“Are you saying that my ass is heavy?” I drawled. “Why, Silvio, I think I’m insulted.”
He huffed, although it sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Silvio reached the top of the stairs, turned right, and started moving down a long hallway. We passed room after room, all of them furnished with white couches, chrome lamps, and glass tables. Everything was sleek, chic, and polished to a high gloss, but no photos, books, magazines, or knickknacks of any kind adorned the furniture. I’d been too drugged earlier to pay much attention to my surroundings, but the inside of Benson’s mansion was very much a reflection of his lab and his own personality—cold, clinical, sterile.
The drug den and the lab were in the center of the mansion, and shadows cloaked the interior like demons about to break free from the walls. Or maybe that was just more hallucinations brought on by Burn.
But the guards were very real.
Vampires were stationed at the end of every hallway, all of them armed with guns and cell phones. A few of them stopped Silvio long enough to ask where he was taking me, but he gave them the same cleanup answer as before, and they let us pass. But the farther Silvio walked and the more guards he spoke to, the faster his steps became, until his wing tips were bang-bang-banging like a drum on the floor.
“Slow down,” I hissed. “You’re practically running, and running makes people suspicious.”
“We’re on a tight timetable, Ms. Blanco,” Silvio snapped back. “In case you haven’t guessed.”
We glared at each other, but he did slow his steps enough to keep me from griping at him anymore.
Silvio turned into another hallway, and I spotted a set of patio doors at the far end that weren’t being guarded. Through the glass, I could see the green expanse of the lawn outside. My heart lifted.
Silvio let out a relieved sigh. “Almost there—”
“Hey, Silvio!” a high feminine voice called out behind us. “Wait up!”
His steps faltered. His mouth pinched into a frustrated frown even as his eyes locked on the doors up ahead, and he debated whether to make a run for them. But he knew as well as I did that that would send all the guards racing in our direction, so he stopped and turned around.
A vamp came jogging up the hallway to us.
“Yes, Joan?” Silvio asked.
Joan stopped and waved her phone in the air. “I just got a text message from the boss asking where she is.” She jerked her head at me. “Benson wants to know why the two of you aren’t in the lab. What are you doing all the way over here?”
Silvio stiffened. “Beau wanted me to get her cleaned up.”
“Yeah, but why didn’t you just dump her in one of the tubs in the bathroom close to the lab like usual?” Joan frowned. “What are you doing, Silvio? You’re not . . . actually . . . helping her—”
Before she could finish her thought, I palmed the knife hidden up the sleeve of my stolen lab coat and lashed out with it. I’d been hoping to catch the vamp in the throat, but she saw the glint of the weapon and jerked back at the last second. My knife only sliced across her breastbone, but that was more than enough to get her to stop asking questions.
Joan screamed and staggered back, clutching at the wound I’d opened up on her chest. Her head cracked against the wall, and she dropped to the floor, unconscious.
“Now you’ve done it,” Silvio muttered.
“What?” I sniped. “She was a second away from figuring it out anyway—”
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Joan’s scream must have been louder than I thought, or the vamps had better hearing, because footsteps started pounding in our direction. Silvio cursed, turned, and ran toward the doors.
But he wasn’t quite fast enough.
A vamp stepped out of one of the rooms at the end of the hallway, his gun already drawn. When he realized what Silvio was doing, he snapped the weapon up and took aim. I reached for my Stone magic, even though I didn’t have enough of it to harden my body, much less protect Silvio and me from the bullets that were going to start flying in our direction—
Pfft. Pfft.
The vampire dropped to the floor, blood leaking out of the two holes in the back of his skull. Silvio skidded to a stop.
Outside on the patio, a hand smashed through the rest of the glass on the door, then reached through, unlocked, and opened it. A second later, a familiar figure appeared—one that could have almost been . . . me.
I blinked, but it wasn’t another hallucination.
She was dressed all in black, from her boots to her jeans to the long-sleeved T-shirt that she wore underneath her vest. Even her gun was black. So was the silencer attached to the barrel. She wasn’t wearing her detective’s badge, and the only bit of color on her was the silverstone primrose rune that glinted in the hollow of her throat.
Bria lowered her gun and smiled at me. “Hey, there, big sister.”
For a moment, I was stunned into silence. Then I found my voice again. “Bria? What are you doing here?”
Her grin dimmed. “Saving you. If it’s not already too late—”
Crack! Crack!
A vamp appeared at the opposite end of the hall. Silvio hunkered down, but the bullets went wild. Bria stepped forward and raised her own gun.
Pfft. Pfft.
She dropped the vamp with two shots to the chest, but shouts rose up from deeper in the mansion, growing louder and louder as more and more guards headed in our direction.
Bria looked at Silvio. “Can she walk?”
“She’s going to have to,” he said.
He set me down on my feet and passed me over to Bria, who grabbed onto my waist with her left hand. I sagged against her, but I managed to stay upright, even though the bag of knives still dangling from my wrist swung and rattled every which way, making it hard to keep my balance. Bria started dragging me toward the doors, but Silvio didn’t move to follow us.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You have to come with us—or you’re dead.”
He shook his head. “There are too many guards. You need someone to lead them away from your location if you have any chance of escaping.”
His mouth pinched, his shoulders slumped, and sorrow sparked in his gray eyes. “Take care of Catalina for me, okay?”
“Silvio!” I hissed. “Silvio!”
But he had already started running in the other direction, back into the heart of the mansion, toward Benson and the rest of his men.
“Come on, Gin,” Bria said. “He made his choice. Let’s make sure that it counts.”
I nodded, and we headed toward the open patio door. I managed to stay upright, but my legs were weak, my steps slow and clumsy, so Bria ended up doing most of the work. She maneuvered herself outside through the opening, but my bare foot caught on the the dead vamp’s leg, and I did a header through the door and onto the balcony. My skull cracked against the ground hard enough to cause white stars to flash before my eyes, while the knives in my bag clank-clank-clanked together, sounding as loud as gongs to my aching brain. All I wanted to do was lie there and kiss the cool, smooth stones under my face, but Bria wasn’t about to let me give up.
“Move!” my sister ordered, reaching forward and hoisting me to my feet again.
Crack! Crack!
Gunshots zinged outside after us, shattering the glass in the other door. I staggered to my left, out of sight of the hallway, and clutched a stone column for support. Bria threw herself down, then rolled over onto her back, aimed her gun, and waited—just waited.