I pushed Anastasia sharply away from me and dived in the other direction to get behind what was left of the table as the first bullet whined over my head. It knocked Royce back to a kneel, snarling at me as he clutched his shoulder where the bullet had embedded itself. Guess she was still on my side after all. Glory Hallelujah.
I looked around frantically for the other gun, but somehow in the shuffle with Anastasia it had gone missing. Not only that, but both Royce and Anastasia were getting back to their feet. The stake made a disgusting slurping, popping sound as she slid it out of her stomach and flung it across the room. Judging by the look she was giving me, I’d better think of something else quick because she was going to flay me alive the second she got her hands on me.
Though every part of me screamed some kind of protest, from my chest down to my knees, I took to running, skittering around table legs to meet Sara. I tossed her some extra ammo while I ran, my breath coming in tight, wheezing gasps. My eyes widened when I saw the focus on the floor, just a few yards away, dangerously close to where Chaz and Rohrik were still fighting with each other. Both of them were covered with bites and claw marks, dripping blood on the floor, but I had no time to worry about it.
I ran past Sara and slid on my knees to scoop the thing up in my hand. Abruptly, the room seemed to shift like I was seeing two of everything.
No, not everything. The room itself was steady. It was the people in it that weren’t. I could see the Weres, the vampires, and even David clutching at his injured knee and shouting something in a language I couldn’t understand. Sara was shouting at me, too, but I couldn’t hear her clearly over the snarls and yips of the Weres.
It was as if there were two of each of them, all moving and shuffling and fighting in motions too fast for me to completely make out. Like there was something solid and then a ghostly bluish-white “something” behind and a little above them. What were those things? Despite the danger, I took a second to try to focus on one of them, maybe figure out what it was and if it was something I could use.
Almost the second I did look at one, I had a complete awareness of the Were I was looking at. Mark Roberts of the Moonwalker tribe. Accountant and happily married father of two by day, werewolf by night. Not too high nor too low in the pack’s pecking order. He was afraid, desperately, for himself and bleeding heavily from a bite in his throat. One of the not-pack had bitten him, tried to take out his throat. He could feel it, the pain, the blood, but he couldn’t stop fighting. Something was making him fight, making him stay, even though he wanted to run, to be out of this vampire den that smelled like blood and death, to hide and lick his wounds.
I could feel his pain. His fear. His confusion.
I had no idea what I was doing. Didn’t want to know. Just as abruptly as I’d come to focus on him, I lost whatever it was as something else, a sense of gathering power, nabbed my attention. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I twisted to look in David’s direction.
Another one of those balls of energy was coming at me fast—too fast. I had no time to dive out of the way and nothing to protect me. All I had time to do was clutch the focus close to my chest as the sickly greenish thing hit me square in the stomach. I screamed in agony as what felt like liquid fire splashed over my skin, spreading all over my body. Sara cried out, but I couldn’t hear the words, couldn’t think beyond the pain other than that I knew I couldn’t let go of the damned piece of stone in my hands or I was dead, all of us were dead.
After a moment, the pain faded enough for me to stop screaming, and I lay there, panting and staring but not exactly seeing what was across the room from me. Except that something was wrong. Different. Quiet, except for my pained whimpers and a faint, angry chitter from Bob, who had somehow managed to cling to my jacket throughout all the fighting. I had just enough of my senses left to know it shouldn’t be this quiet.
Every one of the Weres in the room had stopped fighting. They were shaking their heads a little, some clutching at their ears, looking around in confusion and fright.
“Give it back to me! Now!” David screamed, his hands in tight fists at his sides. Somehow, while I’d been distracted by burning into a crispy critter, he’d found his balance and managed to stand. “Give it to me before I kill you!”
“I think not,” came Royce’s smooth, angry voice from somewhere I couldn’t quite see. My vision was too blurred, even without the weird haze of energy surrounding everyone in the room but Sara and me. I still tried to look, though just the simple act of turning my head made it feel like skin was being peeled off my neck and shoulder in the process. It took everything I had not to cry out in pain again.
Royce was holding Anastasia by the throat. He held her up and slightly to one side as easily as a child might hold a balloon, despite her nails clawing at his arm, making tatters of his shirt. She was snapping her fangs at him, her twisting body as sinuous and unnatural as a snake’s. It looked for all the world like it took him no effort to casually heft her off the ground. Her feet were fourteen inches off the floor and even from here it looked like his fingers would leave permanent indentations in the skin of her neck.
David took a wobbling hop-step toward me, the fingers of one hand extended in my direction while the other arm was flung sideways for balance. His voice was urgent now, afraid. Not like before. “Give it to me, now, or we’re all dead. They’ll kill you, too, if they aren’t controlled!”
Royce laughed, amused even as he was crushing the windpipe of the woman in his grasp. Her mouth was opening and closing like she was trying to scream. “No, my friend. She’s not yours. Not one of your puppets.”
A low, steady growling was building up. Not from Royce. From the Weres in the room. I could feel their attention swinging to David, knowing him for the cause of their fear, tasting his own on the air like a fine wine. He smelled like food, and in that moment, I knew, knew without a doubt, what his flesh and blood would taste like. I could almost taste the salty sweetness of blood on my tongue. I hoped to God that whichever Were I picked that stray thought from wouldn’t become more solid in my consciousness. I didn’t want to know who it was, his name or profession. Who he had killed.
“We’ll kill you, but she’ll be left alone.”
“No!” David screamed, and I flinched as that green light started to form at his fingertips again.
Royce threw Anastasia like a rag doll, a casual gesture, and I winced in sympathy at the sound of the impact, the unmistakable crunch of breaking bone. I watched helplessly as the two lovers flew across the room, sliding in the Were blood spattered on the floor to stop in the midst of the werewolves. Immediately the beasts started to circle, closer, closer, and I closed my eyes as the mingling horrified screams of the vampire and sorcerer became frantic, animal, panicked. I managed to catch only a brief glimpse of their panicked faces as they clutched at each other when the Weres moved as one, converging on the two like a living carpet of fur, teeth, and claws.
The screams didn’t last long. But by all that is holy, those sounds, the shrill wavering cries cutting off so abruptly, the sounds of cracking and ripping like wet cloth being torn apart, were going to haunt me in my nightmares. If I got out of this alive tonight.
I turned away, not wanting to see the roiling, furred bodies converging on whatever was left of Anastasia and David. The thick cracks and sounds of flesh tearing made me want to throw up, but I hadn’t eaten anything in hours. Dry heaves made something grind low in my chest, and I had to fight the encroaching blackness in my vision as my mind tried to turn off the pain and horrors around me and just pass out.
That’s when Royce came toward me. I also noticed Chaz, out of the corner of my eye, bleeding from numerous wounds but alive and stalking in my direction. And lo and behold, there was Arnold standing by the door, horrorstruck and unable to come closer due to the three dozen frenzied, feeding Weres between him and us.
Sara stepped between us and lifted the gun, shifting her stance so she could keep both the vampire and the Were in sight. They both froze. “You okay, Shia?”
I tried to answer. Bad move, trying to breathe. After a brief fit of extremely painful coughing, I managed to choke out an answer. “I’ve been better.”
She gave a faint laugh, forced, shifting her weight uncomfortably as Royce sidled another step closer. “You got any bright ideas on how to get out of here?”
Oh great. Sara asking me for ideas. Royce called out, his voice that same, melodic tone I remembered, just as friendly and smooth as it had been while he told David he was dogmeat. “I can escort you out. Just give me the focus, and I’ll get the Weres out of here.”
Chaz answered those words with an abrupt, angry growl, hackles rising and bloodstained teeth snapping at him in a truly frightening display. Royce didn’t even flinch.
I wanted to say something witty. It hurt too much to talk, so I just settled on shaking my head. Bob made a small sound in my ear that seemed like a warning, though against what I had no idea. Both of the Others came closer still, Sara’s voice shaking as she looked back over her shoulder at me for direction. “Shia…”
Enough was enough. This stupid focus was the cause of enough pain and misery to last several lifetimes. Thanks to this thing, two magi, a vampire, and a sorcerer were dead. Who knew how many Others or how many people had been killed due to David’s handiwork, or what he’d had to do to get the power and knowledge to make it. If Royce got his hands on it, he’d use it to get the Weres out of here, all right. But then he’d use them, just like David had. If Chaz took it, he would take over the Moonwalker tribe, maybe others, and control his own pack on an entirely new level. I couldn’t let Arnold have it, or he’d use it, too, manipulating everyone—maybe even Chaz this time—just like David had.
“Are you still with me?” I whispered, coughing slightly again and doing my best to keep my eyes open so I could keep an eye on Royce, Chaz, and Arnold. Sara was a good shot, but she wouldn’t be able to stop them all in time.
The belt answered me, just as I’d hoped. Faint, but it was there. Still here. You’re bleeding internally—I can’t do much more than slow it down. It’s tough keeping you humans alive.
I almost laughed, but the slight hitch of muscles in my chest and more of that grinding feeling, pressure and pain on one of my lungs, were deterrent enough. “Just a little longer,” I promised it, twisting from my back onto my side, panting as I clutched the focus to my chest. It wasn’t a lack of strength. It was the pain of my broken ribs and the sensation like my skin had charred, even though what I could see looked perfectly healthy, if a little pale. The pain of that spell David lobbed at me was all in my head, I guess. Didn’t make it hurt any less.
Royce inched forward again, Chaz hesitantly following in his footsteps. “What are you doing?”
Sara backed up another step closer to me and lifted the gun, firing a warning shot into the ceiling. Glass tinkled and plaster rained down between her and the Others. The two froze, the other Weres lifting their heads from their “meal” and turning toward us, ears pricked in alarm or curiosity. They were behind me, but I could “feel” them looking, the same way I knew Mark Roberts had been bleeding and afraid. Just like I could feel a mixed sense of hunger, elation, and fear from Royce. Funny to think that he was afraid. Funnier still that his fear was of me.
I coughed again and spat out a bit of blood, taking a few shallow breaths to compose myself before I looked up at the vampire and gave him his answer. “What needs to be done.”
With that, I focused every last ounce of energy I could muster, doing what I could to pull more force with the help of the belt, lifting the focus as fast and high as I could then smashing it into the hardwood floor.
The last thing I knew before the world turned black around me was an intense backwash of energy from the bits of stone crumbling under my hand, throwing me back toward the gathered Weres to the sound of Sara’s screams.