His free hand was also scrabbling for a gun strapped in a concealed shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
Myrial finally got her laughter under control. “Oh, Fae,” she chuckled, “I may have delivered your prize to you with a pretty bow tied around her neck, but only because it was convenient to me. If you want her, that’s your problem now. You see, I’m not here for the hors d'oeuvres.” Her voice flattened and grew hard. “I’m here for the main course.”
I had no clue what the bitch was talking about, and I immediately lost interest in trying to figure it out when Caspian turned to the two cops who seemed to be immune to me and snarled, “Stop staring at her like a pair of simpletons—shoot her!”
My body was buzzing with stolen energy. It sharpened my reflexes, making me feel like the gun in my hand had a direct connection to nerve, bone, and sinew. There was no pesky having to wait for my brain to figure things out.
Three armed men faced me from about a dozen yards away, Caspian finally having gotten his pistol free and aimed in my direction. It was wavering visibly, its tremor the only visible manifestation of the life energy I’d sucked out of him.
My gun swung to the rightmost of the two remaining cops as though of its own volition. My finger tightened on the trigger. I knew even as I did it that it wouldn’t be enough. Caspian’s shot might miss me due to his shakiness, but the second cop would fire an instant after I did, and this time it wouldn’t be a minor bullet graze like the one I’d gotten in St. Louis.
The heavy gun kicked in my hand, the noise it made shocking. Blood erupted high on the first cop’s thigh. He screamed, his shot going wide as he fell backward to the ground, clutching his leg. I tried to lunge sideways as two more explosions went off in near-unison, but pain exploded high in my right shoulder. The gun dropped from my suddenly nerveless fingers as I spun around under the impact, getting tangled up with the pile of bodies surrounding me as I fell.
Some buried succubus instinct had me grabbing for the only source of animus still flowing—Caspian.
He stumbled to one knee under the fresh assault, but not before shouting, “Finish her!” to the last remaining cop.
I tried to scramble for my fallen pistol left-handed. The Fae-controlled police officer prowled cautiously toward me, sighting along his weapon as he crept closer for the killing shot. Every movement was agony. My fingers slipped and fumbled. Lightning flashed across the storm-dark sky above us, but my eyes were fixed on the barrel of the cop’s gun, looming huge in my vision as I waited for the killing shot.
The crack of noise that came next wasn’t loud enough or sharp enough to be a gun’s retort. For an instant, I thought it must be thunder—but then a voice called “Zorah!” and a dark blur slammed into the approaching cop faster than my eye could follow, tackling him to the ground.
SEVENTEEN
I ROLLED ONTO my uninjured side, trying to see what the hell was happening. The two tangled figures slid to a stop, revealing Rans clinging to the cop’s back, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other clutching his head. A sharp twist, a sickening crunch of bone splintering, and the human slumped sideways with his neck bent at an impossible angle.
A second dark figure flashed past in my peripheral vision, but I had already jerked my attention back to Caspian. He was still on one knee, but now he was trying to steady the wavering aim of his gun with both hands.
More importantly, the weapon was pointed at Rans, not me.
I growled and clawed at Caspian’s animus, unspooling it faster and faster until the itchy tingle of Fae magic made me feel dizzy and sick. He reeled and slewed sideways, catching himself on a hand and a hip. Still, the small semi-automatic pistol pointed at Rans.
I made another left-handed grab for my stolen gun at the same time Caspian fired. But Rans was already gone—dissipating into mist as the bullet hurtled through the place he’d just been. Caspian cursed. I got my fingers wrapped awkwardly around the gun’s grip, forefinger poking through the trigger guard.
I’d never even held a gun left-handed before, much less tried to fire one. But as motivation went, the fact that Caspian’s weapon was swinging back toward me was pretty fucking effective. I lifted the heavy pistol and sighted along it, pulling the trigger again and again until the magazine went click.
When the haze lifted from my mind, Caspian lay on the ground, unmoving, and Rans was peeling my fingers away from the spent firearm and tossing it aside.
“Where?” he rasped, his hands running over my bare upper body. “Zorah—where is it?”
Huh? I thought, before realizing he must be talking about all the blood smeared across my skin. Oh. Right. I’d been shot again, hadn’t I?
“Shoulder,” I said, surprised at how thin and shaky my voice sounded.
A gentle grip lifted and turned me this way and that. I hissed in pain, though I could feel a familiar tingling sensation growing in my shoulder as well—I was swimming with other people’s animus, and my succubus magic would already be trying to heal me.
“There’s an exit wound above your scapula,” Rans said grimly. “The bullet’s not lodged inside you. Drink my blood. Fast. We still have a major problem to deal with.”
With that, he tore open the base of his thumb and pressed the wound to my lips. Under the circumstances, I didn’t need to be told twice. I sucked and swallowed, ignoring the coppery taste as I tried to understand what the hell had just happened.
“How did you find me?” I choked out, after he pulled his hand away.
The wind picked up, buffeting my skin first with dry
