Triads.”
“I don’t work for them anymore, but I’m still in this mess.
“No matter the consequences?”
I rolled my eyes. “We’ve both died once already, Wyatt. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You really just said that, didn’t you?” he asked with a groan.
The elevator stopped on level M, below the first floor and above the basement, and the doors opened to a wide, short corridor. Dank air tinged with the odors of oil and exhaust greeted us as we exited down the corridor to the lowest level of the parking garage.
Another elevator was on our left; I beelined for the stairs next to it. Wyatt followed behind me, in silence, to the third level. I dug the keys out of my pocket and surveyed the long rows of parked vehicles.
“Next time,” I said, “remind me to ask what the damned thing looks like.”
“What’s the make?” Wyatt asked.
I looked at the symbol on the keys. A shadow flickered in the corner of my vision. My stomach clenched, senses on immediate alert. A dozen vehicles were parked on our right, and a dozen more across from them. Low fluorescent light fixtures cast a sickly orange glow on the spotty cement floor. Nothing else moved.
“What?” he whispered.
“Hey, bitch!”
I fought off Chalice’s initial instinct to turn toward the snarling male voice—such a greeting is never indicative of a pleasant encounter—and went with my own first thought. I launched sideways into Wyatt and knocked us both to the cool cement floor just shy of the bumper of the first parked car. Dust and bits of stone exploded from the cement block wall near us as it was peppered with silenced gunfire.
The same male voice started swearing loudly and violently about things he wanted to do to my personal anatomy. It was familiar without being identifiable.
Wyatt looked up at me, and I down at him, and his eyebrows scrunched together. “I know that voice,” he mouthed.
I mouthed back, “Me, too,” and rolled off him, sideways on my knees next to the car. Sneakers squeaked nearby, echoing off the low ceiling and walls. Something thudded. Adrenaline surged and left a bitter taste in my mouth—Hunter’s training told me it was time for a fight. Ducking low next to a smear that stank of oil, I peered beneath the cars. No feet.
Damn.
Laughter, low and chilling, reverberated around the room like some awful B-movie effect. It bounced off the shot-peppered wall behind us. Not entirely as helpful as sonar.
“See him?” Wyatt asked, his voice so low it was barely audible.
“Nothing,” I replied.
“Guess you can’t teleport?”
I snorted, a little too loudly. “I don’t know where he is or where I’d end up.” I looked again, hoping I’d just missed him among the patterns of shadows and oil spots dotting the cement floor. “Can you summon his gun?”
“I can try, but I need him in the open first, so I can see the gun.”
“Then you’ll have to be fast, before he starts taking potshots at civilians.”
“How’s your throwing arm?”
I slipped my blade from its ankle sheath, tested the weight in my palm. Months of precision practice at Boot Camp had died with my old body. All this one knew was the technique, the stance, the constant drone of the instructor who taught us. “It’s been better,” I said.
Wyatt quirked one eyebrow, seemingly unconcerned that he was about to risk his life for a maneuver I wasn’t sure I could pull off. “He’s no marksman, or we’d be dead already. Just don’t miss.”
I nodded and shifted to a squatting position at the end of the car. Wyatt shuffled backward a few feet, giving himself some space. Every moment that passed brought expectations of interruption—a car coming around the row or the elevator doors dinging open. Anything to put a crimp in this silly standoff and/or offer our attacker his choice of hostages.
I turned the knife, blade loose in my first three fingertips, and stretched my left hand out behind me, fisted. Took a breath. Exhaled.
The shooter laughed again—a sound like nails on a chalkboard with a shadow of lunacy—much closer than before. Shit. I flared the fingers of my left hand.
Wyatt stood up, both hands stretched out at his sides, eyes scanning the dozens of parked cars in front of him. The air around him crackled with energy and warmed me from the outside through my own connection to the Break. I stood, heart beating so hard I thought my chest might explode, and sought my target.
He stood in the bed of a parked, late-model pickup truck, about thirty feet away, aiming a handgun at his target. A handgun that began to shimmer, even from a distance, black to a glimmering silver. He shrieked and squeezed off a wild shot. It pinged the cement floor by Wyatt’s foot. Wyatt didn’t move, merely closed his right hand around the gun that suddenly appeared there.
I lined the shooter up, drew back to throw, and in that moment he saw me. Recognition slapped me in the gut, and I loosed the knife as he pulled a second gun from the back of his jeans. The knife arched down at the last second and pierced his gut a few inches above the groin. He fell, screaming as he went. But he managed another wild shot that pinged twice before it hit. Agonizing heat seared my right forearm.
I raced toward the shrieking shooter, ignoring my wound. I had to shut him up before he caused a scene we couldn’t explain. I vaulted over the tailgate with less ease than I’d hoped—damned longer legs—and landed in a puddle of strangely colored blood. Halfie. Dead giveaway, even before I got a look at his mottled white-black hair and opalescent eyes.
He growled and tried to kick my ankles, survival instinct firmly in place, all the while holding one hand over the oozing wound in his abdomen. He’d landed on his other hand and trapped it beneath his left side. There was no sign of the knife. He bared his measly attempt at fangs—recently infected. Halfies that managed not to go bat shit from a vampire’s infectious bite didn’t manage a set of impressive fangs for a good two weeks. My attacker’s nubs put him around five days.
Past the fangs, I saw the face. One I’d seen two days before, in a cellar prison. I’d coined the name Jock Guy for him. Same clothes, same cocky expression. Only this time I wasn’t behind bars.
“Miss me?” I asked, and planted my foot flat on his sternum. He hissed and snarled but was in too much pain to put up a real fuss. “Maybe you missed the memo, but Tovin’s dead. Your boss lost.”
Even through the pain he had to be experiencing, Jock Guy sneered and then had the gall to laugh. The same maniacal laughter that had made my skin crawl earlier, as if he were enjoying a private joke at my expense. I ground my foot harder against his sternum. He squealed, still laughing.
“Careful, Evy,” Wyatt said, his voice somewhere behind me. Still on the ground. I couldn’t turn to look.
A car engine rumbled nearby, drawing closer. Echoing in the cavern. I held my breath. My quarry was out of sight, but my right arm had oozed enough blood to make folks stand up and notice. Then again, we were in a hospital parking garage. Maybe it wouldn’t shock anyone.
The car moved away, up toward the next level. One close call too many. I leaned down, putting all my balance on my right foot and his chest. Rancid breath puffed into my face as he continued to giggle.
“So before I kill you,” I said, “you wanna tell me what’s so fucking funny?”
“You got strange ideas about who I work for, bitch,” he replied.
Alarm bells clanged in my head, quickly silenced by logic. He was a Halfie—not prone to reasoned thought or personal planning—therefore lying. No one else would have wanted to hold me and Wyatt captive in a dingy underground jail cell while my clock ran out.
Jock Guy’s laughing snarl morphed into a familiar leer. “Told ’em we should’ve fucked you when we had the chance.”
My cheeks blazed, and my hands trembled. My heart hammered in my ears and made it hard to hear. The world fuzzed out for just a second. Cold, oily skin and blinding pain fell like a theater curtain, heavy and suffocating. All over again.
I stood up, sensing the new elevation more than experiencing it, moved back, and slammed my right foot
