“Let me trade you.” I thrust the gun back at her and took the hose. “I’ve got protection from fire. But be careful out here. Sindari is after the shooter, but there are two more people on the other side of the compound.”
“I know. There were three here when I got here. Dimitri’s cactus thorns drove two of them away. I punched that one.” She pointed at an unconscious man slumped against a dumpster. One of those cactus thorns protruded from the fence above him, but he didn’t appear to be perforated himself.
I hadn’t seen him or sensed him as I’d come up. “You punched him? With what, a tire iron? He’s out cold.”
He wasn’t magical, so he wasn’t one of the three I’d been counting.
“I also hit him with a cast-iron frying pan. After he laughed at my punch.”
“That would do it.”
“Then I grabbed one of my newest rifles—the bear grinder—and threatened him with it. He ran backward so fast he tumbled into the dumpster and cracked his head on it.”
“You are a fearsome woman.”
“I am a mad woman. Val, my truck.”
“We’ll get it put out. You’ve got insurance, right?”
I jumped into the middle of the kitchen fire, spraying water on anything that looked like it could be put out that way. Two empty fire extinguishers already lay spent on the floor. The remnants of grease in the bottom of the drained fryer station were burning brightly, but I vaguely remembered that water would only make a grease fire worse. I grabbed towels and aprons to wet down and tried to smother the flames.
“I tried to call nine-one-one, but I have no reception.” Nin crouched outside the truck, watching the wall and shadows in all directions. “I am in the middle of the city. There should be reception.”
“I know.”
I sensed Sindari had knocked the man off the fence and into the street outside and was chasing him down. The two other magical beings were still on the far side of the compound. I couldn’t tell what they were doing, but one of them had to be responsible for the spell blocking our phones. They felt like full-bloods. A shifter, maybe a member of the Northern Pride, and someone else I couldn’t identify from a distance. As soon as the fire was out, I would visit them and find out what.
“Or maybe not,” I muttered as my senses told me they were on the move. And heading this way.
“Here, Nin.” I waved for her to take over with the hose. “We’ve got more trouble coming.”
She took the hose, but she also leaned around the corner of her truck, facing in the direction I pointed, a big double-barreled shotgun at the ready. I ran to the truck next to hers, not wanting to draw fire her way. After activating my cloaking charm, I crept closer to the aisle, keeping the truck at my back.
The two people heading our direction paused. I must have dropped off their senses.
They didn’t pause for long. The light of the fire made it hard to see people in the shadows, but my senses told me they were looking at Nin from between two trucks across the way. Finally, I picked out the cloaked figures against the black siding of a burger truck.
They were whispering to each other. I crept closer. The bigger person’s voice carried.
I ducked around a truck, activated the screen on my phone where they couldn’t see it, started a recording, and returned to the other side. As I snuck closer, I caught something about the Pardus brothers and having already been paid.
He drew a handgun and said, “Nobody cares if she gets hurt or killed, and if I killed the Ruin Bringer…”
Whoever his partner was didn’t answer, or answered too quietly for me to pick it up. He strode closer to the aisle—and Nin.
He pointed the gun in her direction. Nin was behind cover but kept leaning out to look for approaching enemies. He might get lucky.
“Not on my shift.” I shot him in the shoulder.
He flew backward, hit the ground crying in pain and rolling, then jumped up. He shifted into an ocelot and sprinted at me.
I fired twice, the bullets slamming into his chest, then switched to Chopper as he reached me, springing for my face. I darted out of the way fast enough to avoid the claws slashing for my eyes, then drove my blade into his side. He screeched and crashed into the truck I’d been standing in front of. As he landed, I lunged in and pressed the tip of my sword to his throat. At the same time, I grabbed Fezzik with my left hand and aimed it toward his buddy, who was watching but hadn’t moved or drawn a weapon yet. The shifter transformed back into human form and tried to roll away, but I stepped on him and kept the blade to his throat.
“How much are the Pardus brothers paying you?” My phone was still recording in my pocket. I wasn’t sure he’d been speaking loudly enough before to pick up his words, so a confession would be nice.
“Not enough to deal with you,” he spat between pained panting breaths.
“They just want Nin out of the picture?”
“Oh, they want you dead too.”
His buddy finally moved, facing me and lifting bare hands, the palms strikingly pale, fingers long and lean. A woman’s? At first, I thought she was showing me that she was unarmed. Then a mental attack poured into my mind like a thousand fire ants burrowing through my ear canals and into my skull.
The shifter rolled away as I gasped, distracted by the pain. He turned into an ocelot again and sprinted down the aisle and out the front gate.
Snarling, I tried to fire Fezzik at the woman, but my finger didn’t want to obey. The mental attack grew stronger, more intense, and it felt like a cable was pulling my arm down as I struggled to keep the weapon aimed at the person. At the dark elf. The magic was familiar and I belatedly recognized those albino hands.
I fired, even though I was aiming at my assailant’s foot. I couldn’t force my arm up to shoot at her chest. She sprang more than ten feet in the air, avoiding the bullet that gouged a hole in the pavement, and landed lightly atop the burger truck.
The attack on my mind lessened, but she wasn’t done. She drew her hand back, as if to skip a rock.
Not a rock. I leaped sideways as a disc glinting orange with reflected firelight sped toward me. I whipped Chopper across but didn’t connect with the projectile. It slammed into the truck next to me and sank in deep.
Do not meddle in our affairs, a female voice spoke into my mind.
Your affairs? What are you doing partnering with some scruffy cat shifters?
The time of humans infesting and destroying this world is coming to the end. All who do not stand with us shall perish along with them.
Are you offering me a chance to switch sides? I wouldn’t, of course, but I was curious.
You chose your side long ago, mongrel.
“Yes, I did.” The weight pulling my arm down had faded when she shifted from a mental attack to a physical one, so I aimed Fezzik and squeezed the trigger.
But she waved her hand, and the bullets slowed as if they were flying through molasses instead of air. Before they reached her, she dropped off the other side of the truck. I sensed her run to the far fence and leap up and over.
She didn’t go the same way the shifter I’d shot had gone—nor did she head toward the one that Sindari had chased off—so maybe that meant they weren’t truly working together. Just that, for some reason, she’d lent her magic to them tonight. In exchange for a favor?
Sindari hopped over the fence as if it were three feet high instead of twelve and rejoined me. I chased the other one until he went into what I believe is called a night club. It was very noisy and filled with people. I assumed you would not want me to follow him inside.
Were service animals not allowed?
Sindari placed a heavy paw on my foot. If you’re partial to this, you’ll remember that I am not some servile animal.
If you tear off my foot, I’ll have a hard time battling dark elves.
He squinted at me. I thought I sensed an elf or dark elf. What was he doing here?
She was delivering threats.
How novel.
I thought so.
Someone honked out front. Maybe the police or fire department had finally figured out what was going on.
“You all right, Nin?” I checked on her, found her finishing hosing down the last of the flames, and got a thumbs-up.
“Hello!” came a familiar call from the entrance gate.
“Back here, Dimitri.” Fairly confident we’d dealt with all the trouble—Sindari would alert me if more showed up—I stepped out into the main aisle. “Are you alone?”
“Who else would be with me?” He pushed the gate farther aside and stepped in.
“Your hot date.”
“Jeremy from the club? I haven’t had time to get together with him yet.”
“Zoltan,” I said dryly.
“He doesn’t leave the premises except to hunt, and he said he stays local for that.” Dimitri strode toward me, frowning darkly when the charred and smoking food truck came into view. “Fresh, local food. That’s his preference.” His mouth twisted. He wasn’t wearing his cervical collar, but I wagered it was still in the van.
“How fortunate for the people of Woodinville.”
“Is Nin all right?”
“Yes. Physically. Mentally, she’s probably already stressing out about disappointing her regulars when she can’t show up for the lunch hour tomorrow.”
“Maybe she can use the kitchen there, then set up a table with some warming trays.” Dimitri waved at the building, then rested a hand on the soot-covered hood of the truck.
“Do you think there’s any chance of fixing it?”
“I don’t know much about cars, so if the engine was damaged, don’t ask me. The rest…” He shrugged. “I’ll have to take a look. Do we know who did this?”
“Shifters and a dark elf. One of them confessed that the Pardus brothers paid them and didn’t care if anyone was hurt or killed. I recorded it—” I pulled my phone out, “—but I’ve been told that confessions that I extract at sword point aren’t admissible in court.”