by Faith Hunter
“I knew, logically, that there wouldn’t be time, but I had hoped to make a run at the house, disable all his vamps, and be in position before he got here. I guess we’ll play the hand we’re dealt. Come on.” I gestured toward the house where Jack Shoffru was getting out of a car, a body over his shoulder.
Ideally, now would be the time to take Eli back, but before I could figure out how to attack five vamps and as many humans, they were inside, the door closed. “So. We’ll do it the hard way.”
Getting into a house, finding a hostage, rescuing him, and getting out again without casualties was usually a job for a big, well-trained force. We had me. And a few charms Big Evan had put together for me. I had a look-away charm, a feel-better charm, an obfuscation charm—the closest thing to invisibility that witches could make—and a pain charm, what witches called a curse, one that gave pain instead of relieved it. I carried spelled and silver-plated knives, silver shot in my weapons, flashbangs, and some old holy water. Holy water had worked well one time against vamps, but it seemed to have an undeclared expiration date. One day it would work; the next it stopped, without warning. It wasn’t something I could depend on.
My biggest advantage was Eli himself. He wouldn’t do anything stupid to make my job harder. He would help if he could. And I wasn’t smelling his fresh blood on the night air. That had to be good. It had to be.
Observing the house from the driveway next door, hidden behind a Hummer painted a horrid hue of warning yellow, I adjusted my coms unit on my head and ears. Tapped the mic. “Kid? Can you hear me?”
“Copy, Jane. Bruiser is on the way over. He can hardly stand, but he says he’s coming for moral support. And before you ask, Tia and I are watching the babies.”
“Yeah, okay. That means no rolls in the hay. Eyes and attention on the job at hand.”
The Kid laughed evilly, and I rolled my eyes. Teenagers can make double entendres out of anything. “Rescuing your brother,” I enunciated.
“I know. I’m just yanking you. According to the house specs, online with the builder, the ground floor is an open plan, with the exception of a kitchen and a safe room in back. The second floor has a game room at the top of the stairs, four bedrooms, three full baths, including one Jack-and-Jill-style. Master bedroom is up the stairs, to the right, at the end of the wide hallway. There’s a spiral staircase from the master bedroom down to the safe room on the first floor near the kitchen. The stairs can be wheeled away, sealing the upstairs opening. The first-floor entrance to it is from the laundry room, off the kitchen, and then out along the shed in the backyard, through a narrow hallway along the garage, where another safe room is set up. This one leads into the garage where a vamp could get away in a vamp-mobile, even in the daytime, as long as he had a driver.”
A car moved silently down the street and into a driveway, seven lots down. My gut did a little somersault as the MOC glided out of the car. Bruiser, who had been riding shotgun, also got out, moving like the walking wounded. The driver was Derek Lee, who was wearing black camo and who weaponed up fast as I watched. From the passenger side of the back, Gee DiMercy emerged and melted into the night. A sense of relief washed through me. I wouldn’t be doing this alone.
“Surprise,” the Kid said. “Backup. They all know what you know.”
I chuckled softly. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember this at bonus time.”
“Pony ride on your birthday?”
I heard Tia giggle in the background.
“Sorry,” I said. I hadn’t been aware that she could hear. I was pretty sure I’d embarrassed my partner. Dang it. Social skills zero. The Kid gave a long-suffering sigh.
The men slid through the dark like wraiths and up to me, and joy like the morning sun rose in me. We could save Eli. With this group, I could do anything. I smiled at them, and it must have been a brilliant, really good smile, because Bruiser and Leo both hesitated midstep.
Bruiser was dressed all in leather, bristling with weapons. Leo wore a long sword at his side and two short swords. And several knives strapped to his thighs. Derek looked the way he always did—one of Uncle Sam’s finest—but I was still surprised to see him here.
I flipped a hand at him in question, and he said, “I always did wanna save a Ranger.”
“Ah. So you could rub his nose in it.”
“Forever. Ooh-rah.”
“Just so long as your priorities are straight,” I agreed, grinning. To the group, I said, “The downstairs shutters are closed. We have magical assistance in the tree out back and in the golf course. Don’t shoot them. Molly”—I pointed at the house under renovation—“is trying to see if she can pinpoint Shoffru. She sent a search and locate spell inside a bit ago. Since it’s dead magic, Shoffru might not notice that magic is being used against him. You know—undead flesh and all that. No offense,” I said to Leo.
“None taken, mon petit chaton avec les griffes.”
I had learned what the phrase meant. “I’m not your kitten.”
“Perhaps. But you hold my soul in your claws, mon coeur.”
Which could not mean that he knew about the binding. No way. Could not. Oh, crap. Did he know? Something else to deal with later. Much later. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever.” Gee DiMercy slid up to me in the dark. I said, “There’s a back entrance. Make sure Shoffru doesn’t make it to the garage. And maybe you could also puncture his tires?”
“I would be mortified to be assigned such mundane tasks,” Gee said. “I will simply kill anyone who tries to escape. Except your human.” He slid back into the darkness.
“Okeydokey.” Working with supes was weird. “Leo, can you get Shoffru’s attention and hold it for a while?”
“Of course. Contrary to his vow to me as his master, he attacked one of my people. I am within my rights to demand a Blood Challenge.”
“We don’t need to be getting into the middle of a sword fight until Eli is safe. I’d rather you trash-talk him for a while instead.”
“You wish me to discuss the garbage industry with him?” Leo was confused and I wanted to chortle but had to settle on a mangled cough. I needed him too much to make fun of him. When I got myself back under control, I said, “Ummm . . .”
“I’ll explain,” Bruiser said, putting a hand on his master’s arm. His former master. Weird. Weird-er. Maybe not weird-est.
“Bruiser,” I said, “once you explain, can you hang with me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Hey, Marine,” I said to Derek Lee, as Bruiser explained trash talk to a five-hundred-year-old fanghead. “I got a rocket launcher in the back of the SUV. It’s been modified to toss flashbangs. You up to finding a weak spot in the downstairs windows or doors?”
“Hell yeah.”
His delight at mayhem and destruction was a bit unsettling, but I nodded anyway. “Whatever. After I reach the second floor, count to ten, then fire. If you can find openings, start left to right. I’ll enter the far right room. Oh. There’s a headset in the SUV too.”
“Copy. Hey, cute dragon, Puff.” With an expression of wicked delight, Derek merged into the shadows toward Eli’s SUV. Guys and stuff that goes bang I’d never understand, but the reason for that might be as much physiological as anything else. I was also gonna be stuck with a new name. Puff the Magic Dragon, courtesy of the T-shirt. Great. Just freaking great. But not my biggest problem.
As plans went, mine wasn’t much of one. Mostly it was distract, make a lotta noise, some bright lights. Evan and Molly outside, one in front, one in back, with their magical woo-woo stuff. Bruiser and me inside, with Leo close behind.
And then I heard the muffled scream. I caught a whiff of something. I was smelling blood on the night wind. I opened my mouth and drew air in over tongue and the roof of my mouth. Eli’s blood. I could hear his pained breath, and soft, female laughter. Eli was hurt. Eli was dying. Someone was torturing him. And that someone was enjoying the process.
CHAPTER 23
Hey, Bitch!
You Want Some of This?
“Come on, Derek,” I said, hearing Eli’s ragged breath on the night air. Derek had used some of Eli’s fancy equipment to tell me that the Ranger was in a second-floor room, with a human and a vamp. Even without electronics, I knew which window the sounds were coming through. I could smell the blood and hear the pained breath of my partner. I could tell he was gagged. I could smell his pain and fear. “Come on, damn it!” I snarled.
Over the headgear, which the Kid had routed into all of our cells, I heard the others checking in. Big Evan was ready. The girls in the tree were ready. Molly and her niece were ready. Only Derek was left.
“In position,” Derek said over my earpiece. “But you’ll have to open the shutters or doors. I’ve been all around the site and there is no, repeat, no, access on ground floor without use of explosive ordnance.”
“No bombs. No explosives,” I said.
“Copy. But you ain’t no fun, Legs.”
I knew he was trying to lighten the tension, maybe as part of some battlefield routine, and for the sake of my team, I forced a tight smile onto my face and countered his gibe. “Not the first time I’ve been told that.”
“We can talk about your love life later. Focus, woman. We got a man to rescue.”
I smiled for real then, stretching my arm. It was not a hundred percent. But at least I still had an arm. There was that. “On ten, Evan. Count down.”
Evan, his voice tight, started counting up from one. Irritating man.
Casually, Bruiser said, “I can toss you up.”
I measured the distance from ground to second floor. I thought about having to use my strong arm to catch myself if I jumped, which would mean holding my weapons with my injured arm. “You think you can toss me up so I can just step onto the railing and drop to the porch floor?”
“Piece a cake, doll face.” Which sounded like something out of the ’twenties or ’thirties. The nineteen twenties or thirties.
“Ten,” Evan said.
“Gogogogogogo,” I said.
Big Evan began to play a haunting melody, the flute notes low and sonorous. Air magic flowed toward the house from the golf course. Molly’s dark magic began to flow through the air from the second floor’s unfinished porch across the street from our objective. Leo, though he practically flew ahead of us, moved at a speed that humans—and witches with spells aimed against vamps—could follow. He stopped in the middle of the yard, his body going from a slow vamp-jog to a dead stop. He drew his long sword, propped it over his shoulder, and grinned at me. His fangs were down. Leo was having fun. The smell of blood and fear on the air was probably making him happy.
Our boots nearly silent on the fresh-cut grass, Bruiser raced in front of me. Dropped to one knee, his hands up high to grab mine. I raced up his body, my feet landing on knee, hip, and his shoulder, my body bent, taking his hands as he leaped to his feet. I leaped with him.
My body straightened, elongated, and I flew up and forward, drawing my weapons as I flew. Bent-kneed, I touched my right toes to the iron banister. With a shove I propelled myself in through the open door. Into the room where a fanghead had her fangs buried in Eli’s neck. I landed on the carpet with a double thud.
The vamp-killer took her head almost as if it sliced through the air all by itself. My throwing knife buried itself in the man’s throat. Silently, the bodies of both vamp and human went down. I caught the vamp’s head in both hands, holding the fangs in place in Eli’s throat. Blood, watery and pale, burbled out around the fangs still buried there. Bruiser landed beside me and raced to the doorway, securing the room. I eased the fangs loose and tossed the bloody head. Blood spiraled out from the stump of neck, creating weird patterns on the bedspread. I pulled the charmed stake from my thigh sheath and pressed it to Eli’s neck. Instantly the blood clotted over around the stake, a gelatinous glob of blood that spread until it clotted over the entire wound. I raced to a bureau, opened it, and pulled out a handful of folded clothes. T-shirts, maybe. I removed the stake, tucking it into a pocket, and pressed the clothes to Eli’s throat. I cradled his head in my palm, the other holding the compress gently in place. He was cold. So cold. Shock, I thought. His pulse beat, too fast, an erratic tattoo of movement, beneath my hands.
“I got him,” I whispered into the mic. “He’s alive. But I can’t move him. He needs—”
From the front lawn, I heard Leo shout, “Jacques Shoffru, former Master of the City of Veracruz and Cancún, Mexico, and all hunting territories between, you are forsworn. You will meet me here, now, in Blood Challenge!” So much for the trash talk. He’d skipped it entirely and gone right for the challenge.
“He needs a vamp to heal him. Fast,” I finished, in a whisper, knowing it was too late. Eli’s heart pumped a single hard thump, then sped with shock. He was dying. His pupils were blown, wide and nearly black as a vamp’s. Bruiser slid in behind me and started working the chains holding Eli upright, iron chains, the kind a monster truck would use to haul a cattle car. As if Eli was dangerous—
A shadow flickered in the edges of my vision. One-handed, I grabbed a knife. Threw it. With muscle memory, practice, and pure luck I hit my target. But the compression bandage slipped. I grabbed it as a blood-servant fell, my knife buried in his throat. Blood gushing. Gouting. I’d hit the carotid artery. He tried to shout, but sucked in blood with the breath. Choked. I’d hit his windpipe too. He writhed on the floor, dropping the short sword he had been holding. Trying to pull a gun. Gently, Bruiser took it away from him.
The man died. I remembered to breathe. The air ached in my chest. I blinked and saw the man’s bright green eyes, as if burned into my retinas.
Bruiser checked the hallway again and returned to the chains. He loosed the bonds holding Eli upright in the chair. My partner started to slide down, boneless. The T-shirt bandages slid again and fresh blood gushed over my hands. “No! Nononono,” I whispered, repositioning the bloody cloth as Bruiser caught him. The blood was so watery, like Kool-Aid, not something to sustain life. Eli is dying. Together we eased my partner to the floor. Instantly blood soaked into the carpet beneath him, thin and watery. Fresh and weak. Tears gathered in my eyes. “Nononononono,” I murmured, over and over.
“Jane,” Alex said, his voice full of fear in my earpieces. “Jane?”
“I can’t— I don’t know what—”
From the front yard, I heard the clash of steel. The roar of vampires in a duel. “Alex, I need two things. Fast. I need Shiloh here, in this room. And I need Molly to drain the pirate. You understand? Now. No argument. Just do it. Tell them. Or your brother is dead. Do it!”
I heard Alex giving orders on the makeshift coms system. I felt more than saw Bruiser leave the room. And it was just Eli and me on the floor, my hands trying desperately to hold in the blood. To hold in the life. His pulse thumped and stuttered and raced. I leaned in and hissed, “Do not die on me. Do. Not. Die.” Tears ran from my eyes and snot dribbled under my nose. They dripped onto my hands as I sobbed, trying to be silent. Knowing that if I had to defend him, if someone got past Bruiser and I had to let go and take up a weapon, Eli would die. Right then. “If you die”—I snuffed up the mess on my face and wiped it on the shoulder of the fuzzy purple shirt—“I’ll tell all Derek’s men you weren’t as tough as they are. I’ll . . .”
Fuzzy purple T-shirt. I repositioned my entire body and held the blood-soaked wad of compression material over his neck with my knees as I ripped off the T-shirt. It was stupid to remove the compression bandage. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whispered. But I eased it slowly back. Blood had pushed past the clot that had formed from the charmed stake. I hesitated for half a second, grabbed the stake from my pocket, wiped it cleanish on my jeans, and pressed it back into the wound. Instant clotting. I wrapped the T-shirt over the wound and tied it all off with the T-shirt’s arms, not tight, loose enough to let him breathe. I repositioned Eli’s legs up high, a mound of pillows under them. I pulled all the linens off the bed and tucked
them around his body to treat the shock. I was thinking now. At last.
A hand touched my shoulder. Bruiser leaned down to me and said, so softly it was less than a breath against my cheek, “Someone is in the hallway. Shiloh has a shot. Stay down.” I saw the vamp fall before I heard the rifle shot. It didn’t echo far, not on the flat land, but the echo in the midst of the houses was fast and tapping.
On the front lawn, swords clashed. I heard Leo shout, a sound of pain. I smelled vamp blood, and had been smelling it for a while, what seemed like hours, though it couldn’t have been more than two minutes. From the back of the house, I heard a scream and the faint snap of a whip. Go, Bliss and Rachael. Just hope it wasn’t one of ours.
“Molly says she can’t draw the life from Shoffru without drawing it from Leo too,” Alex said, controlled panic in his voice. “They’re moving too fast and she can’t figure out how to separate them in the spell. Jack is pulling through the bond he has on her, using Molly’s magic against Leo. And Shiloh can’t help you. She says Leo is pulling from her and her new servants, but it isn’t enough. She says all of Shoffru’s vamps are on the front lawn. They’re closing in on Leo.” His voice in the earpieces went emotionless and low. “They aren’t going to honor the Blood Challenge. They’re just gonna kill him.”
I cursed. “Okay. Tell Evan to get up here any way he can. Tell Bliss and Gee to help him get in through the back door. Tell them all to get to Eli and save him—I don’t care what it takes.” I yanked the mic off me and tossed it across the room. To Bruiser, I said, “Cut the light.”
“What are you doing?”
“Flying by the seat of my pants.” I yanked up the chains from the blood-soaked floor. And stalked out onto the porch.
Below me, Leo and Jack Shoffru fought in a ring of vamps and humans, like a couple of homicidal kids on a playground, both bloody, scored by dozens of cuts. They were surrounded by a nimbus of magic, sparking and red. The reddish magic around Jack was a haze that glittered with black and red motes of pure power. Motes that stabbed at Leo. Burrowing into his skin. It was death magic, Molly’s magic. And I knew I could survive it.