Specifically, the light came from the pouch around Ramona’s neck. She held it out in front of her. She chanted, and I focused on her voice, hoping to dislodge the growing command in my head telling me to grab Brand and drag him inside and upstairs to the bedroom, which sounded so much nicer than fighting.
Stupid voice. Nothing’s nicer than fighting.
I whipped out a couple shuriken and they joined Brand’s in flight across the street. Ah, teamwork. The shuriken hit the edge of the red-orange light and hovered. Eleventh Hour raised her arms and twirled like a certain Seventies-era witchy rock goddess and the shuriken changed shape like Trixster had. Their edges flapped and grew, and then we had eagle-sized bats shrieking and flying back at us, one bat per customer.
I pulled a ten-inch blade from each boot and moved to get between Ramona and Jessica and their flying assassins. Brand laughed behind me as he pulled his own blades. Amanda had already woven half her magical shield.
Ramona waved me off with one hand and a sharp look. I stopped, but not because she told me to. I stopped because I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing.
The pouch pulsed and then there was shape in the air like a bridge arching from Ramona to the bats. The bridge was made of colored light and the air filled with the smell of rain and ozone. The bridge took on an almost human face, but masked. It reached out with long arms and captured the bats, which rained down to the street as shuriken again. They clanged against the pavement.
“That’s one hell of a Patronus,” I heard Amanda say.
The music across the street grew louder. Trixster, or Kokopelli, or whatever combination of the two he’d become, danced and played. Eleventh Hour took out what I thought was another flute as the green and blue bridge creature attacked. She put the flute to her lips and her cheeks hollowed. But instead of playing music, she lowered what I realized was a long pipe and smoke poured out of her mouth in an enormous cloud. The cloud enveloped the creature as the thing grabbed for Trixster’s flute.
“No!” Ramona screamed as lightning spider-webbed around the creature. It froze in place.
Brand and I took off across the street with one goal in mind – get the flute. Okay, two goals – get the flute then pound the shit out of our enemies.
As we ran under the bridge creature, it dissolved, raining down on us between lightning bolts like water dripping from a net. Cool and glowing rain slicked our bodies, washing away the vampire gore covering our bodies. I felt a crazy burst of energy and awareness, like what I’d experienced at the rave, but cleaner, pure. Every last trace of mental fuzz and confusion drained out of my body. I felt Brand running next to me, felt his heart beating in his chest, smelled the sweat on his skin, and couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather be with at that moment. My kind.
Then we were on Trixster and Eleventh Hour and it was kill time.
I stabbed my knife into Eleventh Hour. Her body parted around the blade, making a hole that light shone through where there should have been, well, a hole where blood poured through. Her skin moved in segments and I realized that her body was a composite of insects. Cicadas, specifically.
She laughed, only it wasn’t a single voice. It was a summer night chorus of tiny high-pitched voices that threatened to blow out my eardrums. If not my sanity.
Here we go again, I thought as the cicada woman swarmed me. I need to figure out how to stash a can bug spray in my cleavage.
Individually, cicadas are harmless, nearly weightless, a minor annoyance if they fly into your hair or if bugs creep you out. But get about half a million of them together and lash their minuscule bug brains into a single consciousness bent on killing, and you’ve got yourself a pretty formidable weapon.
The little bastards concentrated on my head. Their sudden, unexpected weight pushed me down to the sidewalk. I couldn’t breathe through the tightly-packed armored bodies. For every handful I pulled off, twice as many crawled up to take their places. I could only hear two things – their laughter and Kokopelli’s flute. I fought the urge to laugh or scream, I didn’t know which.
Disoriented, I tried to crawl back into the street. I fell forward as my hand slipped off the curb onto the road. The flute music stopped and I crawled faster, hoping there was something left of the bridge creature above me and that my plan would work.
It did. The rain fell, and the cicadas scattered. They reformed into Eleventh Hour, back on the sidewalk. I gasped for air and looked above me. The green and blue light faded as the creature dissipated.
Then the lightning holding it came home to Trixster.
And Brand, who had him in a choke hold. I watched his bones light up under his skin as the lightning folded around their bodies.
Brand kept fighting. He grabbed at the flute, his fingers brushed it. Then his hand exploded and he lost consciousness.
I rushed them. I might have screamed. There might have been tears at the corners of my eyes.
A surge of power behind me made every hair on my body stand up. Then a blue and green wave of liquid light crashed over us, slamming me to the concrete. The world went black.
***
When I came back to my senses, I rolled over. Ramona’s face swam into view. She looked pale, horrified.
“Brand?” My voice croaked like a frog’s.
“He’s going to be okay. Lie still. We’re checking you out now.”
Hands moved over my body with the surety of experience. They tested my joints, my limbs. They pressed on my belly. A second face peered down into mine. Ramona doubled, but with long white hair pulled back in a ponytail and countless wrinkles embellishing her face. They folded over each other as she smiled. “No broken bones, no puncture wounds, not even a hangnail. You’re a remarkable woman, Kelly Chan.”
Ramona’s face relaxed. “Kelly, meet my Grandma.”