Faith Hunter - Skinwalker

With a quick flick of his wrist he jerked the stake out of Immanuel’s chest. Blood flew. Splattering me. A droplet landed on the charm. The crimson drop bubbled and spat, releasing the heating stench of rotten meat. It mixed with the reek of my burned flesh as the charm bristled with power. I gagged on the pain. Tears blurred my eyes. I wasn’t supposed to hold it once it was activated. I was supposed to throw it at the danger. It was supposed to detonate, but only on the cause of the danger, not on me. Holding the charm was having an unexpected effect on the incantation embedded in it. My hand is burning .

Antoine flipped his knife, lowered it to Immanuel’s neck. The blade pressed in. More blood spurted. I managed a strangled scream as the charm fully activated. Burning a hole into my palm. My fingers spasmed closed. Increasing the pain tenfold.

The charm detonated. Taking with it Antoine’s kinetic spell. Everything happened fast, in overlapping images. The concussion of energies was a backwash of agony as I sucked in a breath, filling my air-starved lungs.

The liver-eater’s outstretched arms ripped inward, closing on Antoine’s body. The liver-eater slashed through Antoine’s thin shirt. Tearing deep into the witch’s back at waist and neck. A deadly embrace. With a violent jerk, Antoine’s spine gave way with two distinct popping sounds. I grunted out a choked warning. Too late. The liver-eater fell forward onto four legs. Shimmering. Shifting. Fangs and pelt and massive musculature ripped through his clothes.

The female witch, half forgotten, screamed and rushed forward. The liver-eater slashed at her with one massive paw. Took off half her face, throwing her away, out of sight.

I gripped and raised the Benelli in my uninjured hand. Pulled an arm under me and levered my body up. Gathered my legs beneath me.

He roared. Leaped at me. The half man, half sabertooth landed over me, the weight a jolt I felt through the floor. Moves and fights like a human, Beast thought at me. Not like Beast .

I had no time to react. Except. My finger squeezed the trigger. Shots boomed.

Silver-shot impacted the beast’s chest, neck, and face. The fléchettes tore through him with brutal efficiency. Blood and gore back-splattered over me. The liver-eater jerked to the side. I stopped firing, watching as he fell, slowly. He hit the carpet, his body encased in silver energies, black motes of dark power dancing, red flames of heat whirling and gusting.

Belatedly, I threw the other charm at him. It hit him in the center of his chest. The explosion rocked me, rolling me, shoving me against the wall. Fire erupted out of the beast’s chest. Witchy fire. He roared.

Statues along the hallway exploded. He shifted fully into the sabertooth cat. Striped tawny coat, with short, powerful legs, a stubby tail, and six-inch upper canines. His lower canines were shorter, only a couple of inches, if the word “only” ever applied to a sabertooth. Round, human-looking pupils stared at me, glinting with vengeance. He stood a good five hundred pounds of cat-fury, and . . . he was drawing in power from my charm, pulling it inside him. Using it. The fire of the spell went out. The charm plinked to the carpet, smoking, its energies used up. The sabertooth attacked.

Fights like human! Beast is better! Beast roared into my head, into my eyes. But there wasn’t time to shift. No time to draw mass so we could fight on equal terms. The sabertooth leaped. I rolled against the wall. Gripped two vamp-killers. The sabertooth landed, jarring the house. Beast rolled me onto my back. Exposing my belly.

The sabertooth took the bait. Claws outstretched, it rose up and dropped down. Landed on my chest. Driving the breath from me with a woof of air and pain. A sharp crack of broken ribs. Stabbing me. The huge cat rose up again. Dropped. Batted me over. Straddled my body and dropped his head. To tear out my throat.

Now! Beast screamed. I thrust up with the knives, deep into his chest. The blades slid along his ribs, one catching and grinding to a stop. But the other slipped deeply, under ribs, slicing cartilage, cutting lungs. Finding heart. I felt it when the blade slid into the heart cavity, a slight give in the resistance.

The lion roared. I rolled as he bit. He caught my shoulder. His teeth punctured, cutting through leather into flesh. With my good hand, I shoved the hilt of the knife with all my might. Swiveling the hilt against and into his body. He shook his head. Rending and tearing. My entire body quaked and snapped. I thought my shoulder would rip free.

He slowed. Shuddered. Gasped, his nostrils fluttering. His eyes met mine, shock and understanding in the depths. His paws swept me up, claws piercing through my jacket, into my skin. Silver light blazed over him, the energies buzzing like sound waves, like the pressure of fast-moving water, over me. The black motes of power shocked where they touched me.

He was trying to throw off mass. He was trying to shift. He was trying to steal my form. Once again, Beast did . . . something. Deep inside my mind I felt her—saw her—an image of Beast twisting in midair, tail rotating, claws outstretched as if to grab prey.

Liquid gushed out of Immanuel’s mouth, out of his nose, out of the holes in his chest, thick and viscous. Smelling like rotten meat, like old death, rancid and fetid as an open grave.

He backed up, dropping me. I landed hard, knocking my head, unaware that he had lifted me so high. I managed to take in a breath. Pulled the last of the vamp-killer blades. And the last of Molly’s charms.

I rose to my knees in the slimy mess pooling beneath the sabertooth. Got one foot beneath me. And shoved with it, hard, shifting my weight, the power of my whole body, into the motion. Turned the blade point out as I moved. And pierced through his eye, into his brain.

He made no sound, just dropped to his belly, his legs gathered beneath him. But a back leg splayed free, sliding. He was losing control.

With my burned hand, I flipped Molly’s charm at him. It hit his damaged chest. I hadn’t wasted any of the spell’s energies this time by burning my own flesh. None of its power had dissipated into the air in reaction to a spoken wyrd spell. And the creature was too injured to take the power for himself. It was all there, ready and contained.

It exploded inward, into the lion. It took apart every organ, the shaped concussion shredding and bursting every blood vessel, tearing his chest cavity apart. A magic hand grenade. Flesh and bone blasted away. Fluid flooded out of him, foul and choking. His remaining bone and muscle shifted, grinding into a different configuration. His skin split and re-formed, the pelt shimmering away.

I scuttled back, cradling my injured arm, unable to take my eyes from him. The silver energies darkened, forcing a change on him, compelling the shift. They seemed to shudder; the black motes blinked away for an instant. The rogue fell to the carpet, his head in the foul mess that had come from within him. The silver light bathed him in a soft fog.

And then, even that wisped away.

On the carpet was a half-naked man. Or mostly a man. His scalp was still partly cat, his hands still paws. But his torso and limbs appeared mostly human, though the joints were oddly turned, his knees bent the wrong way for a primate. He was a huge man. Larger than he had been as a human, still carrying the mass of the unfinished shift. Three hundred pounds of pure muscle. One side of his face was Cherokee. The other half was Immanuel. Both halves had long killing teeth in upper and lower jaws.

I toed him with my foot. He wasn’t breathing. No pulse beat in his throat. There was no heart left to beat in the ruined chest. The liver-eater was dead.