Hexed

survive.
    Coyote’s blood coated the knife. Fremont had shoved the blade into her heart, or whatever passed for a demon-goddess’s heart.
    The blood of a god wasn’t the blood of a mortal. Coyote’s blood held his essence, and now that essence wound itself through the demon-goddess.
    That crafty little trickster god. It wasn’t his death that would save us, but the knife that had killed him.
    The succubus’s sticky gray aura exploded and splattered all over the room. The aura stuck to the walls and worked its way inside, trying desperately to draw strength from the hex.
    Forget Beneath magic. I reached for wind still whipping through the room, drawing the cyclone to me and making it mine. I laughed as I sent it at her dying body.
    I ripped her apart. As the succubus fell, a misshapen creature ten feet tall, mottled green and blue, and ugly as hell rose from the wreckage of her body. The demon, in its true form, the succubus’s glamour gone. It screamed at me through a fang-laden mouth as it clutched at the knife.
    Mick dragged himself up, his tattoos still going crazy, his eyes flickering red. He blasted the demon with a white-hot stream of fire, and I followed with a burst pure from the storm. The demon succubus fought with renewed fury, its chest smoking, but it couldn’t withstand the two of us, Stormwalker and Firewalker, assisted by Coyote’s blood sacrifice.
    The demon screamed once more before it fell to my tile floor in an explosion of goo.
    “The wards!” Mick shouted. He redirected his magic to the hotel’s walls, and I followed. The black aura of the dead succubus resisted us, but our poor, battered wards burned with renewed brightness.
    Our wards twined happily around our magic like pets welcoming home long-absent humans. The hex crumbled and dissolved, our magic rushing through the walls like a river of fresh blood through shriveled veins. The demon-goddess’s aura dissipated with the hex, until both died with a little shriek on the wind.
    Mick’s fire went out. The gale swirled around me once, embracing me, then rushed away, leaving the hotel lobby in silence.
    The lights sprang to life, followed by a soft hum as the central heating clicked on. Outside, thunder boomed, and then the storm drifted away on a gentle rain.
    I turned to Mick, wiping dead demon gore from my face, but before I could reach his open arms, all strength left my limbs, and the floor rushed up to meet me.

ELEVEN
     

     
    I WOKE IN ONE OF MY FAVORITE POSITIONS, my head in Mick’s lap. His eyes had returned to the dark blue I loved, but the look in them was bleak.
    “What the hell happened?” Pamela demanded. She’d reverted to her human form, and she glowered down at me, tall and naked, a Changer woman in all her glory.
    “Coyote’s blood,” I croaked.
    We all craned to look at Coyote—and found him gone. Vanished, not a trace of him, not even a coyote hair left behind.
    “His heart’s blood.” I moved my tongue inside my parched mouth. “Coyote had to die to release it. I guess he figured that whoever we faced would be so powerful we’d need that formidable weapon.”
    “So he’s really dead?” Fremont asked.
    Who the hell knew? Coyote might have gone back to whatever sacred place gods went to when they left the world, maybe never to return in the form we knew. My heart ached.
    “But Ansel tasted his blood,” Pamela said. “I couldn’t stop him.”
    I sat up in alarm, clutching my aching head. “Ansel? Is he all right?”
    I spotted Ansel on a sofa, cringing against the arm as though trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The red in his eyes had gone, and dried blood caked his lips.
    “I’m fine,” he said in a shamed voice.
    “So why isn’t he dead?” Fremont demanded. Fremont looked tired, blood all over his hands, but there was a satisfied look in his eyes. The succubus had screwed him over, but he’d gotten even. Fremont might have inadvertently invited the problem into our lives, but he’d also been instrumental in solving it.
    I slumped back against Mick, liking the feel of the strong arms that wound around me. “Because Ansel isn’t inherently evil,” I said. “He’s a human being who got turned into a Nightwalker. It’s a different thing.”
    Ansel said nothing as he rose and silently faded up the stairs. Nightwalkers could move without sound, and Ansel vanished quickly into the gloom. He’d be punishing himself for a while, poor guy.
    Someone stopped next to