Blood Trade

“I have never done this before,” she said, leaving her team. As she walked, a sense of peace spread outward, and I knew we were being manipulated by her personal magics, but I let it happen anyway. We needed to be calm. We needed a sense of coherence. Or her percentages might become real and half of us could die.



Wolf should die, Beast thought at me. Thief of meat. Stupid pack hunter.



“No problem,” I said to Soul. But it was. Her dress made it difficult to get her into the harness in such a way that she could release the harness and fall without catching the clothing on the gear and maybe hanging her.



Finally we were in position, me in front with a zip-line steering trolley, her behind me in an abbreviated mountain-climbing harness, attached to the line with sturdy carabiners. I showed her how to release it so she could fall. Her scent changed as I spoke, and she tied the end of a scarf to a loop on my pants. Her magics began to rise.



When we were ready, I leaned down to see Eli staring up at me. He raised a thumb and melted into the shadows. The explosive devices were in place.



“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this. Soul, let the harness take your weight, and put your feet against the roof wall to hold you still.” When she was secure, I pulled on gloves, eased down on the line, and hooked my carabiner to the zip-line trolley.



“We have to be close,” she said, her voice shaky, “for the death spell to start. I need to put my legs around you and hold you to me.”



I nodded, and Soul wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me in close. It was a lot closer than my Beast liked. Her idea of personal space was something like miles away, unless it was a kit or a mate.



She said, “Are you ready? This may feel . . . odd.”



I nodded, and Soul took a deep breath and said, “The die is cast.”



Which made no sense at all. For a moment.



CHAPTER 22



“Thank You,” the Corpse Croaked



The scent of the grave surrounded me first, followed almost instantly by the visual transformation. Soul rotted before my eyes. Her body fluids melted into my clothes, her face sagged, the fluids and blood pooling with gravity while her eyes dried out. I looked at my hand and saw the same level of decomp. Ick. Eww. I was gross.



“Hurry,” she said, the croak sounding like the dead. The stench of her breath made my eyes water, and I pushed off the false wall with a thrust of my legs, out into the air and over the buzzing magics of the augmented hedge of thorns.



While the purpose of zip-lining is to gain speed on a downward-sloped line, one can adjust speed with the gloved hand behind the trolley and one’s body position. In our case, the line was too gently sloped and I expected that I’d have to pull us along with my hands. That was before my body reacted to being embraced by a ten-day-old corpse. My shove off the wall was too hard, and I had to brake, one gloved hand on the line, dragging behind the corpse’s carabiner, my other hand atop the trolley, holding us stable. I was so busy working on the braking that I almost missed the energies passing over us as we reached the small hole over the top of the hedge.



When I felt the faint burst of magics, I adjusted our position carefully. The opening was only five feet below us, but the distance to the house roof was three feet more, making it a difficult leap and landing. Ankle breaking. And nowhere to roll afterward, just drop, hit, and stop. Hard.



I set one of Soul’s hands behind her carabiner to hold her steady, and she made sure her scarf was still attached. I said, “I’m ready to go. And just for the record, no offense intended, as I am very grateful that you got us here safely, but we really stink.”



“Thank you,” the corpse croaked, unwrapping her legs from me.



“Yeah. Dropping now.” I unhooked myself, held still until my body stopped rocking, bent my knees slightly to take the landing, and fell. Adrenaline spurted through me. My stomach followed a split-second later. Vertigo hit as I passed through the hedge opening. The scarf spiraled down with me.



The roof slammed me like . . . well, like falling off a zip line onto a roof. The jar whipped up from my toes, through my body, and out the top of my head. My teeth clacked together. I dropped to my knees, one foot on either side of the ridgeline, feeling the strain in my ankles and knees. My feet slid in opposite directions. I caught myself with my gloved hands, the rough roof beneath them grating. I stank of the grave, the stench so strong I wanted to gag. Beast, who had helped with the landing, withdrew.



The first thing I did was untie the scarf and set it to the side. When I was sure I could stand, I inspected myself. I was whole again, albeit still a bit stinky. I held up my hands for my gear, and the corpse above me dropped them one at a time. I positioned each bag on the roof and let them slide into the crevice of the rear chimney.



When they were secure, I held up my arms for Soul, having no idea if I would be able to catch her as she fell, even with Beast helping, or if I would drop her to the ridge, injuring her badly. I braced myself and nodded to her.



I wasn’t sure what I was seeing as she fell. Her body blurred, elongated, stretched, and narrowed. And she landed on her own two feet. Or maybe her own four feet. The most I did was steady her balance as she reformed into her usual gorgeous self, the corpse gone. Even the awful smell was gone. So was the scarf I had put aside.



She smoothed down her dress and looked up at me, her face innocent. “What?”



I felt something push at the boundaries of my mind, and Beast rushed against it, slamming both front paws down on the mental intrusion. The compulsion fell away, and Soul opened her eyes wide. “What was that?”



“You tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine,” I grated out. I was usually lying when I said that, but this time I was actually willing to trade. I had known she wasn’t human, but I had no idea what Soul was.



“I—” she stopped. I waited. “Perhaps we’ll talk sometime.”



“Yeah. Perhaps.” I dropped my arms and she wavered on the roof, but now that I knew that looking human was all for show, I didn’t help to balance her. “Let me get changed, and we’ll set the charges.”



Drawing on Beast again, I half walked, half slid down the roof to the chimney, opened the bag holding my clothes, and stripped off the outer clothes I’d worn when I’d been afraid I’d become Beast in midair. I knew I was in plain sight of the men and wolf on the roof, and I had planned for this, so I wasn’t naked but in boy shorts and sports bra. I didn’t look up. And I didn’t let myself blush. This was a rescue job, not a pole dance.



I dressed in my leathers, which wasn’t easy, having to work stooped so my head didn’t get taken off by the softly sizzling ward just above me. I sat in the crevice of the chimney to pull on my boots and strap the Velcro over the ties. Still sitting, I opened the second go-bag and worked my way into the weapon harness. Nothing was going to be a smooth draw, not with the shirt bunched up where I couldn’t reach it without falling or getting scalped, but I felt immeasurably better once I was armed.



From the last bag, I pulled three explosive devices—each of them composed of C4 and det cord wrapped with tape, and the three ends sealed together with a long-delay detonator. C4, also called plastic-bonded explosives or PBX, was a malleable explosive that required a strong charge to set it off. I unspooled the detonator cord from around the block of explosive material and stood to peek over the edge of the chimney into the dark center. I half expected a huge, hairy spidey vamp to leap out at me, but the opening was clear all the way down. I nodded to the guys on the roof and lowered the chunk of C4. Eli had told me more than I ever wanted to know about the explosives, but the only thing I needed to know to make this work was how many of the devices to put down the chimney and how low to drop it. And he couldn’t tell me any of that. It was either do the math or eyeball it based on experience, neither which I had. But I had flown by the seat of my pants all my life, so why stop now?



I studied the mortar holding the bricks of the chimney flue together and decided that this was the original brick, which meant it was old, porous, and unstable, so it should come down easily. Not that I was taking a chance. I dropped the first block of C4 all the way down to just above where a faint light could be seen from the open fireplace. If there was an old-fashioned vent, it was long gone. I secured the cord to the top of the chimney cap by taping it with long lengths of duct tape. I unspooled another block of C4, let it down the chimney, and secured it about where I assumed the ceiling below me was. I wrapped it into the same tape as the first det cord and cut off the last device. One might work. Two surely would. Three would be overkill and might kill the witches below me.



Regular detonation cord is really just a long, thin explosive. When set off, it detonates—explodes—at a rate of about twenty-four thousand feet per second, so Soul and I were using a long-period-delay detonator, or LPD. Even so, we needed to be on the other side of the roof long before it went off. I pointed to the far chimney, and Soul scampered across to it. I put the go-bags around my neck and moved more slowly, unwrapping det cord as I went. Once over the ridgeline, I slid down the roof to the chimney and wedged myself in with Soul.



“They’ll be waiting for us. We’ve made enough noise to wake the dead,” Soul murmured.



“The undead, you mean,” I said dryly. Soul tinkled with laughter and I laughed with her, pulling hard hats from the explosives go-bag. I handed Soul hers and shoved my own on. I stuck my fingers in my ears, opened my mouth, and nodded to the guys on the roof at the same time.



Four seconds later, Eli’s C4 at ground level went off. I felt the concussions through my teeth. Above us, the hedge ward wavered and rippled, its energies interrupted by the explosions. I ducked my head and pressed my detonator, then re-covered my ears. Three long seconds went by, and the LPD det cord activated.



The blast took off the chimney. And the entire front of the old house. Debris shot into the air and fell, showering us. Bricks fell, some still intact. It was a miracle we weren’t brained by the falling debris. As it was, stuff peppered our hard hats.



Above us, one man zipped in and dropped, unburned by the wavering ward. Bruiser whipped past me and rammed an ax head into the roof. Using the handle, he swung over the roof edge and into the attic. Rick followed him and used a rope that was tied to the zip line to do the same thing. Brute landed, having leaped the whole distance. Beast was impressed and, not to be outdone, shoved me after him.