SEVENTEEN
The sounds of the bloody melee down below had carried up to Xhex’s ears, and given the stench that now wafted through the bedroom’s doorway, she could only guess what had been done to that little
Apparently some portion of the first floor had just been redecorated in slayer paisley.
She was surprised that the Brothers had chosen to rip the bastard limb from limb in the house. From what she knew, Butch O’Neal usually inhaled the slayers to keep them from going back to the Omega. But downstairs? She’d be surprised if there was anything left you could pick up without a mop.
Unless it was a message to Lash.
Following the slaughter’s loud chaos, there was an odd stretch of quiet and then lots of footfalls. They were leaving now that there was nothing left to kill.
Panic rose again in her chest and the effort of pulling herself back together was nearly physical... but goddamn it, she was not going to come undone. All she had in this situation was herself. She was her weapon; her mind and her body were the only things that Lash couldn’t take away from her.
She lost them, she was as good as dead.
Fuck that, she lost them and she couldn’t take Lash with her when she went.
The reality of the situation was where she found the strength to keep going, the weight on her grounding her emotions when they otherwise would have flown the coop and taken her logic with them. She locked away everything, shutting down anything she’d felt when she’d been beside John Matthew.
Nothing got through. Nothing bubbled up.
Snapping into war mode, she realized she hadn’t heard a pop or seen the echo of a flash, so they hadn’t stabbed the slayer. And the smell was so vivid, she was betting they were leaving the body behind.
Lash was going to fucking lose it. She’d heard him interacting with the little Texan and although he’d have denied it, he was attached to the bastard. What she needed to do was exploit this weakness in him. Tee him up even further when he got scrambled. Maybe he’d crack in some fundamental way...
Amid the silence and the sweet stench, she paced around and ended up at the window. Without thinking of the force field, she put both her hands up and leaned in against the jambs—
Xhex leaped back, expecting a wave of pain.
Instead... she just got a tingle.
There was something different about her prison.
Keeping a lid on her head, she came back at the barrier with her palms, pressing them against her containment. Complete and utter objectivity was what she needed to assess things—but it turned out, the change was so obvious that even distracted she would have registered it: There was weakness within the tensile weave of the spell. Unmistakable weakness.
The question was why. And whether it was going to get even looser or this blip was something she needed to take advantage of right now.
Her eyes rimmed the window. Visually, there was nothing out of the norm with her prison and she put her hand up to the glass, just to be sure—yup, she’d been right.
Had Lash died? Been wounded?
At that moment, a big black Mercedes eased by the front of the house, and she sensed the sonofabitch inside. And whether it was because he’d been taking her vein or because the barrier was weakening, his emotional grid was crystal clear to her symphath side: He was feeling isolated. Anxious. And... weak.
Well, well, well...
Didn’t that give credibility to the loosening she’d sensed. And an idea why he wasn’t all Johnny-on-the-spot to come get her. If she were Lash, and she were not feeling particularly strong, she would wait for the dawn to come before going inside.
Either that or she would head off and get some serious-ass reinforcements.
But then, that’s what they made cell phones for, right?
When the Mercedes left the neighborhood and didn’t show signs of returning, she took two steps back from the window. Tensing her thighs, she sank down into a fighter’s stance, curling up her fists and angling her body slightly back on her hips. She breathed deep and focused and...
Snapping out her right fist with all the strength in her shoulder, she punched the barrier hard enough so that if it had been the jaw of a male, she’d have cracked the fucker into pieces.
The spell stung her back, but all around the room, ripples appeared, her prison cell shimmering as if recalibrating itself after an injury. Before there could be a complete regathering, she pitched another punch—
The glass on the far side of the barrier shattered on impact.
At first, she was struck stupid... even as she felt the breeze on her face, and looked down at her now- bleeding knuckles for confirmation there was no other reason why the window had broken.
Holy... shit.
Quickly considering her potential exit strategies, she looked over her shoulder at the door John and the Brothers had left open.
The last thing she wanted to do was go out through the house, because she didn’t know the layout and had no clue what she was going to run into along the way. But instinct told her she was probably too weak to dematerialize—so if she tried to bust out through the window, she didn’t know if she’d be able to pull off a midair disappearance.
In which case she’d yard-sale in the road down below.
The open doorway was her best shot. She could use her own body as a fist, and with a running start, she’d have even more power behind her.
Turning around, she put her shoulder blades against the wall, sucked in a deep breath... and sprinted across the room, the balls of her feet driving her weight over the floor, her arms pumping.
She hit the barrier and the pain was incandescent, firing through every single cell in her body, lighting her up from the inside out. The agony blinded her at the same moment that the spell held her in place, trapping her inside its confines and rendering her as good as dead—
Except then there was a tearing as her momentum won out over her prison’s invisible bars... and goddamn it if she didn’t end up on the far side of that bedroom.
As her body broke free, she slammed into the corridor’s wall, to the point where she expected to take a layer of paint off with her face and chest as she slid down onto the floor.
With her head spinning and her eyes filled with flashing lights, she kicked her own ass into gear. She was out, but was not free.
Glancing back, she watched the rippling of the spell as it recast itself... and wondered if her breaching it didn’t send some kind of signal out to Lash.
Dragging herself off the floor and down the hall, she hit the stairs on unreliable legs, careening around, stumbling. In the foyer below, the stink of
Up ahead, the front door was a massive, ornately carved thing, with glass into which iron bars were set. But all they had for locks were simple dead bolts.
Candy-from-a-baby time.
She walked up, put her hand on the Schlage mechanism, and focused what she had left of her energy on shifting the pins. One... two... three... and the fourth.
Throwing the door wide, she had one foot outstide when she heard the creak of someone coming into the kitchen.
Oh shit, Lash was back. He’d come back for her.
In a flash she was gone, panic giving her wings that her focused mind put to good use. Given the shape she
