Not knowing how far the glass had scattered, I protected my bare feet by jumping back onto the couch.
Then I took one second to assess the situation.
Twenty feet from me, at the other end of the hal in front of the open door, Vayl lay in a spreading pool of blood, the bloody hole in his forehead a result of the .22 lying on the floor. Two reasons the young man kneeling over him stil wasn’t holding it: he needed both hands for the hammer and stake he now held poised over Vayl’s chest, and Jake’s teeth had sunk deep enough into his right wrist that, by now, he’d have been forced to drop it anyway.
Only a guy as big as this one wouldn’t have been thrown completely off balance by a ful -on attack via 120-pound malamute. His size had kept him off his back, though it hadn’t al owed him to recover his balance enough to counter with the stake in his free hand. That would change if I didn’t reach the scene in time.
I jumped to the outside of the stairs, holding the rail to keep from fal ing as I cleared the fal out from the display case. Another jump took me to the floor. Five running steps gave me a good start for a spin kick that should’ve caught the intruder on the temple. But unless they’re drugged, people don’t just sit and wait for the blow.
He pul ed back, catching my heel on his nose. It broke, spraying blood al over his shirt and Jack. But it didn’t take him down. In fact, it seemed to motivate him. Desperation fil ed his eyes. He ripped his hammer hand out of Jack’s grip, though the bloody gashes in his forearm would hurt like a son of a bitch when his adrenaline rush faded. Afraid his next move would be a blow to my dog, I lunged at him. I was wrong. He threw the hammer at me, forcing me to hit the floor. I rol ed when I felt his shadow loom over me, knowing the worst scenario had me pinned under al that weight. But it never fel on me. I jumped to my feet and began to unholster Grief, though the last thing I wanted was to kil the bastard before I found out who’d sent him.
Stil , I was too late. The intruder had retrieved his .22
and was pointing the business end at my chest. He’d probably hit me too if he held his breath long enough to stop shaking. The only positive I could see was that I stood between him and Vayl. For now.
Jack growled menacingly and began to approach the man, his fur standing on end so he looked like the miniature bear he sounded most like when he vocalized.
The gun wavered as the man said, “You tel that dog to stop, or I wil shoot it.”
“No, Jack,” I said. “Sit.”
He came to an unhappy stop beside me. Once again I was looking down the barrel of my ultimate end. Because Raoul had informed me that my body couldn’t take another rise to life. If this scumbag capped me, I’d be done. And I
I said, “I don’t know you. And I thought I knew al of our enemies. You’re not a werewolf. You’re not Vampere.
You’re definitely not a pro. So what’s a human who’s never kil ed anybody in his life doing trying to off the CIA’s greatest assassin?”
His eyebrows went up. So. He hadn’t been told about our work. Baffling. Stil , whoever picked him had chosen wel .
Amateurs
occasional y
succeeded
where
professionals failed because they were unpredictable. And motivated. This one definitely had his reasons for being here. I could see it in the way his eyebrows kept twitching down toward his nose. He was a time bomb ready to blow everybody in the room to bloody bits.
He raised the gun. Uh-oh. While I’d been thinking, so had he. And it looked like he’d made a decision. “You need to walk away from that vampire,” he said.
“No.”
He pushed the barrel toward me, to make sure I understood he could pul the trigger. “I’m not playing. I wil kil you if that’s what it takes to smoke him.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’l die if you do that anyway.” The remark confused him. Upset him.
“Don’t. Dude, you’l be kil ing a federal agent. They put you in jail forever for that kind of shit.”
“Jail?” He laughed. “I’m already in hel .” Which was when I knew there was nothing I could say to divert him. I looked down at Jack, touched the soft fur on the top of his head in farewel . Glanced over my shoulder at Vayl. Only long enough for the pain to lance through my heart.
I could pul on him, make my final moments an epic shootout. But Jack could get hurt in the cross fire. And I’d never forgive myself if that happened. “Get it over with, then.”
I slammed my hands over my ears, though I was pretty sure the voice came from inside my head until I saw that the intruder was wincing and wiping blood from his earlobes as wel .
The floor started to shake. Jack yelped and tried to hide between my legs as the polished pine floorboards between me and the intruder began to splinter and the fiery outline of an arched doorway pushed itself up from the basement below.
“Wel ,” I whispered to my dog. “This is new.” I was pretty sure the intruder couldn’t see the plane portal rising to stand between us. Most humans never did.
But he did get a load of the five-by-six-foot gap developing in the floor. And when my Spirit Guide, Raoul, seemed to step out of thin air, I didn’t blame him for needing to sit down. Which he did. On a plush, round-seated chair that was currently covered with wood chips.
Raoul recovered his
