “I love you, Mama.”

“Shut up, you goddam nitwit.” Gianna snarled, and showed her teeth. Not all vampires grow fangs, and she was one of those who just gnawed at folks. Still, her teeth looked very large with her shrunken gums and all, and she looked determined enough do some serious gnawing. “All right, kitty-cunt. What do you want?”

“What?”

“You agreed with your father that you can’t trust this Tanner, whoever he is. You implied you don’t work for the Order anymore. Is that true?” Gianna walked around the fallen antique chair and the table Larry was hiding behind. She had no weapons, but everyone in the room was watching her every move. Cat didn’t answer. “So, then. I assume you’re not here doing ‘the Lord’s’ work. What do you want?”

“No, wait, I’ve got a better question,” I said, putting my gun up, since it didn’t look like shooting Irish was going to get me anywhere at the moment, and my arm was getting tired. “If she doesn’t work for the Order anymore, how the fuck is she kicking our ass?”

Irish stared at me for a long second as the dread dawned, then he looked at Cat. “What did you do?”

“I… I didn’t…” She fell back at the look on his face, and shot me another hateful glare. “Why won’t you just die? You ruin everything!”

“Were ye following us the whole time?” He paused, eyes widening as he thought it through. “Ye followed us to the library, didn’t ye? Oh, God, Caitlin, did ye talk to the demon?” Cat paled and dropped back another step, and Irish took a step toward her, the expression on his face one of exquisite horror. “Tell me you didn’t. Please?”

“I… It said…”

Ah, I was getting it, now. The demon had given her the recruiting spiel… and she was a teenage girl. Easy sale. She was mad at Irish, mad at Tanner; of course she took the deal.

Cat glanced around the room, anything to look away from the expression on Irish’s face, and saw us all watching her. She looked back to Irish, and dropped back another step, shaking her head. “I just…” Her voice trailed off as she stared at him, and then she spun on her heel and ran. Gianna took a swipe at her, arm blurring with speed no mortal could match, and Cat dodged it without breaking stride. Just like that, she’d gone – back down the secret passage she’d used to break into the basement.

“We’re very disappointed in you, young lady!” I yelled after her. The shadow brought me the sound of her gasps, which sounded very like sobs. I smirked, then glanced at Irish. He scowled at me, and I pulled the smirk off my face in a hurry and tried to look serious. “Terrible.” I made a tsking noise and shook my head.

“God, shut up, ye awful bitch.” Irish sat heavily and put his face in his hands.

I shoved my gun in my holster and sent the shadow to smother the flames, which were just about finished with a second carpet and part of a bookcase. The floor was pretty scorched, too, and the ceiling was smoke-blackened. I rubbed my jaw, which was tender to the touch. Also, my stomach hurt something awful, where Cat had dropped her knee. Still, all told, I’d held up pretty well. Maybe I was tougher when my shadow was stronger? Hard to prove, and I didn’t relish the idea of testing it.

I stood up with a groan, planting my hands in the small of my back and stretching back a little to loosen pain-tightened stomach muscles. It felt like I’d been kicked by a mule. I glanced at Irish, who’d pulled his hands away from his face and sat back, shaking his head sadly.

I considered four or five different things to say to him, decided they’d probably all get me in more trouble, and discarded them. I went over and toed Larry, instead.

“We’re alive, kid. Get up.”

“You sure?” His voice was shaky as he lifted his head to look up at me. His cheeks were wet. His pants were dry, though, so he’d held up better than I’d expected.

“We must be. I hurt too bad to be dead.” I turned to look at Robert, who was holding his gun at his side, frowning around at the damage. He caught me looking at him, shot a quick glance at Irish, and then back to me. “Not bluffing, eh, Robert?” I asked with a smile.

“Oh, and you were?” He raised his eyebrows with skepticism.

“Hmm.” I crossed my arms, and turned to look at Irish, who was staring at me. “Oh, don’t give me that look. I was just going to wing you a little if I had to. The shadow could have pulled the magic out of the bullet. How’s that shoulder, by the way?”

“It’s –”

“Fine,” I said, pointedly. “The bullet fell out while you had your sword to my throat.”

“It never did…” his voice trailed off as he touched the former wound, and his face wrinkled up in confusion.

I righted a chair and sat down, rooting around in my pouches until I found the ruby pinky ring again. I pulled it out and looked around for my light bulb, waving it over so the light fell on the ring. “Robert, I could use some needle nose pliers, if you’ve got some. Also, a drink.” I rubbed my thumb over the stone, feeling for the little curls and twists of pattern that would lock the spells down in the ring. “Interesting thing I noticed, Irish. Care to hear?”

He waved a hand dismissively at me, sitting back in the chair again and glaring at the wall. At the trench spike still embedded there where Cat had thrown it.

“I was going to try suffocating Cat. Figured we almost did it by accident to Larry and Robert earlier, right?”

“‘We?’” Gianna repeated, crossing her arms as she walked around her basement, glaring at the damage. She circled us, coming around to stand in front of me. Her silk blouse was a torn, bloody ruin and there was blood on her hands. Her hair had fallen out of its neat little bun, and she looked like she still wanted to hurt someone. I ignored her, just for the pleasure of noticing her clenching her fists from the corner of my eye.

Michael nudged what was left of Al with his shoe. “Aw, man. I liked Al. He made me smile.”

“Only the shadow wouldn’t do it,” I went on, waving a hand to invite Gianna to take a seat. “She pointed out it didn’t work on you.”

Irish lifted his head, shifting a little to look at me. He was frowning a bit, listening despite himself.

“Also, there’s the healing thing. Robert, you got those pliers?” I glanced over my shoulder, and saw Robert still standing there with his gun. I looked over at Gianna, my expression one of neutral curiosity.

“Oh, fine.” She flipped a hand at Robert. “What are you going on about?”

“I’m being clever. Bear with me. I haven’t got to do this much lately.” Robert returned with the pliers, handing them to me. “What are the odds on that drink?” Robert turned to Gianna, who heaved a tired sigh. Robert smothered a grin, and turned back to the kitchenette, which, amazingly enough, was almost completely undamaged. “Here’s another interesting thing,” I went on, turning my attention back to Irish. “When it looked like I was about to kill your little girl, you were on me like white on rice. From halfway across the room, in the dark, in like, half a second.”

“I…” he paused, and glanced around the room, as though gauging the distance. “Ye weren’t that far off.”

“I was there.” I pointed, and the shadow spilled up from the floor to make an Alice-shaped mannequin. “You were here.” An Irish-shaped dummy formed on the floor near Larry’s feet as he stepped around the settee to join us. He flinched back from it. “That has to be thirty feet. And how did you even find me?” Irish stared at me, brows pinched together, as Robert returned with a tray of glasses and two bottles. One was filled with blood, and the other whiskey. “Thanks,” I said, taking the glass and holding it up for Robert to fill it. I took a healthy swallow, and felt good scotch burning all the way down my throat. “Fantastic.” I set the glass on the floor between my feet, and lifted the ring up to the light again, reaching in with the pliers to pry at the fastenings holding the stone in place.

“It can’t be that far,” he scoffed. “You’re remembering it wrong. I didn’t even think about it – you were so close I just moved and had you.”

“We don’t remember wrong. Ever. And that’s just it, Irish. You didn’t think about it. You just did it. What does that tell you?” He turned to look at the shadowy diagram again, thunderstruck. “I don’t know what the hell it is you guys are doing, but you haven’t lost it. You’re just getting in your own way. You’re stopping yourself from doing it.”

“That can’t be.”

“Really?” I nodded towards the diagram. “Then you tell me what happened. Seems to me Tanner and his crowd enjoy messing with your head. Seems to me it’d be easier to convince you that you’re powerless than it would be to render you powerless.” I pulled a sliver of shadow out of a passing wisp, and pressed it into the face of the ruby. It refracted, like the opposite of light, and three smaller slivers extended in different directions from the opposite facets of the stone. “Huh. That’s interesting.”

“What are you doing?” Gianna studied the ring, a little crinkle between her eyebrows as she watched me fiddling with it.

“Larry made me think of it.” I nodded at Larry, who broke out in a big grin at the acknowledgement. “If body-hopping Carl is a geist, the only thing holding him here is the power he’s got build up. Drain that off, and he disappears.” I twirled the ring between my fingers. “This is a conduit into all that power. Heck, it’s a conduit that lets him into a living,” I nodded to Gianna, “or mostly living person. So I’m going to pop a little hole in its defenses, drop it into the void, and let the shadows drain him away to nothing.” I grinned. “And even if he isn’t a geist, it’s still going to put a serious hurt on his power stores. I doubt he’ll be able to close it up.”

“You can do that?” Irish sat up a bit, eying me while Michael gave Larry a congratulatory slap on the back that doubled the skinny kid over. “And what do ye mean, shadows, plural?”

“Yep. And once he’s weakened or gone, Benny should resurface.” If there was anything left of Benny in there, that is. I doubted it. Gianna didn’t need to know that bit yet, though. “My shadow came from somewhere else, right? What, did you think she was the only one in her universe? Near as I can tell, the place is teeming with them. And they’re hungry. I’d originally planned on sending her back home, but that didn’t pan out. She wanted to stay.”

Gianna scowled. “She? Your shadow? What are you?”

I held up the enchanted ruby, and grinned at the room full of folks staring at me, while shadows moved around the room leisurely. “Still the scariest one in the room.”

Table of Contents / Chapter Thirty-Five >>

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