But I could see enough.

Leo staggered back, into the surf. Off balance, about to drop to one knee.

Titus’s sword swung forward, the weight and torque of his entire body behind it.

The blade cut into Leo’s neck. Blood spraying into the rain.

Leo’s head flew into the air.

His body fell.

Rain shattered onto the earth.

Leo died.

Leo . . . died.

Rain sliced me. Slashed my face. Sluiced down my leather jacket. The future and the past in every drop, icy from the fall through the heavens. I screamed.

CHAPTER 20

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

Suddenly I was in my room, digging around in the box of trinkets. Pulling out the bone fragment I needed. I didn’t remember getting here. Timewalking. Didn’t care.

Beast? Fighting form.

Beast is ambush hunter, she thought at me. Using my hands, she grabbed a second box from under the bed, a box of bones and teeth. Shoved my hand inside. The Gray Between ripped across me, tore its way along my spine.

My bones snapped and popped. My belly wrenched and flipped as nausea bent me double before it vanished. Pain shot through me, twisting the length of my skeleton, stretching my muscles, broadening shoulder joints, re-forming hips and pelvis, twanging in my jaw as my teeth grew. I tasted blood as the tissue and bone in my mouth and jaw tried to accommodate the transformation and the new fangs.

And . . . I took on mass.

The rubies on my necklace shattered. Bloodred crystals melted and disappeared. I threw back my head and screamed Beast’s challenge, the sound roaring through the house and out the windows to the assembled vamps on the beach. In ten seconds I drew back my shoulders. I was half-form, my pawed feet stretching out the sides of the specially made combat boots, my jaw full of teeth designed to tear meat. My eyes glowed golden. But I was more. I was bigger. I was—

Beast is sabertooth lion. Beast is big.

The rubies. You—

Beast took mass from rubies. Took snake in heart of all creatures from bones. Took Glob magic. Gave magic to Jane. Beast is best ambush hunter.

I/we slid le breloque onto one arm. Took the Glob into my fist. Pulled the Mughal blade. I stepped back into normal time. My belly crunched, my head ached, but I shoved the pain away.

I leaped through the window and landed on the porch roof. Roaring my challenge. My body lit by lightning that flashed from the ordinary, natural lightning storm. The vamps on the beach turned to me, looking up, as rain and lightning slashed down. The vamps rushing from the surf stopped, waiting. I shoved the crown they all wanted onto my head. My voice a deeper octave, I screamed, to be heard over the storm, my voice a roar not heard on the Earth in millennia. My voice a basso reverberation, I shouted, “The Dark Queen challenges Titus Flavius Vespasianus for control of the Americas and of Europe. The Dark Queen demands La Danza de los Maestros de Sangre!”

Titus’s eyes went wide and he stepped back into the surging waves. Lightning hit the water and the shore, a two-pronged strike. Titus vamped out, his jaw unhinging and sliding back into place. This was the first time I’d seen him in fanged form. Five-inch fangs, as long as the priestess’s fangs, thick at the base and serrated. Top and bottom. Titus had dog fangs. And three-inch talons.

Beast fangs are bigger.

“By what right do you challenge?” Brandon called out.

“By the right of the Dark Queen and by the death of Leo Pellissier. A death not dealt by the sword used by Titus Flavius Vespasianus, but by witch magic. Vespasianus cheated with witch magic, outside of the protocol of Sangre Duello. Ask the witches.” I pointed with the Mughal blade to Molly and Lachish, who stood together beneath a hedge of thorns that glowed like the sunrise. “Ask the arcenciel who watches this Duello.” I pointed to the clouds. “Only within La Danza de los Maestros de Sangre may magic be used in battle. This challenge is legal and it is mine!”

Titus must have known he was shit-out-of-luck, because he shouted back, “I accept!” He shook his long and short swords at the sky. “The weapons we carry! And the weapon of time! The blood of my enemy still on my blade.”

“Here and now!” I shouted back, my voice low, a growl of fury. “And in time! Prepararse para la muerte.” I threw myself forward, leaped from the roof, and dropped toward the sand. Landed before him, my half-form knees bending, taking the fall. I slammed le breloque onto my head. It clamped down on me as if sealing itself to me.

“Unto true-death!” Titus screamed.

The death bell rang. Battlefield time-sense took over.

Titus’s longsword descended. He threw a smaller blade at me. In Beast-sight, I saw it spinning, flipping. I stepped aside.

Beast clawed again through the Gray Between. Time slowed. Slowed. The consistency of frozen taffy. Time stopped. Pain speared me through my right eye. Nausea rose in a vile rush that twisted my guts. The storm was heavy, rain suspended like crystal bullets striking down. It was hard to breathe. And dangerous to move. If I looked at the rain, I would see moments of time, might change moments of time. But if I didn’t look directly at the drops . . . I focused away from the rain. The time-droplets moved back, out of my way, leaving regular raindrops close to me.

Carefully, making sure I didn’t move quickly enough to accidentally alter time in any of the time-drops, I ducked beneath the sword strike.

Beast is best ambush hunter. Beast reached out for a droplet of rain. In it was the immediate past. The image of Titus’s sword striking Leo’s neck.

I stopped her. Thinking. Trying to see what might happen if we took that small part of time. The droplet beyond it was an image of Titus’s people attacking the Onorios. The droplet beyond that was an image of his people attacking the witches, a sword thrust through Molly’s belly, killing her and her daughter. Lachish dead in the rain, magical implements on the sand. Ailis dead. Koun and Tex dead. The droplet beyond that showed a bomb landing on the beach, another on the beach house. Titus’s ship exploding. Everyone dead. And worse beyond that. A pathway running with blood.

Every time-drop near the death of Leo showed only destruction and devastation. If I went back in time and saved Leo, far worse would happen. I studied the drops. Praying for that one, looking for that one, single drop that might show me another path. But . . . every drop, each and every one, displayed the beginnings of a war between the Europeans and the American vamps. Further back were images of humans drained and dead in the streets. Humans hanging from streetlights in the French Quarter. Bombs dropping on New Orleans. Soldiers and tanks in the streets. Vamps at war with the United States.

Eli and Alex dead on the floor of our home.

Edmund lying back-to-back with Gee, both dead, beheaded.

All because I saved Leo. The pain in my head grew worse. I fought to keep my gorge down, swallowing the sickness there.

Heart aching, I said aloud, “We’ve messed up too much as it is. We can’t fix this by timewalking.”

Beast is best ambush hunter. Beast can save Leo.

No. We’ll screw up things. Mess up people’s lives. If we save Leo, that will change something that may have been supposed to happen. No.

Beast/Jane screamed, the sound lost in the vibration of thunder. And then Titus moved. He stepped into the time bubble with me. His sword swinging down. I caught it on the curved Mughal blade and stepped close, ramming up. Hit him in the jaw with an uppercut. The Glob sliced his chin and busted his lips. It sucked his power away. A sudden scalding burst of might I felt in my paw/fist.

Titus threw back his head and screamed. I tossed the Glob high, where it left the bubble of time, hanging in the air, and, Beast-fast, pulled a vamp-killer. Thrust with the vamp-killer, through his chin and up into his skull. Ripped out the knife, twisting. Titus shivered, shook, seizing as if the lightning had hit him. I slung back the arm and took Titus’s head.

I pushed the headless body out of the bubble of time, leaving him half falling and headless.

Speared his head from out of time on the Mughal blade. Pulled it to me. Sheathed the vamp-killer. With a claw, I lifted the thin chain that still rested on the emperor’s chest. Inside was a tiny quartz crystal with a miniature arcenciel inside. She was purple and gold and shimmering with fury. This explained why Soul had stuck around. One last arcenciel caught in crystal, a slave to a vamp who wanted to rule time. I tucked the crystal into my pocket. Reached for the Glob.