Hex on the Beach by Kelley Armstrong

Chapter Thirteen

Iswung around. Nope, I wasn’t hallucinating this, either. Somehow, Bones was about fifty yards away from me and closing fast. Spade was behind him, moving slower because he had a canon-like object strapped to his back, multiple ammunition belts crisscrossed over his torso, and two mega-sized machine guns in his hands.

“Darling,” Spade said as his spiky black hair blew around his pale, handsome features. “Love your new look.”

Denise’s expression was so openly shocked that I needed to get a picture. “Ooh, who’s got a cell phone handy? A dragon making that face would be the perfect meme!”

Bones and Spade exchanged a look.

“She’s even drunker than we are,” Spade muttered.

Drunker than…huh?

Belatedly, it struck me that Spade’s normally aristocratic tones were now distinctly slurred, and Bones swayed a touch as he strode toward me. I also hadn’t felt them approach and they were Master vampires with auras that crackled the air around them with their power, so I should’ve felt them.

Unless they’d both dropped out of thin air.

“That devious demon!” I said, exasperated.

Ashael knew that Denise and I weren’t involving our husbands while we were contagious, but had he respected our wishes? No, he’d teleported them here himself. At least it looked like he’d pumped them full of his blood first.

Bones flashed his fangs in something too feral to be a smile. “Exactly what I said when I learned he’d known of your predicament for days, but that’s off-topic. What’s on-topic”—he raised his voice—“is that if anyone wants to leave here alive, you will remove the hex from these women now.”

“Or I will hunt down and slaughter everyone you love after I finish murdering you in the most painful way possible,” Spade added in the coldest of tones.

“That’s dark,” I muttered while as a chorus of witches spoke. Unfortunately, most of what they said was barely intelligible from their broken speech. My teeth ground.

“They can’t chant away a curse in their condition even if they wanted to, and since they’re now marked as sacrifices, too, most probably do want to. But that immobility spell is hella effective. Did you-know-who leave you any extra blood?”

“No,” Bones said before stopping mid-stride and turning to the nearest mostly frozen witch. He ripped his wrist open with a fang and held it to her lips.

“Drink,” he said harshly.

Her eyes widened, but with Bones willing his blood into her mouth, she had no choice except to swallow.

Spade saw that and swung one of his guns over his shoulder. Then, he grabbed the witch nearest to him and fed her some of his demon-fortified blood, too.

“Now, start undoing this curse,” Bones ordered.

Both witches started to chant in clear, unbroken voices. That’s right, we could share our version of spell-buffering through our demon-altered blood. I immediately opened my wrist and held it over the mouth of the witch next to me. She swallowed twice before her eyes widened and she fell over.

“Sil…ver,” she gasped out before her eyes rolled back in her head and she spasmed as if I’d stabbed her.

Aw, shit!My blood was now vampire poison thanks to those damned silver-venom snakes. I’d probably be on the ground next to this witch, if not for all the demon blood I’d consumed. Guess I was too high to feel all the damage done to me, even though what I did feel was brutal enough.

A sharp whistling sound went off behind me, like a train barreling down the tracks. When I turned, sea spray was swirling so high in the air that it had reached the top of the cliff. It looked like a water spout, if one of those could trail a waterfall behind it like a cape. But this was no natural phenomenon. The sea goddess had reached the top of the cliff.

Suddenly, my silver poisoning was the least of my problems.

“You need to leave,” I told Bones, swinging back around. “You and Spade have already been exposed to us for too long. If you don’t go now, you’ll end up marked as sacrifices, too.”

“Not a bloody chance,” Bones snarled. “And if any of these bitches want to survive the next five minutes, they’ll undo your hex right now or they’ll get this.”

Another witch suddenly lost her head. I might not have mastered my telekinesis yet, but Bones was surgical with his abilities, if that surgeon was homicidally pissed.

“Wait, we can do it!” the witch Bones had given his blood to said. “Most of us never wanted to sacrifice kids anyway. We wanted to go after murderers or pedophiles like she said!”

“How…dare,” another witch rasped. “We honor…old ways.”

“Times change,” said the witch Spade had given blood to. “I want to live long enough to change with them.”

“Wise choice,” Bones ground out. “Now, point to the most powerful among you, and be sure to pick those with good survival instincts because if they cross me, you’ll eat your own heart.”

The witch pointed, and Bones and Spade began giving more of their blood to the witches she’d indicated. At the same time, the dragon abruptly deflated like it was no more than a very elaborate balloon. Then, Denise rose up naked from the remnants of her leftover scales.

Spade yanked the robe off the witch he was giving his blood to, revealing that she was wearing jeans and a Miley Cyrus shirt under it. Then, he gave Denise her robe. She put it on, grabbed the next witch, and ripped her wrist across the witch’s fangs.

“No!” Spade said as Denise’s demon-branded blood spurted into the witch’s mouth. Only Ashael’s blood would have been more potent, and one taste gave away the source of Denise’s powers. It also marked Denise as a vampire’s version of a walking drug.

The witch’s eyes widened as she swallowed. Then, she sucked at Denise’s wrist as if she were starving. When Denise yanked her arm away, the witch howled, “Wait! I need more!”

“No more. Now, chant away that hex with the rest of them,” Bones said in a steely tone.

The witch kept screeching for more…until her arm tore free and her own hand reared back and slapped her in the face.

“I said chant!” Bones roared.

Even high, being slapped with her own dismembered limb was enough to scare the witch into complying. She began to chant.

Denise shook her head. “Okay, I should give less of my blood to the next witch,” she said under her breath.

That aquatic tornado came closer. I tried to back away and suddenly found that I couldn’t. What? This wasn’t the immobility spell acting up again. I could move closer to the writhing, spinning waterspout. I just couldn’t move away from it.

Denise abruptly stopped giving blood to the other mostly frozen witches, and from her expression, she hadn’t wanted to. Then, the markings on Denise’s forehead started to glow at the same time that my own forehead began to burn.

“Cat?” Denise said, her widened hazel eyes meeting mine.

I wanted to scream. I also wanted to hurl every weapon ever created at the towering funnel of water coming ever closer, and I couldn’t. I could do nothing at all. Despite my best efforts, I’d lost and I wasn’t the only one about to pay the price.

Tears made everything blurry. “I’m so sorry, Denise.”

Why couldn’t it just be me? Why did it have to be her, too? I’d gone after the witches! She’d done nothing to deserve this!

Bones was suddenly in front of me, blocking my view of the approaching sea goddess. He picked me up, but when he tried to carry me away, he couldn’t budge me despite his feet digging furrows into the ground from his efforts. Then, his power flared until my skin burned from the residual energy and still, I didn’t move a fraction. Whatever magic that marked me as her sacrifice now anchored me to her path despite Bones pitting all his physical and telekinetic strength against it.

I might not have been able to leave, but he could.

“Bones, you have to go now.”

I couldn’t let him die, too. I’d rather be fed to that watery monstrosity a thousand times than be the cause of that.

“Please go. Please,” I said, and shoved at him with all my strength. “You can’t let her take you, too.”

“She’s not getting either of us,” he snarled.

I wished that were true, but I could only save one of us.

“It’s okay.” I forced back every screaming emotion enough to crease my face into a smile. “A little thing like death can’t separate us. Not in any way that truly matters, so be the father that Katie needs and leave.”

My voice rose on that last word, riding on the tears that I refused to shed. I wouldn’t let his last memory be of me crying. In so many ways, I had nothing to cry about. I’d been so, so, so lucky. I’d had more love than I had ever dared to wish for, and I’d take the memory of that with me wherever I went.

His arms only tightened around me while he kept me locked out of his emotions.

“I am being the father Katie needs. That’s why I’m not letting this waterlogged bitch take her mother.” Then, he raised his voice. “If either one of them dies, every last one of you will beg for a merciful end, so bloody well chant!”

The witches’ voices rose until their desperation was clear even if I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then, all I heard was a barrage of gunfire followed by a series of booms that shook the ground hard enough to make cracks appear.

Spade was unleashing his arsenal.

“No one stops chanting!” Bones shouted above the din.

Over his shoulder, I saw the waterspout part and then fall away like a discarded cape. In its place was a seven-foot-tall mostly humanoid woman. Frothy seafoam trailed from her head, reminding me of the Bible verse “it leaves a glistening wake behind, as if the deep had white hair.” Her skin was the color of moonlight on water; not blue, not silvery white, but changing between each color with every glance. And her face…I shuddered even as I fought the urge to kneel.

Her face was the very essence of the sea; in one moment stunningly beautiful, and the next pitilessly violent.

The witches’ chants grew until they were louder than the gunfire that had no effect on the sea goddess. Spade may as well have been firing his rounds into the deepest part of the ocean. When the gunfire stopped and all I heard was several futile clicking sounds, I knew Spade had run out of bullets.

He let out an anguished roar. Then, an assault rifle hurtled toward the sea goddess. It passed through her and disappeared over the cliff. Somehow, that got her attention better than all the bullets had because the swirling twin maelstroms in her face that marked her eyes now settled on Spade.

“No!” Denise shouted. “Leave, Spade. Hurry!”

“Like hell,” he snarled, his voice sounding closer. “Wherever you go, I go.” Then, “Crispin, you know what to do.”

The sea goddess came closer, flowing over the ground like a river rushing over stones. The markings on my forehead that denoted me as her sacrifice kept burning as if they’d been set on fire. I knew it was useless, but I tried to back away again and didn’t gain so much as an inch.

“Last chance!” Bones shouted, his power flashing out in rolling waves that made screams briefly interrupt the witches’ chants. Then, the witches began shouting a single word so loudly that my whole head rang from the sound.

“Ustap.”

The goddess looked away from Spade to focus her strange, swirling eyes on me. I shoved at Bones, begging him to leave. He only flared his power out again. The witches’ shouts grew louder, until the ground trembled from them. Still, the goddess didn’t look away from me. Then her arm rose, water falling from her fingers, as she reached for me—

“Ustap, ustap, ustap!”

The pain in my forehead stopped with the same abruptness that her arm dropped. Then, she recoiled from me as if I were foul. All of a sudden, I was moving, too, my surroundings blurring from speed as Bones flew us away.