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However they'd tied their munin to this place it was blood magic, death magic. I cut the palm of my hand and pressed it to the tree. I prayed, and sprinkled blood on the bones at my feet. The circle of power snapped into place with a rush that raised my skin as if it would crawl off my flesh. I invoked the circle. I called the wards. I worshipped, and it was enough.
Shrieks, screams filled the night. The vampires went up in flames. They ran, burning, for the edge of the ward and all who made it across exploded in a rain of burning bits and pieces.
I felt Damian above me, and Asher. None of the vampires left behind tried to do anything but run. Most fell into burning heaps on the ground without taking another step. Anyone under a hundred died where they stood.
The Indian woman had come to stand on the edge of the bone circle. She stared at me while the vampires screamed and died, and the stink of burning flesh and hair was thick enough to choke. Her face showed nothing. She'd rescued the club.
Finally she said, "I should kill you."
I nodded. "Yes, you should, but your allies are dead and your master has flown away. I'd get out while the getting's good, if I were you."
She nodded and threw the club to the ground. "Colin and Barnaby live, and we will see you again, Anita."
"I look forward to it," I said. I was hoping that she wouldn't notice that my back was pressed against the tree, because I wasn't sure I could stand on my own.
Nikki nodded, and started to walk away into the dark, past the tree and the bones. She spoke something then stepped through the ward. When she stepped through, the magic quenched, swallowed back into the earth.
She looked at me from the dark on the other side of the quieted circle. We stared at each other for a long moment, and I knew that if we met again she would kill me if she could. She was Colin's human servant. It was her job.
I slid down the tree until I was sitting in the bones. My legs were too weak to hold me and a fine trembling had started in my hands. I gazed out into the lupanar, gazed out over my handiwork. Some of the bodies still burned, but no vampire moved within the circle. The vampires were dead. All of them.