Mark gripped the Browning hard enough he felt the metal strain.
“I don’t want to play your games anymore. Your bait doesn’t tempt me. I’m going to tell the crown prince what you’ve done to an innocent woman and her little boy and let him figure it out. That’s why he gets the shiny gold hat.”
“You would leave vengeance up to a princeling? A mere boy?” Ferrel sneered.
“I’ve killed far better men than you. You’re hardly worth the effort.”
There was no reply. Ferrel had passed out. Frustration and foreboding surged through Mark, sending a tremor through his poison-racked body. What did he mean by too late?
Whatever it was, Mark had to prove Ferrel wrong. He clenched his hands, forcing them to stop shaking. He was an assassin and a doctor. Pressure situations were his natural habitat. But Bree was involved, and that changed everything.
With an act of will, Mark forced himself into cool, calm detachment. He tore a strip off Ferrel’s shirt and tied it tight enough to stop the bleeding. He didn’t do more than that. There was no time, and the smell of fresh, warm blood was tempting—but with so many strange serums in use, there was no way he was drinking any Knight’s blood.
First, he picked up Ferrel’s rifle and picked his pockets for extra ammunition. Then Mark pulled out his cell phone and dialed Kenyon to ask for backup and an ambulance. Finally, he noticed the missed-call icon.
It was Bree. The message was brief.
“Help me!”
It was time-stamped five minutes ago.
Damn it to the nine fiery hells! Panic surged up in Mark, smacking him like a kick to the guts. Too little and too late. Bree had been in trouble the whole time he was wasting his breath on Ferrel! Another wave of sick dizziness sent a trickle of sweat down his spine.
He slid back along the wall to the window. First, he listened. Hearing nothing, he stretched up to peer inside.
Two figures bound and gagged at the table—not Bree, probably her parents. Two armed men guarding them. These two looked human. The respiration, blink rate and heartbeat all seemed normal. Good.
He’d heard more heartbeats before. There had to be more of Ferrel’s men around, probably hunting for Bree. He didn’t have time to peer through every window looking for them, so he’d go for a simple plan. He’d make a noise and flush the others out.
While vampires couldn’t actually fly like a bird or a bat, they could levitate. With a roar, he smashed feetfirst through the kitchen window.
The two guards swiveled, spattering the wall with bullets. Mark had expected as much. He dove beneath the spray of fire, rolling to come up behind them. These two he took out with two neat shots before they had a chance to turn around. If someone was actively shooting at him, he had no qualms about paying them back in kind. They fell with the sound of falling laundry bags.
The house was suddenly silent again, as if everyone in it was straining to listen. One of the men rattled his last breath into that awful quiet.
The upstairs contingent would be joining them any moment. Mark grabbed kitchen shears from the utility jar on the counter and wasted no time in slicing through the prisoners’ zip ties.
“Are you Bree’s parents?” he demanded, ripping the duct tape from the man’s mouth.
“Y-yes,” he stammered.
“There’s help on the way. Get your wife outside to the car you see there and get inside and lock the doors.”
The man nodded slowly. The woman, who had Bree’s features, peeled off her own gag. “Bree went upstairs. They’re after her.”
Her voice was filled with worry, but it was steady. She has backbone like her daughter.
“I’ll look after her,” Mark said.
“Good.” Bree’s mother stood up stiffly. “Let’s go, Hank. Hurry.”
Still no sign of the people upstairs. Were they setting a trap? He considered the staircase outside the kitchen door and decided there had to be another. This one was too small and narrow to impress. He ghosted through the house and found a second, grander affair and started up that way. Hopefully, his assailants wouldn’t expect him to look past the obvious route into their snare.
He reached the top of the stairs, his head feeling clearer. The poison on the bullet—what little of it had remained as the shot tore right through him—was working through his system. Unfortunately, now there was absolutely nothing to dampen the pain in his ribs.
He took a few steps forward, keeping Ferrel’s rifle ready. He’d holstered the Browning to give himself a free hand. He could hear heartbeats. The trick was to pinpoint which room they were in.
Far end of the hall, to the left.
They assumed they were going to ambush him. Nice try. I can he-e-ear you.
Mark got another five yards before a figure wheeled out of a doorway to his right, planting a gun at Mark’s right temple.
It was one of the faux vampires—this one without a heartbeat. Silent. Curse it to the darkest hells!
The creature gave an ugly smile, showing fang. “I bet you’d die if I blew your head off.”
Chapter 31
Bree held her breath as the closet door opened. She couldn’t see which thug pushed the clothes to one side, then the other. All she could see was a patch of sunlight flutter on the floor as the hems of her mother’s winter wardrobe swished back and forth.
He must have been human because he didn’t smell her and didn’t hear her heart pounding. That didn’t mean he couldn’t kill her—or worse.
She hadn’t tried to dial the phone again, but she held it like a talisman, slippery in her sweating fingers. Please come, please come, please come.
But inside, deep inside in the place where her younger self still dwelled, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Nobody ever came. In the end, nobody picked up the phone. The names and reasons might change, but not the outcome.
Tears of fright slid silently down Bree’s face. She’d heard the crash downstairs, and then gunfire—it felt like ages ago. That had sent everyone running. Bree had wanted to dash out, too, to see what had become of her parents and Mark and...
She pressed her face into her knees. I’m just too scared to move. Yes, she’d survived a lot—but enduring wasn’t the same as taking a risk. She was good at running, but this? She had no gun, no superstrength and nothing but bad memories.
The hangers slid on the closet rail with a sound like raking claws. Skrick. Skrick.
Whoever parted the clothes had come back after the gunfire to finish searching the bedroom, and he was being thorough about it. A hand reached in, fumbling around the periphery of the closet, looking for her. She had the impression that hand was big and hairy, tipped in claws, but she couldn’t really see in the dark. It was just her mind painting in the awfulness.
The hand was getting closer, groping inches from her face. Bree clapped her fingers over her mouth, forcing back a whimper of fright, just like she had as a child. History repeating itself: Bree weeping, paralyzed and terrified, in this closet.
The hand withdrew, and whoever it was muttered and swore but didn’t bother to shut the door. Bree leaned forward an inch, trying to see out through the gap between two skirts. She saw only the edge of somebody’s shoulder, but she could hear better now. There were two speakers. There had been three distinct voices a few minutes ago. Where had number three gone?
One of the men spoke. “Ha! Brown’s got him, the vampire bastard.”
Bree’s heart jolted. Got Mark? Got Mark how?
Then she heard it from down the hall, faint but clear. “I bet you’d die if I blew your head off.”
Her breath froze, terror morphing into something dark and monstrous. Her hands knotted around the phone as that feeling bubbled and popped like an overheated potion, boiling until the pressure of her rage was unbearable. It took abo
ut three seconds.
Oh, no, you don’t! Mark’s head looked just fine where it was. She quietly slid out of the narrow space before she realized what she was doing. Her brain skittered for a moment, shrieking with dismay at what her body was up to.
Whoa! That’s far enough. She crouched in the bottom of the closet among the shoes and tried to quiet her frantic breath. She slipped her phone into her pocket, wanting both hands free. The next thing she heard was an angry exchange of voices, but the words were lost under her panic.
I can’t just rush out there and start breaking heads! But she did have the element of surprise. All she needed to do was to distract Mark’s opponent long enough that Mark could break free. Put like that, it didn’t seem such a horrendous task.
She picked up one of her mother’s shoes. It was really an ankle boot with spike heels cased in metal. Four inches of steely death and uppers of hand-stitched suede.
Weapon? Check. But she still didn’t move. Her knees were starting to shake. Closet equaled safety. Outside the closet were the bogeymen. But there were her parents, and Jonathan, and Mark at stake.
She heard a hammer click as a gun readied to fire—not a good sign for Mark. She bolted forward with a shriek worthy of a ghoul.
Holy Christmas! She was out of the closet, and she wasn’t going back. Bree threw all her heart into the attack. The two thugs were crowded into the bedroom doorway. Right in her path, a balding head just started to turn her way. Bree swung the boot overhand like an upmarket hammer of death.
The shoe-weapon hit the bad guy’s head, the sharp metal heel slicing open the flesh with the ease of a knife. He screamed as his face was flayed in a bloody ruin. His companion swung around, eyes widening. Reflexively, the nose of his automatic rifle came up, but Bree was moving again, swinging the boot and diving between the two men. A hail of bullets chased her, but she was already in the hall, scrambling to get out of the way. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Poofs of fluff spewed from the bed where the loser talent scout had terrorized Bree long ago.
Then came the sound of the Browning going off, bits of skull and brain flying down the hall. Bree dropped, cowering against the baseboards, her hands over her head. The sound came twice more. Blam. Blam. And then silence. The only sound she heard was the ticking of a clock downstairs.
Then footsteps. Metal sliding along the floor. Someone securing the guns so no one could come back from the dead and start shooting again.
Bree raised her head a fraction. A body was halfway down the hall, head smashed like a Halloween pumpkin. The last of the faux vamps. Her first reaction was a surreal sense of confusion. Wasn’t he the one with a gun to Mark’s head? Did that mean her desperate gamble had worked?
“Bree.”
And then he was there, a few feet away. She slowly straightened, her gaze traveling up his tall, strong form. The sports jacket was a ruin, soaked in blood, and he was standing awkwardly, as if something inside him was broken.
“You’re hurt.”
“Ferrel got his last licks in before I took him down.” His face was grim, his dark eyes searching hers. “He won’t be bothering you anymore. Once the Company is through questioning him, he will have to answer to Prince Kyle for what he’s done to you and Jonathan. What Ferrel did is an embarrassment to Vidon. I wouldn’t be surprised if they give him to Kenyon for a chew toy.”
A sudden, nervous laugh escaped her. It sounded close to hysteria. That can’t be good. She stood up shakily, using the wall for support. He jumped forward to steady her, putting a hand at her waist. Suddenly, they were very close. “Thank you,” she breathed.
“Bree, if you hadn’t shown up, this would have ended very differently.” He looked as if he wasn’t quite sure whether to scold her or kiss her. “But that was very brave and very risky.”
“You make me do crazy things.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re worth it.” She rested her forehead on a relatively clean patch of his shoulder. “I love you, Dr. Winspear.”
She felt him stiffen. “Bree, you know what I am.”
“Yeah, and you know what I am.”
He stroked her hair, his fingers slow. “I think I loved you from the moment you pulled my own gun on me. You’re a fierce woman, Brianna Meadows. I don’t think you see that.”
“I hid in a closet,” she mumbled.
“A ninja shoe closet.” He lifted up her face, and kissed her thoroughly. “You do battle when it counts with whatever you’ve got at the time. That’s a real warrior.”
The crisis was over. The cavalry arrived only moments later.
* * *
“Remind me to take you to the next holiday sale at Armand’s,” her mother said in her usual dry tone. “I could use a point guard.”
Bree sat on the front porch, utterly numb. Her brain had been in retreat from the moment they left the carnage upstairs to go outside. Someone had shoved a bottle of water into her hand. It might have been Faran Kenyon. The place was crawling with people from the Varney Center taking care of business. “Where’s Mark?”
He’d been there a moment ago. She couldn’t remember him leaving.
“He’s gone to get that nasty wound of his checked, remember?”
She didn’t remember. Images flickered across her brain, jerky as an old celluloid film that had broken and been reassembled all wrong. Fragments of memories, nothing more. It was a relief. Some of those images would be hard enough to live with as it was. I’m so very tired.
“Where’s Mark?” she asked again. He’d really been there, right?
“Bree, honey?”
Bree blinked, trying to focus on the woman in front of her. She was sure it was her mother, but everything felt oddly distant, as if she were watching a movie.
“Mom?”
Althea slid onto the step beside her. Bree felt her arm around her shoulders, though that, too, felt oddly distant. “That nice young man over there explained why you came here.”
Bree saw Kenyon giving orders to a bunch of the cleanup crew. The significance of what her mother was saying slid away like a darting fish. Why had she come here again? “And?”
“Of course I’ll give you whatever you need. He’s my grandson, and you’re my daughter. A little blood is hardly a sacrifice, for heaven’s sake!”
Mirella’s words came back to Bree. I see a crown in your past and a blade in your future. Death stands behind and before you. To save your boy, you must find what you have lost. Blood will be sacrificed before this is done.
The crown had to be Kyle. The death in the past—that could be Jessica or Adam. The Company of the Dead had been in her future. She’d lost her parents, and now her mother sat beside her, opening a vein. But the blade? She still wasn’t sure about that.
“Okay,” she said, not quite remembering the question, but thinking that answer would do.
“Who is that man?” her mother asked.
Nicholas Ferrel lay on a stretcher being loaded into one of the Varney Center’s ambulances. Unlike the others, he was still alive. She guessed he’d regret that soon enough.
Bree pulled herself together enough to answer. “He’s the one responsible for a lot of this.”
“Why?” Althea squinted at her. Their features were similar, but her mom’s eyes were brown and, at the moment, they were filling with concern. “Bree, are you hurt? You look strange.”
She gulped, feeling her chin start to tremble. “I needed you. I needed you so many times.”
Her mom put her hand over Bree’s, squeezing. “I think you’re in shock.”
Bree snatched her hand back. “I’ve been in shock since I was fourteen!”
Her mother went utterly still.
“I know.” Her voice had that ultra-reasonable tone her mother used with skittish witnesses. “You’re not the only o
ne who’s been through some changes. I’m getting older, Bree, and I have come to understand that I’ve made a lot of very serious mistakes. I’m trying to fix— No, I’m trying to lessen the damage I’ve done. I know I can’t fix it. Not entirely.”
Bree nodded, mute with roiling emotions. A moment ago, she’d felt nothing. Now she was choking on a logjam of unsaid words.
Her mother went on. “I began with my relationship with your father. That’s why we were alone today, just the two of us. No one else. We needed to talk. In a strange way, it was a piece of good luck, because none of the staff were caught in this terrible mess.”
“Yes,” Bree managed to say, letting the curtain of her hair hide her face, just like she had as an adolescent. “That was good luck.”
Her mother tucked Bree’s hair behind her ear, a maternal gesture Bree had forgotten. It had been too long. “Bree, darling, I started with your father because he was easy. We’ve let things slide, and that needs to be put right, but we understand one another. We’re both ambitious. We’re both willing to overlook a lot in the name of our careers. That’s why we’re still together. Now, you—you’re a different story.”
Bree looked up, her eyes hot and prickling. “I have a lot to say to you.”
Her mother gave a crooked smile. “Good. I want to hear it all, no matter how much it hurts. You and Hank are the most important people in my life.”
Without knowing who started it or exactly when, the two women embraced. Bree felt her mother draw a long, shaking breath that sounded like tears of relief. An answering ache squeezed her heart.
It was only a beginning, but as long as they could talk and hug, there was hope.
Chapter 32
Ten weeks later
Mark stood in the doorway of the house they’d rented just blocks away from the Varney Center. He’d broken every rule in the book by living with a human woman, but he was Plague, the feared assassin, the medical genius who’d cracked the code of Thoristand’s virus and the guy who took down the Commander General of the Knights of Vidon and all his nasty minions. If he wanted suburbia, no one was going to argue.
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