The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(81)
Author: Kim Harrison

“Blinders!” I jerked when Ayer shouted, and David warned him off with the rifle. “You saw what they did to Ivy. How can you talk about blinders when I know she’s ripped them from you? Look at me!” he bellowed, shocking me with his shift from calm to furious. “I was bred like an animal to someone’s specifications, abandoned when another pleased him more!”

And jealousy will make him more dangerous. “This isn’t about Ivy. This is about you murdering the undead!”

His teeth clenched, but with a visible effort he calmed himself, leaning back against the table and crossing his ankles to look relaxed. I knew he wasn’t; I could almost see the pheromones rising from him and prickling along my skin. Behind him, the two vampires were exchanging worried looks. “It isn’t murder if what you kill has no soul,” he said softly, his hand going atop Jenks’s prison to block the pixy’s view, and suddenly the container was full of a black dust. “Give me the mystics.”

He picked up Jenks, and David grabbed my arm, keeping me where I was. “Look, those waves you’re pulling out of my line aren’t simply powering your lullaby,” I said as I shook David off. “You’ve divided a communal mind, and she’s looking for them!”

“Energy isn’t alive!” he barked, but I’d clearly hit a sore spot. He knew, damn it. He knew! And he didn’t care.

“She’s not energy, she’s sentient,” I said. “And you’ve made her psychotic. You’re in over your head and lost control. Let them go, and maybe she’ll go away.”

Ayer looked me up and down, and from behind the glass, Jenks’s wings were a blur. “You know a lot more than you should.”

“That’s because it’s my line you’re pulling them from. The wave is following me around like a puppy.” Ayer’s soft fidgeting ceased, and I squinted at him. “You didn’t know that, did you?” I said, and his eyes went entirely dark. “My God, you didn’t even know why the wave patterns were shifting.”

Table creaking, he stood, turning to look pointedly at the two men nursing their hurts behind him. Beside me, David leveled his shotgun. Ayer hadn’t said a word, but he’d just told them to be ready to act. “We do now,” Ayer said, and I stiffened when he held Jenks at his middle, long fingers caressing the glass. “Interesting that they like you, Morgan.”

“Let go of my partner,” I demanded, setting the device on a nearby table in a show of exchange. It made David cringe, but Ayer didn’t even look at it.

“You’ve talked to her, haven’t you?” he said, his voice low with the holding of secrets. “They follow you like puppies, you said. You can control her.”

“No,” I said, fear sliding through me as I remembered Bancroft, driven mad by them.

But he only smiled, chilling me. “Either you’re lying to me, or elven magic is more powerful than demon—as he said.” He leaned in until my skin tingled. “Which is it?”

“Elven magic isn’t more powerful than demon,” I said, affronted. “She’s nuts, and she’ll drive me nuts too!”

“I can live with that,” he said, a slight eye twitch giving me bare warning.

“Rachel!” David shouted, but I flung myself backward, gasping as I tried to stay out of Ayer’s reach. Hitting the floor, I rolled and kept rolling. Again the shotgun blasted, and the scent of gunpowder overtook the stench of angry vampire.

“Rachel! Here!” David cried, and I sat up, eyes widening as he threw the mystics at me. I caught the device almost in self-defense and held it close.

“Get her!” Ayer shoved David’s head into the counter and the Were slid to the floor. Fire and darkness in his eyes, Ayer strode toward me, but I was already moving, slamming my palm into the nose of the first man to touch me, then grabbing the arm of the next to pull myself up. My knee hit his chin, pulled down within easy reach, and he groaned and fell away.

Panting, I spun in my cleared space, the mystics making a tingling in my hand. I was alone, ringed by three vampires, two bloodied by me, the other just pissed. Mark had pulled David to safety, and I felt a twinge of relief when the witch invoked the circle he had back there. They were safe.

Me, on the other hand . . .

Ayer paced before me, knowing better than to try to take me by force while I could tap a line. “You will talk to the splinter or die,” he said, his face ugly as he held the lantern as if to drop it.

“You want them, you can have them,” I said, then threw the mystics at him.

Snarling in rage, he flung Jenks at the wall.

It was too far away. Heart breaking, I leaped for the lantern. Desperate, I made a circle to catch Jenks for the half an instant I’d need. Eyes widening, I held my breath as my feet left the tile, watching as Jenks crashed into the inside of my circle, rolling down it end over end until my outstretched hand hit the edge of the bubble. With a surge of tingles, the circle fell.

But I had him, and I pulled him to me even as my back slammed into the floor, knocking the air out of me. I couldn’t breathe, but I almost cried as my shaky fingers gripped the lantern and held it close. It hadn’t broken, and the small prison was thick with a gray dust. Two little hands pressed the glass, and a faint swearing filtered out.

“Oh God! Jenks!” I wheezed, trembling as I undid the latch and he came boiling out, a beautiful flow of pixy swearing rising up with him.

“About time!” the pixy snarled. “What were you waiting for? God to say go?”

Shaking in relief, I sat on the floor as Jenks’s dust wreathed me in sparkling tingles. But it wasn’t over yet, and I slowly got up to reassess the odds. Three vampires against a demon, a pixy, and a Were. Sure, two of the vampires weren’t going to do much—one unable to see due to his broken nose, the other because I think I’d fractured his jaw—but David was out and I was a wreck. Besides, they had the mystics. All they had to do was run.

But they didn’t, and I watched, numb when Ayer tossed a zip strip at me. It slid to a halt at my feet, and I ignored it. “You’re going to have to kill me first,” I said, not having any right to be so cocky—except I could see something he couldn’t.

News vans, three of them, were pulling into the parking lot. Ayer didn’t turn at the sudden sound of the engines, but the others did, their moods becoming hesitant when men and women began getting out. Mark stood up from behind the counter, sweat stained and shaken, but his relieved expression told me David was okay.