Chapter Forty-three

I was still sorting things out after the titanic wallop the explosion had given the inside of my skull, when a dark-furred wolf emerged from the shadows of the night and slammed into Madeline Raith like a loaded armored car. I heard bones breaking under the impact, and she was ripped off me by the force of the dark wolf’s rush.

Will didn’t stop there. He’d already hammered her once, and he knew better than to try his strength infighting with a vampire, even if the members of the White Court were physically the weakest of the breed. He hit the ground and bounded away into the dark.

Madeline screamed in surprised rage, and her gun went off several times, but I’m not sure you could call it shooting. She was on her knees, firing that big old Desert Eagle with one delicate hand and holding the now-broken tequila bottle in the other when a sandy brown wolf swept by on silent paws and ripped at Madeline’s weapon hand with her fangs. The rip went deep into the muscles and tendons of Madeline’s forearm, an almost surgically precise attack. The gun tumbled from her fingers, and she whirled to swing the broken bottle at Georgia, but she was no more eager for a fair fight than Will had been, and by the time Madeline turned, Georgia was already bounding away—and Will, unnoticed, was on his way back in again.

Fangs flashed. Pale Raith blood flowed. The two wolves rushed back and forth in perfect rhythm, never giving the vampire a chance to pin one of them down. When Madeline finally realized how they were working her, she attempted to reverse herself suddenly the same instant Georgia began to retreat, to meet Will’s rush squarely—but Will and Georgia had learned their trade from a real wolf, and they’d had eight years of what amounted to low-intensity but deadly earnest combat duty, defending several square blocks around the University from the depredations of both supernatural and mortal predators. They knew when the reverse was coming, and Georgia simply pirouetted on her paws and blindsided Madeline again.

The vampire screamed in frustrated rage. She was furious—and she was slowing down. The members of the White Court were flesh and blood beings. They bled. Bleed them enough, and they would die.

I forced myself to start using my head again, finally shaking off the effects of both Madeline’s psychotically delicious kiss and the concussion of whatever had exploded. I realized that I was covered with small cuts and scratches, that I was otherwise fine, and that Binder was less than twenty feet away.

“Will, Georgia!” I screamed. “Gun!”

The wolves leapt out of sight and vanished into the forest with barely a leaf disturbed by their movements, half a second before Binder came out of the woods, a semiautomatic assault shotgun pressed against his shoulder. The mercenary was dressed in a wet suit as well, though he’d put on a combat jacket and equipment harness over it, and wore combat boots on his feet.

Binder aimed the weapon after Will and Georgia and started rapidly hammering the woods with shells, more or less at random.

Everyone thinks that shotgun pellets spread out to some ridiculous degree, and that if you aim a shotgun at a garage door and pull the trigger, you’ll be able to drive a car through the resulting hole. That isn’t so, even when a shotgun has a very, very short barrel, which allows the load of pellets to spread out more. A longer-barreled weapon, like Binder’s, will only spread the pellets out to about the size of my spread fingers at a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards. Odds were good that he hadn’t hit a damned thing, and given his experience he probably knew it. He must have kept up the salvo to increase the intimidation factor and force the wolves to stay on the run.

In the heat and adrenaline of a battle, gunshots can be hard to count, but I knew he fired eight times. I knew because through Demonreach, I could feel the eight brass and plastic shell casings lying on the ground around him. He stood protectively over Madeline as he reached into his pockets, presumably to reload the weapon with fresh shells.

I didn’t give him the chance. I pulled my .44 out of my duster pocket, sat up, and tried to stop wobbling. I sighted on his center mass and pulled the trigger.

The revolver roared, and Binder’s left leg flew out from beneath him as if someone had hit it with a twenty-pound mallet. He let out a yelp of what sounded more like surprise than pain and hit the ground hard. In the odd little beat of heavy silence that came after the shot, I almost felt sorry for the guy. He’d had a tough couple of days. I heard him suck in a quick breath and clench his teeth over a howl of pain.

Madeline whirled toward me, her dark hair gone stringy and flat in the rain. Her eyes burned pure white, as the hunger, the demon inside her, fed her more and more of its power and asserted more and more control. Her wet suit had been torn open in several places, and paler-than-human blood smeared her paler-than-human flesh. She wasn’t moving as well as she should have been, but she stalked toward me in a hunter’s crouch, deliberate and steady.

My bells were still ringing hard, and I didn’t think I had time or focus to pull together a spell. And besides, my gun was already right there. It seemed like it would be a waste not to use it.

I sighted on the spot where Madeline’s heart should have been and shot her in the belly, which wasn’t terrible marksmanship under the circumstances. She cried out and staggered to one knee. Then she looked up, her empty white eyes furious, and stood up, continuing toward me.

I shot again and missed, then repeated myself. I gripped the gun with both hands, clenching my teeth as I did, knowing I only had two more rounds. The next shot ripped a piece of meat the size of a racquetball out of one of her biceps, sending her down to one knee and drawing another scream.

Before she could start moving again, I aimed and fired the last round.

It hit her in the sternum, almost exactly between her wet suit- contoured breasts. She jerked, her breath exploding from her in a little huff of surprise. She swayed, her eyelids fluttering, and I thought she was about to fall.

But she didn’t.

The vampire’s empty white eyes focused on me, and her mouth spread into a maniac’s sneer. She reached down and picked up her own fallen weapon. She had to do it left-handed. The right was covered in a sheet of blood and flopped limply.

Running low on options, I threw my empty gun at her face. She bat-ted my revolver aside with the Desert Eagle.

“You,” Madeline said, her voice hollow and wheezing, “are a bad case of herpes, wizard. You’re inconvenient, embarrassing, no real threat, and you simplywill not go away.”

“Bitch,” I replied, wittily. I still hadn’t gotten my head back together. Everything’s relative, right?

“Don’t kill him,” Binder rasped.

Madeline shot him a look that could freeze vodka. “What?”

Binder was sitting on the ground. His shotgun was farther away than he could reach. He must have tossed it there, because when he had fallen it was still in his hands. Binder had realized precisely how badly the fight had gone for his side, that he had been lamed and therefore probably could not escape, and he was making damned sure that he didn’t look armed and dangerous. “Death curse,” he said, breathing hard. “He could level the island with it.”

I drew in my breath, lifted my chin, and tried to keep my eyes from slipping out of focus. “Boom,” I said solemnly.

Madeline looked bad. One of the bullets might have opened an artery. It was hard to tell in the near-darkness. “Perhaps you’re right, Binder,” she said. “If he was a better shot, I suppose I might be in trouble. As it is, I’m inconvenienced.” Her eyes widened slightly, and her tongue lashed quickly over her lips. “And I need to feed if I’m to repair it.” She lowered the gun as if it had suddenly become too heavy to keep supporting. “Don’t worry, Binder,” she said. “When he’s screaming my name he won’t be cursing anyone. And even if he tries it . . .” She shivered. “I’ll bet it will taste incredible.”