bounced in his hand. “Don’t make me ask your name again.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “I’m disappointed in your partner, Wormer,” I said, tossing the silent Hunter an over- the-shoulder look. “He doesn’t recognize me. That hurts my feelings, Tully; it really does.”
They exchanged looks, sharing their confusion. Time ticked onward. They couldn’t stay and question us for very long. The scuffle and gunshots should have aroused the neighbors. Surely someone in the building would know to call the police and report suspicious activity.
“Her name’s Chalice,” Alex said. “She works in a coffee shop. We’re not who you think.”
“You’re not?” Wormer said. “Guess we’ll just have to kill you, then.”
“Cut it out,” Tully admonished. “We don’t kill humans, and you know it.”
Tactical slip. Wyatt would have reamed me a new one for saying that in front of a civilian. Admitting to not killing humans blatantly said that you killed something else.
Tully studied me, still trying hard to see past the unfamiliar exterior to the person hiding inside. “We’ll take them with us. We can’t break her here; we’ve already made too much noise.”
“No, leave her here,” Alex said. “I know things; you want me. Not her.”
Wormer nudged the back of Alex’s head with the muzzle of his gun. “What things do you know?”
Alex glared at Tully, but wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I know that the downtown power outage two years ago was caused by gremlins, and not what the public was told.”
My mouth fell open, but the pair of Hunters misinterpreted my annoyance as shock. Tully crouched down, putting himself at eye level with Alex. Still out of my range, though. The candlestick lay nearby, within arm’s reach.
“Who told you that?” Tully asked.
“I’ll tell you everything,” Alex said. “Just leave Chalice here. She doesn’t know anything.”
“Oh hell no,” I said. “Alex, I know you feel terrible about Chalice, but trying to be a hero and save me isn’t the way to atone for it. She wouldn’t want you to get yourself killed.”
Tully pointed the gun at me. “I thought you were Chalice.”
“And I thought you were an asshole. Too bad only one of us is right.”
Tully swung the cattle prod toward my left arm. At the last moment, I blocked it and kicked him square in the groin. The second direct hit in five minutes sent him to the ground like an anvil. I twisted the cattle prod out of his grasp with the intent of using it on Wormer. Turned out I didn’t need it.
Alex had grabbed the abandoned candlestick and cracked it across Wormer’s jaw. The trigger-happy Hunter squeezed off a round that shattered the room’s only other window before he slumped to the floor. Satisfied, I shoved the tip of the cattle prod into the hollow below Tully’s Adam’s apple. He gurgled and twitched. When I pulled it away, he lay still.
I watched and waited, expecting a miraculous recovery and second attack. It never came.
“Oh my God,” Alex said.
“You okay?”
“I’ll live.” He dropped the candlestick. It cracked against bits of glass. Still sporting a frightening pallor, he studied me with the eyes of a trapped deer. “You’re bleeding.”
“So are you.”
We helped each other stand and wade through the sea of broken glass. The sole of my cut foot stung and left prints on the carpet. My trail followed us back to the sofa, a safe distance from our disabled attackers. Alex sank into the cushion. His slight tremble turned to full-on shaking.
“Who were they?” he asked, the tremor reaching his voice.
“People I used to work with, others like me, only in the bodies they were born in. I’m so sorry; I don’t know how they followed me. I thought I was careful.”
“And you’re sure that you’re the good guy?”
“I know I didn’t do what they’re accusing me of doing.”
“Murder?”
“Right.”
He hung his head. I pawed through the first aid kit. Found more gauze and a small bottle of peroxide. I sat down on his right side.
“I need to clean you up so we can get out of here,” I said.
“And go where? This is my home. Where am I supposed to go?”
“Look, you can call the police, only I won’t be here when they arrive. And good luck trying to explain how you took out a pair of intruders on your own, not to mention the bloody footprints I’ve left all over the place.”
I dabbed at the drying blood with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball. He hissed and pulled away from my touch. I grabbed his chin and held him still.
“This isn’t going to go away, Alex. As much as I know you want to curl up in bed and wake up last week, with Chalice alive and your life not in shambles, it’s not going to happen. This is reality, pal.”
“So says the reincarnated dog hunter.”
“Dreg.”
“I know.” Heartache tinged his words. He grasped my hand, pulled it away from his chin, and squeezed. His liquid blue eyes held steely determination. Bright spots of color had flared in his cheeks. “I believe you, Evangeline Stone. So what’s our next move?”
“We clean up and change. Tie them up, gather whatever cash you’ve got around, then get back to the east side of the river.”
“Why the east side?”
“Because that’s where Wyatt is.”
His nostrils flared—an odd reaction. “And we need to save Wyatt, correct?”
“Very correct.”
“Do you have a plan for that?”
“Working on it.” I released his hand and continued cleaning his face. “Now hold still so I can get this done.”
The response time for reported gunshots was idiotically slow. We were in Alex’s Jeep, emerging from the underground parking garage and into daylight, before I heard the first siren. He turned north and chose a roundabout way back to the Wharton Street Bridge. It took us deeper into the heart of Parkside East, past high-rise apartment buildings and the first hints of residential houses.
The bullet graze had oozed through the bandage, which barely covered swollen skin. His eye would blacken eventually. During the five minutes it took to fill a backpack with supplies, lash our houseguests to the dining room furniture, and put on a fresh shirt, he’d lost the deer-in-headlights look, and adopted the attitude that must make him a good med student—stern rationality in the face of insurmountable odds.
I just kept an eye out, waiting for hints of a mental breakdown. God knew he was due.
The burns no longer itched, and my skin was as smooth as it had been before the attack. The dozen or so glass cuts on my arms were also healing. I’d shed my borrowed clothes and slipped into fresh jeans and a T-shirt. The change made me feel mostly human again. The only thing I couldn’t help was the bloodstained sneakers. It was that or leather sandals—not great for kicking and running.
“Where are we going?” Alex asked.
“Back downtown, eventually.”
He turned down another residential street, lined with trees that sported dog-proof fences, sidewalks without cracks or weeds, and houses that cost more than an entire block of Mercy’s Lot real estate. I felt intimidated by the wealth. While Chalice and Alex belonged in such a high-class area, I did not. I grew up in the city; I felt out of place in the suburbs.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“About six years. St. Eustachius has one of the best orthopedic centers in the country, and that’s what I wanted to do.”
“Wanted?”
