He leaped, his body going horizontal over the hood of the car. In midair, he fired. Up. Three shots. He landed on the other side, somehow on his feet. Wrassler cursed at the speed and the perfect landing. The man on the roof fell forward and slid down the roof tiles. Dead.
That was seven shots. Bruiser had to be almost out of ammo. “How many bad guys left?” I called out.
Esmee shouted from the mudroom, “One in the yard, three o’clock. I got him in my sights.”
“One in the garage,” Wrassler said.
“Esmee, hold fire,” I shouted. I dove into the yard. Esmee did not hold fire. Instead she laid down cover fire, each shot behind me but so close I wondered if they were tearing through my clothes. I reached the side of the garage, stepping over the dead human on the ground. He was staring at the sky, his mouth open, eyes already drying. I smelled feces on the cool air.
Bruiser whirled at my movement, checking himself before he fired. “There’s one in the garage with Eli,” I said. “Blood-servant.” Which meant faster than human, better eyesight than human, better reflexes than human. Eli was good, no doubt, but none of us knew how good yet. “Kid’s supposed to be in the limo,” I reminded him.
Bruiser nodded once. “I’m faster.”
Yeah. He was. I checked the yard. Safety’d, tossed him my Walther, and drew the one at my spine, surprised it had survived the romp in the hallway. “Go,” I said.
Bruiser leaped straight off the ground in a move so catlike that Beast hacked with delight. Still in the air, he soared through the open garage door. I heard him land, a faint scuff of sound. Two shots sounded, echoing in the garage. Behind me, Esmee fired two shots. The last bogey in the yard fell into the bushes. I ran from cover and checked each of the downed. One was still alive, gut-shot, in agony. He’d probably live if he got to a hospital in time.
A barrage of shots sounded in the garage, then silence. Eli and Bruiser carried a woman from the garage and tossed her to the dirt. Dead. The Kid peeked around the garage door, his face white and eyes wide, an armful of electronic devices clutched to his chest.
It was only then that I realized I hadn’t fired a single shot. I started laughing.
This wasn’t something that we could cover up. Sirens sounded in the distance, closing fast. Neighbors, or maybe Esmee, had called 911. To avoid questions, I took my unfired gun upstairs and secured it. In minutes the house was surrounded by cops. Esmee trotted out to them, a big smile on her face. She had taken the time to smooth her hair and put on lipstick, and she looked the perfect hostess in her bright floral scarf and her pearls. Bruiser, still in his dress slacks with an unbuttoned shirt, the tails billowing out behind him, followed her, his cell phone to his ear. He looked like a fashion shoot from GQ—one titled “The Morning After.” Around and in the house were dead humans, their blood soaking into the parquet flooring and the sculpted garden loam.
Only in the South.
An ambulance pulled up, the EMTs treating Wrassler’s wound and the wounded bad guy before leaving with the injured man and two cops riding shotgun. More cops arrived—more than half the cops in the county and the town gathering, with plenty of plainclothed guys all trying to be the big dog. Alex and I were the only ones who hadn’t fired a shot. To prove that assertion, neither of us had any GSR on us. The others of our group were herded into different parts of the house and questioned, the cops relentless and suspicious. Alex and I sat on the couch, Alex intent on his electronic searches, shaking from time to time, his body odor sour with hormones, fresh panic, and old fear.
At one point, however, the OIC—officer in charge of the shooting scene—made a call. Then, newly elected Adams County sheriff Sylvia Turpin, who was the many-times great-granddaughter of the county’s first sheriff, drove up in her marked car. Turpin took her job very seriously, especially when she discovered that Leo Pellissier’s primo was on-site. Seemed that Leo had contributed a hefty sum to her election campaign. After that discovery, Turpin made a series of phone calls, several of the plainclothes cops took calls, and things began to move along.
Within half an hour, the state crime lab had arrived, bringing a medical examiner, and we were free to go, though not free to leave town. I wondered who had called in the big guns. Remembering the cell phone at his ear, I was guessing Bruiser. As the MOC’s primo and point man, he might be the most powerful human—part human—in the South, governors and senators included, and when he called in favors, things would naturally go his way. A New Orleans blood-servant pulled up in an SUV and consulted with Bruiser, the cops, and the petite, pretty, redheaded little sheriff. While the powers-that-be conferred, the rest of us retired to the dining room.
The unflappable chef had laid out a feast. Or I’d thought him unflappable until I heard him telling the cops he’d hidden under a small table in the butler’s pantry during the shooting. And then he’d changed his pants. It was his vehicle out back. He had been grocery-shopping when we arrived, which was why I hadn’t seen the SUV.
We gathered for snacks in the dining room, which had a carved mahogany table and chairs, and a wall-long hand-carved and painted china cabinet. The room would seat twenty easily, and the chandelier over our heads was the real thing—twenty-four-karat gilt and hundreds of lead crystals. The snack, thrown together in minutes, was brie, fresh fruit, sliced homemade rye bread, and ten pounds of rare roast beef with sandwich makings dished up in cut-crystal bowls. There was also red beans and rice and barbecued Andouille sausage. Finger-licking, to-die-for sausage. The fighters were starving, adrenaline breakdown needing fuel. I hadn’t been involved in the fighting, but with my skinwalker metabolism, I was always hungry. Which likely had something to do with the little clinch in the hallway. But still . . .
I ate two sandwiches, mostly meat and brie, remembering Bruiser’s hands on me, his mouth on me, while the guys discussed what we had to do.
“We can’t stay here and wait until nightfall when our full backup arrives,” Wrassler said.
“We can’t storm the three-story building without them,” Eli said. “It would be stupid.”
“We’re down to two healthy shooters,” Bruiser said.
“Three,” I said through a mouthful of food. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
“A woman,” he said.
My eyes went cold and narrow. The table went silent, all the eyes on me. Bruiser stopped, a sandwich halfway to his mouth. He held it there, his mouth open, thinking. He turned his eyes to me, his head not moving. I didn’t smile. He blinked once, took a bite, and chewed, still thinking, letting his eyes roam the room and out into the hallway where we had recently had that very unsatisfying clinch. When he swallowed, he said, “Four shooters, one injured. Forgive the automatic, ingrained stupidities of an old man.”
Alex snickered into the silence. I finished chewing my bite and swallowed. “Don’t let it happen again.” Eli looked at Bruiser, at me, and to the hallway, his eyes considering. I reached for an apple and bit down, the crunch seeming to break the tension.
“So we have four shooters and they’re down seven. And they won’t be expecting us,” Wrassler said.
“It’s daylight. The fangheads will be asleep, right?” Alex said.
“Fiction. They can stay awake if they have to, and they can stand a little sunlight, especially the old ones.” Wrassler emptied a Coke down his throat and popped the top on another. “From the intel—”
“What intel?” I asked.
“One of Leo’s blood-servants is related to one of Hieronymus’ servants. He asked some questions and provided us some answers. We’ve got maybe ten old ones in there, plus their blood-meals. No way we can take them.”