Burned (18 page)

“Just making my way out,” I said with a wave as I quickened my pace toward the revolving doors. With any luck I’d be out of here before he got out from behind his desk.

“Why don’t you hold on a minute,” he said in a syrupy sweet southern drawl. “Everyone needs to sign out.” He tapped a clipboard beside his desk with one sausage-sized finger.

I glanced at him and sighed like I was tired of his shit. Which I was, but not for the reason he probably thought. In order to not make a scene, I sauntered over to the clipboard like I’d done it a million times before. Names, times, and dates filled a piece of paper about hallway, leaving the rest of the sign in sheet completely blank. It made me wonder if I’d been signed in, but a quick scan didn’t reveal my name.

With a quick flourish, I signed in using my real name right below Maya’s own John Hancock so if anyone looked, they’d known I’d fucked their shit up before walking out the front door scot free. It would have been more fun if the guard wasn’t breathing down my neck and giving me the stink eye the entire time, but what can you do?

Done, I dropped the pen back into the black wire penholder, spun on my heel, and made my way toward the door. The security guard’s radio buzzed, and he raised it to the ear. I wasn’t sure if he was hearing something about me, but I didn’t wait to find out. I put some English in my steps and got into the revolving door. I almost made it outside. Almost.

As the door moved, shutting me in between the walls and the opening, the big guard pressed a button beside his desk. The door stopped with a magnetic screech that held me trapped inside the black-metal-framed safety glass.

Then, like he had all the time in the world, he grabbed the clipboard, glanced at it, and nodded vigorously to the radio while speaking softly enough for me to miss everything he said. It didn’t matter. I knew the look he was giving me. I was made.

Well, that was fine. I didn’t want to go the easy way anyway. I called upon my power, and as I did, the scabs along my tattoos burst into flames. Pain filleted my brain as Hellfire streamed from every single open wound and dripped off my skin like molten magma. I gritted my teeth against the agony and pressed my hand against the glass in front of me. It melted, dripping down like molten candlewax as I drew my aching fingers in a slow circle. The center piece of the glass fell outward and hit the cement with a crash as the guard behind me got to his feet and leveled a huge Dirty Harry revolver at me.

“Don’t move a muscle,” he said, sighting me from behind the huge gun. “I will shoot you.”

“Pass,” I replied and threw myself through the hole in the molten glass. I hit the sidewalk hard on my shoulder and came up on a roll. My own momentum carried me into the street, and I barely avoided becoming a pancake beneath the wheels of a taxi as it zoomed by. Fucking traffic was going to be the death of me.

A bullet whizzed by my ear as I steadied myself. Somehow, the guard was already outside. How was that possible? I never got an answer because I took off running. The next two shots from the guard’s revolver caught me square in the center of the back. They didn’t penetrate the spell-hardened leather of my trench coat, but they did hurt like a son of a bitch. I stumbled forward directly into the path of a bus. The smell of burning rubber hit me full in the face as the driver slammed on his brakes and sent the bus skidding toward me in a cloud of black smoke.

“Tueri!” I cried at the top of my lungs while throwing my arm up in front of me. Hellish flame exploded around my body in a flickering dance of heat. The bus slammed into me a heartbeat later. My tiny body managed to put some sizeable scorch marks on the front of the massive vehicle. I was flung backward like a rag doll. I smacked into the pavement hard enough to see stars, but nothing in me seemed to be broken. I crawled to my feet as the flames surrounding me died away.

“Don’t move, dirt bag!” the guard hollered, standing on the sidewalk with his gun pointed at me. I wasn’t sure what his deal was, but it was starting to piss me off. He was way too tenacious for the average security guard.

“No!” I yelled back and scrambled away from him. My arm felt like it was on fire. Blood poured from nearly every tattoo on my dark skin. Still, now wasn’t the time to worry about it because while my trench coat might be bulletproof, I was reasonably sure my skull wasn’t.

Another shot took me in the back of the knee, kicking the leg out from under me. As I fell back down to the ground, I slapped my arms outward to absorb some of the impact. It hurt anyway, but I was instantly glad I wasn’t unconscious and that I was wearing a long ass trench coat. If I’d only been wearing a bulletproof spring jacket, I’d be missing a leg right about now.

“Stop moving!” the guard said, jogging toward me, his gun still sighted on me. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”

“Okay,” I said, raising my hands in defeat.

“Get up, slowly,” the guard said, moving closer, and as he did, a fucking VW Jetta flew through the air and hit him in the chest. The force of the impact shattered everything inside him before crushing him against the front of the building. I looked away from the guard splattered across the once nice building and fixed my sights upon the other side of the street. Ricky’s brother Bobby was walking toward me wearing a blue Perry the Platypus T-shirt, board shorts, and sandals.

”Hey,” he said, waving at me, and he almost managed to keep the menace out of his voice. His sea-glass green eyes roamed over me as he ran one hand through his short red hair. “Ricky told me you might need a lift.” He held his hand out to me.

“Thanks,” I replied, reaching up and taking his hand as people started to stream out of the bus. That’s when the screaming started. It took me a moment to realize why. The guard. Well, that wasn’t good. Not even a little bit. Screaming and bodies would draw cops, assuming they weren’t already on their way.

As Bobby started to pull me to my feet, he released my hand, letting me fall back to the pavement and a grin flashed across his lips.

“That’s right, I almost forgot.” He held his hand back out to me once more as I lay there glaring at him. “Come with me if you want to live.” His impression wasn’t as good as his sister’s had been, but I took his hand anyway.

“Where’s your car?” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and trying to keep visions of punching him in his stupid nose from dancing in my brain. “We need to get out of here before the cops show up.”

Bobby pointed at a black Mercedes parked beside a conspicuously empty spot on the street. Had that been where the Jetta had been sitting? I was about to ask when people began shooting at us from the building covered in splattered guard.

Chapter 27

A spray of bullets caught Bobby right in the middle of his smug face, pitching him backward in a spray of blood and bone. While I was pretty sure they weren’t using silver since there was no flare of silver flame from the wounds, I wasn’t sure Bobby could survive such an attack even though he was a werewolf.

Bobby landed hard on his back in the middle of the street. What remained of his face stared emptily up into the sky. I flung myself sideways to avoid getting myself shot, and rolled to my feet as bullets chewed up the asphalt. I threw one arm behind my head in an effort to block my skull with my bulletproof trench coat and sprinted toward Bobby’s Mercedes.

Another stream of bullets hit the still running car’s engine block, probably in an effort to keep it from becoming a getaway vehicle. Sparks flew as bullets smacked into the metal, but none penetrated the car’s tough skin. So it was bulletproof. Awesome. I threw myself over the trunk of the car and landed hard on the sidewalk behind it. Pain flashed up my elbows as another spray of bullets tore chunks out of the building behind me.

I dropped to my belly and looked under the car to see Bobby crawling toward me on his elbows. The entire right side of his face was nothing more than cracked bone and ribbons of flesh, reminding me of a skeletal terminator. Above him, I could see no less than six AR15 assault rifles poking out from the third floor windows. If they shot Bobby full of holes, he’d never make it to the car. Well, I was always good at playing distraction.

“Ignis!” I cried at the top of my lungs as I stood and hurled a handful of Hellfire at the center shooter. I’d intended to lob a few more fireballs, but the blast ripped out of me in a stream of horrible agony that let me know I wasn’t going to be flinging more blasts around.

The fireball smashed into the center gunman’s window with a horrific shriek as he ducked back into the building. I wasn’t sure if it’d hit him or not, but it didn’t really matter because the other five guns took sight of me and unleashed a barrage of bullets. Thank God the car was bulletproof, otherwise I’d have been holier than thou in a heartbeat. Instead, I was saved from that fate by good old-fashioned German engineering, and even better, Bobby was pulling open the driver’s door.

I followed suit, throwing open the passenger door and tossing my happy ass inside as Bobby stomped hard on the gas pedal. We rocketed forward, engine screaming while X Gon’ Give It To Ya blared from the speakers. Bullets pinged off his door, but Bobby paid no attention to them.

He weaved expertly around the still-stopped bus and the pedestrians scrambling for cover before making the transition from street to sidewalk and putting the pedal to the metal. We plowed through a trashcan and a box full of newspapers before coming back onto the street and racing through the intersection. Sirens wailed in the background, way too close for it to be good.

“Ain’t no one takes my people on my watch!” he hollered, glancing over at me and smacking the steering wheel hard. The skin covering his face was stretched so tightly he looked like a skeleton that had been dipped in white wax and covered with freckles. “You’re under my protection now!” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “And where I come from, that means something.”

“Yeah, it means a lot coming from a guy I nearly tossed in a shark tank,” I said, turning in my seat to stare out the window. No one appeared to be following us. I guess Murphy didn’t have it in for me after all.

“Aww shit, Mac. You aren’t still sore about the whole me trying to kill you thing, are you?” Bobby turned his eyes back to the road as he went up on the median, tearing up a whole planter full of daisies before moving into oncoming traffic and leaning hard on his horn like he wasn’t the one in the wrong.

“Nah, I’m good.” I sighed, wiping my face with my hand. “I need you to take me to the desert.”

“No can do, sir. My sister wants you brought back to the compound. You can deal with it from there, cool?” He shot me a pleading look. “It’s not safe out here right now. There’s too many factions warring for control, and unfortunately, you’re leverage.”

“Fuck leverage. I need to get to my family,” I said, fixing him with my best DMX stare. I couldn’t believe he was actually entertaining the idea of not helping me. I should have just left him in the street with the gunners. “You can either help me or get out of the way, but I’m going to them either way.”

“Mac, I can’t.” He shook his head. “My sister will kill me if I do.”

“You should worry about what I’m going to do.” I pulled out the black 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P I’d stolen from the guy Maya had gassed and put the barrel against Bobby’s right temple. My hand shook with barely contained rage, and it was all I could do to keep from shooting him, dumping him on the road, and driving away. Hell, I might do that anyway.

Bobby jerked the wheel hard to the left while pulling his head back. The gun went off, and the sound was so loud in the tiny space, I could barely hear anything over the sharp ringing in my ears. The bullet hit the driver’s side window and ricocheted back toward him. Bobby snatched it out of the air with one hand and offered it to me palm up.

“Mac, you aren’t going to do anything other than sit quietly.” He dropped the super-heated bullet into my lap. “I’m a werewolf, and in this city, I’m second in power only to my sister. Unlike last time, I’ve had a decent meal or ten, and you’re lacking silver. I will fucking tear you in half.” He spun the car down another street, tires drifting across the asphalt. “Are we clear?”

He had an excellent point, even if he didn’t know the state of my arm. I was getting really sick of Maya fucking up my whole demonic magic thing. Even if I had it, tangling with Bobby in the close confines of this tank of a car was a dicey situation. Still, I couldn’t let him take me away from my family when I was so close. If we waited until this blew over, they would be dead in the desert, if they weren’t already.

“Call her,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him and dropping the gun down in my lap impotently. “I want to hear her tell me, herself.”

“Don’t trust me?” Bobby asked, leaning down and turning down the volume on the radio before hitting something on the touchscreen. The sound of a ringing telephone filled the air. “It’s cool, I wouldn’t believe me either.”

“Bobby, this had better be you calling to tell me you have Mac or so help me,” Ricky squawked into the phone.

“Hey, Ricky,” I said, not sure how to go on. “What’s this about your idiot brother keeping me from rescuing my family?”

“Mac…” Ricky said, her voice quieter and less rage-filled. “It’s complicated, but if you come here, I’ll make sure your family is okay. There are people after you, and I can’t protect you if you’re out on your own. Come back here. Please.”

“I can keep myself safe, Ricky—”

“Is that so? Is that fucking so? Because right now it seems like I’m out fifty thousand dollars because I had to bribe a goddamned demon hunter to save you.” Ricky let her words sink in before continuing. “You might be good Mac, but you aren’t
that
good. Come here and do this right. The absolute last thing you want is to lead a group of assassins to your family, if you haven’t already.”

Her words made my blood go colder than ice. What if those guys who abducted me had killed my family or worse? No… no that couldn’t be. All I had to do was get there. If I did, they’d be fine. They had to be fine.