Sasha picked up the duffel bag, noting that they stayed away from it and had flung it to the far side of the room by the strap. She snatched out more rowan as she elbowed the vicious little creatures off her back. The moment she held it in her first with a gun in the other, they fled to focus their full torment on Seung Kwon.
“Catch!” she hollered. “They can’t stand it!”
He grabbed a branch of rowan laden with berries, and when it touched three of the little beasties, they exploded into green guck. Sasha went to work on the trapdoor, trying to escape the flames. But the inferno was dying down. She and Seung Kwon stared at each other. The trapdoor fell open. The floor sealed back up. The railroad ties and rowan that covered the circle were gone. All that was left were a few berries that sparked and popped on the floor, then disappeared.
“I think we need to go across the street and make sure Shogun and your pack brothers are all right.”
CHAPTER 21
“It has to be up here,” Hunter said, pointing at the window. “It’s the only source of light.”
Chin-Hwa glanced around nervously, hanging close to the roof hatch they’d been able to open. He kept one hand on the ladder steps leading out, constantly glancing toward the crawl space’s drop-down entrance. “The authorities might have heard us-we have been back and forth here dozens of times, but nothing is to be seen… The Fae were wrong.”
“Look around, man!” Hunter said through his teeth, keeping his voice low. “There must be something!”
In frustration, Chin-Hwa flung down the branches he’d been holding, releasing berries that rolled across the floor. As soon as several hit the edges of the sunlight-bathed spot on the wood, it popped and sizzled and the symbol they sought instantly became visible.
“Milord? We are to mount an offensive without confirmation?” The captain of the guards stared at Sir Rodney for a moment. “But, sir, our magick’s not returned as promised yet.”
“Were this not the time for immediate action I would have you court-martialed for questioning my command!”
Sir Rodney’s troops lowered their confused gazes.
“I will not have her left out there stranded! If she sent the signal through her own device, then that is good enough for me!” Sir Rodney held the cell phone out to his men as he walked down his garrison’s line, armed to the teeth. “If I had been outside the fortress walls, I would have received the call meself. She showed me how to hear her voice in the air with it! How to push the button to stop the chime and to let her speak to me clear as a bell. That much I know how to do, but I do not need to hear her voice to know that she needs my sword! Are we not men without our magick? Do we not know how to destroy this foul beast called Vampire?”
A lackluster aye returned to him from his troops.
“Then the way we would for the Lady of the Lake, for Sasha Trudeau we ride!”
Chin-Hwa came out onto the roof with angry flames licking up behind him; Hunter dropped three stories down into the middle of a police investigation, covered in air-elemental scratches. Before anyone could react, the top of the building blew. Guns were drawn; people on the scene shouted and scrambled against the perceived threat as Hunter ran zigzag through the police like an NFL quarterback.
A hot-wired SUV skidded to a sideways stop as police cruisers got thrown into service amid the distinctive pop of gunfire. Hunter jumped into the SUV as it careened off. The sound of helicopter blades beating the air made Chin-Hwa panic and bail off the roof, wolf style. He hit the ground on all fours, looked around for a second to find an opening, and sprinted.
Sirens blared, and Sasha leaned over with Shogun driving. Seung Kwon opened one door; Dak-Ho opened the other. Chin-Hwa came to a skidding halt out of a back alley, pursued by breathless foot-patrol officers.
“Get in!” Sasha shouted.
The car was still moving and Chin-Hwa had to run to catch up to it. A bullet caught Hunter in the upper arm as the vehicle slowed and he yanked Chin-Hwa inside. Both doors slammed shut. Shogun peeled rubber as Hunter held the wound, swerving through traffic, nearly colliding with parked cars and pedestrians.
“Did it get the bone?” Sasha leaned over the seat but everyone ducked down as NOPD shot out the back window.
“Passed through the muscle but hurts like a bitch.” Hunter leaned his head back against the seat, grimacing as the vehicle lurched and pitched.
“If you can hang on till we get somewhere, I can heal it.”
“First we’ve gotta live,” Shogun said, bouncing over a curb and taking a hairpin turn.
“We’ll never outrun the chopper,” Sasha said as Shogun maneuvered into a back street and came barreling out of the other end of it, taking half a storefront with him.
Hunter cried out as Shogun slammed on the brakes hard and bounced over the pavement and a median to head in the opposite direction, causing traffic to screech to a halt in four directions.
“We have to get off the street before we kill somebody. I need a phone-take us inside a building, any building, where there’re no people on the first floor, then everybody scatter.” Sasha turned, repeatedly glancing back at Hunter.
“We’ll be trapped, sitting ducks!” Seung Kwon shouted.
“You trusted me back there at Dugan’s old place just now, right?” she shouted over the seat as the SUV almost rolled over. “Shogun found the symbol in his building, too, right?”
“I trust the lady,” Shogun said, turning hard into a building and taking out the entire front bay of an auto body shop.
Pedestrians scattered, metal slammed against metal, but she and all the others in their vehicle were up and out as airbags burst forward.
Hunter slapped a shotgun out of a foolish owner’s hands. “Where’s the phone? That’s all we came for; insurance should cover the rest.”
“Come out with your hands in the air!”
The unmistakable blare of a police bullhorn made everybody freeze for a moment. Hunter, Shogun, and his men stared at Sasha as she dialed the telephone.
“How’s the arm?” Shogun muttered.
Hunter didn’t immediately answer, just wrapped the bleeding wound with duct tape. “It’ll heal.”
“We have the place surrounded! Let the hostages in the store go!”
“Hey, Sir Rodney?” Sasha said quickly. “How’s your Fae magick working right about now?”
“We’ve gotta go,” Woods said to Fisher. He looked at Doc and then Silver Hawk. “It’s going down. You all have got to cover Bear Shadow, Crow Shadow, and ’Rissa in there. We can’t do anything but provide security out here, if maybe something tries to come out of the shadows on you guys, anyway.” He tossed Doc a nine-millimeter. “Saw that you know how to use one of these.”
“That I do.”
“Good,” Woods said, looking at Bradley. “You take care of our girl.” Woods gave Clarissa a brief hug.
“Armed with iron, rowan, and brick dust, as well as a few little things that are a special blend of my own.”
“Good man.” Woods bumped Bradley’s fist.
“Did she say what she wanted us to bring?” Fisher started hunting through the cache of weapons hidden at Tulane from the last battle.
“Everything and the kitchen sink.”
“They don’t see us?” Shogun whispered, walking past police officers that had their weapons drawn.
“Nope,” Sasha said quietly and quickly, hurrying the group along.
The frightened Fae civilian that was called out of hiding kept his eyes squeezed shut for a second and then dashed ahead of them. “Hurry, hurry, please hurry… We just got our magick back and I’m only here because of Sir Rodney’s insistence. I’m an innocent bystander-we’re not even from New Orleans! This was not how we had intended to spend the day before the ball!”