Bite Marks

I said, “We need to destroy that weapon.”

“How are we going to do that without leaving the circle?” asked Bergman.

What do you say when you have no clue? I was reaching back into my memory, trying to recall if everybody else would still be protected if I broke the loop, when another body hurtled through the gaping hole that had once been the front entry.

“Vayl!” I stepped forward, but Cole grabbed my arm, held me back as my sverhamin slammed into the demon. They hit the Fisher Price fridge with a crash that made the whole room shake. The sucker took the impact like a child’s toy should, but the door popped open and rained fake takeout all over the combatants as they rolled away.

Vayl had armored himself in ice, one of the powers he’d lifted off a Chinese vampire who was now mostly vapor. It immediately began to melt, the blessings coating the room surrounding it and attacking like white blood cells on bacteria. He was still better protected than Kyphas, whose skin had begun to bubble while she scratched at his slick coating and screamed her frustration that the boomerang wasn’t working faster.

Vayl swung, hitting her cheekbone so solidly that when her neck snapped sideways I was sure it had broken. But she carried some unseen protections of her own. With her face bruising and her eye swelling shut, she wound up and delivered, knocking a chunk of ice off Vayl’s chin. She followed with a kick to his ribs that threw him to one side.

Jack began to bark. “He’s fine,” I whispered, my hand working nervously on Cassandra’s sword hilt.

“He’s holding his own.”

But the armor was melting fast. Already I could see bare shoulder and the tattered remnants of his pants glaring through at the calf.

Fog had begun to fill the room along with a thin layer of water, heat, and the faint stench of death. It felt like we’d stepped into a swamp. Inside the circle we bounced on the balls of our feet in readiness, though we didn’t know for what. Then the boomerang hit a window and shattered it. Kyphas shouted with triumph as it flew back through the door and banged into our shield. The blisters on her skin began to heal.

“Cassandra, Bergman, start praying,” I said.

As they began the familiar incantation, “ ‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,’ ” I gripped the sword with both hands.

Vayl’s entire back was exposed now, wide red stripes appearing over his existing scars where the holy words had begun to burn him. But he kept fighting, clubbing Kyphas with his glacial fists, lifting her so far off the floor I could see chair legs behind her dangling feet.

She reached up, caught the boomerang, and bounced it off the floor. In the seconds it took to return to her hand it transformed again, into a flaming dagger that she sank deep into his side.

My scream, lost in his bellow of pain, worked like a starting gun on Jack. He leaped from the circle. I yanked my hand back, thinking his leash had slipped to my wrist when I’d taken a better grip on Cassandra’s sword. It hadn’t. It had dropped altogether.

Suddenly one of those bits of trivia rushed back to me. The detail you forget the second you answer question twenty-five correctly on your Fiend Lore final. Which is the fact that demons get a kick out of infecting animals. And their favorite critter to smack with the Wicked Crazies is the canine.

As Jack sprinted toward Kyphas, his growl so fierce it brought goose bumps on my arms, I saw her eyes flash a sunspot yellow.

“NO!” I yelled, jumping from the circle.

“Jaz!” Cole’s protest sounded like distant thunder as I swung. She moved just as I hit, protecting her neck by exposing her shoulder. I buried the sword so deep that it lodged in bone.

At the same time Vayl shoved his fist into her sternum. She took the hit full in the chest, the ice melting on contact with a frying hamburger sizzle. Then Jack bit.

Kyphas squealed like a pig at the county fair scramble as the wounds opened and her blood flowed, making Vayl’s pupils flash red.

Jack’s teeth sank deeper in her thigh and he shook , his growls resonating through her skin so deeply I could feel them through the sword hilt.

Damage. Yeah, we could tear her up. Make her fry even. But none of it would pull off the ultimate deed.

I felt my heart twist as I heard Cassandra’s voice, high and shaky behind me, repeating the litany that ought to protect her and my guys.

“ ‘And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ ” Powerful binding, especially when combined with our weaponry. But still not enough. We needed more!

“Raoul!” I yelled. “Quit dicking around in happy land, get your ass down here, and help already!” I know, not the language you should use when requesting assistance from the Eldhayr who’s already done you a string of whopping favors. But if he wasn’t in the direct business of forgiveness, I figured it must be a sideline. So I was slightly surprised when he strode through the door wearing the exact expression Albert once reserved for my grounded-for-eternity lectures.

“You do realize you have the mouth of an illiterate homeless thief? And your timing!” He sighed. “Can you even imagine how quiet the last week has been?” he demanded in his slight Spanish accent. “I got actual work done.”

I couldn’t imagine what kind. How do you perform any sort of labor and then gallop to your earthly charge’s rescue without putting a dent in your immaculate black beret or laying a single scuff on the toes of your massive all-weather boots?

“What do you call this?” I demanded as Vayl delivered another skull-cracking blow to Kyphas, who countered with an attack that would’ve punctured a lung if his chest hadn’t been well protected.