Allegiance(41)

“What the hell are you doing?” Nik struggled to free his arm, but stilled when she reached from behind him and pressed against his neck what felt like a knife blade. Besides, she was seriously strong. Since he got no psychic flashes from her touch, as he normally would a human, she was likely a vampire. Which meant she could slit his throat and twist his arm off at the same time, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

She pressed her mouth next to his left ear, her hair tickling the sensitive skin of his earlobe. The blade pressed more tightly against his neck. “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

“Sergeant Nik Dimitrou. US Army. Came in tonight for the Omega team.”

She relaxed the blade for a second, and then pressed it again. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Lady, we could be doing a lot more to help put out that fire if we could actually get to it.” What would convince her? “Okay, I was just in Mirren Kincaid’s house. He has a red rug in his living room, leather sofa. There are three bedrooms along the back hallway. His wife, Glory, is Native American and she likes to cook. And she talks—a lot.”

Finally, she pulled away from him. “Yeah, Glory’s a real chatterbox. And vampires have mates, not husbands and wives. I’m Shawn, by the way.”

Nik rubbed his neck, and his fingers came away bloody. His vampire Valkyrie noticed, too; her gaze locked on his hand like a laser target, and her eyes took on a silvery glaze.

“You can suck on my fingers if you can tell me whether there’s a water source nearby.” Nik looked down the street and spotted an old-fashioned red-and-white hydrant near the old mill. “Does that hydrant work?”

Shawn jerked her gaze away from his hand and looked down the street at the mill and then back at the burning house. “There’s an emergency fire hose in each of the new community houses. Why didn’t I think of that? Come on.”

Fortunately, someone else had thought of it. By the time they reached the house adjacent to the corner lot, Cage was on his way down the steps hauling the heavy coiled gray hose. “Shawn, take this over and hook it up to the hydrant.”

The man’s voice was hoarse, and it was no wonder. The roof on the house was blazing now, and the smoke had grown as thick as the blinding fog they’d get during training in the woods and hills near Fort Benning.

Nik squelched his first instinct to be the man—take the hose from Shawn and drag it to the hydrant. If he’d learned anything from working with Robin and the big-cat shifters, it was that paranormal beings needed no muscle from him. Far from it.

He walked alongside Cage toward the main blaze. “What can I do?”

“We can make—”

Whatever he’d planned to say was lost when a thin, tall guy with a soot-blackened face yelled at them from the adjacent sidewalk. “Cage, she’s inside! Hannah ran back inside after that goddamned dog. I’m going in after her.”

“Bloody hell.” He clapped Nik on the shoulder. “Next lesson in Vampires 101, mate. We burn up just like humans. Let’s go.”

They ran across the lawns, following the skinny guy. Judging by his accent, Nik assumed it was Cage’s old acquaintance Fen Patrick.

Shawn pulled the heavy hose across the street, but lost control of it when two women—Nik recognized Aidan’s mate and the other was a strawberry blonde he’d never seen—turned on the hydrant. The hose uncoiled like a malevolent, awakening serpent, flipping and flopping in myriad directions while spraying a heavy blast of water at everything except the fire.

Shawn raced after the end of the flailing hose, moving with a blur of speed, and pinned it down with one good stomp of her boots. She lifted it without so much as a grimace, even though Nik knew it was heavy and hard to control, and directed the spray toward the house.

Cage waved to get Shawn’s attention, then pointed at himself and at the house. “Cover us!”

Shawn nodded, adjusting the stream of water to douse the doorway and make sure it was clear.

Fen ran ahead of them. “Let’s each take a room,” he shouted. “The dog is probably hiding under furniture. We find the dog and we find Hannah.”

Nik took the rear, pulling his shirt over his nose and mouth, thankful for the Ranger survival training that had forced them to maneuver burning buildings. His shirt was woven cotton, which was good. He assessed Cage’s and Fen’s clothing as they edged their way through the front door. Cage’s black shirt was lightweight but also looked like cotton. Fen wore some kind of light sweater Nik suspected was synthetic; he’d be in trouble if he hit the flames. Synthetics didn’t burn; they melted.