The basement windows shattered. Black figures flew into the room and dropped onto the ground.
Men aimed their guns at us, shouting to each other, shouting at everyone. “Drop your weapons! Hands in the air!”#p#分页标题#e#
I caught a flash of black and white union equipment out of the corner of my eye. Didn’t dare look too close, but I knew it was the cavalry. I dropped the gun, put my hands behind my head, stood stock-still.
Eduardo fired.
At least, I think he fired first. All the shouts turned to the chatter of automatic gunfire too quickly for me to tell.
Instinct carried me through the silvery spirits that Isobel had summoned, launching myself toward her with hands outstretched. Ice clutched my heart. But I wrapped my arms around her, slamming both of us to the ground as gunfire exploded overhead. Bullets whizzed over us.
Her eyes cleared the second we hit the ground.
“Cèsar?”
The ghosts vanished.
Eduardo struck the earth next to me. Unlike Isobel, his face was blank. Blood cascaded out of his mouth. And then Gregor landed behind them.
Both of them had been shot in the chest. Just like Erin Karwell.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It seemed like the fight ended real fast after that. The incubi went down fast, and there wasn’t enough time for them to summon up a nasty thrall to save their asses. Demons hit the ground, one after another—boom, boom, boom.
The Pit was secure. Isobel and I were safe.
As soon as everything was dead, the union guys stepped aside to let the OPA agents step in. They weren’t from my department, Magical Violations. Considering that we were dealing with incubi, they’d probably come from the Infernal Relations Department—IRD—so I didn’t know their names. I’d seen them in the cafeteria at work, though. The faces were familiar.
And then there was another familiar face. Fritz kicked an incubus body down the stairs as he stormed into the basement.
“Cèsar,” he said when he saw me. Then his gaze fell on Isobel and his eyes lit up. “Belle!”
Fritz hauled Isobel to her feet and kissed her.
I’d like to say that was less shocking than coming up against the Needles at The Pit, but it wasn’t. Surprise squirmed right through my adrenaline haze. All I could do was stare at my boss and the necrocognitive he’d ordered me to find. A necrocognitive that he knew really well, apparently.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, cupping her face in both hands.
She pushed him away. Her face was bright red under the bruises. “Don’t do that.”
“They beat you, didn’t they?”
“Cèsar kept them from doing worse,” Isobel said.
Fritz barely glanced at me. “Well done, Hawke.” Hawke? Since when did we stop being on a first-name basis? “Belle, we need an EMT to look at you. Come with me.”
He dragged her away.
Isobel caught my eye and mouthed, Just a second.
I stared after her for a good two minutes, trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened.
Everything from the last week seemed disjointed, like a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together. I understood that Gregor had put a bounty on my head. I also understood that Eduardo and Joey had been going for the money. But how Erin and Isobel fit in—how my boss knew Isobel—I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
“Agent Hawke?” It was one of the guys from IRD.
I wiped blood off my upper lip. Gregor’s beating seemed to have resulted in a broken nose. “What’s up?”
He asked me a few questions. How did I know the witch outside the perimeter? Why had I called in Domingo Hawke instead of backup? What was Eduardo’s role in what had happened here? I answered him on autopilot. Unlike the LAPD, the IRD agent actually seemed to believe me. Refreshing.
I’d witnessed the aftermath of more than a few investigations gone nasty, so the sight of the forensics team moving into The Olive Pit was actually comforting. It was so normal, in that “my life is weird” kind of way, that the residual panic from the fight finally began to subside.
The insanity of the week drained out of me, replaced the monotony of the status quo.
I stood back and watched as everything was tagged, labeled, and outlined. Ballistics experts started figuring out where all the bullets had come from. I could have told them it was pointless trying to sort that out, but nobody seemed interested in talking to me.
In fact, now that everything had calmed down, it was like I’d turned invisible. Spent a few days a fugitive and started feeling like I was important. Now Isobel and Fritz were having an intense conversation in the corner, like the kind of conversation that looked like it should happen in a locked bedroom somewhere, two IRD agents were questioning Thandy, and the photographers were taking pictures of everything but me.