Leo tipped his head and walked away.
It felt like someone cut the rope to my anchor and kicked me out to sea. I stared blankly at a painting of a cherub angel as my chest weighted down like a bag of concrete. I didn’t want to be the woman that any man settled for.
Suddenly…
chaos
.
Two armed men stormed through the front door and opened fire. My eyes widened in horror and a vase beside my head exploded from a bullet. Screams tore through the house and bodies fell from the automatic gunfire. The spray of bullets pierced the walls, shattered lamps and glass fixtures, and left a spray of blood across the floor from the crumpled bodies. Those who could flash out of the way did, but few could outrun bullets.
I dove into a hallway as a man fell at my feet with blood pouring out from a hole in his eye. Particles of debris filled the air along with the stuffing from furniture. Trays of food littered the floor with broken champagne bottles, and the air crackled with gunfire and shouts.
My back flattened against the wall. Most immortals required time or energy to heal, which is why no one immediately got up. I didn’t even know if the man with a bullet in the head
could
get up.
The men stood with their backs together as they continued firing off more rounds. I flinched when gunshots erupted from all over the house. My heart was a hummingbird caught in my chest.
“Ladies and gentleman, we apologize for our late arrival, but we didn’t seem to receive an invitation! Not very gracious of you.” Laughter pealed out and the gunman fired off another round. “Nero sends his regards but is unable to attend due to other engagements. He wishes for us to give you his—”
Strength didn’t take the other man down, the momentum of my body slamming into his did. The young woman pulled a dagger from a holster beneath her long dress and plunged it into his chest without batting an eye.
“I’ve got this under control,” she said coolly. One of the pins popped out of her hair, unraveling a lock of pale ginger against her green dress. I stood up, admiring her bravery. She was the kind of woman Justus would have wanted in a Learner. Fearless.
Justus ran into an adjacent room and several men scattered throughout the house. Novis was not among the bodies, thank God. Sporadic gunfire sounded as the attack came from all sides and two men dashed up a flight of stairs.
I was shaking like a tree in a typhoon.
“Help me, please!” a voice cried out.
Behind a decorative glass wall, Adam knelt beside a lady in a bloodstained dress. As a Healer, his gift allowed him to heal any Breed—although I’m not sure what his limitations were.
I stumbled over a woman who was clutching her leg.
“Hold onto my neck,” I said, helping her up and taking her to the back of the house. My heart pounded, but adrenaline took over and I went on autopilot, carrying out one wounded victim after another.
Three men lined up the bodies out of sight behind the topiaries. The chaos was inside the house and victims were finding themselves trapped in the inner rooms. The only safe place to go was outside. It was a horrendous display of carnage.
I was running through the hallway to the front of the house when a spray of gunfire erupted. A man was poking his gun into each room and shooting down those who were hiding. He shot everyone in the head who charged at him.
There was no time to wait. I threw my hands forward to pull the gun, but it never came. Meaning—he wasn’t a Mage. I could only pull certain metals recently touched by a Mage. He glanced at his watch and ran out of sight.
Then it grew eerily silent.
The front door crashed in and an engine roared as a vehicle skidded to a stop in the main room, pinning a body beneath a tire.
It was pandemonium. People crawled over pieces of debris and I thought I saw Merc flash into the room. Someone coughed, a few voices shouted out, and then it happened.
An explosion.
Chapter 4
I shouldn’t have survived, but I did
. The floor in the hallway looked like a war zone as pieces of a collapsed wall covered the white floor. When I coughed and looked at my palm, a slick film covered my skin and shimmered on my clothes like the wet trails that slugs leave behind.
“Ghuardian?” I coughed into my hand. “Simon?”
The cries that surfaced were horrifying, but it was the quiet moans that made my hands shake.
“Silver!” Simon called out. “Cover up your wounds!”
I stumbled through the dim hallway, stepping over chunks of mortar. “Simon, where are you?”
He caught my wrist and I looked up.
“Are you injured?” His panicked voice made my heart kick up a beat. “There was liquid fire in the truck and if it gets on any of your wounds then the injury will be permanent. I don’t know how they managed to get it in an aerosol form. It’s a stubborn substance, its properties not easily changed. It’s airborne.”
That scared the hell out of me and I looked myself over. “I think I’m okay. Where’s Justus?”
My eyes widened in horror when I saw a woman with her face half gone lying in the main room.
“They won’t heal. Liquid fire will seal mortal injuries.” Simon grimaced and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it over the dead woman’s face. “Sodding bastards!”
In a connecting room, the woman who helped take down the two gunmen was crouched on her knees. Blood trickled from her ears and she appeared disoriented. A tall Chitah was dragging an overweight man out of what used to be the front door.
Amid the chaos, Adam stood up and took a few shaky steps before he knelt in front of a body missing a leg. In vain, he tried to heal the dead man.
I shuddered when I noticed the gashes on his face and the blood on his arms and shirt. He wiped his brow and I remembered him standing behind the glass wall.
That damn glass wall
! I sprang forward, tripping over a chunk of concrete in my flimsy shoes.
“Adam! It’s too dangerous in here. The air isn’t safe! You need to get outside and—”
“I can’t leave them. They need help,” he said in a disconnected voice, grimacing from his own pain. He lifted the man in his arms and disappeared through the rear of the house.
“Search the room,” Simon yelled out. “Justus was headed this way looking for Novis before the explosion.”
My tangled hair clung to my face and I tried to avoid looking at the carnage.
“Ghuardian!” I shouted in a raspy voice. “Please call out!”
I crawled over piles of broken furniture near the vehicle; it didn’t appear the intent was to blow up the building as Nero could afford enough explosives to complete the job. He rigged this bomb to leave people injured. Permanently.
A foot stuck out from beneath a white sofa. I lifted one end, hoping the leg was still attached to a person. He looked to be a boy of sixteen, and while my fingers felt for a pulse, the chunk of metal embedded in his chest told me everything I needed to know.
Part of a stone archway had collapsed, along with half of the ceiling. Mage energy nipped at my skin and I crawled over the debris into the room with hope in my pocket. Sitting on a large pile, my hands worked at tossing aside chunks of rock and plaster.
A deep voice groaned beneath the rubble and as I cleared some of the debris, I found myself staring at the hilt of a sword.
Footsteps crunched behind me and my hand flew up.
“Don’t come any closer,” I yelled out. “I need a blanket from a safe room.” I whipped my head around and saw Leo. “Get me a blanket that doesn’t have any liquid fire on it!”
“Is it Justus?” Simon dropped on his knees beside me. “Good girl. We’ll do this very carefully.”
Leo returned with a tightly folded blanket he handed to Simon. Something was stuffed beneath his shirt so that he looked pregnant. Leo draped the blanket over our backs, sealing us in dim light.
“Let’s give it a minute for the liquid fire to settle,” he said in our stuffy pocket of air.
“How is this going to work?” I asked in a worried voice.
“As best it can, love.” Simon shook his head. “We’ll do the best we can.”
A couple of agonizing minutes passed before Simon pulled away a flat stone. I followed his cue and we carefully worked together. Others held the ends of the blanket, securing them down. There wasn’t much to uncover. The hilt of the sword was flush with his belly and blood soaked his white dress shirt. Simon unbuttoned the jacket and stopped me from lifting the last bits of rubble. A bead of sweat dripped from my forehead.
“Hang in there, chap,” Simon said encouragingly.
I brushed my hand across Justus’s forehead, relieved he had no other serious injuries. His eyes were hooded, and I stroked his sweaty brow with my thumb.
“Hand me the sheet,” Simon called out.
When the folded sheet appeared, he paused. “Carefully remove the remaining blocks from his stomach. I doubt they’re coated in liquid fire, but lift them straight up.”
Justus wasn’t just impaled, that sword was pushed all the way to the hilt. I grimaced and fought back the sickening feeling in my stomach.
“What about his back?” I asked.
Simon tore a slit in the center of the sheet with a dagger, draping it over Justus with the handle of the sword poking through the hole.
“The blast would have thrown him down and it settled on top. What we’re doing is protecting him for what’s about to happen.”
I pulled my hand away from Justus and looked over my shoulder. “What’s about to happen, Simon?”
He stood up and snapped the blanket off in a dramatic fashion.
Crawling to his side, I cradled my Ghuardian’s head with my left arm, which also kept him from moving.
“Stay still,” I said against his temple, brushing my hand over the bristles of his short hair. His eyes rolled back.
When Leo stepped forward and reached for the sword, I caught his wrist.
“Silver, let him go,” Simon warned. “Someone needs to pull the sword free and release him from this pain. Leo’s the strongest one among us.”
Novis stood in profile with his head hung low. There was a trace of guilt in his voice. “It was mounted upstairs. I’ve kept it for over six hundred years. Please accept my apologies.”
“Can no one take away his pain?” I asked, looking between the men. A Mage kept gifts closely guarded like a fantastic hand of cards.
“Christian?” Novis yelled out.
“No,” Justus grumbled. “Keep him out of this.”
Simon wiped his cheek, leaving a smudge of dirt. “Distract him,” he whispered to me.
How the hell do you distract someone from getting a forty-inch blade pulled from their gut?
By blurting out the most inappropriate thing, of course.
“Simon showed me what binding is. Remember that time you caught us in my bedroom?”
His eyes slanted into fiery slivers and before he could mutter a word, Leo gripped the sword and pulled. Justus peeled his lips back and his moan turned into a roaring shout.
“Ghuardian, look at me!”
His beautiful eyes—the color of summer sky—locked on mine, glazed over.
“I’m sorry I made a spectacle of myself tonight. Just one second of pain. We’ll heal you as soon as it’s out. Focus on my face.”
He bravely locked eyes with mine and a fire flickered in them. This man possessed a control over pain that I would never understand.
Justus nodded and Leo pulled once more. I winced as the heat wafted off him.
“Someone knock him out,” a voice suggested.
I snapped my head around. “Why can’t you pull it?”
Leo bent over with his hands on his knees—his cheeks ruddy from the exertion. “It’s wedged deep in the floor. Where’s the Vampire?”
“Securing the grounds,” Novis replied. “There are still men unaccounted for.”
Simon palmed his forehead—something he often did when thinking. “What can we do? What can we do?”
I stood up and looked hesitantly at Novis. “Is this a regular sword? Has it been tempered with magic?”
Novis turned his head to the small cluster of men gathered behind us. “Gentlemen, you can do no more here. Go outside and help the injured.”
Obediently, the small crowd dispersed with the exception of Simon. Novis stepped forward to speak with me privately and I noticed a small cut on his cheek. “Do you think you have enough control?” he whispered.
“Justus doesn’t understand how it works and neither do I.” After a quick glance over my shoulder, I turned my concern back to Novis. “I’ve never done anything like this. Moving a few knives around is one thing because small objects don’t require a lot of effort, but I’m still clumsy at controlling the direction of the energy. That’s a big sword. When more power is needed, I have to be emotionally charged. That’s all I really know about this gift.”