“Three,” she chirped.
Guns swiveled to me. A dozen men took aim.
“Hexus!” I snarled, unleashing a wave of disruptive energy.
And every light in the place blew out in a shower of sparks, plunging the club into darkness.
Guns started going off, but only from the most confident or stupid gunmen, so I wasn’t cut to ribbons. I was already moving. Hitting a moving target isn’t easy, not even when it’s fairly close. Hitting one in the dark is even harder. Hitting one moving in sporadic flashes of light is harder yet.
I got lucky, or none of them did, however you want to think of it, and I got to the thugs to one side of Tania in one piece.
One of them got off a shot at the sound, but I caught the round on my shield, and the resulting shower of sparks showed the men on my flanks that I was among their compatriots, and no one shot at my back. I knew Lara hired almost exclusively from former military, mostly Marines. Men like that don’t shoot their buddies.
I dropped the shield and threw a punch at the guy in front of me. Ever since I’d started working for the Queen of Air and Darkness, I’d been stronger than the average wizard. Or the average champion weightlifter, for that matter—and I knew how to throw a punch. I connected with the man’s jaw, hard, and shouted, “BAM!” as I did.
The thug reeled back, his legs going wobbly and useless as he rag-dolled to the floor. I threw a stomping kick toward the belly of the guy next to him, shouting, “POW!” I hit him in the dark, somewhere more or less near his belly. His gun went off randomly as he was lifted off the floor and thrown ten feet back into a wall. He was trying to scream, breathlessly. I winced. I hadn’t meant to hit him there, but those are the breaks.
I raised my shield again and dropped, just as the bad guys with shotguns realized that I didn’t have any of their buddies standing near me. I trusted the shield and turned my face away from the blinding shower of green-gold sparks it sent flying up as buckshot hammered into it. The copper band got hot on my wrist, even as I flung my right hand out toward the group of goons by the bathroom and shouted, “Forzare!”
Raw telekinetic force hit three of them—one was the guy from the street, who again impressed me with his smarts by diving to one side, out of the wave of energy. As shotguns pounded my shield, he slid to a stop with an automatic braced in both hands, took a breath, and aimed carefully, only moving his finger to the trigger after he had his sights lined up on me.
Crap. To steal from Brust, no matter how turbo-charged the wizard, someone with brains, guts, and a .45 can seriously cramp his style.
Fortunately, I wasn’t in this fight alone.
I’d been counting on Will to join in at the right moment, and he didn’t let me down. Two hundred pounds of gray-brown timber wolf (wearing a service dog cape) hit the Smart Gunman at a full sprint, bowling him over. A flash of white fangs sent the gun flying.
Total elapsed time since I’d killed the lights? Maybe three and a half seconds.
Will threw himself into the guys I’d knocked around by the bathrooms, and I turned to discover that I’d been right about Tania. She was new to this kind of game. She’d been sitting there with a stunned look on her face at the abruptness of the violence.
I flung myself into the booth with her, getting as close as I could, wrapping my left arm around her neck hard enough to pull her head in against my body and still have my shield ready to stop more gunfire—but the Smart Gunman screamed, “Check fire, check fire!” the second I did.
The shooting stopped. There was an abrupt silence in the club, which was filled with the sharp scent of gunpowder.
For a second, I felt a cool, sweet sensation flooding into me. I realized that Tania had slipped a hand beneath my shirt and was running her fingertips over my stomach.
If anyone ever tells you that being fed on by a vampire of the White Court is not a big deal, they’re lying. It’s ecstasy and heroin and sex and chocolate all rolled into one, and that’s just the foreplay.
So I stopped her by tightening my grip on her until it threatened to break her neck. Tania let out a little yelp and whipped her hand away from my skin.
I met the wide eyes of the little girl and said, “Hold on, honey. I’m going to take you home in just a second.”
“You can’t!” Tania said.
I scowled and flicked her skull with the forefinger of my free hand in annoyance. “Wow, you’re new at this,” I said, panting. Five seconds of combat is enough cardio to last a while. “How old are you, kid?”
“I’m twenty,” she said, her teeth clenched with discomfort, “and I am not a child.”
“Twenty,” I said. “No wonder Lara sent a babysitter along with you.”
Just then, the room flooded with green chemical light. I eyed the Smart Gunman, who had just fired up a chemical glowstick from a pocket. I nodded my head at him, holding it a moment, and said, “I’m Dresden.”
He pushed himself up from the floor with his left arm, holding his right in close to his side. It bore long lacerations, and the blood looked black in the green light. He nodded back to me and said, warily, “Riley.”
I twisted my upper body just enough to drag Tania around a little. She let out a squeaking sound. “Can you see the score here, Riley?”
He studied the room, wincing, and said, “Yeah. How you want to play it?”
“Guns down,” I said. “Me, the wolf, the girl, and Miss Raith here will walk out. No one comes after us. Once we’re on the street, I’ll let her go.”
He stared at me, and I could see the wheels turning. I didn’t like that. The guy had been too capable to give him time to work something out.
“You boys just gave me a twenty-one gun salute, and the front door to the club was broken open, Riley,” I said. “Police response time around here is about four minutes. How long do you think it will take someone to call it in?”
Riley grimaced. “Give me your word.”
“You have it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. He looked around the room and said, “Stand down. We’re going to let them leave.”
“Damn you, Riley!” Tania snarled.
I pressed the still uncomfortably hot copper bracelet against her ear, and she yipped. “Come on, Miss Raith,” I said. I stood up, keeping her head locked in my arm. She could have made a fight of it. White Court vampires can be unbelievably strong, if only in bursts. She didn’t seem up for a physical fight, but I wasn’t taking chances. I moved carefully and kept my balance, ready to move instantly if she tried anything.
“Come on honey,” I said to the little girl. I extended my free hand to her. “I’m going to take you home.”
She stood up and reluctantly took my hand.
Will padded out of the shadows to walk on the other side of the girl, his teeth bared. On a wolf, that is an absolutely terrifying expression.
As I went by Riley, I asked, “Lara giving Tania here a lesson?”
“Something like that,” he said. “You hurt her, things will have to get ugly.”
“I get it,” I said. “You’d have had me if I hadn’t cheated.”
“You aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough,” he replied. “Another time, maybe.”
“I hope not,” I told him, sincerely.
And I walked out with a vampire in a headlock and a little girl overlapped in the protective shadows of a wizard and a werewolf, while Lara Raith’s soldiers looked on.
“Your Honor,” the foreman of the jury said to the judge. She paused to turn to me and give me a deadly glare, “After two days of deliberation, the jury has been unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case.”