As Lie The Dead (39 page)

He crouched low, still panting, not a scratch on him. We stared each other down, my mind furiously processing every tidbit I knew about shape-shifters. I had the cross charm in my pocket, but with all that fur protecting his skin, unless I got him to swallow it, all
the silver would do was piss him off. And swallowing meant getting close to those teeth.

I’d fought a were-coyote once and used an exposed live wire to slow the thing down. The current had sent the ferocious animal back into human form. A man would be a hell of a lot easier to subdue than a fox a quarter my size and twice as fast.

Trouble was, the ceiling fixtures were too high and too protected to be useful, and I didn’t see any outlets close by.

Snow snarled. Blood and saliva dripped from his teeth, pattering to the floor in small drops. He was sizing me up. Probably weighing his chances of successfully ripping out my jugular. Time ticked away.

I shifted my right hand a few inches, seeking better purchase if I needed to move fast. My fingers brushed something gritty and dry. Potting soil, maybe, or clay dust. An advantage. I held Snow’s angry gaze and curled my fingers around as much of the grit as I could gather. Then I sneered at Snow. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

The sound he made was half-human and half-animal, and all rage. He launched off muscled hind legs, jaws snapping. I flung the dirt at his eyes and used the momentum of the swing to roll left, out of the way of his flailing, whining form. He crashed into the leg of a table and tried to rub his eyes with his foreleg. Failing miserably with his lack of hands, he began transforming back into a man.

I didn’t wait for the show. Instead, I scrambled to my feet on a wave of nausea and pain, and when smooth, pale skin had replaced red fur, and long fingers scrubbed at blinded eyes, I smashed several clay
pots down on his head. They exploded into fragments that cut my palms. Dust billowed up, watering my eyes. Snow went limp and crashed to the floor, head lolling and cheeks wet, blond hair coated with red. Not quite out. The heel of my foot stilled him.

“Sorry about your sister,” I said, “but you don’t get to win.”

It took a little doing before I got him secured to the leg of the table with a scrap of wood and his belt. My ass hurt and my shoulder was on fire. Blood stuck my clothes to my skin—one of the three sets of clothes I currently owned, thank you—and the volume of loss was making me dizzy.

I took the long way around the tables to where Wyatt was coming around. He’d turned onto his back and was working on getting his eyes open.

“Take it easy, hero,” I said, kneeling next to him.

“What hit me?” he growled as he tested one eye. It finally found me. The other eyelid flew open, and both eyes fixed on my bleeding chest. “Christ, Evy!”

“Looks worse than it is.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why, you’re very welcome, Wyatt. It was no trouble to take Snow down and save your life.”

“He’s dead?”

“No, just unconscious, temporarily blind, and tied to a table. Babysit him. I have to go.”

“Evy—”

“Stay. Here.”

Annoyance sparked in his eyes; I held his glare, trying desperately to shatter it with my own. Make him understand I needed him out of harm’s way right
now. Far from trouble so I could concentrate on stopping Cole and saving the people in the theater. Defeat finally glared brightly.

“Do I have to say to be careful?” he asked.

“No, but you can.”

“Be careful.”

I brushed his cheek with the back of my hand. “You, too.” I helped him stand—a quick glance at the back of his shirt revealed no blood, so his stitches were safe—and retrieved the nail-bat.

He refused it. “You might need it. Where’s the crystal?”

Shit. I’d almost forgotten. It still hung via chain, near the door. I reached for the slim orange shard and yelped as thousands of tingles ran through my hand and shoulder.

“Don’t touch the crystal itself,” he said.

“Gee, you think?” I looped my fingers around the chain, dropped it to the floor, and proceeded to grind the crystal into the concrete. Just like stepping on a live wire, it shot electricity up my leg and through my hip until abruptly ceasing. My sense of the Break crashed down like a tidal wave, a familiar current of power. “I hope I never see another of those fucking things again.”

Wyatt inhaled deeply, probably as grateful as I was for the reconnection, if not more so. “Only thing worse than not feeling it is feeling it too much,” he said, more to himself than me.

“Feeling it too much? That happens?” It occurred to me how little we’d talked about the way this Gifted thing worked, beyond the obvious tap. I needed to
pencil that particular conversation into my over-packed schedule.

“Not often, but strong thunderstorms can seriously screw with your control.”

Huh.

He ran a hand down his face, pausing to pinch the bridge of his nose. “It’s hard to imagine Cole siding with Tovin, and that he’s been a part of this from the start.”

“Loss can make the most rational person do unbelievable things.” Not that loss excused the irrational, unbelievable stuff.

“Touché. Look, I know you’re still pissed at me—”

“Okay, this really isn’t the time.” I put the palm of my right hand flat on his chest, over the gentle pressure of his beating heart. The words I’d finally said out loud, admitted to Snow in the heat of battle, once again choked in my throat. “Just … be my Handler again and stay here while I go out and beat up the bad guy.”

“I thought we were partners.”

“We’ll be partners when you aren’t concussed and two days out of surgery. You don’t heal like I do.”

“You’re not invulnerable, Evy.”

“Trust me, the flaming aches in my butt and shoulder keep reminding me. You may have been a Hunter ten years ago, but this is my fight now. I’ll take care of Cole.”

I didn’t trust that he’d stay put, and I couldn’t stand there and debate my decision with time ticking away. I also couldn’t knock him out again—his brain had been rattled enough for one weekend. I just had to hope.

“Kiss for luck?” I asked.

He crushed his mouth to mine without further prompting. I parted my lips, allowing him in. Tasting him. Promising in actions what I couldn’t say with words. It was brief and left me tingling. Sharp. Ready to fight for even the simplest of his touches.

“Good luck,” he said.

Nail-bat in hand, I skirted the pile of wood scraps and peeked out the door. No one in the immediate vicinity. No voices, only the distant sounds of the city and, just a bit farther, music. Probably from the benefit. I slipped outside and kept close to the wall of the greenhouse, creeping toward the north side of the roof. At the corner, I peered around and nearly gagged at the odor.

Eleri was crumpled in a pool of her own blood, thick and dark and smelling like an old basement. She clutched her throat with both hands, holding the flow at bay with all of her receding strength, her violet eyes dim. Her white hair had turned red, and her porcelain complexion was nearly transparent.

Full-Blood vampires rarely die from blood loss alone, unless it’s helped along by the addition of an anticoagulant. She needed to feed in order to regain her full strength. No way in hell was I offering myself up. The last thing I needed was to be infected. I doubted even my healing ability could stave off vampire parasites.

“Cole?” I asked, hovering at a safe distance.

She nodded. Her wide eyes latched onto my blood-soaked clothes and didn’t let go. Either he’d discovered she was working against him or he no longer found her assistance necessary. The former was more
likely, given his recruitment program. Weed out the traitors.

“Phin.” My stomach clenched. “Is Phin still with him?”

I decided her feeble head shake meant she didn’t know rather than the alternative. No more bodies were crumpled on the roof that I could see. No sign of the former Hunter and his Coni hostage. I couldn’t babysit Eleri, and I hoped she wouldn’t take my abandonment as a sign of hostility. Unless … 

“Does Isleen know what’s going on tonight?” I asked. Another head shake I could interpret as a no. Too bad there wasn’t a Vampire Backup Flare I could use to get her attention.

I made short work of scouring the rest of the rooftop. No sign of them. At the corner of the north side, I had a good view down the block and of the spectacle that was the arts fund-raiser. The theater marquee was lit, advertising the event in tall block letters. Red and gold and white lights flared brightly from the lobby windows. Cars and limos were parked all along the street. Only a handful of well-dressed stragglers lingered outside, some smoking, others chatting. The music came from there as well—some kind of big band nonsense that always reminded me of dying trumpets.

It all looked so innocent, the people inside unaware of the threat lurking nearby. Oblivious to the fact that they were about to become a Halfie buffet. I’d felt that same false peace once, resting fitfully in Danika’s bedroom while the Triads converged on Sunset Terrace. Bringing with them the same destruction
that Cole’s militia was about to bring down on Parker’s Palace.

I couldn’t watch another slaughter.

There was a pay phone at two o’clock, opposite end of the block from the theater. I focused on the corner, closed my eyes, and slipped into the Break. Every wound was on fire, every ache smarting and stinging. My head pounded, and it didn’t stop when I materialized near the phone, nail-bat still clenched in my right hand. I scooted inside, grabbed the sticky receiver, and dialed.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” the disconnected voice said.

“There’s a bomb in the sound booth at the old Parker’s Palace theater set to go off in five minutes. Better save your highest bracket of taxpayers,” I said, and hung up. My hand was shaking, and I wanted desperately to throw up. Police backup was better than nothing.

I had no idea what time it was and no patience now for subtlety. Sticking as close to the buildings as possible, I ran toward the theater, occasionally checking out the nearby rooftops. For snipers, for Cole, for anything out of the ordinary. A narrow alley, barely three feet wide, ran between the theater and the low-rent office building next to it. I darted in, ignoring the surprised shout of one fur-coated smoker, and sought a side entrance.

Halfway down the length of the building, I found an emergency exit door. No doorknob on my side.
Shit
. Had to get in there somehow. Emergency exits needed to be kept clear for obvious reasons. Logic told me there was a pocket of empty space on the other side.
I shouldn’t mistakenly transport into a solid object—or a person.

The headache from my last transport hadn’t subsided, but I couldn’t wait. I pulled on loneliness, slipped into the Break, and broke apart, moving toward the door, only to smash into something red, electrical, and solid that smacked me backward. I slammed into the opposite building’s brick wall, oomphing all the air from my lungs. My eyes watered, my head pounded, and I slid to the damp ground. Red continued to color my vision, aftershocks of the force shield still zipping through my chest and abdomen. Bile scorched the back of my throat, sharp and hot.

A sudden inhalation cleared my vision of the red, and I worked to get my breathing back under control. Cole already had a shield in place around the theater.
Shit on toast!

I crawled to my feet, using the brick wall for support, and battled a brief wave of dizziness. Not a good way to start a fight. I raced back to the street, where the lingering pair of smokers was trying unsuccessfully to gain entrance to the theater. A man in a tuxedo kept reaching for the door and yanking his hand away as though burned. The woman with him looked around, panicked, and then she saw me. Her overlined eyes widened.

“Patrick,” she said, clawing at the tuxedoed man.

Patrick turned, mouth open to say something, and froze when he spotted my bloodied, disheveled figure. And my weapon.

“Do yourselves a fucking favor,” I said, with enough menace to melt anyone’s brass balls, “and go home. The party started without you.”

He didn’t argue, just grabbed his date/wife/whatever and bolted down the street. Hopefully toward their car or limo. Maybe they’d call the police, too. As a Hunter, I had worked hard to keep the regular cops far outside of our business. Today I wanted them there.

I tested the doors myself and received the same shock. No help. The glass fronts were painted opaque, making it impossible to see inside the lobby. The music was a little louder, a new song with the same wailing trumpets. I swung my bat at the glass. It bounced off the shield with a burst of red and another dance of electricity up my arms.

This was bad.

A shadow fell on the sidewalk, swooped low, and then a familiar kestrel landed next to me.

I scowled. “I thought I said—”

Her cry was ear-piercing and seemed to tell me to shut up. She cocked her head, then took off again. I moved out from the safety of the marquee, watching her fly low to the street. She landed on the front stoop of an apartment building two doors down and across the street. Opposite end of the block from where I’d left Wyatt.

“Thank you, Aurora,” I said.

My transport to those steps left me lurching to my knees. I vomited what little was in my stomach, hands trembling, chest quaking. The constant pounding in my head was a dull roar. The nail wounds in my ass and the gashes on my ribs were starting to itch, and my shoulder still felt raw. So much transporting was using up my tap into the Break, preventing whatever
healing magic I possessed from working to its fullest potential.

No longer in kestrel form, Aurora looped thin arms around my waist and hauled me to my feet. I let her help me into the tiny glass lobby of the apartment building, then lean me against rows of silver mailboxes.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Good, because I feel terrible. Which room?”

“Fourth floor, apartment F. It faces the theater, so he may have seen you.”

“Cole?”

She nodded.

“Phin’s with him?” Another nod. “Is he hurt?”