The question was why. And whether it was going to get even looser or this blip was something she needed to take advantage of right now.
Her eyes rimmed the window. Visually, there was nothing out of the norm with her prison and she put her hand up to the glass, just to be sure-- yup, she'd been right.
Had Lash died? Been wounded?
At that moment, a big black Mercedes eased by the front of the house, and she sensed the sonofabitch inside. And whether it was because he'd been taking her vein or because the barrier was weakening, his emotional grid was crystal clear to her symphath side: He was feeling isolated. Anxious. And... weak.
Well, well, well...
Didn't that give credibility to the loosening she'd sensed. And an idea why he wasn't all Johnny-on-the-spot to come get her. If she were Lash, and she were not feeling particularly strong, she would wait for the dawn to come before going inside.
Either that or she would head off and get some serious-ass reinforcements.
But then, that's what they made cell phones for, right?
When the Mercedes left the neighborhood and didn't show signs of returning, she took two steps back from the window. Tensing her thighs, she sank down into a fighter's stance, curling up her fists and angling her body slightly back on her hips. She breathed deep and focused and... Snapping out her right fist with all the strength in her shoulder, she punched the barrier hard enough so that if it had been the jaw of a male, she'd have cracked the f**ker into pieces.
The spell stung her back, but all around the room, ripples appeared, her prison cell shimmering as if recalibrating itself after an injury. Before there could be a complete regathering, she pitched another punch--
The glass on the far side of the barrier shattered on impact.
At first, she was struck stupid... even as she felt the breeze on her face, and looked down at her now-bleeding knuckles for confirmation there was no other reason why the window had broken.
Holy... shit.
Quickly considering her potential exit strategies, she looked over her shoulder at the door John and the Brothers had left open.
The last thing she wanted to do was go out through the house, because she didn't know the layout and had no clue what she was going to run into along the way. But instinct told her she was probably too weak to dematerialize--so if she tried to bust out through the window, she didn't know if she'd be able to pull off a midair disappearance.
In which case she'd yard-sale in the road down below.
The open doorway was her best shot. She could use her own body as a fist, and with a running start, she'd have even more power behind her.
Turning around, she put her shoulder blades against the wall, sucked in a deep breath... and sprinted across the room, the balls of her feet driving her weight over the floor, her arms pumping.
She hit the barrier and the pain was incandescent, firing through every single cell in her body, lighting her up from the inside out. The agony blinded her at the same moment that the spell held her in place, trapping her inside its confines and rendering her as good as dead--
Except then there was a tearing as her momentum won out over her prison's invisible bars... and goddamn it if she didn't end up on the far side of that bedroom.
As her body broke free, she slammed into the corridor's wall, to the point where she expected to take a layer of paint off with her face and chest as she slid down onto the floor.
With her head spinning and her eyes filled with flashing lights, she kicked her own ass into gear. She was out, but was not free.
Glancing back, she watched the rippling of the spell as it recast itself... and wondered if her breaching it didn't send some kind of signal out to Lash.
Go... now... get out... run!
Dragging herself off the floor and down the hall, she hit the stairs on unreliable legs, careening around, stumbling. In the foyer below, the stink of lesser blood choked her to the point of gagging, and she moved away from it, although not because of her nose. All of the egress and ingress at the house happened in the back. If she had nothing but a sliver of time on her side, she needed to focus on finding another way out.
Up ahead, the front door was a massive, ornately carved thing, with glass into which iron bars were set. But all they had for locks were simple dead bolts.
Candy-from-a-baby time.
She walked up, put her hand on the Schlage mechanism, and focused what she had left of her energy on shifting the pins. One... two... three... and the fourth.
Throwing the door wide, she had one foot outstide when she heard the creak of someone coming into the kitchen.
Oh shit, Lash was back. He'd come back for her.
In a flash she was gone, panic giving her wings that her focused mind put to good use. Given the shape she was in, she knew she wasn't going to make it far and decided the best she could do was her basement place. At least there, she could be safe while she regrouped.
Xhex took form in the sheltered alcove that led down into her studio and sprang the copper locks with her mind. As she went through the door, the motion-sensing lights came on in the whitewashed corridor, and she lifted her arm to shield her eyes as she stumbled down the steps. Locking the door with her thoughts, she tripped forward, becoming dimly aware she had a limp.
The impact of the wall? The scramble down the stairs? Who the f**k knew or cared.
She made it into her bedroom and shut herself in. As the automatic lights came on, she looked at the bed. Clean white sheets. Pillows all arranged. Duvet spread flat.
She didn't make it to the mattress. As her knees gave out, she let herself go, her skeleton collapsing in on itself until she was nothing but a pile of sticks covered by skin.
It was not sleep that claimed her as she hit the floor. But that was okay.
Unconsciousness worked better anyway.
Blaylock reentered the brownstone with Rhage and Vishous a mere twenty minutes after they'd left with John. As soon as they'd gotten him back to the compound safely, they'd returned to finish the sweep of the premises: this time, they were looking for the small stuff like ID, computers, cash, drugs, anything that gave them intel.
Having watched the carnage John Matthew had thrown around, the aftermath barely registered as Blay walked in the kitchen, and immediately started pulling open cupboards and drawers. Vishous headed up to the second floor while Rhage rooted around the front of the house.
He was just finding his groove when Rhage called out, "The front door's wide open."
So someone had been back here since they'd pulled out with John. Lesser? Not likely as they would never have left things unsecured. Maybe a human thief? The Brothers hadn't locked up the back when they'd taken off so perhaps someone had waltzed right in.
If it had been a human, what a sight they'd gotten. Might have explained a rushed exit out the other way.
Blay popped his heat just in case there was someone in the house, and with his free hand, he was quick as he rifled around. He found two cell phones in a drawer with the knives, neither of which had chargers--but V would solve that. There were also some business cards by the phone, but they were all for humans in the contracting trade--who had probably been used to work on the brownstone.
He was tackling the cupboards under the counter when he frowned and looked up. Right in front of him was a bowl of fresh apples.
Glancing down in the direction of the stove, he saw some tomatoes. And a loaf of French bread in a paper wrapper.
Straightening, he walked over to the Sub- Zero and cracked the thing open. Organic milk. Takeout from Whole Foods. A fresh turkey ready to be cooked. Smoked Canadian bacon.
Not exactly prisoner food.
Blay looked up at the ceiling, where heavy footsteps sounded out as V went from room to room. Then his eyes traced the kitchen as a whole, from the cashmere dress coat draped over a stool to the copper pans stacked in the open shelving to the coffeepot that had a brew in its belly.
Everything was name-brand and new and neater than a picture out of a catalog.
This was up to Lash's standards for real... but lessers weren't supposed to be able to eat. So unless he was treating Xhex like a queen, which was highly unlikely... someone was chowing down on a regular basis in this house.
The butler's pantry was right off the kitchen and Blay stepped through the wet remains of the slayer to give the shelved room a quick once-over: enough canned foods to keep a household going for a year.
He was on his way out when his eyes caught something on the floor: There was a subtle series of scratches across the otherwise mirror-perfect surface of the hardwood... and they were arranged in a half-moon shape.
Blay's knees cracked as he got down on his haunches and shoved aside a canister vacuum cleaner. The beadboard wall looked flush and uninterrupted by any seams that shouldn't have been there, but a quick rapping trip around with his knuckles and he found a hollow space. Taking out his knife, he used the hilt as a sonar device to determine the precise dimensions of the hidden tuck hole; then he flipped the weapon around and penetrated the tongue-and-groove pattern with the tip of the blade.