Faint on the cool spring air was the sound of sirens.
“Tink’s diaphragm, it’s about time,” Jenks swore. The Weres who were left heard it too, and they began to exchange looks as they panted. The crowd watching started to break up, their steps fast and their faces pale as they realized that was real blood on the pavement.
“You know who I am?” Jenks shouted, bloody but un-bowed. “I’m Jenks!” He took a breath, grinning. “Boo!”
Several of the well-dressed Weres jumped, and a few of the military Weres touched their tattoos as if for luck or strength.
Walter shoved himself to the front. “Hold together!” he shouted as his control over the second pack slipped away. “You swore an oath to me. You swore, damn it!”
The alpha male in a suit gave him an ugly look. Saying nothing more, he turned and walked away. His wife slipped an arm in his, seamlessly snagging a store bag and heading for the top of the wide alley. There were no more bystanders watching now, and they melted seamlessly into the tourist traffic.Hunched and panting, I watched unbelieving as the ring of business Weres dispersed. I smiled sweetly at Walter, hefting my splat gun. It was empty, but he didn’t know that. The sirens grew closer. If they had held together for five minutes more, they would have had us. It hadn’t been the sirens, it had been their inability to stay together. Without the focus, they couldn’t hold together when things got sticky.
Choleric, Walter gestured to Brett.
“Rache!” Jenks shouted.
At least a dozen weapons turned to us. There was only one thing to do, and I did it.
Grunting, I leapt at Brett. It surprised him, and though he was by far the better military person, I got him down, attacking not like a professional, but like a sissy girl with my arms around his knees. We hit the pavement together and I scrambled for a better hold.
My arm went around his neck and I wrenched an arm painfully. And while he would have felt no pain had they still been in a round, he certainly felt it now. “Tell them to back off!” I shouted.
Brett started to laugh, the sound choking off when I pulled.
“Ow,” he said, as if I was simply bending back a finger, not ready to dislocate his shoulder. “Ms. Morgan. What the hell do you think you’re doing, ma’am?”
I could hear Nick’s truck. “Getting the hell out of here,” I said, stumbling as Jenks helped me stand upright without losing my grip. It was as awkward as all get-out, but we managed. A ring of weapons pointed at us. Jenks took my place, his face ugly as he bent his arm and pressed a knife to Brett’s throat.
“You ever see a pixy battlefield?” he whispered in the Were’s ear, and Brett lost the vestiges of humor. White-faced, he went passive. Which was really scary in itself.
The flash of a blue truck sped past.
“Too far, Ivy!” Jenks shouted, and there was the squeal of brakes quickly followed by the horns and the gunning of an engine.
I looked at my waistband and the phone. An insane need to giggle rose through me. I sure hoped we weren’t roaming.
Another squeal of tires, and Nick’s blue truck rocked to a stop at the end of the alley.
“Mom’s here to pick us up, Jenks,” I quipped, limping to the curb. “I’ll get the bags.”
I scooped up one of our bags, seeing as it was on the way and it sort of added to the travesty. My empty splat gun never shifted from Walter, though he was behind two rows of men. Coward.
“Hi, Ivy,” I said tiredly, tossing the bag into the truck bed and lurching in after it. Yeah, it was illegal to ride in the back, but seeing that we had just somehow beaten up three Were packs, I wasn’t going to worry about it. “Thanks for the ride.”
Nick was in the front seat, and pale. He handed a pair of bolt cutters through the window.
“Hey, thanks!” I said, then started when Brett came thumping in beside me like a sack of potatoes. The Were was unconscious, and I looked at Jenks in question when he followed him in, admittedly a hell of a lot more gracefully. “I don’t want a hostage,” I said. Then wondered when Jenks had knocked him out. He wasn’t dead, was he?
Grim-faced, Jenks shouted, “What are you waiting for, Ivy? God to say go?”
The truck lurched, and I steadied myself against the long silver locker Nick had bolted to the truck bed. My sweat went cold in the new breeze, and thinking we had done it, I pulled the hair from my eyes and smiled at Jenks. My smile faded.
As we jostled into traffic, he was using a plastic cord to truss Brett up with a painful savagery. I thought back to seeing his kids tearing apart the fairy nest in his garden. This was a side to him I’d never truly seen before, since the difference of our sizes had insulated me from it.
From inside the truck came Nick’s petrified voice, “Go faster, Ivy! They’re behind us!”
Wedging myself into the corner, I held my hair out of the way and blinked. I had expected to see Jeeps or Hummers. What I found were three Weres in wolf skin, tearing down the street after us. And they were fast. Really fast. And they didn’t stop for red lights either.
“Son of a Disney whore,” Jenks swore. “Rache, you got any more charms in that gun?”
I shook my head, scrambling for a way out of this. My eyes darted to my ankle. “Jenks, get this thing off me.”
Brett was coming around, and when he tried to get upright, Jenks lashed out, savagely connecting with his head right behind his ear. Brett’s eyes rolled back and he passed out.
“Hold on!” Nick shouted. “Right turn!”
Tossing my splat gun into the front, I gripped the side of the truck. The wheels skittered and hopped, but Ivy kept it on the road. Nick yelled an obscenity, and a motor home flashed by, tires squealing. I didn’t want to know how close we had come to becoming a hood ornament.
My heart pounded and my gaze shot to my foot at the feel of cold steel against my skin. Jenks’s shoulder muscles bunched, and as we hit a pothole, the charmed silver band snapped.
Frantic, I sent my gaze behind us. Holy crap, they were right there!
“Ivy!” I shouted, stomach clenching. “When I say, hit the breaks.”
“Are you crazy!” she shouted, glancing back at me, her short black hair framing her face and getting into her eyes.
“Just do it!” I demanded, tapping a line. Line energy filled me, warm and golden. I didn’t care that it was tainted black, it was mine. I took a breath. This was going to hurt if I didn’t do it right. Big circle. Big circle. “Now!” I shouted.
The breaks screamed. I lurched, shocked to find Jenks’s arm between my head and the metal cabinet. Brett slid forward and groaned.
“Rhombus!” I shouted, the word raging from me hard enough to hurt my throat.
Heady and strong, the line energy flashed through me, expanding upward from the circle I had imagined painted on the pavement. It wasn’t strong enough to hold a demon, but it would hold together long enough for what I wanted. I hoped.
I tossed my hair from my eyes even before the truck stopped rocking. Elation filled me as the pursing Weres slammed right into my circle.
“Yes!” I shouted, then spun at the sound of crunching metal and screams. It wasn’t us. We were stopped! I sucked in my breath when I realized an oncoming car had smacked into the other side of my circle, amber and black in the sun. Aw, shit. I’d forgotten about the other lane.
Horns blew, and the car that had hit my circle was rear-ended.“Oh, that was just beautiful!” Jenks said in admiration. His eyes were on the Weres making painful splurges of motion on the pavement. Apparently running into a wall hurt if you didn’t have a round of alphas taking away your pain.
People were starting to get out of their cars, dazed and excited. “Sorry!” I called out, wincing. Breaking my connection with the line, I took down the circle.
In the distance were sirens, and I could see flashing lights. Jenks tapped the window, and Ivy slowly accelerated, taking the first left she could and doubling back a street over, trying to put as much distance between us and the sirens as she could. I exhaled, falling to slump against the tool locker. I put a hand through the window, finding Ivy’s shoulder. She jumped, and I whispered, “Thanks,” before I pulled my hand out. We had made it. We were alive and together. And we had a hostage.
“Damn it all back to the Turn!” Jenks swore.
Nick turned to look at us, and I nudged Jenks’s foot. He was messing about in his bag and he looked ticked. “What is it, Jenks?” I breathed as we jostled along, tired, so tired.
“I lost my fudge!” he swore. “That woman took my fudge!”
Twenty-six
T he hamburger place was busy with kids, moms, and teenagers cutting loose after school, telling me more clearly than a page of demographics that the resident population was decidedly slanted to human. I slumped deeper into the molded plastic, my lips curling when I found the table sticky from someone’s pop. Brett snickered, and I made a face at him. The defiant Were was sitting across from me, handcuffed with his own steel to the table support bolted to the floor. Pride had him hiding the fact, and no one was paying us any mind. Just two people having coffee. ’Least we would be when Jenks got back with the drinks.
The Brimstone had worn off somewhere between shaking the Weres and Ivy and Nick dropping us off here, and fatigue was seeping into me like water through mud. Ivy was sure that they knew how to track Brett’s location from an active phone, and the two of them were leading the Weres on a wild goose chase until we figured out what to do with him.