Kim Harrison - The Witch with No Name

“Let go!” I exclaimed, the last of the energy in my chi sparking between us.

Cormel jerked, his hold coming back all the stronger. With a sudden tug, he yanked me to him, an arm wrapping around my neck. “God help me, how does that vampire bitch resist you?” Cormel murmured, his breath in my hair. “Do you know how long it has been since anyone has been able to hurt me?”

From somewhere, ever-after energy burst from me, and with an angry cry Cormel flung me away. I hit the wall, sliding down and rolling to stay out of his reach.

“ Corrumpo! ” Trent raged as I tried to find my feet, failing. Just as well, as a pulse of force exploded from Trent, knocking everyone down. The windows shattered into the hall with a loud pop, and frightened cries filtered in. Cormel was on his hands and knees. His men were disoriented.

I ran for Cormel, scooping up a gun as I went. Energy zinged down my pathways from an unending spool in my head. Trent must have given me more than I realized.

“ Cohibere! ” Landon bellowed from the floor, and I ducked even as Trent set a circle and the magic was harmlessly deflected.

I skidded to a halt behind Cormel, dropping down and wrapping an arm around his neck and shoving the gun to his head. “Give me Ivy. Now!”

Cormel moved, and I stung him with a pulse of ever-after. “You want to live forever?” I shouted, gun pressed against his head. “You need your brain intact! Tell them to back off! Now! ”

It had gone silent. Landon was flat on the floor, a haze of energy in his hand. Trent was standing over the two vampires he had downed. He had a red mark on his forehead, and his eyes were angry. Whispers came from the hall, and I tightened my grip when six capable-looking vampires edged through the glass in the hallway. Each one of them had a gun pointed at me.

Cormel began to laugh, pissing me off. “Shoot her,” he said to his men. “Try not to hit me this time.”

My eyes widened. Shit, he had called my bluff.

“Rachel!” Trent cried out, and he went down under two vampires.

My breath came in. I could see everything. Landon on the floor, the court papers strewn before him, a scrap of Trent’s pants showing from under the pile of guards, the scent of excited vampire stinging my nose.

The bang of the handgun seemed too small, and I knew before the bullet left the muzzle that it was going to be true. I had no time. My eyes closed and I wished it had happened some other way. Energy tingled, but I couldn’t set a circle. Not without being connected to a line. He’d won. The bastard had won.

With a familiar furp-ping, the bullet glanced off a bubble and buried itself in the wall.

I tensed, feeling nothing but the sensation of tingles over my skin. My heart thudded in the new silence, and I opened my eyes. Someone had saved me. Trent?

But it hadn’t been him. My lips parted. Cormel tried to move and I instinctively tightened my grip, shoving the handgun into him harder. A faint haze hung before me like a bubble, but it wasn’t the expected red-tinted ever-after with shades of an aura, but a milky white.

Shit. The mystics.

Panicked, I looked at Trent. His face was pale as he struggled in the grip of two vampires.

“How . . . !” Landon sputtered, the papers scattered before him forgotten. “You don’t have a familiar!”

I swallowed hard, my grip on Cormel tightening. “Yeah, how about that.” Everything I’d been working for to get the demons to survive was gone. Even they wouldn’t listen to me now. Not with mystics swarming through me.

“She must have taken a familiar,” Cormel said. He had me on weight, but the gun beside his eye kept him still.

“That’s right,” I lied, and Trent shook off the goons on him. “You there. Put the paperwork on the desk.”

“This won’t change anything,” Landon said. He was right, but I wasn’t leaving without Ivy.

“Get Ivy in here!” I shouted. “Now!”

No one moved. “You’re just going to have to kill me, Morgan,” Cormel said, and it was starting to look like a good option.

Trent tensed as my finger tightened. It wouldn’t take much. The world would be a better place. “Rachel! Don’t!” Trent called out, and I looked at him, unbelieving.

“Why not?” I asked, watching Cormel’s eyes dilate in fear.

“This isn’t who you are,” Trent said, shaking off the hands holding him.

“How do you know?” I shouted, and the whispers from the hall grew loud. “I already let one sniveling excuse for a person live because you asked me to. Maybe this is who I am! Huh? Maybe I’m just a murdering bastard and you don’t know it! Why should I be any different from you? Why!”

I swear I saw a drop of sweat trickle down Cormel’s neck. He wasn’t breathing, terrified.

For three long seconds Trent thought about that. Head dropping for an instant, his eyes rose to find mine. The enormity of the past two days was on him, heavy and thick. “You’re right,” he said softly. “Do what you want.”

Cormel’s eyes closed to hide the fear and hope that I might shoot him dead and end it all.

Son of a bitch, this isn’t who I am. Crying out in frustration, I shoved Cormel away from me. I never saw him hit the floor as someone flew at me, tackling me around the waist and sending me down.

“It’s yours, it’s yours!” I shouted as one sat on me and spun my arm around behind my back and another wrenched my wrist until I let go of the handgun.

“Get her off the floor!” Cormel bellowed, and I was yanked to my feet again. Like a huge cat, the master vampire paced before the desk, his fear just under the surface. Landon was a hunched shadow gathering his precious paperwork as if it was diamonds in a mine. But I couldn’t look away from Trent, strapped and standing with a defiant gleam in his eye and a cut under his cheekbone. His suit was rumpled but the only fear in him was directed at me. He knew the mystics were working in me. I was a loaded gun.

“You going to kill me now?” I said. “And you wonder why you walk into the sun when you find your soul.” The soft sound of Landon shuffling papers almost made me sick, and I stared at Cormel defiantly when he jerked to a stop.

“Don’t harm her,” he said, pointing, and my arm was wrenched back until I saw stars. “Put her in a box. One that has holes so she can breathe. Kalamack . . .”

His voice whispered to nothing, and my breath caught when I realized Trent didn’t have the same value I did. My lip curled and I pulled the mystic energy together enough to make my hair begin to float. If he made one move to hurt Trent, it was going to start back up, and this time I wasn’t going to hold back.

Cormel’s lips were pressed tight as he looked from me to Trent and back again. “Put them both in a box,” he said. “Kill his horse, though.”

Trent didn’t move as two vampires literally lifted his feet from the floor.

“Which one is his?” one of them asked, and Cormel looked at me in disgust.

“I don’t know. Kill them all.”

“Cormel—” Trent said, his voice cutting off when one of the vampires hit him.

Cormel turned his spilled coffee cup upright. “I’ll get my soul, Morgan. One way or another.”

“Yeah?” I managed before we were pushed into the hallway, my boots and Trent’s dress shoes clinking among the shards of safety glass. We had two vampires each holding us, and though I could do magic, Trent would suffer if I did.

“Hey, Trent,” I said as we were shoved past the onlookers and to the elevators again. “Was this about what you wanted?”

“Apart from his killing my horses, yes. Cormel now realizes he needs me.”

We were at the elevators, and I looked at him, wondering how big this box was going to be. “Needs you? For what?”