“No more fucking vampires,” I pleasantly agreed, then smiled at the guy, who was making himself at home on the hood of the car. Keeping my gaze on him, I made a blind effort with the key.
“You live around here?”
“Used to. Moved away.” Finally, the key found home, and the lock clicked open. “Sorry, but we need to get going, so . . .”
He looked at me for a moment, eyes narrowing as he realized he’d been handily rejected. And because he couldn’t fathom the possibility that anyone would reject him, he immediately decided there was something wrong with us.
He tapped the blade of the knife against the hood. “You like fangs? You think that’s hot?”
“I think you should get off my car so my friend and I can leave.”
He flipped the knife in his hand so its point was facing me, and he leaned in closer. “I think you need to learn some respect.”
Mallory’s hands began to shake, her body vibrating with energy. She crossed her arms, tucking in her hands. She gnawed on her lip, banked anger in her expression, all of it directed at the guy who was hassling me.
She wanted to kick his ass.
She wasn’t the only one.
“I know plenty about respect,” I said. “But really, we need to go.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know what we just did?” He gestured back toward the column of smoke rising behind us. “We brought a building down. They think they’re powerful? The vampires? Fuck them. Fuck them. Clean Chicago!” he yelled out, raising his arms to gather more of the rioters around him—and around us. They came with their weapons and began to surround us, drumming them on the Volvo to the beat of their own hate-filled symphony.
“You ready to go now?” asked the hateful one, the man who’d started the drama.
He slammed his hockey stick down on the hood, leaving a two-foot-long dent in her otherwise unmarred steel.
“What the hell!” I said, my own emotions breaking through the faux-human barrier I’d erected. I squeezed my hands into fists to keep from throttling him, from attacking humans in the middle of a street surrounded by witnesses, and no matter the justification. “That’s my car!”
“Yeah? What the fuck are you going to do about it?” He hit the windshield, a crack spreading from side to side.
“Maybe it’s not her you need to worry about.”
We both looked at Mallory, who’d spoken those ominous words. She’d pulled off her knitted cap, and the tendrils of blue hair that had escaped her braid floated around her face in the cloud of magic. That cloud wasn’t visible, but I could feel it, as though I were standing inches away from high-voltage wires.
“You got something to say about it, blue hair?”
“Mallory,” I warned, but she was staring at him, giving him a look you might have expected from a genius to the man who’d just asked the world’s stupidest question.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I do.”
She blinked . . . and so did a streetlight across the street. It flashed and crackled with light, loudly enough to make even the fearless rioters flinch. Another second of staring, and the light exploded—sending a shower of green and orange sparks into the air. Chaos erupted, and we took full advantage.
I tossed her the keys. “Get in the car!” I yelled out, and as she unlocked her door and climbed in, I used my door like a blunt object, slamming it against the guy’s knees until he crumpled to the ground.
My predatory senses now on full alert, I heard the whip of a bat behind me and ducked just in time. But it was already moving, and it smashed right through the driver’s side window.
“Damn it, I just washed the road salt off this thing,” I gritted out, grabbing the middle of the bat and thrusting it backward into the gut of the woman who’d tried to take my head off.
The woman grunted and fell to her knees. I dropped the bat, climbed into the car, started it up, and gunned it. Most of the mob dropped away to avoid getting run over; some were braver and made a run at us, one final attempt at violence. I put the accelerator to the floor to gain speed and hightailed it down Division past another set of screaming police cruisers.
We’d gotten away. But what were we heading into?
Chapter Four
SWEET AND LOW DOWN
The car was freezing. The driver’s side window was gone, and the windshield, while still in place, was marred by a web of cracks. Fortunately, Little Red wasn’t far away. The bar was located on a corner in Ukrainian Village, which was only a hop and a skip—and in this case, a freezing car ride—away from Wicker Park.
When I’d put a few blocks between us and the riot, I glanced over at Mallory. Her knit cap was in place once again, and her arms were crossed, hands tucked into her sides. She’d banked her magic again, only a whisper of energy flowing around her, and all of it melancholy.