with us, would.
Mick wouldn’t be able to contain his dragon, and he’d kill us all, maybe himself, too. Emmett Smith, mighty sorcerer, was cursing as nose blood gushed all over his pristine suit. He desperately held his handkerchief to his face, gasping for breath. No help there.
Cassandra was flat on the floor, Pamela over her. Her halfwolf body contorted, flashing in and out of wolf and wolfhuman. Claws raked against Cassandra’s back, and Cassandra cried weakly. Ansel, fangs gleaming, eyes molten red, launched himself at Coyote’s body. There was no one left to hold him back.
My Beneath magic, which had been waiting below my surface, now gleefully sprang forth, knowing I wouldn’t be able to control it.
The demon-goddess sensed my building power and smiled at me. Our battle would be the death of us all— whether or not we opened the vortexes, there would be a smoking crater where my hotel had once stood.
“Bring it, girl,” the succubus said.
I forced my hand down to my side, the incandescent ball of light in it fighting to get free. “No,” I said.
“No? You want to, sweetie. You want to see who’d win this fight.”
“Maybe. But they’d all die,” I said.
“What do you care? They’re far weaker than you, even that pathetic ununculous who killed my son.”
“Coyote died to help us.
The succubus’s gaze moved to Emmett. “I want the sorcerer.”
“Fine. Whoever wins, gets him.”
“Damn you,” Emmett burbled. “I’m not a prize.”
“You are today,” I said. “Shut up. Your hunger for power has resulted in the death of my friend, and you get to pay for that.” The ball of light flared in my palm, its incandescence making everyone cringe, even the big, bad Emmett. My headache vanished, and I felt whole, healed, and unstoppable.
The demon-goddess’s lip curled. “Do you challenge me, Stormwalker?”
I drew a breath to answer, but before I could, someone rushed past me. Fremont, the least affected by the hex, snatched up the knife Mick had dropped on the floor and hurtled himself toward the succubus.
“Fremont!” I yelled. “No!”
Fremont ignored me. I had to banish my Beneath magic again before I could grab for him, and then it was too late.
“I thought you were an angel,” Fremont sobbed, his voice harsh with betrayal. He plunged the knife straight into the succubus.
It didn’t kill her. She was a demon-goddess, immune to the weapons of man. Coyote had died because his god powers had been somehow stripped away, rendering him mortal.
The succubus was immortal and could only be defeated by magic. Collective magic, maybe. If I could get Cassandra and Mick functioning, maybe Emmett as well . . . If I could make the hex work against her somehow . . .
Without stopping to think, I charged. She smacked Fremont away, and raised her hand to knock me aside. I grabbed the forces of the storm outside and filled the hotel with wind.
The hex made certain it turned into a tornado. Wind ripped through the lobby, tearing the remaining pictures from the walls, overturning furniture. It lifted the coyote statue and sent it flying through the air. The statue smashed through a window, tumbling end over end to land in the parking lot outside. The window immediately sealed itself once again, the hex not wanting the living inside to escape.
The succubus laughed at me. She seemed to stand in a bubble of protection, and the wind didn’t touch her. The knife still stuck out of her chest, and she put her hands on her hips and laughed.
I couldn’t reach her. Screw Coyote’s warnings about the vortexes. I had to end this.
I lifted my hand again, my Beneath magic thrilled to come out. I hefted the white ball of magic. “Hey, succubus,” I said.
The succubus’s eyes widened, but not at my magic. Her chest had started to smoke. She grabbed the hilt of the knife and tried to pull it from between her breasts, but the blade stayed inside her as though welded in place.
I snuffed out my ball of Beneath magic and watched, openmouthed.
Coyote’s blood coated the knife. Fremont had shoved the blade into her heart, or whatever passed for a demon-goddess’s heart.
The blood of a god wasn’t the blood of a mortal. Coyote’s blood held his essence, and now that essence wound itself through the demon-goddess.
That crafty little trickster god. It wasn’t his death that would save us, but the knife that had killed him.
The succubus’s sticky gray aura exploded and splattered all over the room. The aura stuck to the walls and worked its way inside, trying desperately to draw strength from the hex.
Forget Beneath magic. I reached for wind still whipping through the room, drawing the cyclone to me and making it mine. I laughed as I sent it at her dying body.
I ripped her apart. As the succubus fell, a misshapen creature ten feet tall, mottled green and blue, and ugly as hell rose from the wreckage of her body. The demon, in its true form, the succubus’s glamour gone. It screamed at me through a fang-laden mouth as it clutched at the knife.
Mick dragged himself up, his tattoos still going crazy, his eyes flickering red. He blasted the demon with a white-hot stream of fire, and I followed with a burst pure from the storm. The demon succubus fought with renewed fury, its chest smoking, but it couldn’t withstand the two of us, Stormwalker and Firewalker, assisted by Coyote’s blood sacrifice.
The demon screamed once more before it fell to my tile floor in an explosion of goo.
“The wards!” Mick shouted. He redirected his magic to the hotel’s walls, and I followed. The black aura of the dead succubus resisted us, but our poor, battered wards burned with renewed brightness.
Our wards twined happily around our magic like pets welcoming home long-absent humans. The hex crumbled and dissolved, our magic rushing through the walls like a river of fresh blood through shriveled veins. The demon-goddess’s aura dissipated with the hex, until both died with a little shriek on the wind.
Mick’s fire went out. The gale swirled around me once, embracing me, then rushed away, leaving the hotel lobby in silence.
The lights sprang to life, followed by a soft hum as the central heating clicked on. Outside, thunder boomed, and then the storm drifted away on a gentle rain.
I turned to Mick, wiping dead demon gore from my face, but before I could reach his open arms, all strength left my limbs, and the floor rushed up to meet me.
ELEVEN
I WOKE IN ONE OF MY FAVORITE POSITIONS, my head in Mick’s lap. His eyes had returned to the dark blue I loved, but the look in them was bleak.
“What the hell happened?” Pamela demanded. She’d reverted to her human form, and she glowered down at me, tall and naked, a Changer woman in all her glory.
“Coyote’s blood,” I croaked.
We all craned to look at Coyote—and found him gone. Vanished, not a trace of him, not even a coyote hair left behind.
“His heart’s blood.” I moved my tongue inside my parched mouth. “Coyote had to die to release it. I guess he figured that whoever we faced would be so powerful we’d need that formidable weapon.”
“So he’s really dead?” Fremont asked.
Who the hell knew? Coyote might have gone back to whatever sacred place gods went to when they left the world, maybe never to return in the form we knew. My heart ached.
