And Beth… Beth was fully dressed. Lily swallowed. Her sister hadn’t been raped, and Harlowe had agreed to let her go.
At least Lily could put down the damned phone now. With her door cracked but not fully open, she turned to Benedict. “Stay here. Harlowe wants me alive. He has no reason to spare you.”
“Can’t do much from in here.”
“Can’t do much out there, either. Not with twenty or thirty bullets in you.”
He just smiled that barely there smile of his and reached for the handle of his door.
She grabbed his arm. “I can’t stop you. You’re too damned big. But don’t make yourself into a liability. With that staff, Harlowe can make you like him, believe him, want to follow him. Don’t trust your reactions. Leave him to me.”
He gave her a level look and a slow nod. “Understood. But his charisma won’t matter much if he doesn’t smell right.”
“What does that mean?”
“Are you coming?” Harlowe called. “Beth, maybe you’d better ask your sister to hurry.”
Lily heard Beth’s cry of pain and flung open her door. “Okay, okay. Here I am. Now let Beth go.” That was the deal—she and Benedict would get out, expose themselves to his little army of gangbangers, and he’d turn Beth loose.
She didn’t expect him to keep it. How much longer? Five minutes? More? Less?
Rule was close now. Close and coming their way.
“I don’t think so.” Harlowe moved forward, the staff in his hand making him look like he belonged in a Christmas pageant playing one of the shepherds. But this staff didn’t have a crook at the top. It was simply a long length of wood the color of coal.
From behind the wall of gangbangers Beth cried out, “Lily, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” she said, standing in front of her car with her hands held out slightly at her sides—see, I’m not drawing a weapon. No need to shoot anyone. “Harlowe’s staff has you hocus-pocused. You can’t help—” She stopped, staring. “What the hell is that?‘
That was pale, about as tall as Harlowe’s hip, and looked like a cross between a kangaroo and a really weird nightmare.
“Hey, she sees me!” It jiggled on those oversize haunches, excited, its voice squeaky-high. “She can see me!”
“Of course she sees you, you cretin,” Harlowe muttered. “She’s a sensitive.”
“I thought that was just for spells, but she can really see me, even though I’m dshatu.”
“I can hear you, too,” Lily said.
“Who or what are you talking to?” Benedict asked very low.
She started. It’d moved up on her right side so silently she hadn’t known it was there. She answered softly. “The demon, I think. You can’t hear it?” It, he, she… those were definitely breasts high on the naked chest, but the genitals, though small, were the dangly sort.
“No. Neither can anyone else, I think.”
“Harlowe does.” She raised her voice. “Are you a demon? Did you knock me out?”
“Yes, and I can hardly wait to—”
Harlowe rapped the demon on the head with his staff. “Try to be a little less stupid. And now,” he said to Lily, “it’s time to let my boys have your weapons.”
She wrenched her attention away from the bizarre creature standing next to Harlowe. “Uh-uh. It’s time for you to tell Mr. Muscles there to let Beth go.”
Harlowe giggled. “Make me.”
“All right,” Benedict said.
She’d never seen anyone move so fast, not even Rule. She had the barest glimpse of something flashing out from his far hand—then a blow on her back knocked her to the ground.
Caught by surprise, she fell hard even as shots rang out, a rolling thunder that seemed to come from everywhere. She rolled onto her side, spitting out dirt, scrambling to get her weapon.
Screaming. More shots. The acrid bite of gunpowder in her nostrils and the feel of her gun in her hand.
And howling.
Huge, eerie, beautiful—howls bursting from the throats of enormous wolves. Two, three, half a dozen of them shot across the yard like streaks of moon-touched night in their mottled coats, straight at the gangbangers firing at them.
Those of the gang who remained, that is. Several were missing—fled or fallen, Lily couldn’t tell in the darkness and confusion. And it was hard to see past the strong, furry body that had landed, legs spread, in a crouch over her.
“Rule!” Dammit, he was playing shield. She shoved at his belly—that’s about all she could see—his belly, legs, and chest. “I can’t see to fire. I can’t see what happened to Beth.” Or Benedict—was he down?
Harlowe yelled, “No, no! Stop it! Stop!”
Rule didn’t budge. He faced out at the battle, growling.
Giving up, Lily flattened herself—prone position, arms out, weapon gripped in her right hand with her left to steady it.
The young giant was gone, but Beth wasn’t free. Harlowe had her. She was fighting him, but she was so much smaller, untrained in any kind of combat. He pinned her with one arm. With the other, he used the staff. Where he pointed, agony followed.
He was indiscriminate. Wolves and men alike collapsed, screaming and writhing. Sometimes blood spattered. Sometimes it didn’t. Harlowe kept yelling, “No, no” over and over, striking almost at random. And he was advanc ing toward Lily with that damned kangaroo-demon hopping along at his side.
She couldn’t get a clear shot. “Beth, hold still!” she yelled over the screaming and gunshots.
“Grab her hand,” Harlowe yelled. “Get her, grab her!”
“Get rid of the wolf! How’m I going to grab anything if he bites my hand off?”
“How?” It was a shriek. “It isn’t working! He’s supposed to love me, follow me—”
“You don’t smell like a wolf, dummy! Careful—no, no!” The creature grabbed Harlowe’s arm as he swung the staff toward Rule. “Don’t hurt her body! I need that body! Get closer, get closer!”
The bizarre pair shifted, trying to come at her and Rule from the side. Rule shifted with them, his growl a steady thunder above Lily, and she squirmed around, trying desperately to get a bead on some critical part of Harlowe, terrified of hitting her sister.
A head shot. She’d have to try for a head shot. That should have been easy at this distance, but he kept moving and her own motion was limited by a damned stubborn hero of a wolf.
“Hurry!” the demon squealed. “The wolves are winning!”
“Shut up! And split up—he can’t cover both of us!”
She wiggled to the right, tracking Harlowe as the demon went in the other direction. She bumped against Rule’s leg, and there he was—yes, hold still, you bastard, stay just like that. She squeezed the trigger just as Harlowe darted aside again, damn him, damn him. Where—?
Faster than she could react, Rule spun—but the staff flashed down just as he whirled to face it.
It grazed his shoulder. His whole body spasmed and collapsed.
The world blanked out. There was only a sudden, vertiginous drop into terror and guilt. My fault, it’s my fault—first Beth, now Rule, hurt because of me…
Then rage flooded in, giving her the strength to shove him off her upper body so she could twist around, bring up her weapon—but a hot, dry hand clamped around her wrist, stopping her as surely as if it were made of iron.
It felt orange. Orange, like her shoulder.
“I’ve got her! Hurry, hurry!”
Harlowe flung Beth away. She fell to the ground and didn’t move. Lily wrenched violently at her hand, but there was no budging the demon, so she tried to roll over, to get her weapon into her other hand, but her legs were still pinned by Rule’s heavy body. She couldn’t quite reach.