“Please! Help me!” the woman screamed, her arm reaching back for me.
I took aim, but the I.S. officer had regained his wits and darted after them, getting in my way. Glenn was still out cold, and that blonde in the lab coat was still burning everything she touched and laughing. As soon as she was done with the papers, she might start in on us.
The captive woman screamed again as the man flung open a panel in the floor, and in an instant, they were down it and gone. An I.S. officer followed.
“Damn it!” I shouted, not knowing who to shoot.
“Rache!” Jenks exclaimed, and I puffed a strand of hair out of my eyes as he hovered beside me, dripping a bright red dust.
“Where is everyone?” I griped, then shot at the brown-haired woman chucking paperwork on the bonfire, and she ducked, swearing at me. “This is insane!”
“Elevator jammed. Someone cut the power before they got out.”
Swell.
Nina howled, and Ivy flew through the air, crashing into a pylon, then slumping to the floor.
Jenks darted to her, and my eyes squinted. I’d had enough. I should’ve come down here by myself, all quiet like, and just put them all to sleep. “Take a chill pill, Nina!” I shouted, and with everyone out of my way, I sat on the floor, aimed a little to the right, and plugged Nina. Twice.
The vampire spun: her fingers savagely bent, eyes black, hunched to attack. I could see Felix behind the out-of-control DMV clerk, and with a silent “Thank you,” Nina collapsed with a sigh. The man she’d been choking fell beside her without a sound.
“Damned bug!” a high-pitched voice shouted, and I looked at the brown-haired woman swinging wildly at Jenks. She was bleeding from several scratches, and Jenks was easily staying out of her reach.
“Just flick the switch and let’s get out of here!” the blonde said, standing with a cardboard box of papers on her hip as if I wasn’t still in here and it was over. Maybe it was. Ivy was out, Glenn was down. I didn’t know what had happened to the I.S. guy in the tunnel. And where was the rest of the team? Taking a friggin’ coffee break?
Head down and one hand waving about as if at random, the brown-haired woman flicked a lever and a hiss filled the air, accompanied by the lightest touch of mist. “Tink’s a Disney whore!” Jenks shouted, and dropped.
Sticky silk, I thought when my eyelashes became clingy, then panicked when the woman in the lab coat started for him. “This is how you take care of bugs,” she said, her foot raised.
Jenks looked up at her, terrified, as he tried to get himself unstuck from the floor. Anger was a hot wash through me, and I shot at her. She froze, a bubble flashing into existence around her, but the air in my gun just hissed and nothing came out. No wonder those assassins hadn’t been able to hit anything, I thought as I flung the gun aside and reached for the other one.
“It’s that witch!” the woman shouted, her eyes going wide. “I told you putting the corr on display would get her attention. Get her!”
My jaw dropped. Get her? I shared a panicked look with Jenks, then lunged to the side as a ball of who-knew-what went hissing past me.
Suddenly I was dodging spells as the two women ganged up on me. I grabbed a still warm tray from the dying bonfire, trying to use it as a shield. It took a spell, then another. My anticharm vest would go only so far. The blonde came at me, and I spun, kicking her in the middle when she reached for me. She flew back into the labware she’d thrown on the floor, shrieking as she went down.
Grinning, I looked at the younger brown-haired woman, who abruptly looked scared. I didn’t have time for any finesse, and I slammed the tray on her head.
“Way to go, Rache!” Jenks cheered as the woman dropped.
I turned, heart pounding at a soft click, but it was only the panel on the trapdoor clicking shut. The blonde had run. She’d left her friend out cold and just run. The sound of excited men grew loud, and I realized why. Finally.
Jenks rose up, his wings moving fitfully as he continued to dust heavily to get the silk off. “Son of a Disney whore,” he swore, face red and head down as he worked at it. “What a bitch! Sticky silk? Who uses sticky silk?”
I looked at the brown-haired woman, and nudged her with a toe, not caring if she had a concussion. “People who know we might have pixy backup,” I said. “Is Ivy okay?”
“I’ll survive,” she said softly, and I turned as she sat up with a hand to the back of her head. “How’s Nina?”
Relief was a heavy sigh, and I looked at the downed vampire, slumped over the unmoving man. I thought she’d killed him. “She’s fine,” I said, glancing at my splat gun. “I’m sorry, but I spelled her. She was out of control.”
“Tell me about it.” Ivy rubbed her arm, looking up as the first of the FIB guys tore in, their guns out and screaming at us to freeze.
“We’re good!” I shouted, hands high and gun dangling from a finger. “It’s over! Don’t shoot me, for God’s sake! I’m wearing one of your lame-ass vests!”
Someone took my gun anyway, which I couldn’t have cared less about, and after I glared at him for even suggesting I was one of the bad guys, I yanked the vest off and went to Glenn. Jenks was on my shoulder, and we peered down at him as Ivy stumbled closer. The charm he’d been hit with was bad, but it wasn’t lethal.
Around us, the FIB guys were putting out the fire and securing what evidence was left. Someone had gone down the hole in the floor and an unconscious I.S. man was being hoisted up. Shoving aside the FIB guy shouting for a medic, Ivy knelt beside Glenn, gingerly lifted his lids and felt for his pulse. Shrugging, she looked up at me. “He’s stable.”
“Maybe he stepped in some of your potion?” Jenks suggested, and not knowing what else to do, I dumped a vial of saltwater on him to simply shock him awake.
Sputtering, Glenn came to. Ivy leaned back on her heels, and I sighed in relief. Wiping his face, he lay on the floor and looked up at us, then sat with Ivy’s help. Looking angry, he watched Nina being dragged off the body of the unidentified man and the FIB crew yammering. The brunette had regained consciousness, and she was screaming about her lawyer as they cuffed her to that rolling chair. Yeah. Right. Insults were falling from her like prom-date promises, and my gut tightened. I hated the C word.“I missed the fun,” Glenn said, his breathing shallow as he glanced at her raving in the chair.
“You’re all right,” Ivy breathed, and Jenks and I exchanged a look at her worry.
“I’ll live,” he said, and we backed up as he got to his feet. “What did she hit me with? It felt like I was going to die.”
“Pain charm,” I said. “You passed out, which was probably the best thing you could have done,” I said loudly when Dr. Cordova click-clacked in, her eyes cataloging everything and her lips curled in disapproval. She’d gotten here too fast. Maybe she’d tripped something.
“Let me go!” the brunette screamed, making the rolling chair jump up and down as she struggled. “I’m a scientist, you rutters! You’re nothing but a bunch of four-flusher scabs, working with chubies and corrs! We’re going to sweep the world clean from these filthy animals!”
“My God, the woman has a mouth worse than yours, Jenks,” I said, and the pixy darted to her, his hands on his hips.
“Yeah? Well, you look like toad shit right now, Suzie-Q,” he said, and she howled, lunging at him, making the officers laugh when her rolling chair moved a few inches and her hair fell into her face, which made her look even crazier.
“Uh, you did cuff her with charmed silver, right?” I asked, relieved when Glenn nodded.
“Goddamn scuppers! Let me go! You don’t know who you’re dealing with!” she yelled.
My jaw clenched at the insult. Glenn leaned toward her, eyed her up and down, and whispered, “We’re going to find out. I promise you that.”
The brunette stared at him, her chin quivering in anger. What was this woman on? She looked about twentysomething, but seemed to think she ruled the world.
Dr. Cordova smacked her gloves together before handing them to an aide, and Glenn straightened, turning on a heel to face her. “We’ll be lucky if we get anything we can use in court from this,” she said disparagingly, her gaze dropping to the char that was once evidence.
“Someone broke early,” I said before Glenn could say anything. “An alarm went off. We were lucky we even got this much.”
“Especially when some jack-crap lunker cut the power to the elevators before the doors opened!” Jenks added, and I swear I saw Dr. Cordova’s eye twitch.
“Get a team in the escape tunnel,” she said shortly, and the FIB officer looked past her at Glenn for direction. That time, I know I saw her eye twitch, and when Glenn gave the man a slight nod, the officer spun away, calling out names and converging on the hole with flashlights.
The suspects were long gone, though. Their departure had been executed with too much precision, too much . . . polished talent. I’d heard that HAPA had bases hidden in the Smoky Mountains, training areas and breeding grounds for hate cells. They knew what they were doing. And they were using magic?
Turning my back on Dr. Cordova’s ongoing harangue, I dropped the wad of my FIB vest and looked past the dead man and Nina, still unconscious but arranged to look like she was sleeping. In the corner, as yet untouched and hopefully a source of fingerprints, was a makeshift kitchen and five cots.