by J. R. Ward
“How you doing?” Tohr whispered in Wrath’s ear as he checked his phone for a response from his other brothers.
“Fine. You?” Except the king coughed… and, man, there was a rattle in his lungs.
He was bleeding somewhere along his respiratory tract—
Moving fast as a gasp, Assail slipped out of V’s hold, and streaked across the back of the mudroom, heading for a door that had to let out into the garage. “Don’t shoot! I’ve got a car you can take him in! And I’m killing all the lights in the house.”
As everything went dark, Vishous dematerialized on top of the guy, taking him down and grinding his face into the tile. “I’m going to kill you now—”
“No,” Wrath ordered. “Not until we know what’s going on.”
In the shadows, V grit his teeth and glared at the king. But at least he didn’t hit the trigger. Instead, he put his mouth to their host’s ear and growled, “You better think twice before you go for any exits again.”
“Then do it yourself.” This came out as, “Vhen do ith y’selth.”
Vishous glanced over at Tohr, the pair of them locking eyes. When Tohr gave a subtle nod, the other brother cursed… then reached up and popped open the garage door. The automatic lights were still on from Assail’s having come home earlier, and Tohr caught sight of four cars: The Jaguar. A Spyker. A black Mercedes. And a black van with no side windows.
“Take the GMC,” Assail grunted. “Keys are in the ignition. It’s bulletproof all the way around.”
As everything went silent outside, John and Qhuinn began pumping rounds off through the broken glass, falling into a steady, alternating rhythm, just to make sure that someone didn’t try and dematerialize inside.
Shit, their ammo wasn’t going to last long.
Tohr cursed the lack of options, as well as the fact that he’d gotten no reply from the Brotherhood—
“We got this,” Qhuinn said, not turning away from the door. “But we need the other Brothers here before you try to leave.”
“I’ve already alerted them,” Tohr muttered. “They’re on the way.”
At least, he hoped they were.
Assail’s voice rose above the gunshots. “Take the goddamn van. I’m not fucking with you.”
Tohr pegged the guy with hard eyes. “If you are, I will skin you alive.”
“I’m not.”
Given that there were no further assurances to be had, Tohr rolled off Wrath and helped the king into a crouching position. Shit… blood at the side of his neck. Lot of it. “Keep your head down, my lord, and follow my lead.”
“You don’t say.”
Moving as quickly as he dared, Tohr started them across the floor, steering the king over to the wall so that Wrath could put a hand out and orient himself.
“Washing machine,” Tohr said, pulling him out to avoid the boxy machine. “Dryer. Door six feet. Four. Two. Step down.”
As they went by Assail, the male was watching them. “Jesus, he really is blind.”
Wrath pulled up short and unsheathed his dagger, pointing it directly into the guy’s face. “But my hearing works just fine.”
Assail probably would have recoiled, but he was stuck between the hard wall, a bullet and a sharp point—not a lot of room to maneuver. “Yes. Indeed.”
“This meeting isn’t over,” Wrath said.
“I don’t have anything else.”
“I do. You watch yourself, son—this little go-around proves to have your fingerprints anywhere near it, and your next house is a pine box.”
“It wasn’t me. I swear to it—I’m a businessman, pure and simple. I just want to be left alone.”
“Greta fucking Garbo,” V bit out as Tohr urged Wrath back into motion.
In the garage proper, Tohr crabbed it across the bald concrete with the king, going around the other vehicles. When they got to the van, he checked the thing out, then popped the back double doors and shoved the most powerful vampire on the planet in there like he was a piece of luggage.
As he reshut the panels, he spared one moment to take a deep breath. Then he ripped around to the driver’s side and got in. The interior light stayed on for a bit after he took his seat, and yes, the keys were right where Assail had said. And yeah, there had been some serious modifications to the vehicle: two gas tanks, reinforced steel crash cage, thick glass the girth of which suggested it was indeed bulletproof.
There was a sliding partition that separated the back from the front, and he opened it far enough so he could monitor the king.
With his hearing on overdrive, the dripping of blood in the van seemed as loud as the gunshots that had caused it. “You’re hit bad, my lord.”
All that came back at him was that cough.
Fuck.
John was ready to kill.
As he stood to the left of that goddamn back door, the thick muscles of his thighs were twitching, and his heart was going bronco in his chest. His gun, however, was steady as a stone.
The Band of Bastards had initiated the attack from where the Brotherhood had started out: on the far side of the cleared lawn, in the forest behind the house.
Hell of a shot, he thought. That first rifle bullet had punctured the door’s windowpane and gone right for Wrath’s head, even though there had been a number of people standing around.
Too close. Waaaaay too close.
These guys were true professionals—which meant they had to be gearing up for a second engagement… and not from this angle that was guarded so well.
As Qhuinn kept pulling his trigger in a slow, even motion, John leaned back and looked through the archway into the kitchen.
Whistling low, he caught Qhuinn’s eye and nodded in that direction.
“Roger that—”
“John, you don’t go out there alone,” V said. “I’ll watch the back door as well as our host.”
“What if they come through the opening?” Qhuinn asked.
“I’ll pick ’em off one by one.”
Hard to argue with the guy. Especially as the Brother trained his second gun right where Qhuinn and John had been shooting through.
That was the end of any further convo.
John and Qhuinn fell into flanking position and took off together. Using the moonlight as a guide, they streaked through the professionally equipped kitchen, and tried every door they came to. Locked. Locked. Locked.
The dining, living, and family rooms turned out to be one massive expanse, kind of like a football field that had been outfitted at a home show. The good news was that there were ornate columns at regular intervals that supported the ceiling over the expanse, and he and Qhuinn used them for cover as they darted out, checked sliding glass doors, and ducked back again.
Everything was locked: As they worked the circle of the giant room, shit was tight as a tick on all sides. But God, all that glass…
Stopping short, he leveled his gun muzzle at a stretch of it, whistled twice to signal to V… and popped off a test shot.
No shattering. Not even a cracking. The ten-by-six-foot pane simply caught the bullet and held it, like the thing was nothing more than ABC gum.
Assail hadn’t lied. At least not about that.
From the back of the house, their host’s voice was distant but clear. “Close and lock the door at the base of the stairs to the second floor. Fast.”
Roger. That.
John let Qhuinn sweep the bathrooms and the office as he beat feet over to a black-and-white marble staircase. Sure enough, tucked into the wall was a stainless-steel, fireproof panel that, when you pulled it out, smelled like fresh paint, as if it had been recently installed.
There were two locks on it, one so you could isolated yourself upstairs, one for doing the same downstairs.
As he got the thing into place and secured, he had to have some respect for how Assail handled security measures.
“This place is a fortress,” Qhuinn said as he came out of another bathroom.
Cellar? J
ohn mouthed so he didn’t have to reholster his gun.
Like he read minds, Assail called out, “The basement door is locked. It’s in the kitchen by the second fridge.”
They darted back in the direction they’d started out in, locating another one of those steel jobbies that happened to already be slid into place and bolted.
John checked his phone, and saw the group text that Rhage had sent out: Hvy fghtn dwntwn—b thr ASAP.
Fuck, he breathed as he flashed the screen to Qhuinn.
“I’m going out there,” the guy announced as he jogged for one of the sliders. “Lock the door after me—”
John lunged for the fighter, snagging a hold. The hell you are, he mouthed.
Qhuinn shook off the iron grip. “This is a cluster-fuck waiting to happen, and Wrath has to be taken to the clinic.” As John cursed in silence, Qhuinn shook his head. “Be reasonable, buddy. You’re the backup for V with Assail, and the pair of you have to keep the interior secured. Likewise, that van has to get moving because the king’s bleeding. You need to let me go out there and do what I can to secure the area—we can’t spare anybody else.”
John cursed again, his mind churning for other options.
In the end, he clapped his best friend on the side of the neck and brought their foreheads together for a brief moment. Then he let go and backed the fuck off—even though it nearly killed him.
Bottom line, his first duty was to save the king, not his best friend. Wrath was the mission critical here, not Qhuinn.
Besides, Qhuinn was a deadly son of a bitch, fast on his feet, good with a gun, great with a knife.
You had to trust those skills. And the bastard was right: They were sorely needed in this situation.
With a final nod, Qhuinn slipped out of a glass door, and John closed and locked it behind him… leaving the male on his own.
At least the Band of Bastards would likely assume everyone was in the house and staying there—they had to know that backup would be coming, and in most situations, people waited for their reinforcements to arrive before they marshaled a counterattack.
“John! Qhuinn!” V called out. “What the hell is going on out there!”
John jogged back to the mudroom. Unfortunately, there was no effective way to communicate without losing his weapon—
“Shit, Qhuinn went out there alone, didn’t he.”
Assail laughed softly. “And I thought I was the only one with a death wish.”
FORTY-ONE
Directly after Syphon pulled the trigger on his long-range rifle, Xcor’s first thought was that the male may well have killed the king.
Standing in the shelter of the forest, he was amazed at his soldier’s accuracy: The bullet had sailed across the lawn, blown out the glass pane of the door… and dropped the king like a bag of sand.
Either that or the king had chosen to take cover.
There was no way of knowing whether the disappearance was a defensive reaction or the collapse of a male gravely injured.
Mayhap both were true.
“Open fire,” he commanded into the newfangled transistor at his shoulder. “And assume second positions.”
With practiced precision, his soldiers went into action, the ringing sound of gunfire providing cover as everyone but him and Throe shifted in various directions.
The Brotherhood would be arriving at any moment, so there was little time to batten down the hatches and prepare for conflict. Good thing his soldiers were well trained—
All at once, the house went dark—smart. It made them more difficult to isolate as targets, although given the way all the glass except for that back door’s had withstood bullets, it appeared as though Assail was far more tactical than your average glymera waffle-about.
Car bombs notwithstanding.
In the lull that followed, Xcor had to assume that if the king were alive and completely unhit, Wrath would dematerialize through the opening in the back door, get out of the area, and the others would attack. If the king was injured, they would hunker down and wait for the other members of the Brotherhood to arrive and provide cover for a drive-out. And if the Blind King were dead? They would stay with the body to protect it until the others got here—
A gun went off in the interior. One shot, the flash of which appeared to the left.
They were testing the glass, he thought. So Assail was either dead or they didn’t trust him.
“Someone is coming out,” Throe said by his side.
“Shoot to kill,” Xcor ordered into his shoulder.
There was no reason to take a chance at a capture: Anybody fighting alongside the Brotherhood would be trained to withstand torture, and therefore not a good candidate for information gathering. More to the point, this situation was a powder keg about to explode, and reducing the number of the enemy was the most important goal; taking prisoners was not.
Gunfire rang out as his bastards tried to pick off whoever had departed, but naturally the fighter dematerialized so it was unlikely they were hit—
The Brotherhood arrived all at once, the massive fighters taking positions all over the exterior of house, as if it had been scoped out previously.
Gunfire was traded, with Xcor aiming for the pair on the roof whilst his others focused on the dark shapes moving around the porches as well as any who might be coming up from behind in the woods.
He needed to get in the path of any vehicle that attempted to get away from the house.
“I shall cover the garage,” he spoke into his transistor. “Hold positions.”
Glancing over his shoulder at Throe, he ordered, “You back up the cousins at the north.”
As his soldier nodded and took off, Xcor ducked and did the same, shifting his position by running, as he was too keyed up to dematerialize: If they tried to take Wrath out by vehicle because he was injured, Xcor had to be the one who got the satisfaction of preventing the king’s escape… and finishing the job as necessary. The garage, therefore, was his best vantage point: The Brothers would have to commandeer one of Assail’s vehicles as they appeared to have arrived without any—and Assail would offer the aid. He had no allegiance to any particular group—not the Band of Bastards, not the Council, probably not even the king. But he wouldn’t want to bear the price of someone else’s vendetta against Wrath.
Xcor set up behind a massive boulder that sat at the edge of the asphalt square behind the house. Taking out a small, convex strip of metal that was polished to a high shine, he positioned the mirror on the rock so he had a view of whatever was behind him. And then he waited.
Ah, yes. Right again…
As gunfire continued to ring out, the garage door farthest to the right opened, the protection it offered disappearing panel by panel.
The van that backed out had no windows in its rear portion, and he was willing to bet that, like the house, its flanks were impenetrable by anything less than an antiaircraft missile.
It was entirely possible, of course, that this was a ruse.
But he was not going to miss the opportunity in the event that it wasn’t.
Flicking his eyes up, he checked behind him, then refocused on the van. If he jumped out into its path, he might get a shot into the engine block through the front grille—
The attack that came from behind was so swift, all he felt was an arm locking around his throat and his body getting hauled backward. Shifting instantly into hand-to-hand self-defense mode, he stopped the male from snapping his neck by elbowing the shit out of the fighter’s gut, and then taking advantage of the momentary stun to spin around.
He had a brief impression of mismatched eyes… and then it was all about the fighting.
The male attacked with such ferocity, the punches were like getting rained upon by cars. Fortunately, he had outstanding balance and reflexes, and crouching low, he took the male by the thighs and tackled him hard. Riding that massive lower body down to the ground, he jumped upward and worked the fighter’s face until there was blood not ju
st on his knuckles, but flying in the air.
His superior position did not last. In spite of the fact that the soldier couldn’t possibly see clearly, he somehow caught one of Xcor’s wrists and held on to it. With brute strength, he yanked back, brought Xcor within range, and head-butted so hard, for a moment the world went incandescent sure as if the trees around them had fireworks for branches and leaves.
An abrupt shift in gravity told him that he was being rolled, but fuck that. He stopped the momentum by throwing out a leg and digging his boot into the ground. As he strained against a great weight on his chest, he saw the black van screeching off like a bat out of hell down the driveway.
Anger at a missed chance at the king gave him extra power, and he rose up onto his feet with the male draped across his shoulders, a shawl of soldier.
Unsheathing his hunting knife, he stabbed around the back of his own torso, and he knew he hit something, given the resistance and the cursing. But then that grip around his neck returned, challenging his airway, making him work even harder for oxygen.
The large rock he’d taken cover behind was about a meter away, and he headed for it, his boots clomping across the lawn. Spinning about, he slammed the male once… twice.…
On the third time, just before he was about to black out, the grip loosened. With sloppy disorientation, he freed himself just as a bullet whistled by his head, so close he felt a stripe of heat on his scalp.
Behind him, the soldier fell down upon the grass, but that wasn’t going to last—and a quick glance around at the gunfight being waged told him that if he and his bastards stayed much longer, there would be catastrophic casualties—yes, they would take out some of the Brotherhood with them, but only at a tremendous cost to their own numbers.
His gut instinct told him Wrath had already left. And damn it, even if half the Brotherhood was in or around that van—and if the king was being transported away, some of them were undoubtedly shadowing the vehicle—there were still plenty of Brothers left here at the river’s edge to do vital damage to him and his males.
The Bloodletter would have stayed and fought.