Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6 (3 page)

Just thinking of him in conjunction with the word
lover
was more of a problem than I was willing to deal with at the moment.

“So what’s the plan?” Holden looked past me to Shane. I could have hugged the vampire for giving the hunter his dues as the leader of this expedition. Maybe the blood veneer made Shane seem more respectable to everyone.

“The elevator is out of the question, obviously,” Shane said.

Siobhan raised her bloody hands as evidence. Holden’s nostrils flared as the smell of the girl’s blood fanned through the air. He sucked in a ragged breath, and since breathing wasn’t necessary for vampires, I knew he was taking a good whiff of her.

“Has anyone checked for the stairs?” Holden asked, his voice strained.

“It’s at the back, but a section in the middle is rotted through. Not passable.”

“A few stairs missing? That’s nothing.” Holden stepped clear of us and bounded across the patchwork floor with the ease of an alley cat prowling the city streets. His confidence was contagious because the three of us followed after him, less nimble, but still able to track his route.

Holden was waiting at the top of the emergency stairwell, which must have been constructed in a bygone era before concrete was the norm, and we all assessed the rot damage.

The stairwell wrapped around the wall, with a broken railing along the outer edge. Where the railings gave way there was a central column open all the way to the ground floor. Since we were ten flights up, I didn’t think jumping to the main level would be feasible for anyone but Holden, and even he couldn’t guarantee making it without a broken ankle. He was still a man, not a cat.

Each section was missing six or seven steps—about half of the stairs—and the remaining bits looked worse for wear. I wouldn’t have trusted Siobhan’s lithe figure on the steps, let alone Shane or Holden. The weight of a full-grown man would fracture the threadbare wood.

“So, genius, you were saying?” I turned my attention from the stairs up to Holden.

He sneered at me and jumped to the next riser. Holden landed smoothly, avoiding the center section of the steps, and gave me a haughty
I told you so
look.

“Throw me the tiny one,” he said.

Shane and I stared at Siobhan, who was shaking her head emphatically and backing away from us. “No. Nope. I have no intention of being tossed into the waiting arms of a vampire.”

“It’s okay, he won’t bite you,” I told her.

“It doesn’t escape my notice you said he won’t bite
me
instead of
he doesn’t bite
.”

“He’s still a vampire,” I reminded her, rolling my eyes.

“Yeah, and we came here to
kill
vampires.”

“Vampires pay your boyfriend’s rent.
I’m
a vampire.” My tone clearly conveyed I wasn’t in the mood to argue about the shades of gray when it came to the badness of vampires.

I grabbed Siobhan, and before she could wriggle free I shoved her off the top step. I was careful not to just knock her off the edge, but instead gave my push a little oomph so she went flying into Holden’s arms. He, in turn, carried the momentum a step further and tossed her down to the next riser.

Siobhan was flustered but still a warrior at heart. She landed in a crouch, her back to the wall, and scowled up at us.

We continued the system, ensuring there was never more than one person standing on any riser longer than a few seconds, lest we push the wood’s limits and send us on the express route to the ground floor.

After a few tense moments we were all on solid ground, regrouping behind Shane. I took my gun out, as did Shane, and Siobhan retrieved her baton. Only it wasn’t a baton anymore. I didn’t see if she squeezed it, twisted it or whispered some weird druid incantation, but the baton had extended and grown in length, transforming into a bow.

She unstrung the tiered silver necklace she was wearing, and as she looped it around the ends of the bow I realized it wasn’t a necklace at all. The crazy woman was wearing a bowstring as a necklace. She must have noticed my slack-jawed expression because she gave me an uneasy smile. “I wasn’t a Boy Scout, but I do like to be prepared.”

“Hey, who am I to judge? I brought a gun to my own wedding. I’d just be worried about an accidental garroting.” A bow was one thing, but where the hell was she hiding the arrow—

She slipped a small silver blade out of her belt and squeezed, and I watched in amazement as it unfolded into a full-sized arrow. Apparently the druids had come into the twenty-first century with open arms. Cool.

Holden was the only one of us to remain unarmed, and it made sense because he didn’t
need
a weapon. With no further need to worry about falling to our deaths, Holden led us down the nearest hallway just in time for the whimpering girl’s voice to escalate to screaming.

This time her screams
were
those of pain, and my heart hammered. Adrenaline pumped through me, and I restrained myself from running headlong into danger. I had a bad habit of being impulsive and putting myself at unnecessary risk, and though I’d started to control those urges better, I still had them.

Holden must have known what I wanted to do because he raised a hand as if he could use invisible force to keep me back. “Hold on.”

The screaming petered out into a pain-filled mewling noise like an injured animal. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I glared at Holden, silently insisting he get this show on the road.

Shane was getting anxious too because he edged past Holden and moved to stand outside the room where Grendel would be waiting. His large gun was trembling slightly in his hands, and I wasn’t sure if it was from fear, rage or both.

“Let’s just fucking do this,” Shane growled, and kicked the door open.

Standing inside the room was one of the largest men I’d ever seen, undead or otherwise. He towered over seven feet, and his hair was a scraggly, grease-coated mane falling beyond his shoulders. Like Shane, he had a layer of blood over his bare chest and forearms, but in one meaty fist he was holding a skinny girl—no older than twelve—around her neck. It was hard to tell if the blood on her was from his skin or a fresh wound.

Behind him, on the periphery of the room, were three vampires. They were a normal size, but next to Grendel they looked like toddlers.

The girl started crying when she saw us, gasping sobs that racked her whole body. Grendel gave her a rough shake to silence her.

“I was beginning to wonder if you fools were just going to tromp around in the hall all night, or if you’d ever knock.” His voice was a deep, booming rumble, and it made me imagine the whole floor quaking with each word.

This guy was scary.

I’d killed scarier.

Chapter Four

“You.” Grendel shook the girl at Shane, her small head whipping from side to side. “You think you can triumph over me with these
tiny women
?” The giant vampire laughed loudly, and if there’d been any windows left in the complex, they would have broken.

The way he said
tiny women
was how I imagined a god might say
puny humans
. He clearly thought Siobhan and I were no threat, and that could only benefit us. If Grendel focused all his energy on Shane and Holden—the “real” threats—the petite druid and I could teach him why tiny women were just as tough as burly men.

Holden waltzed into the room with the casual ease of a man who was looking for ties at Bergdorf.

“Tiny women and a gay?” Grendel’s laughter contained a note of concern. He hadn’t been expecting another man, and now our numbers were throwing him for a loop.

Holden smoothed the lapels of his suit and glanced down at his ensemble. “This says
gay
to you?” He seemed genuinely interested in the barbarian’s opinion of his attire. “I was going for ’50s chic. Interesting.” The vampire looked at me like he was waiting for a second opinion.

I wanted to remind him of the more pressing issue at hand, but the whole routine was having an interesting effect on Grendel. The giant vampire lowered his captive to the floor and glared at Holden with determined anger.

“Which of you wants to die first?” Grendel boomed.

How original.

Beside me, Siobhan was nocking up an arrow, her focus not on Grendel but rather the girl he was holding. I licked my lips, dry from the dusty interior of the building, and spoke quietly to her. “If you get the chance, you grab the girl. Understand?”

“Don’t need to tell me twice.”

“How good is your aim with that thing?” It didn’t really matter if I whispered. With Grendel this close, he’d hear everything we were saying. I was counting on him being distracted by Holden’s cheeky disregard, though.

Siobhan winked at me. “Very.”

“Great. Can you shoot him in the neck for me?”

She blinked, as if surprised by the request, but collected herself, posed like an elf right out of
Lord of the Rings
and released the arrow without seeming to adjust her aim at all. I pivoted my head in time to see the arrow cross the room and lodge itself in Grendel’s neck.

The giant vampire dropped the girl, and both hands flew to the projectile now sticking out the side of his neck. His thick flesh had stopped the arrow from piercing all the way through to the other side, but there must have been a barbed edge on Siobhan’s arrowhead, making it extra difficult to remove. Grendel was struggling and grunting with discomfort and annoyance. He didn’t seem to be in a great deal of pain, but distraction had been my primary motivation.

He ripped the arrow out, taking a large chunk of skin and flesh with it, and hurled it back at Siobhan with staggering force. Still, an arrow thrown isn’t the same as an arrow fired, and she easily deflected it with her bow.

Heeding my previous instruction, she took her opportunity and ran for the girl. Shane and I responded quickly, leveling our weapons at Grendel and keeping steady watch in case he tried to attack Siobhan. It wasn’t a question of
if
he attacked, but
when
.

The moment the druid had her arms around the girl, Grendel swung for them both. Shane fired first, the bullet snagging Grendel in the wrist and making him jerk back before he could swipe at Siobhan. She must have known she wasn’t going to get another lucky break because she held fast to the fallen girl and dragged her out of easy squishing range.

Shane chambered another bullet, and Holden stepped in front of the other women, blocking Grendel’s path to them. “Take the girl and get out,” he instructed Siobhan.

The redhead glanced towards Shane as if unsure she wanted to leave him, but the sobbing child beside her took precedence. Siobhan helped the girl to her feet, and they ran from the room. Hopefully to safety.

Grendel’s henchmen, the pitifully normal-sized vampires, had been frozen in mute stupidity up to that point. They must have assumed no one in their right minds would fight their boss, giving them a slack job. Now they weren’t sure what to do about us and were slow to retaliate.

The first to act—a gray-haired vampire who looked like he’d stumbled out of a
Crocodile Dundee
movie—barreled towards me at full speed. Apparently they’d already stopped dismissing me as the weakest link. So much for our advantage.

I pivoted my gun from Grendel to the charging vampire and fired three rounds into his head. Precision aiming was tricky enough when a human was running towards you, but with a vampire there was the added difficulty of their preternatural speed. My first shot glanced off the side of his scalp, making him turn his head. The next two lodged into his skull above his ear, fanning a cloud of pink mist into the air as he fell.

Vampires could heal most things, but two 9mm silver bullets into the brain wasn’t one of them.

With one of their comrades down, the other two guards were less gung ho to run wild into the fray. Basically, they were the worst guards ever: slow to act and only out for their own protection. Where did Grendel find these guys, Spineless Cowards ’R’ Us?

One of them lunged for the door, intent on making a getaway. Shane fired at him, landing a shot in the vamp’s shoulder, sending him spinning backwards into Grendel’s arms. The warrior vampire had evidently seen his minion make a break for it and was none too thrilled. Grendel raised the guard into the air as if he weighed nothing, then brought him down hard onto his knee, cracking the vamp’s spine.

The broken vampire howled in pain, but the injury wouldn’t kill him. It would take him out of the mix for a while as the fractured bones healed, though, giving us one fewer foe to worry about.

Grendel stepped on the vampire’s head, crushing his skull beneath big shit-kicker boots as if it were a grape.

So…
that
guy was out of the picture completely then.

“Jesus,” Shane said.

“I know. Try getting that out of your boots after,” Holden replied.

When Grendel stepped back, there was a red smear on the floor with fragments of scalp and brain matter now taking the place of the man’s head. In spite of my many years being exposed to some of the most revolting things imaginable, I fought back the urge to gag.

“I will do this to one of my own,” Grendel bellowed. “What do you think I will do to
you
?”