settling on me. That vampire strength pressed down, and I couldn’t seem to get the leverage to slip away from him. Reaching for Ben’s dropped stake seemed unlikely, but I tried. Meanwhile, that open mouth and those vicious sharp teeth sank closer to my neck.
I wouldn’t panic. He couldn’t kill me by biting me and taking my blood. Not unless he took it all.
The vampire grunted, an instinctive burst of surprise in a creature who didn’t have to breathe. Ben was hanging off him, arm braced around his neck, trying to pry him off me. Nice thought, but strangling him wasn’t going to do any good. It did give me a chance to knee him in the gut. It felt a little like kneeing a wall.
Without a stake, or holy water, or something, we weren’t going to get out of this fix. Ben still hung on, strong enough to stay with the vampire if not strong enough to rip his head off bare-handed. His face was flush with effort.
I reached for his eyes, an act of desperation; if I could claw them, scratch them, blind him—hurt him, even a little bit, as unlikely as that seemed—we’d be able to regroup and try the next thing. I couldn’t get a grip. The vampire twisted his head, snapped his teeth, and when he caught the skin of my forearm, he tore. Blood streamed down to my elbow; a length of skin hung loose.
Snarling, I punched at him, or tried to. Ben, his own growl burring in his throat, had done the same from the opposite direction, which only served to mildly rattle the vampire.
“Ms. Norville, Mr. O’Farrell, move aside,” a newcomer commanded.
I’d have liked to. It was easier said than done. Then, once again, Ben fell, yanked back by a shape in the darkness. He let out a bark.
A cane swung above me, striking the vampire’s head, sounding like a beat on a hollow melon. The vampire fell, and I scrambled away. If I had hit the vampire like that, even with werewolf strength, the guy probably wouldn’t have noticed.
But Marid was holding the cane.
The guy was on his back now, and Marid didn’t give him a chance to recover enough to sit up, much less stand. Moving next to him, he stepped a booted foot across his neck. Then Marid set the sharpened tip of the wooden cane on the other vampire’s chest and leaned.
“No, no, no—!” the prone vampire managed to gasp before the cane’s point broke through skin, then through ribs. The vampire arced, muscles contracting at once, and flailed like a bug on a pin before going limp, his skin turning gray and desiccated, leaving an aged corpse stuck to Marid’s cane.
Marid stepped on the dried-out chest and used the leverage to yank out the cane. A puff of ash rose up. Marid didn’t glance back.
“Ben?” I asked, looking.
He was picking himself up, brushing himself off, and his scowl hinted at a foul mood. “I hate vampires.”
“Present company excepted, I’m sure,” Marid said, donning a crooked smile.
Ben huffed, and asked, “You okay?”
I was frowning at the gash in my arm. “Nothing a little time won’t heal.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, coming at me and holding my arm up to study it. He pulled me close and dropped a kiss on my cheek. A big chunk of tension drained away at that, and I breathed in Ben’s scent.
Marid leaned on his cane, regarding us with amusement.
“Thanks,” I said, over Ben’s shoulder. Marid waved me away with a tip of his hand.
“How are we doing otherwise?” Ben said, keeping hold of my hand.
I listened and couldn’t hear anything that sounded like fighting. When I tipped my nose to the air, the only blood I smelled was my own.
“Almost finished,” Marid said. “We’re cleaning up now. We managed to drive them off.”
“How many did we lose?” I asked.
“Two of Caleb’s pack, and one of Ned’s Family,” the vampire answered. “Not bad, all in all.”
“But not good,” I said, and he shrugged. I hoped Caleb was okay. I wanted to find him, to see if I could do anything to help.
The three of us went back to the path, and from there to the hill where we’d started. We let Marid walk on ahead.
“I’m glad Cormac wasn’t here,” Ben said softly.
“He’d have been okay.” I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded.
“I worry about the day he isn’t,” he said.
“Well, that’s what family does.” It wouldn’t matter if Cormac was a corporate drone or a firefighter. We’d still worry.
“If he ever gets bitten, if a werewolf ever infects him, he’ll kill himself. You know that, right? If it had been him instead of me who’d been bitten that night, he’d have just shot himself.” Many years of worry strained his voice. Cormac had been hunting werewolves a long time.
“That was before Amelia,” I said. “You think maybe she could change his mind?”
“Or drive him even more crazy.”
The others had gathered at the top of the hill. The meeting might have been going on, uninterrupted, if there hadn’t been so much blood and sour sweat on the air, smells of death and fear. Bodies—naked, human—lay on the sloping lawn. A wolf with a human companion—another werewolf—moved around the area in a patrol.
Ned watched the tableau. He was holding his left arm with his right, and I had to study him a moment to figure out why. His sleeve hung in tatters, and the arm inside was likewise shredded. A wound like that, there should have been more blood, but the shirt still shone white, and the flesh underneath was strangely clean. Vampires didn’t have much to bleed. Still, the skin and muscle hung in ribbons, pale and pink, torn away from the shoulder, rent in jagged tears by claws and teeth. An ivory gleam of bone, the round joint of the shoulder, shone through. A wolf hadn’t just attacked, it had hung on and gnawed. Ned seemed strangely unconcerned.
Antony and a pair of vampires from Ned’s Family also stood nearby, keeping watch.
“Are you all right?” I said to Ned.
“This is nothing,” he said. “What about you? I could smell you coming fifty yards away.”
I looked at my own arm, which in contrast to his was red and dripping. The swathe of pain throbbed in time with my pulse.
Ben unbuttoned and pulled off his shirt. Taking my arm, he used the shirt as a makeshift bandage, tying off the wound and mopping up blood. The pressure settled the pain to a dull roar.
Caleb stood a few yards away from us; his eyes shone dull gold. Rage contained. He cupped a cell phone in his hand, pressed to his head. “I’ve got a cleanup,” he said. Then, after listening a moment, “More of theirs than ours.” He clicked the phone off and shoved it in a pocket.
“I have people who can take care of that,” Ned said.
“This is my territory, vampire, I can handle it.”
“I think there’s enough mess for both of you to clean up,” I said. Even I thought I sounded tired.
“You two all right?” the alpha werewolf asked. He didn’t seem tired at all; rather, he seemed ready to go another round.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Anyone who isn’t needed here should get indoors,” Caleb said. “Ned, you, too. Get that fixed.” He gestured at the injured arm.
“I can help—”
“We’re supposed to be working together. Isn’t that what this is all about? We work together, I trust you, you trust me. Try to keep blowups like this from happening. Keep the buggers out of our city.” He shook his head. “I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”
“All right, then,” Ned said.
Ben touched my arm and nodded down the path; I caught the scent just before they appeared—a new group of werewolves, burly, broad shoulders built up from manual labor, five-o’clock shadows from being up all night. Caleb approached them, and they ducked their gazes in submissive greetings. In moments, they went for the bodies, slinging them over their shoulders. The visual—these strong and silent men carrying off naked, bloodied bodies—was surreal, definitely criminal.
“He’s right,” Marid said, after we’d watched a moment. “We should go.”
