by Dane, Lauren
She waved a hand to fan her face. “Stop that.”
“You’re breathless. I thought I’d satisfied you enough to hold you over for an hour or three. I apparently didn’t do my job very well.”
“You’re making me all fluttery.”
“I see that. It’s beautiful on you. My beast loves to play with you.”
“You did. Three times.”
He laughed. “Maybe it should have been four.”
“I’m going to be so relaxed the DMV people will eat me up. I need to be tough and hard-ass.”
“Mmm. I’ll let you play bad cop if you’ll let me frisk you later.”
She laughed, finishing her coffee and rinsing out her cup. “Come on. Incorrigible.”
Bad things were happening all around them. But it wasn’t all bad. She had this male, this being who made everything better.
“You sure about carrying? I distracted you inside before you answered.”
“Yes. I’ve got a permit. And I’ve got a don’t-look spell on them at the moment. No one is going to see them unless I want it.”
He pulled the car out of the garage and they’d gotten about two blocks when she rolled her window down.
The sun was now up and she waited to hear the birds. But instead she heard . . . yelling and then gunshots.
“Shit. Get to the gates. Now.”
She put her earbud in and called the office. “There’s something going down at the enclave down here.”
Which was an understatement.
Several large trucks had pulled up to the front gates, a few mounted with .50-cal guns. They sprayed the area with bullets as other humans wearing camo and masks tried to get in the gates.
She needed to pull everyone together. She spoke into her phone, “Get the rest of the guards in the area here. I don’t want us to get flanked, so someone needs to get a better view of what’s happening around the entire enclave. People need to stay in place, we don’t want to leave any openings. Remember there are kids here, get someone to contact the school and if they’re not on lockdown protocol, make that happen. Call me when you hear. Don’t bother calling the local cops. Call Gil Anderson at the FBI.”
Faine pulled the car around a corner and they got out, keeping low. “I need to get over there to get people together.” She popped the trunk and pulled out more weapons and ammo. He took what he needed.
He understood it. He’d been in command in military situations for much of his adult life. But if she thought he’d stay behind while she did, she was out of her mind.
“Lead on. I’ve got your back.”
She grabbed him, kissing him hard. “If you get hurt, even one little scratch, I’m going to rip some people apart. Got me? And I’ll make you use my mother’s green soap. So keep your head down.”
“I think I can manage that, boss.”
She harrumphed and he followed her.
One of the trucks with the mounted gun had several people in the guard shack pinned down. He knew she was drawing magick as they moved, felt it build in the air all around them. Their link shimmered and heated as she charged herself. But even then he was not ready for the moment she stepped out, shot the guy at the gun in the head with one hand and blew back the others standing near the gates, trying to pry them open, with a heated blast of power.
She spoke instead of yelling, but her voice was modulated to be heard by those in the shack.
“Get out of there and behind some cover. Weapons hot. Shifters, you’re free to take either form. Witches, don’t waste whatever shot you get with anything but lethal force.”
“We’ve got two down,” one of the guards shouted.
“Leave them in the shack.” It was fortified, Faine knew. “We’ve got backup on the way, but let’s see about clearing out this riffraff before one of these nearby houses gets hit.”
“We got them evacuated first thing. Only one house was occupied. A lot of people had already left for work.” One of the guards, a shifter named . . . Sophie, that’s right, spoke to Helena.
She’d been training this group so they followed her orders perfectly and fanned out, narrowly avoiding getting shot. The problem was that one of the trucks sat at an angle behind the wall so it was hard to get a shot at it, but they had a higher vantage point and kept them pinned down.
“Who are they? Have they made any demands?”
Sophie shook her head. “They haven’t. They just rolled up to the gates and opened fire.”
Helena made a call and ordered her people to run the plates. Faine took film of the situation and emailed it to the Gennessee office.
“I’m going to shift. Cover me.” Sophie got her clothes off and in a blink she was a large, honey-colored wolf.
“Go left, along the wall. I’m going to take out this nearest truck.” Helena drew more power. “They just tossed the dead guy off and there’s another one now. The ones near the gates will be bleeding out the ass for a while, if they’re still alive. But we need to deal with those mounted guns.”
She turned to the others. “You, if you get in that tree over there, you can use magick to short out their engines. I’m going to try something with the guns. I need a distraction because I need to be closer. I’d prefer not to take a bullet the size of a small dog if I can help it.”
“No jokes,” Faine growled at her. “I’ll shift. I can jump the fence easily.”
“No. What I want to do . . . well, everyone needs to be behind me. Cover me. You’re handy with a weapon.”
And then she took off her shoes and began to pull magick, spooling it up at a rate he figured was pretty alarming given the way the nearby witches gaped at her.
“Go on!” He waved at them. “Get in place or this is for nothing.” Once they’d all run off he got in Helena’s face. “I know you’re going to do something scary. And I’m not happy. I get it, I know why. But you’d better not end up dead, Helena. I mean it.”
Her eyes were otherworldly now. The power arcing off her skin. The hair on his arms stood straight up.
“I got this. And stay behind me.”
“Give me a forty-five-second lead. I need to lay down some fire and the rest just got into position.”
She nodded and he had no choice but to put her immediate safety from his mind.
Helena’s heart raced and her mind reeled. She’d never brought so much power into herself, not even when she stopped that bomb. But something about her link to Faine had grounded her. She felt the power rushing through her, knew it could burn her out and leave her brain-dead. But she held the reins.
She gave him his forty-five seconds and gunfire began to fill the air. She blocked it all out except to be sure to stay out of the line of their fire. Her focus was on the two remaining trucks and the deafening percussion of the chunk, chunk, chunk of the bullets hitting the pavement and the walls of nearby buildings.
They saw her coming and she let it go. Let them see her full of magick. Let herself be the monster they were frightened enough of that they’d attack a neighborhood filled with innocents.
They’d tried education. They’d tried diplomacy. They’d even fought back and used threats. But PURITY and their buddies kept coming. They would keep coming until all the Others were dead because that’s the only thing PURITY wanted.
So she’d be sure they understood if they wanted that, it would be their bodies at the morgue.
She raised her hands and drew more power. The city had its own sort of energy and she pulled it from the people, from the buildings and cars, from the stored energy in the roads and sidewalks. She drew from the Font as well.
And then she spoke, and turned it on them. Focused on those guns. Made it hot. Made it so hot she knew the metal was softening. She heard a scream. Heard yells to get back. But they shot at her. Before she could shift and shield herself, three bullets tore through her thi
gh. Her hip was shattered with a fourth.
But she kept standing. Kept sending power at them until the screams stopped. Until the bullets stopped. Until she couldn’t stand anymore and her legs buckled.
The ringing in her ears lasted a while. Faine picked her up, holding her against his body. His heart beat so fast she worried. She knew he was yelling her name, but she couldn’t hear. She just put her finger on his lips and shook her head.
She said, “I’m going to live.”
He frowned and she knew he growled but she couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear the sirens. Then the police came with the FBI and they tried to arrest everyone, including the people inside the enclave.
She could sort of hear at that point as one of the enclave medics packed the wounds on her leg.
“No.” She shouted this from where she lay in a pool of her own blood. “If you come in here with weapons drawn, we will defend ourselves.”
“Like you did with these humans?” The cop waved at the molten metal and the mass of bodies.
“Yes. We did nothing wrong. They came here, they attacked. They shot us, they tried to harm children. We told you what would happen. And you kept it up. You kept on and on until we had no other choice. You brought this on yourself. We will not let you harm our young. We will not. So you need to figure out who the enemy is here and act accordingly.”
Her lips tingled.
Gil Anderson shoved his way to the front. “Christ, Helena. Why is it that every time I see you, you’re covered in blood? Stand down. Let the ambulances in. This is a crime scene, let’s get on it.”
“She needs a hospital.” Faine wouldn’t let go of her.
“Yeah, I think I do.” It was harder and harder to talk.
A paramedic approached. “We’re going to get you loaded up and to the hospital, ma’am.” He smiled. “I’m a witch too. I promise to take good care of you. Your, um, guy can ride along.”
“You should stay here and manage the scene. Let the clan know what’s happening.”
The heat of morphine traveled up her arm and through her body. “Oh, that’s nice.”
Faine frowned. “I’m not leaving you. Sophie can handle this from here. I’ll make calls on the way.”
They loaded her into the ambulance and she was only going to let her eyes close once, but it was very hard to get them back open.
So she gave Faine orders with her eyes closed. But it seemed like once she closed her eyes it was really a lot harder to talk.
He bent down and kissed lips that were far too pale. If he didn’t have the link with her and her life force hadn’t been so strong, he’d have been far more panicked than he was.
And it was already pretty bad. The smell of her blood and pain drove his beast so close to the surface he’d had to struggle harder than he had in centuries to keep it back.
He called Gennessee and told David what was going on. David assured him they’d handle everything and to just focus on Helena. He said Rain would meet them at the hospital.
He called Lark.
“Lark, it’s Faine. Helena . . .”
His voice must have betrayed him worse than he’d thought because she gasped. “What? Oh my goddess, what?”
“She’s been shot. Four times. She’s lost a great deal of blood. Your mother will meet us at the hospital in case she needs a transfusion. There’s more. The enclave was stormed. She used her magick. I’m frankly not even sure what she did, but none of them will be a threat ever again. I need to go, we’re arriving at the hospital now. Your dad has more details.”
“I’m coming down. Take care of her.” Lark hung up and he turned back to his female, covered in blood and drugged to the gills.
Chapter 27
SHE came to several hours later.
Faine rested, his head on her bed. Her hospital bed. She remembered then what had happened.
He looked up, a weary smile on his face. “You’re awake.”
“I am. I guess I’m alive huh?
“You’re forbidden to joke about such things.”
“Is everyone all right? At the enclave?”
“One of the guards got out of surgery about twenty minutes ago. They’re saying he’s got a good chance of survival. Other guards surround this room and this wing of the hospital. You were shot four times. Your hip is shattered so they’re going to have to replace it. You lost a great deal of blood. Your mother gave you a lot of hers.”
Tears ran down his face and she got worried. “Is my mother all right?”
“Why are you worried about her? My goddess, Helena! She’s fine. She’s in another room, resting.” He burst from his chair and started to pace.
“Why are you mad at me?”
“You. Could. Have. Died. I was pinned down and you looked all right. You didn’t even fall, hell, you didn’t even register pain at first or I’d have felt it through the link. And then you were gushing blood and I couldn’t get to you fast enough and fuck fuck fuck, Helena. I can’t even think about how scared I was.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was. She could only imagine if it were him who’d been shot and how that would have made her feel.
“I know you are. But you’d do it again.”
“Well, next time I’d shield myself better. Obviously.”
He muttered something in his language and she caught a few choice words about crazy women.
Lark burst into the room at that moment and threw herself at Helena, who screamed at the feeling of her leg and hip being jostled. Faine lifted Lark up and off and there was some snarling when Simon came in and saw this happening.
Lark barked orders at them both as a nurse rushed in and, undeterred by the two giant men and the blue-haired woman, gave them all a lecture about jostling, alarming, or disturbing Helena in any way that was detrimental to her recovery.
“They attacked four enclaves. They killed kids, Hellie. Little ones.”
“I thought we agreed this could wait?” Simon sighed.
“I told you not to say anything.” Faine inserted himself between the sisters.
“She needs to know. She’d want to know.”
“It’s too late anyway. I do know now. Tell me the rest.”
“There are riots in Seattle, Bakersfield, Miami, Cincinnati, Boston and Chicago. The Others are on the warpath and every time the humans push, we push back harder. It’s a bloody damn mess. The data sticks you brought back were full of stuff. Plans to attack different cities and groups. Information about the purchase of large amounts of explosives. Biological weapons! They had this silver stuff, like from a damned movie, it exploded and sent tiny shards of silver into the air. They tried to use it on some Vampires up in Alaska. But no one ever heard from them again.”
Ha. She bet. Vampires didn’t mess around.
“What’s going on in DC?” Her tongue was thick and felt two sizes too big for her mouth. Whatever substance they had her on really did a number on her. But the horrible pain in her leg and hip when Lark had come in had settled back on a far distant shore so she was all right with that.
“Those plates you sent? On the trucks that attacked the enclave? One was registered to a bigwig in PURITY. PURITY and Humans First have been tied to multiple attacks. Tosh is urging the president to finally make a stand. He and several others on Capitol Hill have demanded an investigation into what part Senator Hayes played in all this. His name is all over that data. Bastard. There’ve been some pings from the spells you laid at his office and at PURITY, but there’s not a lot we can use legally. We did find the location of a few of the turned witches and a mage or two who escaped. The wolves are handling that for us.” Lark’s smile was vicious.
“Good. But what’s wrong with the president? The country is on fire and she hasn’t spoken yet?”
“Her chief of staff did about two hours ago. He announced she’d be iss
uing a statement later today. The governors of the states involved have spoken out, urging calm. Right now it looks like humans, most of them anyway, are coming down against PURITY for this mess.”
It was hard to stay awake. Faine took her hand and squeezed gently. “Rest. You’re doped up, alamah.”
“I have stuff . . .”
He smiled and kissed her. “You will have stuff when you wake up again. Until then, your sister and her big mouth will have things handled.”
• • •
TOSHIO had had enough with waiting. He’d been standing around in an anteroom of the Oval Office for the last hour. And before that, another hour earlier in the day. He’d left and given multiple press conferences demanding an investigation of Marlon Hayes.
He’d been kept apprised of Helena’s condition as well as the status of the thousands of Others and humans who’d been injured in the riots. Insanity, all of it. And the president had remained silent and unreachable behind closed doors with the attorney general and White House staff for most of the day.
But he was totally and completely done with this nonsense. When the door opened and the attorney general came out, Tosh simply swept past the secretary and into the Oval Office.
“Madam President, I’d like a moment of your time.”
Those sharp green eyes of hers landed on him. “Senator Sato, I’m really quite busy.”
“Pardon my bluntness here, Madam President, but you’ve been too busy to meet with me for months as this situation has grown worse and worse.” He tossed multiple newspapers and sheets of paper detailing all the riots onto her desk. “How much longer will you remain silent on this? How many more children will die because you’re afraid to anger PURITY? They didn’t vote for you to begin with, they’ll never be all right with a female leader. But millions of Americans did. You won this office. The nation is starving for leadership right now. Be a leader. Do your job.”
He knew he was going too far, but someone needed to say it.
“Senator Sato, I’ve got this.” She stood. “I wanted the people of this country to work this out. I wanted them to have a national discussion on this so we could move forward without large segments of the population feeling they’d been ignored or steamrolled. I waited too long. I know that. My biggest mistake was in trusting those in the House and Senate to manage this in an appropriate way.”
