“Hey.” The third one wedged in between the others. “That’s her.”
“Grier something,” the fourth one agreed. “Lacroix’s granddaughter. He said you might come after Volkov. Guess he was right.” He smiled, fangs on display, and ran his tongue along one point. “This night just keeps getting better and—”
A dull thud preceded his head hitting the pavement and rolling into the street.
“You might not be scared of him,” Boaz muttered next to me, “but I might need fresh boxers after this.”
Ignoring the carnage, Linus kept his tone polite. “Leave, and the rest of you will be spared.”
“You killed Dan,” Number Two bellowed. “What the actual fuck?”
With Two’s eloquent battle cry ringing in our ears, Number One charged us. He must have been an older vamp. The way he swung his sledgehammer reminded me of a Viking wielding an ax. He used the shaft to absorb the scythe’s blows, his movements practiced and brutal.
That left Boaz and me with Two, Three, Five, and Six.
“I can already smell the vampire BBQ,” I taunted. “I hope someone brought sides.”
Squeezing my hand, I coaxed fresh blood into my palm that I used to draw sigils on my ward. I lined up a row of four and slammed my palm against the wall of air. Magic blasted out in a wave, striking two out of the four before they could dodge.
Unlike last time, when I was protecting my friends, these vampires didn’t crisp on the spot. They hit the pavement and rolled, the wind knocked out of them.
Well, that was embarrassing.
“Make up your mind,” I grumbled at the seeping cut. “I can’t invite them to a vampire BBQ if I can’t ignite the grill.”
Two shots fired behind me, the proximity causing my ears to ring. Boaz had winged one of the remaining vampires, but the other was bulling straight for us, and the two I had knocked down were getting to their feet.
More blood, more focus. Less fear, less doubt.
Teeth gritted, I slammed my bloody palms against my ward and sent a blast of energy hurtling toward my targets.
Impact stunned them, and panic tightened their eyes. Then it was over. They turned to ash and swirled away on the breeze.
A shocked gasp punched out of Boaz, and when I turned, the gun wilted in his hand. “How did…?”
There was no time to fill him in, and I preferred to keep the scope of my emerging powers to myself and Linus, who remained locked in combat with Number One.
I couldn’t blast the vampire without risking Linus, and I couldn’t join the fight either. Not only did I not have a weapon, but getting too close to Linus while he did his thing was a recipe for decapitation. All I could safely do was stand there and feel like a total—
A deafening shot rang out, and Number One hit the ground with a clatter of his hammer.
Linus whirled toward us, scythe raised, but I didn’t have to turn to know Boaz had taken the shot.
“Thanks,” Linus panted.
A shrug rolled through Boaz’s shoulders. “Don’t mention it.”
Before I finished marveling over their cordiality, I realized we were a man down. “Where’s Hood?”
But neither Linus nor Boaz had an answer for me.
Eight
About the time my heart lodged in my throat, Hood trotted around the corner of the neighboring house with an arm dangling from his mouth. He wagged his tail at me and kept going, finding a comfy spot on the lawn to dig into his treat.
A necromancer I might be, but blood magic was the extent of my experience with corpses. Once you got into chewing, gnawing, or otherwise munching on the dead, I was out of my comfort zone.
Skirting the snackish gwyllgi, I hit the sidewalk. “Let’s go, uh, see where he got that.”
The cloak vanished from Linus’s shoulders, and I heard Boaz exhale with what I suspected was relief.
“We should return to Woolly.” Linus fell in step with me. “It’s dangerous for you to be on the street.”
I pinned the back of my wrist to my forehead. “Good thing I have a big, strong potentate to protect little ol’ me.”
A smile wanted to curl his lips, but he forced them into a flat line. “You can take care of yourself. You’ve more than proved that.” He skated his fingers down my arm. “But there’s a difference in you looking for trouble and it finding you.”
“Make you a deal. We figure out where the rest of Hood’s snack came from, and then we’ll go home.”
“I’ll take that deal.”
“Goddess,” Boaz breathed from behind us. “Hood did all that?”
A blocky SUV sat with all four doors standing open. The back tires had been gnawed until they flattened into rubber puddles on the asphalt, and teeth marks punctured what remained of the rear bumper. The vehicle’s occupants, who lay in pieces strewn across the sidewalk and onto the lawns of nearby houses, appeared to be vampires.
Thank the goddess for the evacuation order. Otherwise, we would have had some explaining to do.
“This was a nice ride for the goon squad.” I stepped over random appendages to reach the driver’s side with its buttery-leather seats stained crimson. “They could have stolen it. Plenty of empty vehicles to choose from.” On car lots and in driveways. “But why split into two teams? It’s a minimum-security facility, but still.” I rifled through the contents of the dash and searched the floorboards. “And why leave their transportation a street away when every second counts?”
Boaz rubbed his jaw. “Looks like these guys sent the muscle ahead then played lookout.”
“Grier.” Linus crouched over a body missing everything south of its rib cage. “This complicates matters.”
One of its severed arms crooked on the asphalt, still gripping a crossbow.
“They found us.” I looked at him. “Again.”
Understanding dawned, and Boaz paid closer attention. “These are the archers who hit the Cora Ann.”
“Yeah.” Among their many and growing accomplishments. “Looks that way.”
“This doesn’t fit,” Linus murmured as a second crossbow was discovered beneath a dismembered torso.
“I don’t see assassins caring about Volkov one way or another,” I agreed. “Two teams?”
“One dispatched after we left the safety of Woolworth House and the other…” Cold, hard onyx filled his eyes. “A source tipped them off where and when to be in order to confront us and protect Volkov.”
“Why can’t just one villain be after us? Or even multiple villains united under one banner? It would be so much easier to keep track of them.” Volkov. Lacroix. Odette. Eloise. “What if we offered them matching T-shirts with a catchy slogan so identifying them was easier?”
The maniacal laughter is free, but the hits cost extra.
Come for the vengeance, stay for the finger sandwiches.
I make evil look good.
The edge of exhaustion creeping into my voice must have tipped Linus off, because he bundled me in his arms before it hit me how tired all this made me. After Atlanta, I was still running on fumes.
“I’m okay,” I breathed against his chest, my fingers tightening in the fabric at his spine.
“No, you’re not.” He kissed my temple, as if sensing the headache waiting to pounce. “But that is okay.”
Laughing softly, I nudged him back before I decided to burrow in and never leave. “Let’s finish this.”
“We need to test their weapons.” Linus bent and started gathering samples. “The previous assassins always used poison. If these vampires were part of that unit, their knives would have been treated.”
“I wish we had thought to test—” Geez, I really was slow on the uptake. I never thought to wonder what else might be stuffed in that duffle bag along with our would-be assassin. “You brought the Atlanta vampire’s crossbow with us to Base Four.”
“I did,” he confirmed. “The initial tests confirm the presence of wraith’s bane on the arrowheads.”
An uneasy feeling tingled through my limbs. Archers firing on the Cora Ann with brass-tipped arrows. Vampires chasing us through City Market, their arrowheads dipped in wraith’s bane, a poison designed to take down Linus. Daredevils rappelling down buildings and busting through windows. And now this.
The former Grande Dame, Abayomi Balewa, had admitted to hiring the assassin in the Lyceum, but she hadn’t taken credit for the archers.
Eloise had teamed up with Balewa under the guise of Angie Dearborn, but hiring assassins, archers in particular, made no sense when they had wanted to sacrifice me for my blood.
There was only one other possibility, but I couldn’t believe she hated me that much. After what she did to Linus, I had been made brutally aware Odette was ruthless, but the child in me who had loved her struggled to believe, even after everything she had done, that she would put a price on my head.
“We’ll figure it out,” Linus promised, reclaiming the cooler. “Are you done here?”
I scanned the area one last time, then we returned to the street outside the facility housing Volkov.
“What do we do about our friend Rue?” I stared at the frilly curtain in the window. “Her bad attitude paved the way for this delightful interlude. Coincidence?”
“No such thing,” Boaz drawled, reaching for his phone. “Give me a sec, and I’ll arrange transport for her.”
“No, I’ll put in a call to Mother.” Linus cut his eyes toward Boaz, expecting a one-liner no doubt, a jab below the belt, but none came. “Volkov will be secured and then relocated, and Rue will be detained in a cell at the barracks until we can spare someone to interrogate her.”
Hood lounged on the sidewalk, gnawing on a femur in plain sight, which told me he had cased the neighborhood while he waited on us to finish with Volkov and determined it was free of humans who might raise an alarm. When he spotted us, he spat out his chew toy, trotted over, and shifted before sliding behind the wheel.