Whoever it was tipped their hat down, hiding their face as Jack approached. He made a slight gesture that Bo and I took to mean to wait by the stairs. I assumed as badass a pose as I could while being bored and cold in an ill-fitting, fake fur-lined parka. Bo did a far better job of looking menacing as he folded his arms and adopted a bodyguard stance.
Jack muttered something so quietly, even with the help of the belt attuning my senses, I couldn’t hear what he said. Whoever was sitting on the bench responded in kind.
A few things happened at once. Patrick’s body landed with a sickening crunch on the flagstones between Jack and me, apparently thrown from on top of the bridge. At the same time, a group of shifted Weres hopped off the top of the arch to follow Patrick down, while others loped down the steps from the other side of the park. As far as ambushes went, this one was certainly planned out well. Fuck.
Worst of all, whoever that was who’d been sitting on the bench moved with liquid speed and grace to their feet and sucker-punched Jack. When the hunter staggered back, turning around, his shirt had a growing red stain between his ribs—and just before he went to his knees, above the cherry glow of the cigarette, I caught the sight of flashing yellow eyes staring at me from the darkness under the fedora’s brim.
Chapter 15
Bo and I immediately went back to back so we couldn’t be flanked, preparing to meet the rush. I hadn’t expected a fight, so all I had were the stakes. As far as I knew, Bo only had a Glock tucked into the small of his back and a silver-coated hunting knife. Three—no, four—Weres had hopped down from the bridge, and two more had come down the opposite steps, plus the fucker in the trench coat.
Patrick’s sightless eyes and the blood staining the stones under him were hint enough that this ambush hadn’t been planned so whoever was after Jack could take prisoners.
‘Not good odds.’
No shit. Any ideas?
‘Let me take over. I’ll handle it.’
There wasn’t time for me to argue or reflect. The moment I started contemplating agreeing, I found myself trapped in my own head, a bystander to the belt’s special brand of madness.
Though I could feel the stretch of my muscles, the pain of impact when one of the Weres managed to punch or scratch me, and the cold wind blowing my hair around my face, I had no more say in what I was doing. The belt forced me to move away from Bo to meet my attackers head-on. Though I felt a pang of conscience for leaving Bo to fend for himself, I spun, twisted, ducked, kicked, punched, and basically put some of Neo’s moves in The Matrix to shame. Everything moved in a blur—and I found I wasn’t as worried about those scratches as I probably should have been.
One of the Weres swiped claws at my face. I caught its wrist and hurled it into another one of the beasts. Another snapped its jaws at my ankle, aiming to incapacitate me. I kicked it so hard, fangs scattered like marbles, clacking over the stone pathway. It fell back, only to be replaced by another, which I cracked in the sternum with my elbow, driving the breath out of it.
I hadn’t even pulled one of my stakes yet.
Bo was just as busy as I was. He was using the gun to keep the Weres from descending on Jack, and the hunting knife as long as my forearm to slice and dice any of them that got too close to him. I’d never seen him in action before. His leg had already been in traction when I first met him, when I was taken to the White Hat’s hideout back when the hunters saved me from Max Carlyle.
He showed no signs of his earlier injury. The moves were calculated, fluid, and deadly. One Were was already breathing its last by his feet. Others sported wounds on their furry muzzles, throats, and chests. He was going for the kill, not to wound. Excellent.
Considering the Weres put the majority of their attention on me once they realized I was a greater threat than Bo—that I was more than human—I was holding my own. My back was burning with pain from some shallow claw wounds. My ankle ached from kicking the Were, my arms were bruised, and my knuckles were raw and bleeding. Other than that, I wasn’t doing too badly.
Time to break out the big guns.
A pained yelp was startled out of the Were in front of me when I embedded one of the stakes in its chest. I shoved it aside as it fell to its unnaturally jointed knees, and worked my way closer to Jack and the thing in the trench coat standing over him. Bo was out of bullets, unable to drive it off.
The stakes were not only silver, but imbued with magic. As soon as I went more than a few feet from the body they were stuck inside, they popped out of existence and teleported back into place in their holsters on the belt. The glory of magework. The belt used its knowledge and skill to kill and incapacitate the remaining Weres until only the leader remained, one hand formed into monstrous claws hovering over Jack’s throat.
“Step no closer.”
The voice was low, guttural. A male on the verge of shifting.
I—or the belt—didn’t give it a chance to hurt Jack. With a rather impressive roundhouse kick (if I did say so myself), I sent the creature flying a good thirty feet until it slammed into the base of the bridge, leaving a deep dent in the concrete and stone. Dust and pebbles rained down onto the stones of the path below.
That might have slowed the creature, but it wasn’t down for the count. It was already staggering to its feet. As much as I wanted to prolong the fight and finish the thing off, sirens were blaring in the distance, growing closer. The gunshots must have been reported by someone.
Scooping Jack into my arms, I fled back the way we had come, shouting at Bo, who was staring at me instead of hightailing it as he should have been. “Come on! Move your ass!”
With a start, he bounded after me, hot on my heels. I had to slow down so he could keep up. Jack was groaning and clutching his wound. He hadn’t quite seemed to notice yet who had picked him up. That wasn’t a bad thing in my estimation. He already thought poorly enough of me. No telling how he’d take it or respond once he realized he’d been rescued by an Other-tainted girl.
Of course that asshat in the trench coat couldn’t stay down. Bo made a strangled sound before he was pulled back, cracking his cheek on the steps when he failed to catch himself as it yanked one of his legs back.
Though I wasn’t as gentle with Jack as I wanted to be, I put him down as carefully and quickly as I could before leaping over Bo to tackle the creature. Claws dug into my ribs and hip as we rolled down the steps in a mockery of a lover’s embrace. We were both snarling and clawing at each other. Its much heavier weight allowed it to come to rest on top when we finally stopped that painful roll.
I shoved and clawed at it, writhing under its bulk, but it didn’t let up in the slightest.
Its hands immediately went for my throat, putting pressure on my windpipe while those talons dug into my skin. My vision was going gray around the edges, but the belt still radiated confidence.
Abruptly, the creature let loose an agonized howl, falling back as the stake shoved into its gut dug deep enough to scrape along bone. Blood and some other fluid gushed out of the thing, coating me in foul-smelling, hot ichor.
It twisted off of me and leapt to its feet, fleeing into the darkness, one hand holding its guts inside. Coughing and rubbing at my throat, I cautiously sat up, feeling around my chest to make sure I hadn’t rebroken any ribs in the tussle. There was pain and tenderness, but it didn’t feel like anything was out of place.
Lurching to my feet, I shuffled up the stairs as rapidly as I could, considering my head was spinning like I’d just taken a few shots of green death Nyquil. Bo had gotten back to his feet and had Jack in a fireman’s carry. That couldn’t have been comfortable for either of them. Bo’s cheek was still bleeding, too. He shook his head when I caught up and tried to help, jerking his head in the direction of the car.