"I have." Vanda stumbled to her cot. Her heart ached in her chest. Marta. Fighting for the Malcontents.
Tootsie screamed.
Vanda spun around. A Malcontent had entered the room.
Giselle ran to the huddle of whimpering women at the back of the room.
The Malcontent spotted Vanda and raised his sword. She grabbed her whip off the cot.
With a shout, he charged. She leaped over a cot and snapped her whip at him.
Scarlett threw a pillow at him, then squealed when the Malcontent turned and stalked toward him. Scarlett pressed against the wall, trembling.
Tootsie teleported, landed right behind the Malcontent, and clonked him on the head with a Blissky bottle. The Malcontent tumbled onto the floor.
Scarlett leaped into Tootsie's arms. "You saved me!"
Giselle and the women screamed. Two more Malcontents had entered the room.
Colbert charged after them, killed one and engaged the other in battle. "We called a retreat!" he shouted. "Teleport to our country place now!"
The women began teleporting away.
"God be with you." Tootsie hugged Vanda, then he and Scarlett teleported away.
With a quick thrust through the heart, Colbert turned the second Malcontent to dust. He spotted the unconscious Malcontent on the floor and finished him off, too.
"Colbert!" Giselle ran into his arms.
He hugged her, then extended a hand to Vanda. "You should come with us."
"No!" Phil sprinted into the room.
Vanda grimaced at the bloodstains on his shirt. But thank God he was alive. But how he'd managed to get to the second floor on his own, she couldn't imagine.
He grabbed his cell phone he'd left on his cot. "Go ahead, Colbert. Leave while you can. We're leaving, too."
"God be with you." Colbert teleported away, taking Giselle with him.
Phil opened his phone and punched a number. "We've got to go, Vanda."
"But where?" she cried. "We can't go east."
He put the phone to his ear. "Brynley? Keep talking. We'll be right there." He wrapped an arm around Vanda and pressed the phone to her ear. "Trust me."
Vanda heard a strange woman's voice on the phone. Three Malcontents charged into the room. She gasped, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 18
Vanda stumbled. Her concentration was off, making for a messy landing.
Phil quickly regained his balance and steadied her. "Are you all right?" He snapped his phone shut and pocketed it.
"I—" She blinked. For a second she thought they were back in Howard's hunting cabin in the Adirondacks. But that couldn't be right. It was daylight in New York.
"Phil!" A young woman ran toward him, smiling.
He turned and grinned. "Brynley!"
She halted with a gasp. "You're bleeding. You've been injured."
He glanced down at his ripped and bloody polo shirt. "Just a few cuts. No big deal."
"It is a big deal." The woman cast a suspicious glance at Vanda, then grabbed Phil's arm and dragged him away. "Let me patch you up. Dear Lord, look at you." She touched his cheek. "You've gotten so handsome."
Vanda's hand curled tighter around the handle of her whip. Who the hell was this woman? With her long, gleaming hair and skintight jeans and tank top, she was bound to be a bitch. How come Phil let her touch him like that?
Phil took her hand and squeezed it. "I missed you."
Vanda cleared her throat.
He glanced at her. "Brynley, this is Vanda."
She noticed this time he didn't call her his fiancée. "How do you do?" Bitch. She glared at the beautiful Brynley. What kind of stupid-ass name was that anyway?
Brynley glowered back. "So this is the vampire you mentioned? Somehow, I thought it would be male."
Vanda's temper flared. "Who are you calling an 'it'?"
"Brynley," Phil said quietly, "Vanda and her friends are very good friends of mine."
"Friends?" She motioned at his bloody shirt. "What kind of terrible mess have these 'friends' dragged you into?"
"Phil's more than a friend." Vanda stepped toward the bitch. "He's my anger management sponsor. He can tell you how dangerous I get when I'm royally pissed!"
"Oh yeah?" Brynley stepped forward.
"Enough." Phil put out a hand to stop her. "Vanda, this is my sister. So cut the crap."
Vanda's mouth fell open. His sister? She looked past the gorgeous hair and perfect skin and noticed the pale blue eyes, just like Phil's. "I didn't know you have a sister."