“This was not goddess energy,” Michael said.
“Couldn’t you see it?” I asked.
“I could feel it, but I concentrated on repairing the damage to our wards so that more would not follow her. I trusted Michael to chase out that which had crossed our borders and to keep you safe.”
“That’s a lot to trust someone with,” I said.
“You’ve seen him armed for battle, Marshal; do you believe my trust is misplaced?”
I flashed back on the image of Michael with the burning sword and that shadow of wings over him. I shook my head. “No, it’s not misplaced.”
“Someone talk to me,” Edward said, “now.”
“I lowered my shields to see if the vampire was ours, and Michael here tried to taste my power by making the opening a little bigger.”
“You mean like what happened with Sanchez earlier,” Edward said.
I nodded.
“I did not damage your shields deliberately,” he said.
“I believe you,” I said. “And the Mother of All Darkness tried to eat me again. But Michael stopped her, cast her out.”
“To hell?” Bernardo asked, still looking haunted.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, just out of here.”
“How did it get through our wards?” Michael asked.
“I think I carry a piece of her inside me all the time now,” I said. “Once you let me inside your wards, she had an in.”
“You don’t taste evil, Marshal.”
“She did something to me earlier today. It’s messed with my psychic abilities, opened me up, somehow.”
“I think we can help there, and I would love to hear more about what she is and how you came to her attention.”
“We don’t have time for this, Anita,” Edward said.
“I know,” I said.
“The Darkness has tried to eat her twice in the same day,” Olaf said. “Eventually, if Anita doesn’t learn how to guard herself better, she will lose.”
Edward and I stared at the big man. “How much did you see or feel?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said.
“Then why are you the one encouraging me to get all metaphysical?”
“Marmee Noir wants you, Anita. I understand obsession.” He stared at me with those cave-dark eyes, and I fought not to look away. I couldn’t decide which was more unsettling, the intensity in his gaze or the lack of any other emotion. It was as if, in that moment, he was simply pared down to the need in his eyes. “She’s chosen you for her victim, and she will have you unless you can fix what she damaged inside you, protect yourself better, or kill her first.”
I gave a harsh laugh. “Kill the Mother of All Vampires? Not likely.”
“Why not?” Olaf asked.
I frowned at him. “If she can do all this to me from thousands of miles away, then I do not want to see what she’s capable of if I’m physically closer. All vampire powers grow with proximity.”
“A bomb would do it, something with high heat yield.”
I searched his face, trying to read something in it that I could really get a handle on and understand, but it was almost as bad as staring into the faces of the shapeshifters in their half-human forms. I just couldn’t decipher him.
“I’d still have to get to the city she’s in, and that would be too close. Besides, I don’t know anything about bombs.”
“I do,” he said.
I finally got a clue. “Are you offering to go with me?”
He just nodded.
“Damn it,” Edward said.
I looked at him. I shook my head. “I won’t ask you to go.”
“I can’t let you go off alone with him to hunt her.” He said it as if it were a done deal, a given.
I shook my head, and waved my hands as if erasing something in the air. “I’m not going either. None of us is getting any nearer to her.”
“If you do not kill her first, she will surely kill you,” Olaf said.
“Should we be talking about this in front of witnesses?” Bernardo asked. He had finally moved closer to us.
We looked at Phoebe and Michael as if we’d forgotten them. I almost had. Edward never forgot anything, but as he looked at me, I realized that there was guilt in his eyes. I’d never seen that for anyone but Donna and the kids.
I reached out and laid fingers on his arm, a gentle touch. “You dying trying to kill Marmee Noir would not have helped me now. You’d be dead, and I’d be alone with these two.”
That almost earned me a smile. “Or she’d be dead, and you’d be safe.”
I gripped his arm, tight. “Don’t second-guess yourself, Edward, you’re not good at it. Certainty is all we have on shit like this.”
He did smile, then. “Look who’s talking, Ms. Doubting-All-My-Choices.”
“Are you saying that thing has a physical body, on this plane, right now?” Michael asked.
I thought about the question, then nodded. “I’ve seen where her body lies, so yeah.”
“I thought you’d never been physically close to her.”
“Only in dreams and nightmares,” I said.
Music started-“Wild Boys” by Duran Duran-and it still took me a minute to realize it was my cell phone. I fumbled it out of my pocket, vowing to pick a different song for Nathaniel to put into the phone so I could get rid of this one.
“Anita,” Wicked said, “are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you being coerced?”
“No, no, I’m fine, really.”
“I cannot get inside. I cannot even step on the doorstep.” Wicked’s voice sounded afraid; other than for his brother’s life, I’d never heard him afraid.
“You don’t have to, Wicked, just wait outside. I’ll come to you in a little bit.”
“I felt the Mother of All Darkness, and then I felt…” He seemed at a loss for words.
I almost helped him out, but he was a vampire, and it had been angels. I wanted to know what he’d sensed.
He finally spoke again, “When I first arrived, I could have entered the house with an invitation, but now I wouldn’t dare. It glows like something holy.”
“The priestess had to redo the shields,” I said, “to keep out Marmee Noir.”
“If anything goes wrong in there, I cannot help you.”
“It’s covered, Wicked, honest.”
“I know you have Edward with you, but I am your bodyguard, Anita. Jean-Claude charged me with your safety. If I let you die here, Jean-Claude would kill me and my brother. He’d probably kill Truth first and make me watch, and then he’d kill me. And right this second, I can’t reach you. Shit.”
“Isn’t that usually my line?” I said.
“Don’t make a joke of this, Anita.”
“Look, I’m sorry you can’t enter past the wards, but we are all right, and you couldn’t have kept me safe from Marmee Noir even if you’d been with me.”
“And that is another problem. I could see her like some black storm towering over the house. She ignored me as if I didn’t exist, but I felt her power, Anita. All the weapons training in the world won’t stop her.”
“Apparently, magic does,” I said.
