Chapter Nineteen
EJ
EJ was leaning over the low brick wall separating the edge of the flat roof and a long fall down nine stories.
The wall’s cement cap pressed into his middle, cold even through his layers and armored jacket.
Snow blew into his eyes until he activated an armored telescoping helmet up and over his head and pulled his face shield down.
The temps had plunged, and his gloves weren’t heated.
Already he was frozen half through, but he had a reasonably good vista of the street below and the back of the building, where Angie said the trouble would come.
His sister was plowing through the snowdrifts in the parking lot toward the street.
Hidden beneath an obfuscation working and the dark of night, the only evidence of her passing were glimpses of a blue cloak and the snow moving to the sides.
The city had plowed a single lane through the middle of the street.
When she passed between the parked cars and the mounded snow on this side of the road, she would make a mess that the enemy would see, and they would know someone was there, regardless of the obfuscation working—a working not nearly so effective as the shadow working Nyoka had used at the queen’s reception.
He wanted that working, but it would take careful study and a lot of time to break it down to musical notes and replicate it, time he didn’t have.
He closed his eyes and concentrated for sounds of magic, muted and damped by the snow. He adjusted the mics on his helmet to pick up faint frequencies.
He said, “Sis. I’m on the roof with Grizz. I hear two vampires, Nyoka, and something broken that sounds like the screams of hell. Are the vamps and the witch with the bot? Can you pinpoint?”
“You know that little red car that parks on the street?” she asked, heaving deep breaths as she pushed through the snow.
He’d like to know the tall, slender dance instructor who drove it, but his sister didn’t need to know that. “I’m having to guess where it is from this angle,” he said. “Why?”
“Right where it usually parks, one vamp is hidden behind the car and its four-foot snowdrift.”
Listening, turning his head this way and that, he tried to pinpoint where the magic originated, through the muffling and sound dispersion of falling snow and swirling wind.
The vamps were too indistinct, their undead magic uncertain, but— There.
Yes. He said, “Got it. Nyoka is at the rear, from where you’re walking. ”
“Yes.”
“Grizz, do you have a shot?” EJ asked over comms.
“Negative. Too much snow. Vamps don’t show on infrared, and low light sucks in these conditions.
However, the bot’s engine is overheating.
I can read its position on infrared. It’s at a forty-five-degree angle from Angie, about”—Grizz paused, calculating the distance with her scope and gear—“about twenty-five feet up the street at a diagonal from her current twenty. It’s still moving at a dead crawl. ”
“Can you see my cloak?” Angie asked, dropping her working for a moment.
“Affirmative,” EJ said, “and if you move further from the building, so can our enemies.”
“I was talking to Villetti.”
“Affirmative, tesoro.”
Angie sighed into her comms mic.
“You’re going to need help, Ange,” EJ said. “You can’t hold your staff and fight vamps, a witch, and whatever that bot is carrying. I’m on my way down.” Spinning from the wall, he sped across the slick roof and into the door to the stairwell.
“Whatever,” she said into her comms. “Villetti, I’m going in under the strongest obfuscation working I have, and with my AE ear-patches activated.
” The ear-patches that let in specific hertz wavelengths, like voices, but dampened explosive frequencies and concussive waves, automatically.
“When I get to within ten feet of the bot, I should be in the middle of the road. At that point, I’ll deactivate the obfuscation working.
You’ll have one second to see my cloak and calculate the bot’s position.
After that one second, I’ll open the strongest blood hedge I know how to make and drop flat onto the street. You’ll open fire at the bot.”
“Ten feet?” Villetti demanded. “No! Even a blood hedge won’t stand up to a demon-zooka.”
Angie didn’t respond for several seconds, and EJ, racing down the stairs, knew she was evaluating the odds of her survival versus the odds of the demon bomb on the bot.
He sped into his apartment and grabbed more weapons.
Swords, one long, one short, both with silver plating to harm vamps, two semiautomatic handguns already loaded with silver-lead rounds to kill vamps.
When Angie replied, her tone was reluctant. “Understood. Further away places me behind the cars on this side and it decreases my staff’s ability to draw in demons that are released by the explosion and expelled into the air.”
“The rocket will stop them, cara. They will be frozen in place for several seconds. You will have time to move closer, and the concussive explosion will take down the vamps for long enough for us to take head shots, or EJ to behead them.”
“Okay. Right,” she said, her voice winded from fighting snowdrifts.
EJ burst from the exit door, gave Peg a halfhearted wave, and whistled a note, opening an obfuscation working. He sped along the narrow snow trail Angie had made.
In front of him, she disappeared behind an obfuscation working so powerful it didn’t have a sound, or even a visual with his seeing working.
Either Angie had multiple workings open at once, or she had pulled on her own life force, or on the snowstorm, or she was keeping more secrets.
“Son of a witch,” EJ muttered. “What have you created, Ange?”
She laughed in reply, the sound so winded it was more like coughing.
EJ looked into the air currents. His gift wasn’t his sister’s.
He didn’t have her ability with raw power.
But he could see what was happening with the air and the snow itself.
It was fluffing up and billowing out and being compressed all around Angie’s position.
Anyone in a building above could see her by the disturbance in the snow-filled wind.
“Team. Close hedges,” EJ said. “Look for spotters.”
“Hedge closed.” “Closed.” “Roger that,” came over his ear-patch.
Peg said, “I think we have a spotter.”
Grizz said. “Ojos, open 3-D map.”
EJ touched his helmet and saw the map of the area displayed on his face shield. The tiny red dot was the spotter. He angled off from Angie, plowing his way toward the spotter. A spotter was always a potential shooter.
Two seconds went by and Grizz said, “Good eye, Peg. Confirmed spotter in building B, fourth floor, window on the corner. Possible weapon noted, though window is closed. If a weapon is present, his first shot will likely be off, so he’ll be planning on a two shot.”
“Walter is currently not available to lead or command,” a different voice said over comms. “Evan Junior Everhart-Trueblood, upon the order of the Consort of the Dark Queen, you are in command of the queen’s forces,” the Consort himself said.
“Fire as necessary to protect yourselves and the populace. A diplomatic envoy will handle any repercussions.”
“Crap,” Angie said.
EJ grinned. About time.
Raccoon said, “I have a nonlethal flash-bang loaded in a tripod-braced, underbarrel launcher. The window is within my fifty-meter range.”
Grenade launchers were completely illegal off the battlefield.
EJ didn’t want to know why the people who were supposedly here for guard duty had so much weaponry on hand.
For a moment, he considered what Villetti would say about the illegal weapon when this was all over, but he let that thought slide into the dark of his brain for later consideration.
EJ drew one semiautomatic weapon and an attack flute. Wondered if the dancer would refuse to have dinner with him if he killed her little car.
According to her snow trail, Angie was directly between two snow-mounded vehicles parked on the street across from the dancer’s car.
He could make out nothing on the far side of the car, no movement, only the faintest of musical notes.
He was magic-blind to the workings being employed.
If not for Angie’s gift, they would have been attacked and they would all be possessed and killing people right now.
Theta opened in his mind. His mental focus tightened. “If the window opens, take the shot,” EJ said. “Repeat, you have a ‘Go’ to fire a flash-bang grenade if the window is opened.”
A single note rang on the air. EJ said, “Angie has a blood hedge open beneath the obfuscation.” The note told him she had cut herself, likely on her inner arm.
Just a tiny piercing allowed his sister to open a hedge strong enough to repel most anything, military quality or not.
Of course, her blood-scent was now on the wind, probably enough for a vampire to know she was present even if they didn’t know where.
With a tap on the attack flute, he opened a hedge beneath his obfuscation.
“The window in building B is opening,” Boots said.
“Flash-bang and demon-zooka. Fire at will,” EJ said.
Angie’s cloak appeared for a single second. One-one-thousand. Then it was gone.
In that second, Raccoon fired his flash-bang grenade launcher.
Villetti fired the rocket to take out the military bot.
An instant later, the concussive explosion hit. Even beneath his hedge of thorns, EJ was knocked back. Landed in the snow. Curled tight, as debris shredded the air. Shrapnel rammed into his hedge with sizzles and thumps. Things clanged and crashed into the street. He fought his way upright.
The wailing of hell erupted. Stopped. The temporary disruptor of the small rocket had gone into effect.