Cake (52 page)

The loud beat of the music competed with the high-pitched screams, and the events around me began taking on a surreal quality. I watched impassively as a red-haired girl in white pants crashed to the ground in front of us, her leg shattering, her blood and bone splattering as she inadvertently got in the way of another bullet that had been meant for us.

My crystal vision snapped down, and I could suddenly see, almost like a vapor trail, the trajectory the bullet had taken. And then my vision went red as the laser scope centered on my eyes, and I realized another shot was about to be fired. Ducking sideways, I instinctively willed the Hand of Light into being.

The first time I had used it, I’d blasted that Armanita bitch about thirty feet down the hall in the manor. That had been just blind luck and having that much uncontrolled firepower was not a good thing. So, both Claudius and Shade had me practicing out in the woods at my parents’ farm. Before long, I had fine control over a small flame. I could light candles. I was able to start Dad’s barbeque when he forgot the starter fluid. But this situation called for more drastic measures.

I concentrated on the ball of blue flame in my hand and grew it to the size of a volleyball. Then, lifting up my arm, I threw the flame back along the trail where the last shot had come from.

The corner of the building blew out, with glass and metal breaking and twisting as the immense power blast forced it aside. And amidst all that chaos, I heard a man shriek.

Got you, you bastard.

There was a whine close by my ear as another bullet bypassed me. Damn, there was another assassin out there. We had to get out of here.

“
Marcus…Marcus?”

I turned around to where I had pushed him, and saw him lying on his back in a growing pool of blood. His hand was at his neck, trying to stem the flow coming from the open wound, but the blood was still seeping through his fingers. Oh my God.

“
Claudius!”

I jumped as the black-haired vampire placed his hand on my shoulder.

“
Move,” he ordered calmly. Shifting over, I watched helplessly as he pried Marcus’s hand back. “It is healing, but he needs blood, now. Give me that girl laying there next to you. She is bleeding to death. The bullet hit her femoral artery, and there is nothing we can do for her.”

Picking her up as carefully as I could, I swore as she jerked in my hands as yet another bullet was fired at us. Damn it.

Dropping her gently at Claudius’s feet, I spun around and hurled another light ball up at our sniper. It only blew out a window this time, but I’d caught movement, and I realized there were two of them as they separated and moved apart from each other.

I turned and ran to the bar, where I grabbed up a bottle of vodka before heading back out onto the dance floor and skidding to a halt. I had never tried hovering a ball of light bigger than a marble in my training, but I had no choice other than to try now. I knew that both Marcus and Claudius could die out there if I didn’t do something.

Forming a basketball-sized light sphere, I set it hovering, spinning in front of my eyes. It weaved a little but then stayed stationary, and stepping back a pace and tearing off my halter top, I took a big swig of the vodka and willed my wings to emerge.

The continuing chaos going on around me masked the fact from others that I was performing things that were beyond the norm. I ignored the confusion anyway, focusing solely on what I had to do as I made an exploratory stretch with my left wing to see if I could control the angle of movement after being shot in the shoulder. If I could do one then I could do both of them, after all I didn’t want to accidentally lob the ball of flame into the floor in front of us. That would be all the irony I needed, to blow up my vampiric family.

Concentrating, I willed the ball to form a flat disc shape and blew out all the alcohol held in my mouth onto it, flapping my wings at the correct angle as hard as I could. This all had to be done at one and the same time, and if I’d misjudged it, I was going to be burning off more than just my eyebrows.

The small, flat disc erupted into a sheet of blue flame which blasted up from the floor towards the upper walkway where the hidden attackers were. All the windows there blew out as the blast erupted, and I noticed that one of the assassins had leapt out through an open window just before the flame hit. I didn’t see if they’d been caught in the flame or not, because in the very next second, the walkway they had been on collapsed and came crashing down to the dance floor. The entire building creaked and groaned. I had just weakened the structure with my attack, and it was going to come down. Oh shit,

What the hell is going on? I can’t leave you alone for a second, and you start something.

Shade was back from napping in the limo. She was still a small kitty, but her fur bristled with agitation at having to avoid the stampeding crowd that was pouring out of this place. I realized that the creaking and groaning of the building was confusing her. I guess she’d never been in a building that was about to collapse before. But then, really, who the hell does have that kind of first-hand experience?

There were at least three assassins, Shade. I got one, but two have run off. I only need one of them. The closest is at the southeast corner, probably heading for the wood. Get him for me, will you?

I smell him. Kind of crispy. Assassin flambé.

Shade turned and sprinted from the destroyed club, following the scent of the fleeing gunman.

“
Marcus?” I went back to kneel at the side of my fallen lover to see that Claudius had ripped material off the dead girl and was pressing the strips of cloth up against Marcus’s wound.

“
He is good. But he needs more blood,” Claudius told me before gesturing to my shoulder. “Xavier, you are injured.”

“
It’s nothing,” I said, dismissing my own injury. “But you have to get Marcus out of the building, Claudius. I don’t know how long it’s going to remain standing.”

Claudius nodded. “Run them to ground, my Lord Emperor,” he said as I stood back up. “Make them pay.”

“
Get him out of here,” I said softly, watching him pick up and cradle Marcus lovingly in his arms as any worried father would. Then I turned and ran at the wall that I had just blasted.

I knew that it would be just like climbing the tallest oak in the forest. Power, determination, and a few flaps of my wings soon got me to the shattered windows.

A scent trail headed off to the right, into the woods, but Shade’s unique odor was all over it. There was another trail, the scent smelling of gunpowder, heading north…the third assassin. He was injured, his sickly-sweet blood scent leaking all over the ground. I set my wings and jumped out from the broken window, gliding along the side of the building and slipping through the trees after him.

Settling in the high branches of a tall tree, I scanned the ground below me. I could hear someone crashing through the underbrush. He was panicked and scared shitless, and his unprofessionalism made me think that maybe this wasn’t a Blue assassination attempt after all. Maybe Marcus had been the intended target all along…and the attack on him had very nearly worked. I tightened my stomach muscles to keep my balance as this realization hit me. It wouldn’t do me any good to fall out of a tree now.

I’ve got mine.

Shade sounded satisfied.

Mine is coming to me now. Give me a minute.

The assassin stumbled past my tree. He was bleeding heavily, large patches of blood being left behind where he walked. I took a deep breath, and angling my shoulders down just as when I’d practiced, I streaked towards my target.

Ten feet away from him, I spread my wings wide to halt my descent, and I slammed into his back with my feet, instantly knocking him to the ground. I kept my balance as I landed safely, while he rolled over and over before crumpling into the dirt. I knew I’d broken a number of his ribs; I’d heard them crack.

“
You’re not going to shoot and run, are you?” I said, kicking him over onto his back as I willed away my wings. “That’s rather rude of you. Ah, well, it’s my turn now.”

“
What the fuck are you!”

He fumbled in his coat pockets, frantically searching for something. I stepped on his forearm, pressing it hard into the ground, and then I dropped down on one knee, pushing against his chest. He gurgled.

“
The first rule of hunting is to know what the hell you are hunting. Otherwise, you never know what will come back and bite you on the ass. Or in my case, bite you on the neck,” I told him companionably. Then I got serious. “Who sent you out so unprepared? Let me see.”

Sitting on his stomach, I rested my hand on his damaged chest, feeling his broken bones grinding together. “Does that hurt? Hmm? Does it feel as bad as getting shot in the neck?”

I knew my eyes were flaring blue. I saw the terror in his face, and even though he was pinned down and injured, he still tried to get away. It was a truly pathetic attempt as I had no intention of letting him escape.

“
How about an ‘in and through the shoulder’, does it hurt as much as that?” I asked, digging my fingers into his ribs. He blanched, and then he screamed. I dropped a vocal binding on him. “I can’t have any fun with you if your screaming brings people down on us, now, can I?”

His eyes widened in terror, and I could see the white of his eye all the way around his iris. He froze as I reached out and grabbed his forehead. He didn’t know it, but I was going to do what Marcus had done to me when he’d fucked up my head.

I forced my way into the assassin’s sense of being. I mind-fucked him. I equated it to playing with a VCR. I could run forward or play back through his memories and thoughts at my whim. His mouth was wide open in a parody of a scream the entire time I sat on him. The muscles on his neck stood out, and as I delved deeper, he even tried to arch his back.

Oops, went past the part I wanted. Rewind. Ah, there it is.

In his mind, I saw his memory of a dark-haired man handing him an envelope and a photograph. I looked at the picture and had my confirmation. Marcus had been the target. Scanning forward again, I saw something else interesting, and I dug into the sniper’s front pocket, jubilantly pulling out a set of car keys.

“
You won’t need these any more,” I told him. “I’m going to be taking her for a spin.” I made a move to get up and felt a twinge at my sore shoulder. Blood was crusted around the wound, but it still ached. “I guess we’re done here. But I’ll be kind. I won’t leave you a drooling idiot.”

Leaning low over him I fanged him hard and drank so fast I got a head rush and felt nauseous. Then I stood up and left him lying there, his pulse erratic and his soul not long for this world.

Shade?

Waiting.

On my way.

I climbed back up the tree I’d flown from, in the old-fashioned way, using my hands and scuffing my shoes. By the time I got to a nice thick sturdy branch that would support my weight, my shoulder had healed and my wings came out with just a thought. Everything worked better with essence. Taking a small run, I leapt from off my perch and started soaring back to the wrecked warehouse, surprised by just how far that little bugger had actually gotten on two feet, even wounded. I guess sheer terror can do that for you.

Shade heard me winging in, and her red panther tail started whipping back and forth impatiently.

What the hell happened in there?

Oh, Marcus and I are married now.

What?

Her tail stilled in mid swipe.

Well, I never actually got a chance to say yes, because those idiots started shooting at us right in the middle of his proposal.

My wings dissolved as I landed beside her, and I looked down disdainfully at the thin man who was laying stone still at Shade’s feet, her fangs biting and holding him on the back of his neck.