“Nice,” Trent said. He’d seen me do this before, but probably not with such quickness. I was edgy, and I jerked again when Bis landed on my shoulder.
“You want to jump out?” Bis said eagerly. “Let them find an empty church? We need to go soon. The sun is almost up.”
My eyes flicked to Trent. That was why they were waiting. Sunup would put Bis and an easy escape out of reach. I was starting to like robins a lot more.
“We are not abandoning the church,” Jenks said, wings clattering.
Keeping silent and my options open, I scooped up my splat gun and checked the hopper. The charms were not old, but they weren’t new either—and vampires were fast.
“Rache?”
Jenks hovered, waiting for me to agree with him, but all I did was tuck the cherry-red paintball gun at the small of my back. Going to a drawer, I got a couple of extra canisters of CO2 to fire it. Someday I’d figure out a charm to propel them, but until then, it was good having a spell that would work without connection to a ley line.
“Ah, Rache?”
I leaned against the counter and sighed. I didn’t want to flee. Why were they even after us? Cormel couldn’t make me do anything. But then my heart thudded as I thought of Ivy.
“I need to call Ivy,” I said as I pulled my shoulder bag off the table. Damn it, I’d told her she’d be okay. I’d told her there’d be no reprisal. I shouldn’t have filled her head with such do-gooder tripe. I was going to get her killed.
We had about ten minutes until sunrise, and Trent sat casually against the table, ankles crossed and looking calm and even a little sexy. “Bis . . . ,” he drawled, catching my attention. “Can you leave undetected, find a vampire at the outskirts, and jump him here?”
My finger scrolling through my numbers slowed and my eyebrows rose. Jenks began to chuckle. “Oh, I like that,” he said as Bis nodded.
“We have time,” Trent said, his smile shifting to an ugly hardness. “If we can find out who and why, I don’t mind leaving. Especially if we can drop back and hit whoever planned this while their main force is still here.”
My God, the man might be a business tycoon, but his heart was that of a warlord elf.
Jenks’s dust pooling on the center counter turned silver. “Let me find Jumoke. He’ll know who would be easiest to snag.”
I kind of felt bad for whomever Bis was going to snatch. Then I caught a glimpse of movement between the tombstones and the guilt went away.
“Back in a sec.” Bis gave me a poignant look before he took to the air, a draft sending my snarled hair back as he followed Jenks out of the kitchen and presumably into the garden.
We were down to kidnapping, and heart pounding, I texted G2G to tell Ivy to go to ground, then hit her number, wanting to give her more than a text could handle. “I’ve got zip strips in the top drawer there,” I said, phone to my ear. Please pick up. Please.
“I’ve got something better.” Motions holding a hard intent, Trent cleared off the center counter, piling everything on Ivy’s stuff. I knew it would irritate her to no end. My skin tingled as he pulled more heavily on the line, and I hoped they didn’t have a magic user out there with them. They might be able to feel it.
Finally Ivy answered her phone, and I pressed it to my ear. “Ivy, thank God.”
“Rachel? Why are you up so early?” she said, following it immediately with “Shit, what happened? Is everyone okay?”
Clearly she hadn’t gotten the text yet. She sounded fine, and my eyes closed in relief. I could hear dogs in the background. “We’re okay,” I said, and I heard her say something muted to someone else. Nina, probably. “The church is surrounded. Bis is going to jump us out as soon as we know who it is, so don’t come back. You’re okay, right?”
With a slight shock, I realized I wanted to run. It was something new to me, but perhaps I was only now realizing the fragile nature of life. I wasn’t running away, I was running to find a stronger position. Whoever this was, they weren’t going to get away with it.
“Cormel!” Ivy hissed, her vehemence taking me aback.
“I don’t think so. I’ll let you know who as soon as we find out. Are you being followed?”
“No.” She was distracted, and I wondered what Trent was wanting to do with the overhead rack when he eyed it.
I jerked at the sudden displacement of air, reaching for my splat gun when Bis popped back into the kitchen. His claws were pinching the shoulder of a terrified vampire.
“What the hell?” the young, surprisingly muscled living vampire shouted, eyes pitch black and short fangs sheened with saliva. He took a breath to shout for help.
“Ta na shay, sar novo,” Trent said softly, every word seeming to have edges. My skin crawled, and the aura about his hand glowed a soft silver. I froze when he reached out and the glow vanished from his hand to blossom anew over the vampire—swamping him in a heartbeat. The vampire’s exclamation choked off. He stiffened as the charm soaked in, and he went still.
“Sar novo,” Trent said again, shoving the vampire against the center counter where he slumped, eyes open, breathing, but clearly unable to move voluntarily.
The entire thing had taken maybe three seconds.
“Uh, Ivy, I have to go,” I said, impressed and a little scared. “Please. Don’t trust Nina,” I said, ashamed, and the hum of Jenks’s wings dropped in pitch.
Ivy was silent, then, “Okay,” and the conversation ended with a click.
My eyes were on the terrified vampire as I put my phone in a back pocket. Bis had puffed himself up larger, managing to look menacing next to Trent. Jenks, though, didn’t give a fig about impressing our captive, clearly more upset about abandoning the church as he wiped the soot off his wings. “Rache,” he started, and I rubbed my forehead. It was the right thing to do, hard as it was.
The garden, my kitchen. But to stay and fight might get someone killed when we would be better off dropping back and attacking with more strength later. I was trying to make smarter decisions—I loved Trent, and realizing I’d abandon the church to get him out of this threat was . . . a gut-wrenching shock, both happy and sad.
“This won’t take long.” Trent didn’t sound like himself, and I watched, chilled, as he reached up into the rack, his motions sure and steady, his eyes never leaving the vampire’s. The vampire panted, small noises coming from him as he tried to break through the binding charm. Trent looked awful, showing a part of himself he wasn’t proud of—and being with me had brought it forth again.