Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [121]
Nikolaos let Zachary drop to the floor and turned, face bloodstained, the front of her pink dress crimson. Blood spattered on her white leotards. Zachary’s throat was torn out. He lay gasping on the floor but still moving, alive.
She stared at Burchard’s body, then screamed, a wild banshee sound that wailed and echoed. She rushed me, hands outstretched. I threw the knife, and she batted it away. She hit me, the force of her body slamming me into the floor, her scrambling on top of me. She was still screaming, over and over. She held my head to one side. No mind tricks, brute strength.
I screamed, “Nooo!”
A gun fired, and Nikolaos jerked, once, twice. She rose off me, and I felt the wind. It was creeping through the room like the beginnings of a storm.
Edward leaned against the wall, holding Zachary’s dropped gun.
Nikolaos went for him, and he emptied the gun into her frail body. She didn’t even hesitate.
I sat up and watched her stalk towards Edward. He threw the empty gun at her. She was suddenly on him, forcing him back into the floor.
The sword lay on the floor, nearly as tall as I was. I drew it out of its sheath. Heavy, awkward, drawing my arm down. I raised it over my head, flat of the blade half resting on my shoulder, and ran for Nikolaos.
She was talking again in a high, sing-song voice. “I will make you mine, mortal. Mine!”
Edward screamed. I couldn’t see why. I raised the sword, and its weight carried it down and across, like it was meant to. It bit into her neck with a great wet thunk. The sword grated on bone, and I drew it out. The tip fell to scrape on the floor.
Nikolaos turned to me and started to stand. I raised the sword, and it cut outward, swinging my body with it. Bone cracked, and I fell to the floor as Nikolaos tumbled to her knees. Her head still hung by strips of meat and skin. She blinked at me and tried to stand up.
I screamed and drove the blade upward with everything I had. It took her between the breasts, and I stood running with it, shoving it in. Blood poured. I pinned her against the wall. The blade shoved out her back, scraping along the wall as she slid downward.
I dropped to my knees beside the body. Yes, the body. She was dead!
I looked back at Edward. There was blood on his neck. “She bit me,” he said.
I was gasping for air, having trouble breathing, but it was wonderful. I was alive and she wasn’t. She fucking wasn’t. “Don’t worry, Edward, I’ll help you. Plenty of Holy Water left.” I smiled.
He stared at me a minute, then laughed, and I laughed with him. We were still laughing when the wererats crept in from the tunnel. Rafael, the Rat King, stared at the carnage with black-button eyes. “She is dead.”
“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” I said.
Edward picked it up, half-singing, “The wicked old witch.”
We collapsed into laughter again, and Lillian the doctor, all covered with fur, tended our hurts, Edward first.
Zachary was still lying on the ground. The wound at his throat was beginning to close up, skin knitting together. He would live, if that was the right word.
I picked my knife up off the floor and staggered to him. The rats watched me. No one interfered. I dropped to my knees beside him and ripped the sleeve of his shirt. I laid the gris-gris bare. He still couldn’t talk, but his eyes widened.
“Remember when I tried to touch this with my own blood? You stopped me. You seemed afraid, and I didn’t understand why.” I sat beside him and watched him heal. “Every gris-gris has a thing you must do for it, vampire blood for this one, and one thing you must never do, or the magic stops. Poof.” I held up my arm, dripping blood quite nicely. “Human blood, Zachary; is that bad?”
He managed a noise like, “Don