“Think of Adelaide,” Becky said with the rhythm of an oft-repeated phrase. “What would she say?”
“That I’m being an ass.” He sighed through his parted lips. “But she always thinks I’m being an ass.”
To keep from agreeing with his absent fiancée, I pasted my polite-interest face on. I had honed it to wear during particularly odious speeches given in Maud’s honor, usually at award dinners, which made Linus chuckle as if he remembered the exact expression and its purpose from all those years ago.
“Goddess, is that Detective Russo?” I pressed my nose against the glass. “The Elite might want to shadow her. She believes there’s something hinky about how Maud died. The city closing for a hurricane that wasn’t is going to ping on her hinkdar. She’s like a dog with a bone. She won’t let go once she sinks her teeth in.”
“We’ve been wiping the short-term memories of the human first responders and escorting them past the barricade,” Becky informed us. “She must have slipped through the checkpoints.” Pulling out her phone, she punched in a number. “I’ll get her picked up before she ghosts again.”
A rolling boom sounded in the distance, and I pressed my hand to the glass. “What was that?”
The noise reminded me of cannon fire during the reenactments held at Old Fort Jackson.
A second boom hit closer, and a plume of asphalt erupted on our right.
“Those bastards planted another minefield.” Boaz gritted his teeth. “How did the sweepers miss this?”
“They didn’t.” Becky scowled out her window. “I checked this route at noon, and it was clear.”
“Call it in.” Boaz slammed his palms against the wheel. “They’ve got humans doing their dirty work. That means no routes are safe without inspection prior to use.”
“You want to help the city?” One of the guys from the back leaned forward, swinging his head between Linus and me. “Drop some of your inheritance in these potholes, yeah? These bastards don’t even have to dig. They just drop in a homemade boomer and kick pebbles over the top.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said dryly, but it got me thinking.
I hadn’t considered what I might do to improve the city. I never had a reason to involve myself in its maintenance. Until now, when my family, and our feud, was wreaking havoc. Unless I stepped in, checkbook in hand, the city might not recover for years after another few days under siege.
A third boom rocked the vehicle, and I found Linus’s hand with mine as a fourth and fifth ignited beneath us. With a scream of wrenching metal and shattering glass, I was flung against the window where my head cracked on the trim before blackness engulfed me.
Except unconsciousness didn’t claim me, Linus did. His midnight cloak wrapped me tight as he cushioned us while the SUV rolled, setting off other mines and igniting a twisted pinball game that blasted us from one side of the road to the other.
When the creaking frame rocked to a stop on its side, I couldn’t tell where we ended up until Linus dissipated enough to let me see through the gaping maws of former windows to the pockmarked road behind us.
“Roll call,” Boaz growled from the front seat, the driver side of the vehicle resting flat against the pavement.
“I’m alive,” Becky wheezed, head limp on her shoulder from where she hung in her seat belt. “I think.”
“Ricco.”
“Brown.”
“Martinez.”
“Jung.”
Boaz twisted in his seat for visual confirmation that Linus and I were both still breathing. “The gang’s all here.”
“We have to move.” Linus unfastened my seat belt, and I dropped into his arms. “Whoever set those might be watching to see who tripped them.”
Smiling my thanks, I shifted my focus out the windshield. “What are the odds the vampires’ humans knew to reseed this area in particular?”
“This was random.” Becky hissed out a curse as she freed herself. “This trip wasn’t cleared through official channels, if you catch my drift. No one except for the six of us knew it was happening, and the four guys in the back didn’t know until fifteen minutes before we tagged them.”
The four guys in question grunted as they cut themselves free of their seat belts, but their mouths were set in grim lines, and their eyes glinted with barely restrained violence and the need to give back as good as we had gotten. Flowing like water, they climbed out of the wreckage and moved into position to flank the vehicle while scouting the area.
The SUV groaned and rocked as Becky accepted a hand out from Jung then fell into position.
“The vampires tend to hit the main drags and the most logical alternate routes. All this means is they’re doubling down, a nightshift and a dayshift. Twice the fun for us.” Boaz hauled himself out the window and sat perched on the SUV’s side. “Wait by the vehicle until we come for you.”
His boots hit the ground, and he ordered his men to fan out, sweep the area.
Linus boosted me through my smashed window, careful of the teethlike glass shards, and I swung my leg over the side. I dropped to the asphalt, and he hit a second later. Following Boaz’s orders, we crouched together with our backs to the undercarriage. Laughter hitched in my chest when the quick examination I conducted on him left us with our gazes clashing after he finished his own visual sweep over me.
“You’re all right,” he said softly, a reassurance for himself.
“You saved me.” I rested my hand against his cheek, his cool skin contrasting the hot sun overhead. “Again.”
“Even damsels such as myself manage a rescue once in a long while.” A tiny smile played on his mouth. “You’ll balance the scales soon enough. You always do.” He tapped the side of his throat where his spent sigil was smudged beyond recognition. “I could argue you already have.”
Much to his amusement, I located my pen and drew a fresh impervious sigil on him in a less-distracting spot before we took turns rooting through our supplies to see what had survived the impact.
“Clear.”
The word echoed six more times, from six different directions, before they converged on us.
“Looks like we’re walking the last half mile,” Boaz informed us as he gazed across the pitted asphalt. “Step where I step.” A thin sheen of sweat coated his skin, but I didn’t think the heat was to blame. “Unless I’m blown to bits.” His smile was full of bravado, but I saw through the strain to the memories churning behind his eyes. “Then you go around me.”
Unable to let it go when the past had sunk its teeth in him, I grasped his arm. “Are you okay?”
“This is the job.” He pushed out an exhale. “I can do this.” He reached down, rubbed the top of his left thigh, right where his prosthetic used to fit. “You can always grow me another one, right?”
“Um, don’t count on it.” I let him go. “The first time was a fluke.”
“Figures.” He hesitated, then offered me a thinner smile, but a genuine one. “Thanks. For…everything.” He dropped a brotherly kiss on top of my head. “I’m the same man with or without the leg, but you saved my life, Squirt.”
Tension strung my spine tight as a bowstring at the unexpected endearment, once so familiar, but I shrugged off my discomfort. This—a return to normal—would be a blessing. For all of us.
When Boaz turned to rally his troops, I caught Linus staring at him, but it wasn’t a territorial thing. Curiosity had rekindled in those dark blue eyes, and I elbowed him in the side before Boaz noticed and took offense to the bug-under-the-microscope routine.
Heat blossomed in Linus’s cheeks at being caught, and I couldn’t resist the urge to kiss the pinkest spot.
A throat cleared behind us, and I turned to find Becky wearing a goofy expression. “Ready?”
“Linus?” I held out my hand for his, and he laced our fingers. “Let’s do this.”
Eyes going tight, Boaz took point, and I fell in line behind him. Linus followed me, and a guy flanked each of us, on both sides, with Becky bringing up the rear.
We had almost reached the barricade when rapid gunfire peppered the air.
“Take cover,” Boaz yelled as the Elite shuffled Linus and me to relative safety behind an overturned semi that had met the same fate as our SUV.
Eyes on Linus, I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, but I didn’t ask him not to go.
Midnight swirled around him, engulfed him, and his cowl covered the bright auburn of his hair. But instead of nudging me into the darkest shadows or the deepest recesses, he held out his hand, inviting me to join him.
If I hadn’t already been hopelessly in love with him, I would have fallen then.
“One second.” I palmed the pocketknife I had no intentions of returning to him and opened a wound across my hand. Dipping my fingers in the stinging cut, I painted protective sigils down my arms, waiting until a solid wall of air formed Kevlar-dense around me. “Okay. I’m ready.”
The Elite exchanged concerned looks that slid toward Boaz, telegraphing their worry he would skin them alive if I got hurt. While I appreciated the sentiment, I was learning to take care of myself, and I never felt more bulletproof than when Linus stood beside me.
Together, we stepped out into the open. Within seconds, bullets pinged off my wards and his body.
Heart pounding in my ears, I blocked out the fear slicking my palms and broke into a sprint, aiming straight for the source of the attack.
Light glinted to my right, sun dancing along the edge of Linus’s sickle-shaped blade.
The enemy wore black fatigues and dark face paint.
Two snipers.
Both human.
Neither stood a chance.
Linus took their heads with a clean arc of his scythe, and they rolled to a stop in a crater made by their own bombs.
With silence restored, Linus remained standing over the corpses, his shoulders bowed under his burden.