by Lyn Gala
“You are going to break every bone in your shoulder,” Paige warned. All the wariness and readiness dropped out of Brady’s body language as he turned to look at her. “Use your training, Brady. It’s not always about brute strength.” She crossed her arms and glared at him.
She could tell the instant he realized what she meant. He blushed, his whole face turning darker and his eyes taking on a pinkish color. Without a word, he walked over to the door and looked at the area right under the doorknob.
“Donkey or side kick?” he asked, but he asked it soft enough that she figured he was mulling over his options. “This may splinter. You may want to take cover,” Brady warned her. The wood was a lot heavier than the standard training doors they taught recruits to kick through when they didn’t have time to go for proper equipment. The door was heavy and old, so Brady was right about the possibility of it splintering.
“You’re the one who’s going to be standing right in front of it. Vampires and wood splinters are not friends,” Paige warned.
“Good thing I’m not a vampire.”
“I’m guessing a wooden stake to the heart would still kill you,” Paige pointed out. “Actually, I’m pretty sure Hunter said that stakes worked, so do you really want to test that theory?”
Brady eyed the door. “No, but this is the best escape strategy. So I have to be in the line of fire here. You don’t. Use your training, Silver,” he said with more than a touch of sarcasm.
“Asshole,” Paige said softly, but she also went over to the far side of the bed and crouched down. He was right that they didn’t need to both put themselves in danger. That didn’t mean she had to like him being right.
“Just looking out for my partner.”
Paige didn’t have an answer for that. Ducking her head lower, she waited for Brady to place his kick. The kick right below the doorknob would do a lot more damage than any shoulder jammed into the center of the door. She couldn’t believe he’d even considered that. Then again, maybe demon Brady was used to having enough strength to bull through most obstacles.
A hard crack echoed through the still room. “Shit,” Brady muttered. A second crack and then a third filled the air before the fourth crack came with the horrible screech of metal against wood. A near explosion of sound filled the room. Chunks of wood clattered down, metal bits fell with a tinkle of iron against rock.
Paige stuck her head above the bed and looked at the mess Brady had made out of the door. The latch-side of the door had shattered and Brady stood in the middle of the ruins with a huge smile on his face. “Door zero, Brady one,” he announced proudly.
As Paige was getting ready to stand up, a sound made her freeze. A woman gave a low chuckle and Paige was pretty sure she knew who was standing in the hallway.
“My demon emerges,” uber-bitch said. She came into the hall so that the tatters of the doorway framed her. “Like a butterfly out of the cocoon, you have embraced your power.” She gave a little golf clap that really made Paige want to bitch slap her. Actually, bitch slapping would be number two on the list. The first thing she wanted to do was shoot the woman in the head.
Brady fell into a crouch, his hands curled into claws. If Paige thought he had a chance in hell of winning, she would have stood up and cheered him on. However, considering how round one had gone, she wasn’t holding her breath for the outcome of round two. And she was one backup plan short of having a backup plan.
“Killing the woman was the wise choice. You’ve healed beautifully.” The woman stepped into the room, raising her hand halfway as though she would stroke Brady’s cheek. Brady fell back a step and physically braced himself. “The time for fighting is over.” Her voice got brittle now. “You’re physically weaker, you’re ignorant of your own being and you need my guidance.”
“Lady, I don’t need anything from you, except for you to get out of my way,” Brady disagreed.
“That is not going to happen.” She stepped carefully over a large chunk of door that was drunkenly propped against the wall. “I created you.”
“You created nothing.” Brady’s voice was shaking with emotion and Paige could feel the disaster coming. She could feel it and there was nothing she could do to stop it. “You killed the first Brady and you opened a door, but you never created me. Do you really think you can control me?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “That’s how it’s done in our community. The strong set rules for the weak, and until you can fight your way free, you are mine.”
“So, who are you trying to fight your way free from?” Brady asked coldly. Paige had wondered the same thing, but she had more common sense than to ask.
The woman sucked in a breath and gave Brady such a cold look that Paige thought they’d start round two on the spot. “I am strong enough to have my own court, my own rules and my own consort. And I will have you obedient.”
Brady looked her up and down, his gaze equally as cold. “Well, that’s not how I do things.”
When she smiled, the expression was toothy and full of danger. “You do things the way I tell you, unless you want to test your strength against me. You may be healed, but I promise, you are not strong enough to take me on.” She made a strange hand gesture and sighed as though he really were nothing more than a pitiful annoyance. “I’m trying so hard to not break you, but if I must, I will.”
“That’s what happened to you, isn’t it? Someone told you that the strong controlled the weak and you were weak.” Brady’s words hit her like a weapon. She took a step back and the veins in her eyes turned red. It made it look like she had red spider webs clinging to her eyeballs. It was not a good look.
“I am not weak,” she hissed. Paige could tell that the woman’s tenuous grip on reality was starting to give and Brady just kept pushing.
“You were. You were too weak to protect yourself, so you just told yourself it was normal. You got out of that situation and now you think you can come in and fuck with my life.” Brady’s voice was rough with emotion and his eyes were turning red. The second they got out of this safely, Paige was going to head-slap the boy until his brain rattled. If this was his idea of talking his way out of a situation, he needed to take the negotiation class over. Bitch-lady looked ready to fly into a rage and Brady seemed ready to follow.
Paige looked around and couldn’t spot much in the way of a weapon. Unfortunately, with her bare hands, she couldn’t do much damage if it came down to a fight.
“You have come into this world knowing only what was in the human mind. You don’t understand—”
“I know I won’t play your fucking game.” Brady arched his back, and lowered his head. His body language screamed his fury and the hairs on Paige’s arms stood up straight.
“You will—”
“Rip you apart,” Brady finished. His words were a growl, and before she could react, Brady threw himself forward. He grabbed her arms and slammed her head back into the wall. The sheer force would’ve killed a human, but this woman brought her hands up and wrapped fists around Brady’s arms. Pushing off against the wall, she slammed Brady into the far wall. Since the room was only about six feet wide, neither of them had room to really maneuver.
“You’ll learn your place,” the woman snarled.
Paige remembered something that Hunter had said. He said to shoot demons in the head because staking them in the heart meant getting too close. However, that implied that staking them through the heart worked.
Darting out from behind the bed, Paige wrapped up the nearest good-sized shard of wood and swung at the woman’s back. At the last second, the woman flinched, her eyes scanning the room behind her and going wide when they spotted Paige. Paige didn’t hit her heart, but she sank the wood deep into the woman’s lower back. The woman screamed in pain.
Paige fell back out of the way, her eyes searching for another stake. Taking advantage of the distraction, Brady wrenched himself free and grabbed the woman by the neck, slamming her head into the wall next to the door. He
repeated that three times, and each time the woman’s head hit the wall, it did so with a sickening thump.
Her hands came up and clawed at Brady’s face and Brady gave a bellow. However, he didn’t let go. Pulling the woman away from the wall, he spun them both around so that her back was to Paige.
“Now!” he yelled, holding her there.
Paige grabbed another shard of wood and this time she had her mark, driving the impromptu stake deep into the woman’s back. Paige’s hand burned with pain as hundreds of little slivers dug their way into her flesh, but that was nothing compared to the damage done to the demon.
Brady let go and backed away as the demon woman twisted and shrieked. Her skin seemed to shrivel, her bones protruded gruesomely and then her whole body seemed to fold in on itself. Flesh melted away and bones clattered to the floor, bits of shriveled mummified skin and hair settling slowly on top.
Paige stared at the mess, her stomach churning.
“Don’t look.” Brady crossed the distance between them and caught her in a hug. With his hand behind her head, he pulled her close enough that all she could see was his strong chest. “Don’t look,” he repeated, his voice softer the second time.
Paige stood in his arms for a second, her heart pounding. Even the lust that normally assaulted her when Brady touched her only scratched the surface of the horror she felt watching the woman die. The woman hadn’t been some random demon. She’d known the woman, or she knew about women like her, anyway. She wasn’t some faceless creature. Watching her die like that—Paige’s stomach gave another little flop before Paige pushed her feelings to one side. They didn’t have time for this.
“Focus on the scene, Brady,” she said in her best training voice. Brady’s arms loosened and he looked down at her fondly.
“The scene?”
“Yes, the scene. This is a scene, and until I have time to properly freak out and seek psychiatric medicine, I’m only going to think of it as a scene,” she said firmly. She didn’t have time to do anything else. “And shit, my hand hurts.” Looking down, she could see dozens of trails, some with blood smears, from where the rough edge of the wood had sunk splinters into her flesh.
“I can—” Brady started to say. He reached for her hand.
“Focus on the scene. It isn’t cleared yet.” Paige jerked her hand away.
“Yes ma’am,” Brady said, his voice amused.
“Hey, I don’t want to beat the demon only to get killed by the freaked-out human flunky with the big-ass gun,” she pointed out.
“You have a point there,” Brady admitted. He turned back to the doorway, his body on alert again. He stopped and looked down the hallway before he stepped out. Paige stayed in the room and pulled the largest of the splinters with her teeth as she waited to give him a head start. If she had a gun, she’d be on his six, but since she was unarmed, she didn’t want to be so close on his six that he tripped over her when he needed to move.
After two splinters, she moved into the hallway. Brady checked the other two doors. Placing his hand flat against the heavy wood, he cocked his head to the side. It wasn’t exactly by the book, but Paige trusted he could hear if there was anyone in the rooms. The staircase was more modern than the basement itself. It was standard two by four framing and plywood and the first step creaked when Brady put his weight on it.
Brady and Paige both froze, but the house was silent as Brady hurried up the stairs. Paige hung back. The hallway lacked any good cover and she felt the loss of her gun. Even if she wasn’t one of those cops who named their weapon and bought it ammunition for a Christmas present, she was still pretty damn fond of it.
When Brady reached the top, the door came open and the human servant appeared in the open door, his mouth falling open. Brady reached up, caught him by the shirt and yanked him forward. The man made a small cry, and then Brady snapped the man’s head to the side. The neck bone breaking sounded loud in the silence that followed.
Paige swallowed, watching as Brady continued to hold the body, his back arching and his neck stretching up in that same inhuman body language she’d seen from him before. Then, after about ten seconds, he dropped the man and stared down at him. Brady looked lost.
“Escape now. Angst later,” Paige said as she hurried up behind him. While she’d never killed in the line of duty, she knew the drill. You focused on clearing the scene and maintaining your position until backup came. Since backup wasn’t coming, they couldn’t afford to get emotional now.
Brady blinked at her, and then he moved up into the main house. Paige waited as long as it took her to pull a splinter in the junction between her palm and her trigger finger, and then she followed.
For one second, she considered grabbing the flunky’s shirt since Brady was running around bare-chested, but her sense of practicality didn’t extend to robbing the dead. That would be creepy. When she got to the top of the stairs, the house was silent. Paige wanted to find her weapon, but she had no idea where to start a search. She also didn’t know how many bad guys were in the house, how strong they were or whether the vamps outside would come inside if they saw her. That was a lot of not knowing. So she followed Brady.
He stalked into the room where the woman had Paige brought. Paige stood with her back to the wall and watched the exits while Brady paced the room, his body language alien to her. When he finished, he glanced over to her. “I’m just following you and hoping I find my gun,” Paige pointed out. Brady cocked his head to the side, but he didn’t answer.
Turning his back to her, he pushed the pocket doors open and strode into the next room. It looked like a mirror image of the first room, only this one had a formal, cushioned chair that looked like it was out of some fancy house, a rough table and two side tables with small drawers.
Paige waited until Brady had paced the entire room before she went to the tables and opened the drawers. One had papers that belonged to a Mrs. Ethel Biltmore. The other was empty. No luck.
Paige looked to Brady, and before she said anything, he was out another door on the east wall. Paige followed him back out into the central hallway and through an arch into a damn big dining room. The table in the middle looked like it had been there since the Civil War. Worms or termites had eaten tunnels in the legs, the wood had turned gray with age and one leaf had fallen, leaving a hole in the middle. Brady circled once and then they were through into the world’s biggest closet. This place had as many cupboards and drawers as Paige’s entire house.
She pulled one drawer after another while Brady paced back and forth in the hall. On her tenth or eleventh try, she found success. She grabbed her Glock and a bag of sparkly toys she’d brought for the idiot vamps.
Ignoring the pain in her hand, she checked the weapon and made sure it was loaded before putting it in her holster. “Just let me pull some of these splinters. I can’t aim if I’m flinching in pain,” she said. Brady frowned, like he couldn’t quite understand her. However, when she started working at her hand with her teeth, the alien body language softened and he took a step into the small room.
“Let me,” he offered, holding out a hand.
“I’d be more comfortable if you kept watch.” Paige mumbled the words as she tried to get her front teeth into the end of a nasty splinter that followed the line of her palm.
“Two perps, upstairs, west corner. Neither is moving around much and there’s no sign they know about any trouble. Eight or nine outside.” Brady cocked his head. “I think nine, but one is really quiet. The rest are just pretty damn quiet. None of them show any interest in doing anything at all.”
“They aren’t what I expected from vampires,” Paige admitted. While the bitch lady had been scary, vampires or demons or aliens or whatever they wanted to call themselves—they weren’t a terribly impressive lot as a whole. If anything, Paige felt herself feeling a whole lot of sympathy toward them.
“They aren’t all the same, Paige.” Brady took her injured hand in his and studied it. “She was a strong dem
on.”
“Not as strong as you,” Paige pointed out.
“Stronger than me,” Brady corrected her. He shrugged. “But not as strong as the two of us together.” He brought her hand up to his mouth and gave it a small kiss of apology before he sucked at it. Paige gritted her teeth and barely swallowed the surprised yelp when Brady used his teeth to pull one of the splinters. He spit it out on the ground. For a second, they just stood there, him holding her hand, neither looking at each other.
Brady finished pulling a particularly large splinter and paused, his gaze on Paige’s hand. “She was like a lot of abused women, huh?”
Paige sighed. After seeing the woman die horribly, she really didn’t want to have sympathy for her.
“You always said domestic calls were the worst. You told me that if I ever put my back to a battered woman that you’d kill me yourself.” Brady looked up and gave her one of those lopsided smiles he was famous for.
“Women like that often want to feel powerful, even if powerful means defending their man against the cops who showed up because she called,” Paige said. She told all her trainees the same thing. Hell, they heard it at the academy, but that rule bore repeating several times until new cops got it in their heads. People who’d been denied power weren’t the most stable sort. “Yeah, maybe she was like that. I’m still not sorry we killed her,” Paige said firmly.
Brady nodded. “Me either. She wanted us dead, and since we can’t exactly have her arrested, it seems fair.” Brady went back to work on Paige’s hand. Brady worked quickly, each splinter bringing a little flare of pain that Brady gently kissed away until Paige’s growing desire started to override the pain.
“Brady,” she warned. He paused, his lips still pressed to her palm.
“Right,” he said in a tone that made it clear he knew exactly what she meant. He let her hand go after a pause. “I think I got all the ones I can.”
Paige pulled her hand back and flexed it. It was sore, but there weren’t splinters in any vital spots that would keep her from pulling the trigger. “Good enough. You need to give me a little space to get…cooled down some,” Paige said. She waited for him to back out of the small space. Her body was tight with lust and she had to have a stern word with her internal self-control before she could even look up at Brady. He held onto the sides of the doorway and watched her with those amber eyes that made her want to stare.