“He called me,” Garrett said, trying to help me stand, “to come check out your apartment while he followed the vehicle, just in case. Sure enough, you weren’t home.”
“By the time we figured out they had kidnapped you, Mr. Chao had called me as well, and we all met behind that hill over there.” Smith pointed out the shattered window. All I saw was a stark brightness.
“The cops are on their way,” Garrett added.
“Charley,” Angel said with a startled voice, a split second before a shower of bullets rained down on us.
Garrett shoved me to the ground behind a rather disgusting mattress and box spring, and both the other men took a dive as well. The sound was bizarre. Gunfire from a fully automatic weapon echoed and zinged around us as bullet after bullet punctured the Sheetrock, the paltry furniture, and dinged against the ancient sink. Then it stopped for what I assumed was a reloading. Mr. Chao grunted in pain. He’d been shot, but I couldn’t tell how bad.
“We have to get help,” I said to Garrett as I tried to stand.
“Charley, damn it.” He jerked me back down behind the broken and rusted bed. “We have to figure out what to do first.”
“We could, I don’t know, take Mr. Chao and get the fuck outta Dodge.” The spike in adrenaline must have de-fuzzed my tongue. I was suddenly having no problem articulating my opinion.
Garrett wasn’t even paying attention to me. For real? We were pulling this shit again? “If we wait it out, the cops will be here any minute,” he said.
“If we grab Mr. Chao and head for that back window, we could get the fuck outta Dodge and wait for the cops out there.”
Another round of gunfire blared around us. “Son of a bitch,” Garrett said as bullets ricocheted in every direction. “Who the fuck is that, anyway?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that he told me his name. It’s Let’s-Get-the-Fuck-Outta-Dodge Redenbacher.”
“Here, take this.” He reached behind his back.
“Is it a get-the-fuck-outta-Dodge-free card?”
He placed a small pistol in the palm of my left hand.
“Dude, I’m totally a righty.”
“Charley,” he said, exasperation filling his voice.
“I’m just sayin’.”
“You stay here,” he ordered. He climbed onto his knees, apparently readying himself to do something heroic.
The first bullet that found its mark inside Garrett’s body sent me into a state of shock. The world slowed as the sound of metal meeting flesh hit my ears. He stared at me, his face a mask of disbelief. When a second bullet convulsed through him, he looked down at his side, trying to find the entry point. By the time the third bullet hit him, I knew what I had to do.
As a line of rounds paraded across the wall behind us, the gunman’s spray stopped and reversed, careening back in my direction as he did a standard sweep pattern.
So, I climbed to my feet, locked my knees, and waited.
Garrett collapsed against the wall, his jaw clenched in agony as each incoming round ripped chunks of Sheetrock out of the threadbare walls, ricocheted against the metal sink, and slashed through the rickety furniture as though it were paper. The room looked like the hapless victim of a Friday-night pillow fight.
Where was a son of Satan when you needed one? Maybe he was still mad at me. Maybe he wouldn’t be there this time — he didn’t show up when the parolee intent on cutting out my heart attacked, a first — but it was a risk I was willing to take, for Garrett.
I waited for one of two things to happen. I would either be shot dead right then and there, or Reyes would come. He would save the day. Again. And all of this, all the noise and chaos, would end. I felt the concussion of gunfire ripple over my skin, the heat of an object moving faster than the speed of sound vibrate along my nerve endings.
I closed my eyes and whispered softly, unable to hear myself over the gunfire. “Rey’aziel, I summon you.”
The reverberation of a round thundered past me. And another. They were getting closer. The next one would hit me in the neck, possibly severing my jugular.
I opened my eyes, braced myself for the impact, and watched in astonishment as the world slowed even more. The debris hung in midair like ticker tape frozen in time as a line of bullets pushed slowly through the atmosphere toward me. I studied the one closest. The one that had my name on it. The metal was white hot, the friction of traveling so fast heating the metal instantaneously. Then the world came crashing back as a powerful force threw me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. The bullets I’d been watching sank into the wall over my head with popping sounds.
And everything darkened, starting with my periphery and closing in around me until I fell into a beautiful black oblivion.
What seemed like seconds later, my eyes fluttered open and I found myself floating toward a crumbling ceiling I didn’t recognize. I looked back at my body, at the pool of blood growing in an arc around my head. Then I looked up at the dark figure lifting me toward the heavens and I ground my teeth together, curled my hands into fists.
Freaking Death. I was so going to kick his ass.
I jerked my arm out of his grip and fell back to Earth. Reyes was in front of me at once, his dark robe undulating around him. But I had already been in full swing and clipped him on the jaw.
“What the hell was that for?” he asked, lowering his hood to reveal his perfect face.
“Oh.” I shrugged sheepishly. “I thought you were Death.”
A grin slid across his face, bringing to light his charming dimples, which in turn caused a shiver to dance along my spine. “That would be you,” he said, eyebrows raised teasingly.
“Right, I’m Death. I knew that.” I looked down at my body sprawled unappealingly across the floor. “So, am I dead?”
“Not hardly.” He inched closer, placed his fingers underneath my chin, and turned my head side to side to check out the damage from Evil Murtaugh. “You should have summoned me earlier.”
“I didn’t even know that I could. I just took a chance.”
His brows furrowed. “Usually you don’t have to. I can feel your emotions before they surface.”
“They drugged me. I was really happy.”
“Oh. Next time summon me earlier.”
I lowered my head, hesitant.
“What?” he asked.
“I was attacked the other night by a guy with a knife, and from what I remember, my emotions were pretty strong then. You weren’t there.”
“Is that what you think?”
I blinked up at him in surprise. “You were?”
“Of course I was there. You were doing just fine by yourself.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “Apparently, you went to some other chick named Charley’s attempted stabbing, ’cause I was almost killed, mister.”
“And you dealt with it. Told you, by the way.”
“Told me what?”
“You’re capable of more than you think.” A most sensual grin tipped the corners of his mouth, and he closed the distance between us. “Much more.”
“Garrett!” I shouted, and woke up an instant later beside him. Back in my body, I scrambled up and looked around for Reyes. Had I dreamt all that? It would be just like me, really. But the gunfire had stopped. “What happened?” I asked Smith.
“The gunman is dead,” he said, helping Mr. Chao. “And the cops are almost here, so we’re leaving.”
“Wait, did you stop him?”
He pulled a groaning Mr. Chao to his feet and wrapped his arm around him. “Not me.”
