As plans went, mine wasn’t much of one. Mostly it was distract, make a lotta noise, some bright lights. Evan and Molly outside, one in front, one in back, with their magical woo-woo stuff. Bruiser and me inside, with Leo close behind.
And then I heard the muffled scream. I caught a whiff of something. I was smelling blood on the night wind. I opened my mouth and drew air in over tongue and the roof of my mouth. Eli’s blood. I could hear his pained breath, and soft, female laughter. Eli was hurt. Eli was dying. Someone was torturing him. And that someone was enjoying the process.
CHAPTER 23
Hey, Bitch! You Want Some of This?
“Come on, Derek,” I said, hearing Eli’s ragged breath on the night air. Derek had used some of Eli’s fancy equipment to tell me that the Ranger was in a second-floor room, with a human and a vamp. Even without electronics, I knew which window the sounds were coming through. I could smell the blood and hear the pained breath of my partner. I could tell he was gagged. I could smell his pain and fear. “Come on, damn it!” I snarled.
Over the headgear, which the Kid had routed into all of our cells, I heard the others checking in. Big Evan was ready. The girls in the tree were ready. Molly and her niece were ready. Only Derek was left.
“In position,” Derek said over my earpiece. “But you’ll have to open the shutters or doors. I’ve been all around the site and there is no, repeat, no, access on ground floor without use of explosive ordnance.”
“No bombs. No explosives,” I said.
“Copy. But you ain’t no fun, Legs.”
I knew he was trying to lighten the tension, maybe as part of some battlefield routine, and for the sake of my team, I forced a tight smile onto my face and countered his gibe. “Not the first time I’ve been told that.”
“We can talk about your love life later. Focus, woman. We got a man to rescue.”
I smiled for real then, stretching my arm. It was not a hundred percent. But at least I still had an arm. There was that. “On ten, Evan. Count down.”
Evan, his voice tight, started counting up from one. Irritating man.
Casually, Bruiser said, “I can toss you up.”
I measured the distance from ground to second floor. I thought about having to use my strong arm to catch myself if I jumped, which would mean holding my weapons with my injured arm. “You think you can toss me up so I can just step onto the railing and drop to the porch floor?”
“Piece a cake, doll face.” Which sounded like something out of the ’twenties or ’thirties. The nineteen twenties or thirties.
“Ten,” Evan said.
“Gogogogogogo,” I said.
Big Evan began to play a haunting melody, the flute notes low and sonorous. Air magic flowed toward the house from the golf course. Molly’s dark magic began to flow through the air from the second floor’s unfinished porch across the street from our objective. Leo, though he practically flew ahead of us, moved at a speed that humans—and witches with spells aimed against vamps—could follow. He stopped in the middle of the yard, his body going from a slow vamp-jog to a dead stop. He drew his long sword, propped it over his shoulder, and grinned at me. His fangs were down. Leo was having fun. The smell of blood and fear on the air was probably making him happy.
Our boots nearly silent on the fresh-cut grass, Bruiser raced in front of me. Dropped to one knee, his hands up high to grab mine. I raced up his body, my feet landing on knee, hip, and his shoulder, my body bent, taking his hands as he leaped to his feet. I leaped with him.
My body straightened, elongated, and I flew up and forward, drawing my weapons as I flew. Bent-kneed, I touched my right toes to the iron banister. With a shove I propelled myself in through the open door. Into the room where a fanghead had her fangs buried in Eli’s neck. I landed on the carpet with a double thud.
The vamp-killer took her head almost as if it sliced through the air all by itself. My throwing knife buried itself in the man’s throat. Silently, the bodies of both vamp and human went down. I caught the vamp’s head in both hands, holding the fangs in place in Eli’s throat. Blood, watery and pale, burbled out around the fangs still buried there. Bruiser landed beside me and raced to the doorway, securing the room. I eased the fangs loose and tossed the bloody head. Blood spiraled out from the stump of neck, creating weird patterns on the bedspread. I pulled the charmed stake from my thigh sheath and pressed it to Eli’s neck. Instantly the blood clotted over around the stake, a gelatinous glob of blood that spread until it clotted over the entire wound. I raced to a bureau, opened it, and pulled out a handful of folded clothes. T-shirts, maybe. I removed the stake, tucking it into a pocket, and pressed the clothes to Eli’s throat. I cradled his head in my palm, the other holding the compress gently in place. He was cold. So cold. Shock, I thought. His pulse beat, too fast, an erratic tattoo of movement, beneath my hands.
“I got him,” I whispered into the mic. “He’s alive. But I can’t move him. He needs—”
From the front lawn, I heard Leo shout, “Jacques Shoffru, former Master of the City of Veracruz and Cancún, Mexico, and all hunting territories between, you are forsworn. You will meet me here, now, in Blood Challenge!” So much for the trash talk. He’d skipped it entirely and gone right for the challenge.
“He needs a vamp to heal him. Fast,” I finished, in a whisper, knowing it was too late. Eli’s heart pumped a single hard thump, then sped with shock. He was dying. His pupils were blown, wide and nearly black as a vamp’s. Bruiser slid in behind me and started working the chains holding Eli upright, iron chains, the kind a monster truck would use to haul a cattle car. As if Eli was dangerous—
A shadow flickered in the edges of my vision. One-handed, I grabbed a knife. Threw it. With muscle memory, practice, and pure luck I hit my target. But the compression bandage slipped. I grabbed it as a blood-servant fell, my knife buried in his throat. Blood gushing. Gouting. I’d hit the carotid artery. He tried to shout, but sucked in blood with the breath. Choked. I’d hit his windpipe too. He writhed on the floor, dropping the short sword he had been holding. Trying to pull a gun. Gently, Bruiser took it away from him.
The man died. I remembered to breathe. The air ached in my chest. I blinked and saw the man’s bright green eyes, as if burned into my retinas.
Bruiser checked the hallway again and returned to the chains. He loosed the bonds holding Eli upright in the chair. My partner started to slide down, boneless. The T-shirt bandages slid again and fresh blood gushed over my hands. “No! Nononono,” I whispered, repositioning the bloody cloth as Bruiser caught him. The blood was so watery, like Kool-Aid, not something to sustain life. Eli is dying. Together we eased my partner to the floor. Instantly blood soaked into the carpet beneath him, thin and watery. Fresh and weak. Tears gathered in my eyes. “Nononononono,” I murmured, over and over.
“Jane,” Alex said, his voice full of fear in my earpieces. “Jane?”
“I can’t— I don’t know what—”
From the front yard, I heard the clash of steel. The roar of vampires in a duel. “Alex, I need two things. Fast. I need Shiloh here, in this room. And I need Molly to drain the pirate. You understand? Now. No argument. Just do it. Tell them. Or your brother is dead. Do it!”
I heard Alex giving orders on the makeshift coms system. I felt more than saw Bruiser leave the room. And it was just Eli and me on the floor, my hands trying desperately to hold in the blood. To hold in the life. His pulse thumped and stuttered and raced. I leaned in and hissed, “Do not die on me. Do. Not. Die.” Tears ran from my eyes and snot dribbled under my nose. They dripped onto my hands as I sobbed, trying to be silent. Knowing that if I had to defend him, if someone got past Bruiser and I had to let go and take up a weapon, Eli would die. Right then. “If you die”—I snuffed up the mess on my face and wiped it on the shoulder of the fuzzy purple shirt—“I’ll tell all Derek’s men you weren’t as tough as they are. I’ll . . .”