Angelo grabbed my foot and I crashed to the ground again.
It was chaos, and Ashtoreth stood aside to watch, calmly, unperturbed.
“Kitty!” Ben yelled, somehow breaking free from the three vampires attacking him. He had blood streaming from his face, his arms, and his eyes were golden, wolfish.
I looked up to see a staff lofting toward me. He’d tossed over one of the wooden javelins. I grabbed it with my good hand, forced my broken one to clasp it. Angelo was coming at me. I scrambled to my feet, pointed, thrust as hard as I could, howling, running into the vampire with all my strength.
The point slipped between ribs, right through his heart.
One of the vampires screamed. They all stopped; Ben backed off, a long wooden stake in hand, sweeping to clear a space around him.
I kept hold of the wooden staff, and Angelo fell at my feet, groaning, not in pain or fear but in pure anger. Hundreds of years old and he wasn’t done yet. His body dried out, crumbled, blackening to ash, and his mouth stayed open. Somehow he looked straight at me, caught my gaze, grimacing. “Kitty. Obsidian. Go there, Obsidian. Kitty!” The sound died to a screech, his teeth bared as the lips pulled away, blackened, ash scattering on the breath of his last words. He’d held on long enough to scream in desperation—to scream my name.
I howled, dropping the spear. I hadn’t wanted to kill him. I’d never wanted to kill anyone. A coin lay among the ashes of his remains. Belonging to Roman hadn’t saved him.
The vampires, Angelo’s minions, backed away, staring with shock. They could have kept fighting, but their will, their Master, had been destroyed. And I’d destroyed him. What would they do to me?
They ran. Faster than the eye could see, vanishing into the shadows like puffs of smoke. This wasn’t their fight anymore.
And now we were going to have to figure out how to deal with the demon, all on our own, without magic.
“Ashtoreth!” I called. I wanted to see if she responded, and how she felt about me knowing her name.
She looked; her lips pressed together, some indeterminate acknowledgment. Goggles covered her eyes, and I couldn’t read her expression. I wanted
at least a grimace, to know if I was pissing her off.
“Why are you here?” I demanded. My voice was rough, on the edge of a growl. “Did I do your work for you this time? Were you here to kill him like you killed Mercedes?”
Now, her lip curled. “It must all seem so simple to you. If you just find the right words to say, you will be saved. But you will not be saved.”
“Kitty!” Ben called.
I stumbled to his side. The pain in my arm was agonizing, so I kept it tucked in. I squinted; blood on my face made my eyes sting. Ben’s shirt was torn, and he was bleeding from a dozen wounds. But we were both on our feet. We’d made it this far.
He held his semiautomatic in both hands and fired at Ashtoreth. Three clear, ringing shots.
They went through her. I saw them hit with puffs of smoke. But she didn’t react, didn’t even flinch. The leather of her armor seemed to seal back over the wounds. She drew spears off the holster across her back. Two of them, tipped with gleaming silver, flashing like mercury in the glow of the streetlights. She’d throw them at us, and we’d be dead.
Shift, fight, tear her throat out …
Not with all that silver.
“Do we have time to run?” I murmured.
“What have we got to lose, I say.”
Not that we could run fast enough. In tandem and without discussion, we stumbled backward into the parking lot and toward the car, like a couple of losers in a horror movie. I dug in my pockets for a spare amulet, hoping I’d forgotten something there. A cross, a rabbit’s foot, a can of mace, anything.
Ashtoreth was an assassin, and she was unstoppable. We didn’t have a whole lot to say about what happened.
Those damned goggles, if I could just get them off … I was too far away to go around her reach, and she had too much silver for me to get close. She cocked back her arm, ready to throw both spears at us. We’d split, we’d dodge, we could get out of this.
A car pulled into the parking lot—a nondescript white sedan, the kind you’d rent. Two men sat in the front, silhouettes visible through the reflection cast by streetlights on the windshield. We all stopped to look, even the demon.
I thought maybe I should shout a warning at the newcomers—battle with evil demon in progress, please leave! But I was stunned. The car very smoothly pulled into one of the empty spots, and the engine shut down. Ashtoreth regarded the car with her head tilted, lips pursed, and even lowered her spear.
Now, we rip her throat out …