“Help me push the bed,” he said. I bent next to him and shoved the bed, scratching the hardwood. The floor beneath the bed didn’t look any different, but he waved his hand over a section of it and an iron pull appeared. Hiders. Sneaky bastards. He grabbed the ring and opened a small space, three feet by three feet, maybe a bit bigger.
“I have a weapon here, like yours. He’s a mouthy thing, but I think he will help you. He loves Anita like a sister,” Carlos said.
Dinah shivered. “A sentient gun? Like me?”
I grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back. While he was theoretically on my side, I couldn’t risk letting him pull a gun. If he attacked me, I’d have to shoot him, and we still needed him.
Keeping him on my right, I reached into the darkness, and my fingers brushed against the metal butt of what felt like a larger gun. Something semi-automatic by the feel of it.
A voice breathed out of the small space. “Oh, baby, just like that. Carlos, you didn’t tell me that you were giving me to a pretty girl!”
I raised an eyebrow at Carlos. “It’s no small thing to have a sentient gun. I thought I had the only two.”
He shrugged. “He was a ladies’ man in life. That didn’t change after. And it was his wish to be . . . placed in a gun to protect someone he loved.”
I was going to have a longer chat with Dinah about the spell used on her. Find out just how many people knew about it.
“Hey, Carlos, you fucker, you going to let me go do some damage?” the gun yelled as I dragged him out of the hiding spot.
He was no handgun, but an AK-47, with what looked like a seriously long-range scope. Matte black—he had that much in common with Dinah. I rolled him over once. “What’s your name?”
He shivered in my hands. “Well, that depends. You want the name I was born with?”
“I need a name so I can yell at you,” I said.
He chuckled. “A woman with fire? Bring it on, baby. You can call me Diego.”
Carlos cleared his throat. “We should go. We have less than thirty minutes before they arrive.”
I looked at him as the rumble of an engine cut through the walls of the house, soft, barely there but I heard it. My dog lifted her head and I turned toward the front of the house.
“Correction, we are out of time.”
13
I gave Carlos one last look as the engines of what sounded like three distinct army trucks rolled up the driveway to his house. “You did call them.”
He grimaced. “It was the deal. I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t be sorry, get your fucking keys and get ready to move. I don’t want you in the line of fire.”
He was like a goose that laid golden eggs; a Hider in this world where we were about to be on the run could be the difference between our survival and death.
I held the new gun, Diego, up and settled his stock against my shoulder. “What can you do, boyo?” That was the bit of Killian I carried with me coming out. Boyo.
Diego gave a happy chuffing sound. “The usual. Exploding rounds, rapid fire, distance shots, whatever you need. But I want a certain number of kills, you hear?” he said. “Oh, and I can shift to a more manageable size too, if I get to be too big for your tiny girly hands.”
“He’s from the Bronx,” Dinah said. “I can hear it in his voice. And she does not have tiny hands. Idiot.”
“I am not from the Bronx,” Diego said. “If I’m from the Bronx, you’re from jolly old England, sass mouth.”
They quarreled back and forth as I checked the hidden storage box and pulled out a strap that would keep the new gun slung over my shoulder and back, plus a box of what I hoped was extra special ammo. A leather belt that had a holster went around my waist.
“Welcome to the crew. You’ll have your share of blood.”
“Fucking right,” he growled. “I like that you aren’t running. Stand your ground, mess the bastards up.”
Dinah sighed and then laughed. “He’s going to have to learn that he’s second string. I get first blood.”
“Not tonight.”
I tucked her into the holster and she squawked. “What the fuck?”
I swept Diego around and went to the window. The trucks in the driveaway had parked and men were spilling out of them, crouched low as they scuttled toward the house. “Peter, in here!”
The Magelore appeared at my side as if by magic. “We really going to fight?”
“They don’t know we’re awake. They didn’t even send a full crew.” I motioned at the thirty or so men in tactical wear who were creeping forward and circling the house. “I want the goodies in that truck. Weapons, gear, information. I want it all. And then we’re going to ram it up their asses.”
The big gun shivered in my hands. “Oh yeah, talk dirty to me, baby.” He said baby like bay-bay with just the slightest hint of an accent.
Peter glanced at me. “New gun?”
“Yup.” I stepped forward and quietly slid the bedroom window open, dropped to my knees, and lifted the gun. “You got a silencer?”
“I do,” Dinah grumbled.
“Nope,” Diego said.
That was that. “Peter, you want to eat?”
“Seriously?”
I didn’t even look at him. “If you want a meal, this is your chance. Fill up on them. I’ve got you covered.”
He was gone before I took another breath. I didn’t wait to see him stalking his prey but got things going on my end of the fight.
I squeezed the trigger on the new gun and the guy in front of the approaching group went flying backward from the force of the bullet slamming into his forehead.
Pop, pop, pop. Rapid fire was handy, and I used it to our advantage, mowing down the first wave of soldiers headed our way. Humans for sure, they didn’t get back up. Fifteen down. The other fifteen or so scattered, looking for cover. I picked them off as they ran. Two more on the left, four on the right.
Nine left. This was going well. About as good as I could have hoped.
My dog lay at my feet, not moving an inch even with all the gunfire. Her ears lay flat against her head and I could feel her emotions. She wanted to fight. That was what she’d been trained for. To sink her teeth into flesh.
“Better hurry, Peter!” I yelled.
The Magelore launched out of the darkness and took two soldiers down at once, rolling across the ground with them. My stomach turned and I struggled not to turn the gun on him. But if I was going to have him with me, he needed to feed regularly. Which meant I needed to ensure it happened.
“Exploding rounds,” I said and the inner workings of the gun gave a click. I fired on two soldiers lifting their guns toward Peter and his prey. The new bullets hit them and their tactical gear shredded; they fell back screaming.
“I wanna see!” Dinah whined. “And I wanna shoot something!”
“You’ll get your chance, but I have to see what Diego can do, and if he’s worth taking with us,” I said.
“What the fuck? I’m the best you’ll ever have, baby,” he growled.
“Heard that before,” Dinah said. “Usually two minutes before they groan and say they’re done.”
I couldn’t help it, my lips twitched. “You know, Dinah, you’re right about that. No stamina these days.”
“WHAT?” Diego yelped as I ducked below the window. “I’ll show you two ladies what you’ve been missing!”
Return fire was on us now, the humans finally pulling their shit together and taking out the glass above, sending it all over the room like sharp confetti. I dropped and slid backward, crawling across the floor to the hall, the dog following on her belly. Once there, I stood and headed back to the dining room, snapping my fingers for her to keep up. Silently she kept pace at my side. The door in that room was a glass slider, open about ten inches to let the night air in. I kept Diego raised as I swept toward the backyard and stepped out into the cool air of the night.
Screaming ripped through the silence, then cut off.
Peter was done feeding.
I picked up my pace. We needed to move. There would be backup coming as soon as someone got smart and radioed in that they were in trouble.
Movement to my left swung me in that direction and I squeezed off a round at close range. The soldier’s face exploded, bone and bits of his helmet spraying in every direction.
“Booyah!” Diego yelped. “That was a good one. I didn’t even see him!”
I kept moving, not bothering to wipe the blood and bits of the soldier’s brains from my skin. By my count, we had a half-dozen soldiers left scattered about. Should have been easy, but the prickling of my skin said we had more to worry about than a few humans with guns.
A knife slashed at me from the darkness, and I stepped back, the blade just missing my face. Another step, and another as the blade kept swinging. “You killed my friend!”
“Oh dear,” Dinah said. “You should not bring a knife to a gun fight.”
I yanked her clear and shot him point blank as he brought the knife down. It cut across my arm, but the strike lost momentum as he died and fell to the side.
I tucked her back into the holster. “Happy?”
“It was a good line,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to use it.”
Another time, I would have rolled my eyes, but the job wasn’t done. My dog gave a low rumbling growl as we cleared the side of the house. That was how I felt too, but there were no soldiers standing and Peter was the only one I saw.
Danger screamed through my body, making my skin prickle, hair standing at attention along the back of my neck and arms. Peter grinned at me, but I shook my head. “Something’s wrong.”
His grin faded and I moved carefully toward the big army vehicle that had brought the soldiers.
Soldiers who had died easily.
Soldiers who had kept us pinned down for the last ten minutes.
“Fuck,” I whispered the word as I swept the area, searching for what was coming. My dog butted her head against my thigh and gave a low whine. I glanced at her and saw she wasn’t looking at me.
She was looking straight up.
I looked up with her.
“Peter. What kind of abnormal flies with wings?”
“None that I know of—Jesus Christ, what are those?”
Which was what I’d thought he’d say, because I was with him on this. I knew all the abnormals out there, that was part of the job I’d had. I’d never once heard or seen anything like what was coming at us. Which meant they weren’t abnormals. They were something else.
They were the fallen.
Three creatures dropped from the sky, leathery wings spread wide, bringing the stench of death and rot with them. They landed as a trio, hard enough to dent the concrete and send a ripple out toward us. Each one had four arms, foot-long claws dangling from their hands, and legs that looked like tree trunks bent at odd angles, like a horse’s back legs. Their mid-sections rippled with muscle, but their faces looked human, and even had a vestige of beauty that made it seem as if their heads had been photoshopped onto their incredibly monstrous bodies.
“Dinah, you’re going to get your wish.” I pulled her from her holster and tossed her to Peter.
“Jesus,” he muttered again as the creatures rose on their strange legs, easily ten feet tall, and started toward us.
“Not Jesus,” I said softly. “Fallen angels. Incendiary rounds.”
The trio tucked their wings back, but didn’t slow their pace, as if they didn’t care that we had guns trained on them.
“I don’t have incendiary rounds,” Diego said.
“Fuck. Keep it exploding then.” I spoke as I squeezed off the first round. The bullets hit the fallen one on the far left of us, and while it rocked him backward, there was no real wound. No blood, and the creature didn’t even slow his approach. “Something else, what else have you got?” I yelled as I kept firing.
I aimed for the joints in the legs, hoping the force of the bullets would at least knock the ugly fuckers down.
Peter squeezed off a few of Dinah’s fiery rounds, and that seemed to drive the creatures back. For a moment. And then they stepped over the flames and kept on coming.
I caught one in the knee, and the joint dislocated, the big ugly going down with a howl. His two buddies looked at him. “Get up,” the one in the middle said. “For the glory of the creator, get up and abolish this filth.”
“Look who’s talking! You might as well have crawled out of a goat’s ass, stinking like shit and saying a field of daisies smells bad!” Dinah yelled in between shots. She had a knack for the insults, I’d give her that.
The one I’d downed tried to get back up, but I kept working on those joints, snapping them with the force of the bullets even if they weren’t actually doing permanent damage. I backed up and aimed at the knees of the one closing in on Peter.
The creature whipped a wing around and blocked the bullets. They bounced off the wing as if it were metal.
What the actual fuck was happening here?
I swung the gun around on its strap and charged the creature. His eyes widened and he swept one of his four arms toward me. I grabbed him by the hand and reversed direction, snapping his arm with my entire body weight. The crack of bone filled the air, but I didn’t stop. I spun, still hanging onto his arm, so I twisted it completely free of all attachments with the exception of his skin.
He roared and another arm came for me. I let go and went low, kicking at his knees, knocking him sideways.
“For big, monstrously ugly motherfuckers, you sure aren’t all that scary,” I said. No doubt they were used as the final intimidation once the soldiers had pinned down the abnormals they were hunting.
The one in the middle shot toward me—and I mean shot. He was standing still one moment and the next I had all four of his hands on me, holding me by the arms and legs, stretched out.
My dog snarled and leapt forward, grabbing him around the ankle and tearing him from side to side. She didn’t put a dent in him, but at least she kept him off balance.
“We have you now.” He smiled and his face lit up.
“Shock her,” said the one who seemed to be the leader.
“Nix!” Dinah yelled. The lights around us dimmed, the streetlights popping and the world going completely dark as the creature holding me lit up like a fucking mini-sun. He was clearly drawing all that power into him. This was going to hurt like a motherfucker, no matter how I looked at it.
“Ruby,” the dog’s name came to me in that moment, “release!” I yelled as my limbs were pulled taut, muscles straining. Ruby backed off, but she was whining and growling, her body hunched as she stalked around the freakish creature that held me tightly.
I didn’t fight the power as it slammed into me, designed to maim and kill.
I welcomed it.
14
The surge of power snapped my teeth shut and I closed my eyes to keep them from bugging out of my head. Breathing was not an option as the jolt surged through me three times, cutting into my head, lighting up my nerve endings. I fought to hold onto it, pooling all that power in my lower back—strange, I know, but that was where I’d kept stuff like this before.
Killian’s ability was one of lightning and I could absorb his power and hold it in order to discharge it at my leisure later. I was hoping this would be the same. I was hoping I wasn’t completely blocked from this ability the way Cowboy was from his EMP pulse.
That’s the thing with being an abnormal. We were all different, even the ones with similar abilities. Part of mine was being able to hang onto another form of energy and then redistribute it through a weapon. Usually Dinah.
Seeing as she was with Peter, Diego was about to get the shock of his afterlife. I hoped.
As quickly as it started, it was over.
The creature dropped me to the ground. “There. She is out.”
I stayed down on the cold concrete, breathing hard, my eyes closed as I tried to feel my bo
dy.
As I tried to find my way through the blocks that had been put on me. They were still there, still holding me back.
Sweat rolled down my spine as I lay there unsure of how to untangle my abilities, so I could use the power that these fucking fallen had run through me.
The briefest touch of something in my mind kept me still. What felt like Eligor’s fingers spread through my head and deftly unblocked the wall that kept me from my power, more carefully than I’d ever felt him move through my consciousness before. Smoother and . . . softer, almost gentle.
I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t about to ask in that moment.
It was a weapon offered freely, and I was going to use it.
I opened my eyes.
“She’s not out!” one of the fallen yelled, but I was already rolling onto my back and lifting Diego to my shoulder. They hadn’t even bothered to take him from me. Cocky featherbrains.
I tapped into that power I’d pooled in my lower spine and sent it back through my body, down my arms and into the weapon as I squeezed the trigger. Just like I’d done in the past with the electricity Killian could manipulate and create.
The explosion that ripped out of Diego bashed into my eardrums, numbing my senses. This was more than just electricity, but a pure bolt of power I couldn’t understand in all its strength.
The blow hit the creature in the chest and lit him up from the inside, showing his skeleton like a superpowered X-ray machine. His back arched and his wings went wide as he basically turned into a living breathing spotlight, the power tracing blood vessels, showing his heart beat and every tiny part of him.
I scrambled backward, still on my butt, and kept my weapon trained on him. There was no looking away, not for any of us, as his body began to shift and change. The leather skin of his wings sprouted feathers, his extra set of arms absorbed back into his body leaving him with only two, and his legs smoothed out and became strong, sleek limbs that any woman would want to dry hump like her life depended on it.
A Savage Spell (The Nix Series Book 4) Page 12