Pale Demon. Kim Harrison

twisted his arm around his own neck, ready to snap his wrist if he moved. The pixies were everywhere, talking so fast I couldn’t understand them, but I caught the words “intruder” and “Papa.” Just where was Jenks, anyway?

      The man wasn’t moving, and after some vigorous “encouragement” he let go of his splat gun and the pixies worked as a team to drag it out of his reach. It looked like mine, right down to the cherry red color. And the blue splat balls? They were almost my trademark.

      “You trying to frame me for assaulting Trent?” I exclaimed, and he only grunted. “What you got in your splat balls, Jack? Maybe we should find out together? Real personal like?”

      Breathing hard, the man tried to look at me, the anger obvious in his green eyes. Green eyes, blond hair, lanky build, tan: Was he an elf? An elven assassin? Not a very good one, though. And where the hell was Jenks?

      The sound of running feet pulled my head up. There was a second man, and I could do nothing. Damn it, he was getting away!

      “Are you after Trent or me?” I shouted at the guy under me and, furious, I thunked his forehead into the cement.

      The man’s eyes showed his pain. “Why do you even care?”

      Huh?

      There was a squeal of ultrasonic sound, and Jenks’s kids dropped back to make room for their dad. “Two of them!” Jenks exclaimed, dropping silver sparkles and a zip strip from my charm cupboard to hit the man’s back. “Trent’s in the kitchen. You want me to get her?”

      Her? I slipped the zip strip around the man’s wrist and ratcheted it tight, immediately feeling better. “Jack” didn’t move as his maybe-contact with a ley line was severed, telling me he hadn’t been prepared to use one to begin with, but better safe than sorry. I was spared the decision of what to do by the sound of Ivy’s cycle at the far end of the street. Jenks darted away with a second zip strip, leaving his kids to sweetly tell me what I ought to do to the man under me. He moved when the subject of wasps entered the conversation, and I yanked on his arm.

      Ivy’s bike slowed as Jenks’s dust glittered over her, then she gunned it, roaring past me and aiming for the woman fleeing over the lawns. Ivy was a tad more protective of me than Jenks, and with a silent fury she ran the woman down, using her foot like a jousting pole. Wincing, I watched the woman take a mouthful of grass as she slid to a front-face halt. Jenks’s children left me, and the woman slowly sat up, her hands in fists over her head as they surrounded her, bright sparkling spots of potential death in the sunshine.

      “Kids!” Jenks’s voice was shrill. “We’ve talked about this! Lunkers are a no-kill species! How come you never listen to me like you listened to your mom!”

      It looked like it might be over. “Get up,” I said, breathing hard as I eased up on my grip.

      The man spun under me, foot and fist lashing out. Jerking up and away, I stood, grabbing for his foot. It smacked into me with a bone-jarring thump, but I caught it. Determined green eyes met mine, and when I went to snap his ankle, he sideswiped me with the other foot.

      I gasped and went with it, trying to keep my presence of mind as I fell on the concrete walk, trying to turn it into something graceful. There was a sickening crunch under me. My glasses. Damn it! I’d let go, though, and when I again found my feet, he had stood and was coming at me with a knife.

      “Rachel, quit playing with him,” Ivy said loudly, her cycle idling back to us, the zip-stripped woman meekly walking before her with an escort of exuberant pixies holding swords.

      “He’s got a knife!” I exclaimed, teeth clenched as I did an X block, then dove under his arm to make him twist his own knife into his side. And there I stopped, breathing hard as I pressed the blade, still in his grip, into him, but not yet breaking the skin. He didn’t move, knowing it was right over his kidney. Jeez Louise, the curtains of the house across the street were moving. We had to take this inside before someone called Inderland Security. The last thing I needed was the I.S. out here.

      “You’ve lost, Jack!” I shouted as I pinched his wrist until he let go of the knife, then wrenched his arm up and pressed him into the nearby light pole. “We got Jill,” I said as he grunted, “and no way are you getting that bucket of water in my garden. If you don’t relax, I’m going to bust your crown! We clear?”

      The guy nodded, but I didn’t ease up. Spitting my hair out of my mouth, I realized that Ivy had parked her cycle and was coming up the walk with the woman. The female assassin’s hands were in fists, high over her head. Jenks’s kids were working together to shift the knife to the sidelines. Slowly I started to smile. We’d gotten them. Hot damn!

      “Hi, Ivy,” I said as she scuffed her booted feet to a halt. “Get the errands done?”

      The slightly Asian-looking woman quirked her lips at my robe, smiling as she held up her pharmacy bag. The unmistakable shadow of a second splat gun and several knives showed through the thin plastic. Her lips were closed to hide her small, sharp canines, but her mood was good.

      “You want to take this inside or bag them up and leave them here for big-trash pickup?” she asked, her black eyes going to the deceptively empty street. Her pupils were fully dilated despite the bright sun, evidence that she was working to maintain control of her instincts. Being in the sun would help; so would the wind now carrying away the scent of sweat and fear.

      “Inside,” I panted. I was out of breath, but Ivy wasn’t. She was six feet of lean, athletic living vampire, dressed in blue jeans, boots, and a tight black T-shirt. It would take more than running down a fleeing assassin on her bike to make her break into a sweat.

      “You going to be good, Jack?” I asked the man pressed against the light pole, and when he nodded, I let up. He grimaced as Ivy patted him down, adding another knife and more blue splat pellets in a clear, crush-proof plastic vial to her bag. I held my hand out for the splat balls and I refilled his hopper, fast enough to make Jack’s eyes widen in appreciation.

      Clicking the magazine away, I hefted the splat gun, thinking it felt good in my hand. “This is my house,” I said as I indicated the church. “If you do something I don’t like, you’re going to get whatever’s in the hopper, and the law will be on my side. Clear?”

      They didn’t nod, but they didn’t spout threats, either.

      “Move,” I said, and with an obedience that told me the potions were nasty, the two of them started up the cement stairs and toward the double wooden doors. Slowly I began to relax.

      Ivy looked at the gun, her brow furrowed. “It looks like yours,” she said.

      “You noticed that, too?” Eying the attackers, I pulled one side of the door open. Jenks’s kids entered the church first—three of them carrying my broken sunglasses—then the bad guys, then us. “Are you okay?” I asked Ivy.

      She smiled to show her fangs, small until she died and became a true undead, and I stifled a shiver. Ivy was great at maintaining a grip on her instincts, but fight, flight, or food brought out the worst in her, and this was all three. “Not a problem,” she said as the dark foyer took us. One of these days, we were going to invest in a new light fixture, but the sanctuary beyond it was a bright wash of light, the sun coming in the tall stained-glass windows to make colored patterns on the new set of living room furniture, my unused desk, Ivy’s exercise mats, and Kisten’s burned pool table. I still hadn’t had it refelted. My bare feet squeaked over the old oak, and I shoved Jack toward the small hallway at the back of the sanctuary.

      “Trent is here already?” Ivy asked, clearly having smelled him. “He’s still alive, right?”

      I nodded, wiping the grit from the sidewalk off my feet. Good Lord, I had tagged an assassin in my bare feet and a bikini. If this showed up on the Internet, I was going to be peeved. “Last I knew, he was. I told him to go into the kitchen and wait.” Assassins usually traveled in threes, but these were elven. I didn’t know their traditions.

      “He’s in there,” Jenks