Chapter One #2
One second: The vehicle whipped for the driveway.
Two seconds: I grabbed the wheel well and spun myself onto the hood. Landed with a thump that dented the synth-metal. Caught my grip into the space between hood and windshield.
I had never hit an electromagnetic-powered engine with a disruptor. It might explode. It might fizzle. Anything in between.
Three seconds: Berky cursed. Grabbed the door handle as if he’d stop the car by sheer muscle power.
The disruptor activated. My magic sizzled over the vehicle, interfering with every circuit, every electrical thingamajig, every sensor, every freaking object, gadget, and security feature that used tech. The Scorpion died. Its wheels locked up. The car skidded to a stop.
I didn’t have fangs, but I showed my teeth at my reflection in the black windshield. Vicious. Snarling. Green as a leprechaun.
Berky slammed a fist with brass knucks into the driver’s window repeatedly. More as an annoyance than to any real effect. These cars were designed during the Witch War, with Witch War tech. The window glass could withstand most anything.
Knowing the car’s cameras were down and the security cams for the bar out of sight, I dropped my glamour for a count of two and then reestablished it. I could almost feel the reaction from the guy inside.
Yeah. You drugged the wrong chick. Now you got me to deal with.
I released my hold on the car, kneeling on the hood. Green reflected back at me from the black glass. Like a green gnome with attitude. I removed a small earring from my left earlobe. Held it over the windshield. Still grinning. Giving the guy inside a chance.
“Baby. Stop, girl.”
Smooth voice with a vampire push of mesmerism. Labaka. Damn. I risked a glance to both sides. Behind Labaka were six more guys, a mixture of vamp and human. Not the band, but the table full of men that Tony Montgomery, or whoever he really was, had spoken to. What had Labaka gotten me into?
I thumbed the amulet, dropping it into the space between the windshield and hood.
Shoved off from my knees, leaping, and landed on the roof.
Whirled my vamp-killer in my offhand and tossed two reverse hedge of thorns amulets at the men.
In an instant two of my opponents were trapped in energy cages.
Four guys charged.
Berky had reacted to the presence of more men.
He stopped smashing at reinforced windows and rushed from the car like a freight train.
Rammed his fist down on top of a vamp’s head.
The guy dropped like a stone. Blood gushed from his mouth.
Maybe bit off his tongue. Berky jammed a stake into the vamp’s belly.
That left three humans and Labaka. Can’t kill humans. Couldn’t let them take me either.
Do the unexpected. A memory from my past.
I gripped two stasis amulets and leaped at the men. I was still in the air when a vehicle whirled into the parking area. Headlights lit us up, flickering shadows jittering like zombies.
Whirling, horizontal, I kicked out. Landed only a glancing blow on one as they both moved smoothly to the side.
Training. I hit the pavement off balance.
Between them. On one foot and hand. Skidded on the old-fashioned asphalt.
Caught myself and pivoted on that hand. Left some skin from my palm on the parking lot.
In my peripheral vision I saw one guy holding a gun. He fired. I was already rolling.
The new car came to a halt. The doors opened. I tossed the stasis amulets. The guy with the gun fell slowly. The guy I had clipped with my toes vanished into the dark. My amulet hit the pavement and rolled.
Labaka flashed his fangs at the new car and pulled a vamp-killer. Dumber than rocks.
The driver—tall, dark, and half gorgeous—stepped like a dancer from his vehicle.
New guy was Walter, wearing a black business suit, white shirt, and shiny shoes.
His presence meant I’d been monitored by security all night, and Walter—the bodyguard who was blood-sworn to the queen to keep her godchildren safe—had left a meeting or a date to come save me. I was in trouble, one way or another.
Labaka turned on Walter. Slashing out with a vamp-killer.
Walter stepped inside the strike, knocked the shortsword away with a single block.
Hit Labaka smack in the nose with the heel of his other hand.
As the singer dropped, Walter caught him and slammed his head against his own car until the vamp went boneless.
He threw Labaka ungently into his vehicle like a bale of hay.
A weapon fired, cracking from the dark. Walter stumbled.
Vamped out. Tore into the night. Three more gunshots sounded.
Close. Deafening. Six seconds after vanishing into the dark, Walter reappeared, a limp man dangling over his shoulder.
“I quite liked this suit,” he said casually, his old-fashioned upper-class British accent telling me more than anything that he was pissed.
KeeKee and Lissa were standing inside the club, peeking out the open door, eyes and mouths wide. They knew me from college, knew about me being the queen’s godchild. But it wasn’t like I had ever displayed my fighting abilities or my magic to them. I had no idea how much they had seen.
As he walked toward his car, Walter looked me over for injuries, studied the downed opponents, shook his head, and dropped the unconscious man at Berky’s feet. “This one is all yours.”
The big bouncer looked from the unconscious man to Walter. “What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Give him, give all of them, to the police,” Walter said, sounding eminently practical. “This looks like a terrible bit of gang warfare.”
Berky looked around at all the prone bodies. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Of course it does,” Walter said. “His weapon is in his suit pocket; his rounds mostly hit the club. The other rounds are inside me, so I’ll hang on to them a bit.”
“No silver in them?” I asked too softly to carry. Silver was poison to vamps.
“Oddly enough, no. I’m quite curious why.” Walter walked to the broken Scorpion.
“Disruptor?” he asked me.
“Yeah.” I was still breathing fast. It was freaking damn cold.
My breath was a white mist on the night air.
My skin prickled into chillbumps. Belated shivers seized me.
My palm hurt like a mother. “I also dropped a second disruptor into the engine area to disable the locks and brakes, and open hidden compartments.”
“Good choice,” Walter said, his voice mild. “I’ll open the door. You get Corry. I’ll deal with the gentleman inside.”
“He’s no gentleman.”
“Mmmm. I find that appallingly evident.”
I followed Walter to the side of the car where none of Kegs and Boots’s security cams or my friends could see us.
Walter tried the lock, but either my disruptor hadn’t worked or Tony had an update anticharm on some of his security measures.
Walter placed a slim tubular device against the door handle.
Tech stuff, not magic, but I wasn’t prejudiced. The lock clicked.
Walter tore the door off its hinges with one effortless-looking wrench, and then slammed it into the driver’s face.
Tony Montgomery—or whoever he really was—slumped.
Blood shot everywhere. Walter tossed the door into the shadows, lifted Tony by his shirt and pulled him out.
One-armed, he flung Tony over his shoulder, a trail of blood adding to the ruin of his once-very-expensive black suit.
Walter walked to his vehicle, where he tossed Tony on top of the singer.
With a remote, Walter rearranged the seating into conference mode, and stepped gracefully into his car, facing the vamp and the human. The doors closed.
On auto-drive, the vehicle moved silently out of the parking lot and into the night. I didn’t envy the two men the next few hours.
I also didn’t envy the coming tongue-lashing about getting myself and my friends into trouble. Being treated like a twelve-year-old when I was twenty-eight and a grown-assed woman was embarrassing. But it was also totally deserved.
Corry was asleep in the passenger seat of the Scorpion. I wasn’t strong enough to lift her, and I needed to get her out of here.
KeeKee, pink Afro bobbing, and Lissa raced up, bright in Walter’s headlights, our jackets and bags in their hands, their mouths still open.
Yeah. Walter was something to behold, half his face gorgeous, the other half branded with the initials WY.
Their eyes followed his auto-electric car until it vanished over the slight hill.
Then my friends were all over me, babbling questions, wanting to know who Mr. Beautiful was, and what had happened, and jibber jabber I couldn’t and wouldn’t answer.
“KeeKee,” Berky rumbled, “pull up your car. You gals get your asses out of here.” He pointed at me. “Take the magic shit with you. Police are on the way. And restart my fucking cams.”
“Your cameras are out?” I asked.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but the big guy might have rolled his eyes. “Magic shit and a dead Scorpion? Yeah. Everything’s out. You did it. You fix it. My job’s on the line, here.”
Well, dang. That meant Walter had alerted my little brother, EJ, when the fracas first started, probably from the moment Labaka left the stage to follow me.
My disruptor had a limited sphere of interference and no way had it affected the Kegs’s cams. My overprotective little brother, EJ, had no concept of personal space or personal boundaries when any possibility of danger was involved.
The Witch War, when demons were used as weapons by witch-vamps, had stolen all that.
With Walter running the security show and EJ as my business partner, I had less privacy now than I did when I lived under the queen’s thumb. And then my ex’s thumb. Freedom was a ghost, drifting close but never really grasped.