Silver Circle: Part 3: Shattered Skies (Black Dog Book 11) by Rachel Neumeier

Author:Rachel Neumeier [Neumeier, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

19 Miguel

Titania Valentine—or a Titania Valentine—stood way up there on the highest balcony, leaning on the railing, smiling down at them.

This was at least the third Titania, apparently. Miguel wondered how many there could be. Thirteen? He sure hoped not; or at least, he hoped they weren’t all here. He tried to decide whether this woman actually looked exactly like the woman Gerhard Brault had left pinned under a heavy planter upstairs in that house, or whether that was an illusion created by her use of the same dramatic goth makeup. Skin very white except for purple and black eyeshadow and black lipstick; black fingernail polish with little flecks of red in the center of each nail; hair long, straight, and black. Same jewelry too: mandalas of jet and diamonds. Either way, Titania Valentine was beautiful, sophisticated, model-thin, and, under the circumstances, extremely creepy.

Miguel had just time to think that before a single shot rang out. A small black hole appeared right between Titania’s eyes. She folded slowly forward over the railing and hung there, so obviously she hadn’t actually been the real Titania. This iteration of Titania hadn’t been immune to bullets. That was weird, but a nice discovery. Drops of blood fell, one after another, from the body to the flagstones near the house, glinting dark crimson against the white wall of the house, lit up like rubies by the actinic white light of the floodlights.

Turning, Miguel found Lieutenant Savio gripping another man’s arm and, with his other hand, gripping the barrel of the weapon the man was holding, shoving the gun down to point at the ground.

Ezekiel, suddenly right there, took the weapon away from the man, who flinched, grimaced, and took a step back, swearing under his breath. Ignoring that, Ezekiel handed the gun to Goldstein.

That was about how long it took Miguel to sort out the flow of events, but now he got it. The weapons had all been piled at Lieutenant Savio’s feet. So, when Titania—this iteration of Titania—appeared, Savio had snatched up a gun, but handed it to this other man, who was, presumably, a better shot. The man had taken that shot and then, almost certainly, tried to turn and shoot one of the black dogs, no doubt Ethan. Savio, expecting that, had stopped him just before Ezekiel did himself.

Yeah, that was about the way this had gone. Good for Savio. And yeah, it was urgent to break the Special Forces people out of the curse, get their minds back in the game, and … wait, the witch had said that was fine, like whatever Natividad was doing was playing into Gossamer’s extremely creepy hands.

And it had taken Miguel so long to arrive at this obvious conclusion that before he could say anything about that, Natividad was already saying, “I think what she meant, every time I pull the black magic off someone, the magic flows down into the earth and joins the … the curse, whatever is already down there. So that’s not good, obviously, but we still have to get the curse off everyone.

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