by Reinke, Sara
“Yeah,” Julien murmured, his brows narrowed. Usually he could glean a sense of a person’s peripheral thoughts and feelings without having to lower his own psionic shields too much, or extend his powers. Weirdly, though, he couldn’t get a telepathic fix on the woman; it felt like he had a head full of static, the open-channel, fuzzy sort on TV. And while he could easily dismiss this anomaly as the result of overextending himself back at the police station—combined with the news about Lamar—Julien decided he’d be better off safe than sorry. Especially when toting the nephew of a renowned Serbian mafia boss in the passenger seat of his rental car.
He draped his hand against the gear shift, dropping it into reverse, meaning to whip a sharp U-turn and backtrack the way he’d come.
“Wait!” the blonde cried as the Infiniti rolled backwards. “Wait—hey!”
“You’re going to leave?” Nikolić asked.
“Yeah.”
Nikolić’s eyes widened. “Slatko parče pičke kao ona?”
“Yeah, a sweet piece of pussy like that,” Julien growled, cutting the wheel. He didn’t do the knight-in-shining-armor thing. That had always been Aaron’s deal—and it had always gotten him into more trouble than it was worth.
“Hey, I need help!” The woman managed to reach the passenger side and slapped on the hood. “Look, I’m sorry about flipping you off back there.” The car kept rolling back, and she danced along with it, as if she meant to throw herself across the front end. “Come on, you can’t leave! Please!”
Julien met her gaze through the windshield. Although all he could get from her telepathically was that strange static-like sensation, he could smell fear radiating from her skin in heady waves that wafted through the Infiniti’s ventilation system and into his nose. He could smell the metallic rush of her blood as her heart pounded out a frantic cadence. He could see the color flushed in her cheeks, the slight engorgement of her pupils as her body responded in fight-or-flight fashion to her mounting alarm. He couldn’t read her mind, but he used his other senses, and he’d learned over the decades to trust in these as implicitly as his telepathy. After a moment, he pushed up on the gear shift, putting the car in park.
“Stay here,” he told Nikolić, killing the engine and pulling the key from the ignition. “I mean it.”
Nikolić held his hands up as if in surrender, but there was a slight crimp of visible aggravation between his brows. “Nyema problyema,” he growled, with no translation really needed. No problem.
Julien opened the driver’s side door and stepped out, pocketing the keys and tugging the lapels of his jacket into place to better hide the holster and pistols he wore beneath.
“Thank you,” the woman exclaimed in breathless relief as she scrambled around the front of the Infiniti toward Julien. “Thank you, mister. I really mean it.”
“What happened?” Julien asked. Insects buzzed and whined near his ears; frogs warbled in low, timbral tones from nearby. The air felt stagnant, thick with heat and humidity, and he could already feel sweat breaking out beneath his arms and between his shoulder blades.
“I don’t know. The tire just blew. It just scared the shit out of me.” She looked between her stranded car and Julien. “I’ve been trying to get a signal on my phone so I can call for road service, but I’ve got nothing.”
Julien fished his iPhone out of his pocket. “Here. Try mine.”
She reached for it, hesitated, then dropped her hand. “You don’t happen to know how to change a tire, do you?” she asked, all round and pleading eyes. “I’ll have to wait forever for AAA out here in the sticks, and I’ve got a flight out of Miami at three-thirty. Plus those tow-truck drivers always look like rapists.”
“Maybe I’m a well-dressed rapist,” Julien remarked, and the flash of fear in her eyes seemed genuine enough. He’d caught her off-guard, rattled her, and she took a hedging step back from his car. “I’m not…” he told her, making her laugh nervously. “I just mean you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
She giggled again uncertainly. “Yeah.” As she glanced past his shoulder—as if realizing for the first time just how alone she really was with this man she didn’t know from Adam—she caught sight of Nikolić through the windshield. He was big enough, especially when crammed into the passenger seat of a mid-sized sedan, to add to her intimidation, and she shied back all the more.
They’d scared her, and now Julien felt kind of bad. With a heavy sigh, he raked his fingers through his hair. “I can help you change your tire, I guess.”
She blinked at him, and smiled hesitantly. “Really? Oh, my God, that would be great. I can pay you.”
Julien shook his head. “Not necessary.”
“Are you sure?” Her smile widened, more natural and at ease. “Wow, thanks, mister. I really appreciate it. I mean it.”
“Call me Julien,” he said. “My father—he’s the mister in the family.”
Or he was, at least, up until today, he thought. Now, he’s nothing but worm fodder.
She hopped in place a little bit, like she was thinking about hugging him but decided against it at the last possible moment. Instead, she thrust her hand out. “Nice to meet you, Julien. I’m Anna.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Julien found himself on his knees beside the Mustang with a tire iron in hand as he fastened lug nuts into place to secure the new tire. Sweat rolled in steady rivulets from his hairline down his face and neck; it had soaked through his shirt, which now clung to his back between his shoulder blades. He’d shrugged off his jacket and turned back his shirt sleeves to his elbows as he’d worked, but had still wound up drenched in sweat and with grease spots on his Armani slacks.
“So you said you’re cop?” Anna asked. She had tried her best to help without getting too much in the way. This had mainly entailed her squatting down in front of him and holding the lug nuts in the basin of her upturned hubcap while he’d worked.
“U.S. Marshall,” Julien replied, and thank God she hadn’t asked to see his badge, because he doubted he could’ve pulled off a convincing napkin trick, like he had with Agent Simms. The sight of his pistols had frightened her all over again when he took off his jacket; he’d forgotten about them until it was too late, and had come up with a clumsy cover story to explain them.
“And the guy in the car…” Her gaze wandered back toward the Infiniti. “He’s your prisoner or something, isn’t he? That’s why you wouldn’t let him out to help you.”
Julien wiped his brow with the side of his hand. “Something like that.”
“Well, I really appreciate you abandoning your line of duty to help me,” she said, making him laugh wearily.
“You’re welcome.” With a stifled groan, he rose to his feet, hefting her ruined tire in hand. “I think you should be good to go now.”
“Thanks.” She followed him back toward the trunk. “I like your tattoos, by the way.”
Like the holsters, he’d forgotten she’d be able to see the marks on his arms when he’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He glanced down at the interlocking, twisting network of black hatch-marks and lines—increasingly intricate, almost fractal-like—trailing from beneath the rolled cuffs of his sleeves past his elbows. The tattoos continued up from there, bridging his shoulders and covering most of his back.
“Funny,” she remarked. “I never pictured a U.S. Marshall having a bunch of tats like that.”
“I told you before…” He dropped the blown tire into the trunk with a grunt. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
He’d noticed the sound of a distant car engine several minutes earlier, and had hurried to finish with her tire before another motorist came upon them. Now he heard it again—louder and closer this time, a big engine from the sound of things; maybe a V-6 or V-8 hauling some serious backwoods ass. More significantly, however, he felt a sudden chill steal down the length of his spine, a curious sensation given the thick, moist heat of the midafternoon. The hairs along the b
ack of his neck and forearms stirred, and he turned to look behind him, his brows narrowing.
“Someone’s coming,” Anna said—his thoughts exactly. Only Julien felt pretty sure she didn’t realize the same thing he had—that whoever was coming wasn’t human. “I guess I’d better get going. There’s no way they can get around us.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, not really paying attention and simply paying her lip service. He could see the car coming toward them, still a mile or so back, its chrome-plated grill glinting in the sun, its white paint job shimmering like a mirage in the heat radiating off the asphalt. She was still talking, but he wasn’t listening; he was honing every ounce of his sensory attention on that car. He opened his mind, the furrow between his brows deepening as he tried to push past that strange static sensation.
He could sense them—four Brethren, their presences flickering and fluttering in and out of his telepathic awareness. Julien no longer felt certain that it was fatigue inhibiting his powers. Sources of strong electromagnetic energy could interfere with telepathy. He was usually able to overcome the interference without much trouble, but if the source of the electromagnetic energy was strong enough, he could effectively be muffled.
Is there a power plant or something around here? he wondered, because he didn’t know what the hell else could be dampening his telepathy. He also didn’t know any other Brethren who would be out there in the middle of the Florida Everglades.
So I’m betting they’re not Brethren at all. Nikolić had said his gang had staked out the jail in Bayshore. If they’d still been there when Julien had arrived, they’d have seen him leave with Nikolić. And if they hadn’t hyped themselves up on doses of soc until they’d been on the road in pursuit, then Julien wouldn’t have sensed them; he wouldn’t have had any need. They would have felt like any other humans to him telepathically.
“Terrific,” he muttered, because the car was closing in on them fast, near enough so that he could make out the distinctive grill design of an early-model Cadillac sedan. Anna was still talking—Jesus, doesn’t this bitch ever shut up?—and he glanced over his shoulder at her as he reached for the Nighthawk in his left-side holster.
“Go,” he told her.
“What?” Her eyes widened at the sight of his gun, and then she cut her gaze toward the white Cadillac, now within a football field’s length of them. “Who is—?”
He smelled the stink of scorched rubber as the Cadillac came to a screeching halt, swinging out at an angle that blocked the entire highway behind them. Four doors swung open wide, and four men—each at least as big and burly as Nikolić—stepped out. Even from a distance, Julien could see their pupils were enlarged, distended with the bloodlust. They didn’t have fangs like the Brethren, but they looked no less intimidating—particularly considering each carried a locked-and-loaded Zastava M84 assault rifle.
“Kuchkin sin,” Julien muttered. Son of a bitch. Whirling, he hooked his arm around Anna’s waist, jerking her off her feet as he broke into a run. Just as a spray of gunfire began, he leapt over the hood of the Mustang, dragging Anna with him as he scrambled for cover. Bullets struck the other side of car in rapid-fire succession split-seconds later, punching into the framework and body, riddling it with holes. The passenger-side windows shattered, showering the road with glass shards. The entire chassis dropped precariously as the tires blew out.
Anna screamed, clapping her hands over her ears as she huddled next to Julien at the front driver’s side wheel well. As soon as there was a pause in the relentless barrage of bullets, Julien was on his feet, his legs unfurling as he drew his second Nighthawk from his side.
“Stay here!” he snapped as he sprang into motion again, rushing around the battered Mustang’s front end. The gunmen hadn’t stopped firing because they were feeling generous—they were making their move for the Infiniti to get Nikolić.
Like hell, Julien thought, his brows furrowed, his fangs dropping down from recessed grooves in his upper palate. They forced his mouth open in a furious snarl as he rushed the Serbians, arms outstretched, pistols leading the charge. He had a 26-round clip in each of the Nighthawks, but had no goddamn intention of using all of those rounds. Not on these worthless bastards.
As he sprinted across the narrow distance between the Mustang and his car, he flexed his index fingers inward simultaneously on the triggers. The Serbians had already started scrambling for cover, moving with the same preternatural speed as the Brethren, thanks to the effects of the juice. They couldn’t outrun a bullet, but Julien still missed nailing two in the head, like he’d aimed. One shot hit a Serb high in the chest, though, knocking him off his feet and sending him with a crash to the ground like a felled redwood pine. His second shot struck the Cadillac’s passenger window, shattering it. He got off two more rounds—both hitting the Caddy’s grill and punching through the radiator, causing steam to spew in a sudden, hissing cloud from beneath the hood.
They opened fire again, and as bullets slammed into the ground around him, Julien ducked his head, dropped his shoulder, and rolled for the Infiniti, taking shelter by the passenger-side front end. The door swung open in front of him as Nikolić made a break for it. Julien caught sight of him through the window as he ducked his head, stepping out of the car.
Hell, no! Julien unloaded a pair of 9-millimeter slugs through the window, spraying himself with glass fragments, and sending Nikolić scuttling back inside for cover. He planted the sole of his shoe against the door and punted mightily, slamming it behind the bigger man. “Try that shit again and I’ll put a bullet in your goddamn skull, Nikolić!” he shouted hoarsely in warning. “You’re not going any-goddamn-where!”
Crouched down with his legs folded beneath him, Julien rested his weight on his toes and leaned back against the front fender. He shook his head, grimacing as splinters of broken glass flew out of his hair. The bloodlust surged through him. His pupils had fully expanded, and the bright light of the sun felt nearly blinding. He couldn’t close his mouth for his fangs; he tipped his head back, panting, and struggled to catch his breath.
The Serbians had stopped shooting. Beneath the heavy stink of spent gunpowder, he could smell them—the heavy, salty musk of their blood, sweat, and adrenaline.
Fuck, he thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Anna wasn’t screaming anymore, and he hoped she had enough goddamn sense to keep her head down. He couldn’t distinguish her heartbeat from the others and with his telepathy still out, he couldn’t sense her thoughts or psionic presence.
Fuck, he thought again, because it would have been so much easier if he could use his telepathy. All it would take was one, maybe two of the psionic bolts he normally used to incapacitate opponents; a sudden surge of neuroelectric impulses in the brain that caused grand mal-like seizures and paralysis. Now he was stuck handling the situation the old-fashioned way.
“Hey, mišiću,” Nikolić called out from inside the car. “What are you doing? You put down your guns, no? I’ll tell my boys to let you go.”
“Hey, Nikolić,” Julien called back over his shoulder. “Jebi se, no? Go fuck yourself.”
He could hear glass crunching beneath boot soles as the Serbians moved slowly, shifting positions around the Cadillac. He could hear the rapid, overlapping patter of their hearts, the heavy snuffling of their labored breaths, the rustling of their clothes, the faint slap of their sweaty palms as they shifted their grips on their rifles.
One coming around the trunk. Julien cut a glance in that direction. The passenger-side door had bounced open again, swinging out in a slow-moving arc. He reached for it now, easing it further toward him for cover, and raised somewhat to peer through the ruined window.
Two coming from around the front end. He looked over his shoulder at the faint scuffle of footsteps that would have likely been imperceptible to anyone not endowed with his heightened sense of hearing. He had jack shit for cover from that direction, nothing but open air between him and the oncoming pair of Zastava M84s.
/> In other words, my only defense is going to be offense, he thought. And with that, he stood, leveling the business ends of his pistols in the direction of the hood ornament. His fingers were already folding in against the triggers, but he froze before he could depress them fully.
“Don’t shoot!” Anna hiccupped, her eyes enormous with terror. One of the Serbians had her in a chokehold, with his thick forearm clamped beneath the shelf of her chin. He had her by at least half a head in height, and she danced on her tiptoes, flushed and gasping for breath as he forced her along in step.
Fuck, Julien thought, because no good deed went unpunished. Hadn’t he learned that lesson enough from having to clean up after Aaron’s Boy Scout escapades? He could have just turned around and driven off, but instead, his conscience had gotten the better of him and he’d stopped to help. And now he was fucked, because even though he could take out the guy holding onto Anna, he wasn’t fast enough to shoot the other mercenary coming around the back end of the Infiniti and the remaining Serbian who stood nearby, rifle raised to his shoulder, his sights leveled squarely for Julien’s head. Hell, the Flash wouldn’t have been fast enough.
“Spustite oružje!” this one snapped at Julien. He wore a weathered black patch over one eye, and the left side of his face looked like it had been riddled with shrapnel at some point; it was now striated with scars. Put down your weapons!
Keeping his gaze locked with the one holding onto Anna, Julien answered in Serbian, “Let her go, the I will.”
“Drop your weapons!” the one-eyed Serbian demanded again, more sharply this time.
“Let the girl go!” Julien shouted back.
From inside the car, through the opened passenger doorway, he heard Nikolić chuckle. “Let her go,” he said to his men, and the one with his arm clamped around Anna’s neck immediately released his hold. She stumbled away from him, clutching at her throat, gasping.