“Yes?”
“Where are they now?”
Oops. He’d been talking to her that time. “Head east. He’s still walking. Jaxon, you’re about fifteen feet away now. Back off just a little.”
She heard Lucius’s fingers move over the car’s console, pressing buttons. “Initiate manual operations.”
There was a grind as several panels opened up, and then the car was easing backward, to the right, forward. Mishka was highly curious about the man beside her. How he’d met Eden, how two assassins had made their relationship work, but held her questions. Now was not the time.
“Nolan has turned right.”
The SUV picked up speed, and then they, too, were swerving right. She shifted in her seat, somehow managing to balance the two pieces of equipment in her lap without seeing them. Jaxon’s red line was closing in on Nolan’s.
The two men walked a straight track for a bit, then Nolan turned left. Left again. Mishka relayed all of this.
“Where the hell is he going?” Lucius muttered.
“He’s stopped,” she said suddenly. “He’s waving his arms. You’re almost on him. Back off a little.”
One second, two.
“We’re in an alley,” Jaxon whispered. “The end is blocked.”
“This can’t be good,” Lucius said. Metal glided from a syn-leather pouch, whooshing. “Bastard wouldn’t have entered a closed alley without a reason.”
Her heart sped into hyperdrive. Sweat beaded on her skin as apprehension slithered through her. She’d asked the chip to show her all Schön while sitting still and in the contained area. There’d been no one but Nolan to latch onto. What if the chip needed to rescan every time she moved to find the others?
Use the infrared to reveal any other otherworlders in the surrounding area.
Increasing scope of infrared.
A moment later, eight other red lines appeared. All were amazingly bright and flanked Nolan’s sides. All were approaching Jaxon. Her stomach twisted painfully.
Dear God. He had no idea. “Jaxon, they’re here,” she shouted. “The other Schön are here and they’re coming after you. Start firing.”
A car door opened, and she heard Lucius jumping out. His footsteps hammered into the pavement. I need to see, she thought desperately.
Returning vision to normal.
As the world came back into focus, Mishka leaped out of the car. The equipment fell to the ground and shattered. Uncaring, she was hot on Lucius’s heels. Evening had arrived, and the daylight had dimmed substantially. There were a few cars whizzing behind her, but no people meandering along these dirty sidewalks.
She couldn’t see the otherworlders now.
Blue pyre-beams suddenly lit up the alley just in front of her. She heard Jaxon grunt, curse, and then more beams appeared. A killing haze fell over her, and she palmed her gun and two knives.
No one hurt her man and lived to tell about it. For that alone, the Schön would die.
CHAPTER 25
Jaxon, down.
Lucius, down.
All in a matter of seconds.
An invisible enemy was an undefeatable enemy. Or so Mishka allowed the Schön to think. Though she wasn’t able to see them anymore, she knew they’d glommed on to the men like locusts. They didn’t speak, but they could not control the erratic pants of their breathing as they knocked the mystified men down and held them down, guns and knives whipping from their grasps and skidding across the pavement.
“Get out of here!” Jaxon shouted to her. Worried, angry. Helpless.
“Grab them,” she called, “hold them steady.”
He tried. He really did. His arms flailed, though, sometimes grasping nothing but air. Mishka crouched and fired around Jaxon’s body, only daring to use stun beams. Just in case. The thought of Jaxon being harmed by fire, her fire, scared her. And after Dallas’s warning…“I’ll shoot them one by one if necessary.”
“Go!”
“No.”
“Keep firing,” Lucius commanded.
She did. But as she fired, Jaxon and Lucius began to disappear in spurts. An arm, a leg. Head. Pieces of them were there one moment but gone the next. Gone, there. There, gone. What the hell is happening?
Aliens attempting to shield them from view.
Likelihood of success?
Ninety-four percent.
Shit. She squeezed the trigger in quick succession. Blinked in shock. One of her blue beams must have slammed into an alien, because suddenly his cloak of invisibility disappeared, revealing a Schön warrior who’d be frozen in place for the next few hours, not dead but unable to move. His hands were gripping one of Jaxon’s wrists, as if he’d been pinning it down. She would have stunned Jaxon and Lucius to prevent invisibility, but stun did not work on humans, a defense against accidentally freezing agents.
So Mishka returned to firing at the hidden aliens, knowing they would come for her and attack her as they were attacking the men.
Her vision blurred on a rush of dizziness. Her nostrils suddenly stung. Her blasts did not slow, her finger hammering away, but she had to close her eyes for a moment. Even with her lids shut, the world seemed to spin. Reaction to the stress?
No. Foreign substance detected in the air. Most likely a sleep aid.
Sleep aid? Hell, no! Stop breathing.
Blocking airways now.
Instantly her lungs ceased inflating, and her throat closed. Having trained for this, experienced it, she did not panic. She knew the reservoir of oxygen stored inside her would slowly seep out, keeping her lucid for another ten minutes.
If she remained calm.
Determined, she opened her eyes. The men were not so lucky; unlike her, they had to breathe. They ended up sucking breath after breath of the drug into their systems. Soon Jaxon and Lucius stilled, their bodies relaxed and slumped. A moment later, they disappeared completely.
They never reappeared, not a single part of them.
Determination blending with fiery rage, Mishka scowled. Where were they? You won’t hurt them with stun. She fired like a woman possessed, managing to freeze and materialize three other Schön.
Two were a few feet away from her; the third was mere inches from her face.
She expected the impact of the aliens, but was somehow surprised when it came. Her feet were swiped out from under her, and her back pushed down. The ground seemed to swallow her up in less than a single blink, heavy bodies fighting to keep her pinned.
They struggled for what seemed an eternity. Mishka could have broken free, but in the end decided not to. She couldn’t kill all of the otherworlders while they were invisible, and she knew it. She couldn’t save Jaxon while he was invisible; she knew that, too. What she wouldn’t allow was Jaxon to be taken from her.