Chapter Fifty-Five
Denne triangulated her approach through one of the sliding glass doors in the darkened kitchen.
As she passed through the pane and then moved through the tiled space, cutting around stainless steel appliances and countertops, she thought of when she’d first looked inside this house. It had been a lifetime ago.
And the distance back to that first night got even farther as she looked down the river side of the structure into a gray and white living room. A female with blond hair and well-tailored white clothing was tied to a chair—
As guns started going off outside, Denne had to steel herself not to lose focus, especially because she knew what was happening.
She had warned the Brotherhood about t’On astro-projecting and it wasn’t hard to figure out that images of him had just propagated all over the property, trying to distract the fighters—
A gunshot rang out close by, the pop loud enough to hurt her ears.
She ran without thinking into a darkened hall.
And saw Allhan duck just as he was shot at. In response, he dove forward to tackle the male in front of him, but it was just an image. Nothing real. He landed hard on the tile floor, and scrambled to get back on his feet.
“Hello, Denne.”
Click.
The sound of an old-fashioned gun hammer getting pulled back was right next to her ear.
“I have a gun,” she said to t’On without turning her head.
“Do you. How romantic.” There was an evil chuckle. “It’s like we were meant to be together.”
Out in the wintry darkness, bursts of light from the discharge of bullets were like fucked-up fireflies running all the way from the landscaped lawn down to the shoreline.
At the same time, Allhan was banging into things inside, crashing into lamps and mirrors as he fought with holograms and chased ghosts.
“Why did you do it,” she asked.
She didn’t give a shit as to the whys. She needed to get ready to spin around and put a bullet of her own into the male’s skull. Or maybe she’d use the dagger.
“Money,” t’On said in a bored tone. “I hate to be so unoriginal, but it’s only ever about money in this modern era, and I’m not going to get left behind. I’m going to make sure I have plenty of it.”
“I thought you valued our traditions, that you disapproved of the way my mother was opening up the Territory to the human side, to the vampires in Caldwell.”
“Lies are so handy,” he drawled. “And I’m very good at them. I even made those civilians I killed and tortured think they smelled lesser.”
“So what was next, after you got the intel. Were you going to sell the Brotherhood’s address to the Lessening Society, or something?”
“I already have the deal negotiated.”
“Well, you don’t have the information, so how’s that going to work—”
She spun around and led with the black dagger. But t’On was too fast for her, lithely jumping out of the way as he pulled his trigger.
In a flash, Denne dropped to the floor and rolled, taking cover behind an island that had a cooktop on it.
“I can scent him on you,” t’On sneered. “What a coincidence. You being unfaithful to me with the very vampire I was working with.”
And then t’On’s voice bloomed behind her. “However did you two meet. It could only be because of fate, right? Otherwise, who would believe it.”
Swinging the muzzle up, she squeezed off some rounds and blew apart the glass door she’d come through. As cold air rushed in, the apparition of t’On disappeared.
Just as she heard a scream from the living room.
Talk about tits up.
Vishous tracked the figure of a male in black through the trees.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem. The trouble was…
there were, like, twenty of them… and the biggest risk to this scene was friendly fire.
He didn’t want to shoot one of his brothers or any of the other fighters, and holy hell, that Shadow really knew what the fuck he was doing.
Laser sights were all over the pines and on the paths that snaked around the property, and those bullets that went flying were carefully discharged—but never, ever hit the target. It was like they were chasing holograms away—
A brilliant shattering of glass lit off up at the house, some kind of gunfight going down. And it was as he looked through the newly opened goddamned door that he saw Allhan stumble into view for a split second and disappear out of sight.
Denne was in there because of her parents.
Allhan was in there because of his sister.
Goddamn, V was going in there…
Because of his son.
Between one blink and the next, he dematerialized in through the shattered pane, and continued past the kitchen and directly into the living room.
The image of a Shadow standing over Allhan with a gun pointed at the male’s head sprung V into action.
With a primordial roar, he rushed across furniture, jumping off couches and chairs, knocking over art and lamps, leading with his gun.
But he couldn’t pull the trigger and risk collateral casualties. So he went with the dagger he had left.
He swiped at the image in front of him, and spun around to find one in his wake, and then he dodged and weaved at a kaleidoscope of flickering 3-D representations of that Shadow. But at least he gave Allhan a chance to crawl over to his sister.
And start undoing her bindings.
Had he been hit?
Allhan didn’t know and didn’t care. He was flat on the carpet at his sister’s feet, loosening the ropes at her ankles with clumsy hands. Chaos was all around, inside and out. And if he had ever wanted to know what it was like to be at war, he now knew, and it wasn’t what he’d thought. Not at all.
There was nothing heroic or exciting about anything. It was like riding a wave toward a rocky shore. You knew the impact was coming, and you did what you could to keep from drowning, but the hard hit was unavoidable—and you knew that because everybody else was getting body-slammed—
“Allhan…”
The whisper of his name stopped even the bullets in midair for a split second, and he looked up to meet his sister’s eyes. They were bloodshot and the bruising on her face was already swelling, distorting her beauty.
“You came for me,” she said in a voice that cracked.
Another bullet sizzled by them and they both ducked.
“Always,” he vowed. “You’re my sister.”
That was it for the talking. And as soon as he got one of her hands free, she helped the cause, after which she was on the floor and he was sheltering her with his body.
Just as he looked for an escape route, there was another shattering of glass and the whole straightaway that faced the Hudson broke out of its enormous frame in a shimmer of shards. As the cold air barreled in, he ducked another bullet.
“Can you walk?”
“I don’t know,” she gasped.
He glanced around, hoping to see Denne—
There she was. In the doorway to the kitchen, frantically scrambling for cover as she clearly ran out of ammo in a gunfight. Ditching the firearm, she two-handed the black dagger she’d taken from Vishous, and as if Allhan had called her name, she glanced over.
There was blood on her face, in her hair, but he couldn’t figure out how badly she was injured.
As their eyes met, she nodded at the billowing drapes and mouthed, Go.
And that was when Vishous jumped in between them.
“Allhan!” the Brother yelled as he threw a gun.
Going on instincts he shouldn’t possess, Allhan snatched the autoloader out of the air, and knew that Vishous was giving him the only chance he was going to get.
And even though it killed him to leave Denne, as she jumped into the fray with the Brother, she was deadly fast with the knife, clearly trained and in a far better situation to fight than he was with his sister.
“On three, run for the porch.” He locked eyes with Carmen. “One. Two. Three—”
They bolted for it, crouching low, dodging broken lamps and sideways furniture.
And bullets.
When they got out onto the porch that faced the river, he didn’t hesitate and neither did his sister. They leaped and went airborne down the descent to the water.
The brief weightlessness was an odd comfort.
The way they landed on the snowy embankment far below was not.