“Thanks!” She flew in a curling loop in the air.
The fairies all giggled like a classroom of children who’d heard a naughty word.
“Hey!” one of them protested to shut the others up. “Wait a second here. If he wants her to help him again, he has to pay for her services.”
Remy held a finger up. “I still have at least one day left on the week I already purchased,” he insisted. “And as a sign of good faith, I’ll pick up another pound of honey while I’m out. Right after we save Taylor. It will be the second thing on my to-do list.”
Riley darted over to him and hovered beside his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said to her people, “I’ll hold him to that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Riverside Boulevard, New York City Waterfront
The fairy had again climbed onto the dashboard and now peered out the windshield with her hands on the glass like a kid looking out the window. Most of her ass peeked out from under her ridiculously short dress.
“Yes, that’s the place,” she said in a hushed voice. “I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Remy replied, “but we can’t exactly drive in without them probably shooting us a few hundred times. I don’t want this car to suffer that kind of fate, anyway, since Taylor would probably send me a bill for the goddamn thing.” He sighed. That meant he would have to look around for somewhere to park. “Oh, New York…why do I love you so?”
“What?” Riley asked and almost gasped with excitement.
“New York,” he repeated. “I was talking to the city.”
The fairy’s wings drooped. “Oh.”
“You’re rather nice, too, though, don’t worry. And less of a pain in the ass than this town is, most of the time.”
They had finally arrived—after Riley sniffed the splinter and directed him around half of Manhattan—at the battery of piers extending into the Hudson from the vicinity of Riverside Boulevard.
Being close to finding Taylor was one of two things that alleviated some of the tension that boiled in his chest. He made every effort to keep a tight rein on his emotions, but it was difficult not to collapse in relief and hope.
If the conspirators had brought her coffin to a warehouse by the pier, it meant that, rather than intending to kill her, they might simply try to ship her somewhere and hold her hostage. He seemed to recall something about how vampires couldn’t cross running water but then again, he was also sure she had been driven over multiple rivers already. She’d not yet informed him which of the old legends were true and which were bullshit.
The other thing that improved his disposition, in conjunction with the first, was the setting of the sun. If Taylor was still alive, she might be able to break out on her own and deal with these fuckers herself—although even then, the hopeful rescuers’ help couldn’t hurt.
He turned down a side street and found a parking area another block away from the river. That ought to be far enough to avoid any immediate suspicion of him trying to surveil the warehouse. They would need to finish scouting on foot.
Soon, they reached the edge of the warehouses. With a grimace at the thought of what it would do to his clothes, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled forward until he came within a couple of yards of a metal fence.
Someone with a flashlight patrolled the outside area but moved away from them. He waited until the sentry was a safe distance before he crept right up to the fence and peered through it.
Twelve or thirteen guys were gathered out front. He guessed that half or so of them were human mercenaries or similar such people. Every once in a while, his parents had dealings with private security firms. These men looked similar but somehow rougher and less reputable. Some of them also looked like mobsters or simply hicks with guns.
One of the men—who seemed to be in charge of the group—raised a phone to his ear and spoke a few brief words in a hushed tone. He motioned to a couple of guys who stood near the main front door to the warehouse. They raised the large, garage-like door and, together with two other men, disappeared into the building.
“I think,” Riley said softly, “they’re bringing Taylor out.”
She was right. The four men emerged carrying a rectangular wooden box—an old-fashioned casket. A long gash in one side matched the splinter Remy had given to the fairy. A fifth man trailed them closely and beamed a battery-powered grow-light onto the head-end of the coffin.
Clever. They’re using full-spectrum light to keep Taylor trapped within and possibly even keep her asleep by tricking her into thinking it’s still daytime. In fact, it was now almost full dark.
They watched for another couple of minutes while most of the men assembled in formation as if awaiting a superior. A few others cracked a crate open and distributed what looked like automatic weapons and magazines. Remy suspected that most of the crates and boxes in there contained guns and ammunition.
“Wait,” the fairy whispered in his ear, “who is that? He seems important.”
It took a second for him to see who she meant. His gaze caught sight of a large man—both taller and wider than most of the other men—who strode leisurely down the pier toward the area by the coffin with a gunman at each elbow.
The figure passed under one of the lamps and the light illuminated his face. It was none other than Tucker Bedford.
He grimaced. Him again.
“Sir,” one of the guards said, “so far, there’s been no sign of activity from the coffin. We wanted to check inside but the orders we got from Mr G. stated that we were not to open it under any circumstances. We can only assume the lamp is working.”
“Yessir,” the man’s boss acknowledged in his drawling accent. “You done right. We’ve got things all squared away with the box itself. You men only need to see to it that no one tries to take it away from us. Have y’all scouted around the perimeter here?” He motioned with his hand in a semicircle.
The guard nodded. “Yes, sir. We don’t have enough men to keep the patrols as thick as I’d like, but any attack by more than one person ought to be easily detectable. And we have more than enough ammunition.”
“Good.” Tucker rolled on his heels. “We only have to wait for another half-hour before Mr G and that other SOB will be right along. Then we can move on to the terminal phase of the operation. Heh, heh. Get it? Terminal?”
One of his bodyguards chuckled at this but the man who had given the report only nodded.
“Uh…yes, sir. Half an hour shouldn’t be a problem. It’s been quiet so far. We’ve had no word from Mr G or his messengers, either, about any of the target’s allies moving against us. Although he said he’s not sure where that one guy is—the human assistant.”
The Southerner snorted and flapped a hand in an almost dandified motion. “Him? He probably crawled off to the bar for the night. It’s the preternaturals on her side we need to worry about. Any sign of them and we go right to Code Red. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
Tucker ordered them to return the coffin to the warehouse and he and his two elbow-men sauntered out of sight to allow the other guards to resume their watch.
“Remy,” Riley whispered, “let’s get out of here. We need to either leave or…do something.”
“Hmm,” he mused. “How about both? Leave first and then do something.”
They crept to the car. No one stumbled onto them or accosted them, although they did see one of Tucker’s sentries come uncomfortably close for a moment. When he was distracted by another guy hundreds of feet away who gestured to him, they slipped past him and made their way toward the black Tesla.
He stood beside the car and studied it to examine its structure and aerodynamics more closely.
The fairy floated in front of his face. “Okay, you said you wanted to do something. What? We can’t simply stand here—”
Remy smiled evilly. “Actually, I was thinking about the demolition derby.”
She stared at him in confusion.
“Of course,” she replied. “But how will that help us to—”
“Ram them?” he said. “Obviously, it will offer us protection as we run over some of these pricks and batter the front door down. Fun stuff like that. And it looks like they have a large number of guns laying around anyway, so after we crash, I’ll grab one of those while you deflect the bullets.” He nodded to himself. “Yes, it ought to be a piece of cake, really. Even if Taylor does make me pay back every penny of repairs, probably for the rest of my life.”
Riley frowned. “I’m not so sure about that, Remy. There are so many of those guys, and they have the bigger kind of guns that fire faster. And if you crash through the door, you might even drive into Taylor’s coffin and kill her. We don’t know exactly where it is in there.”
He shrugged in an irritated way and retorted, “Well, we only have about twenty minutes until Tucker’s friends show up—this Mr G guy, whoever he is, and probably that prick Albert and his minions as well. At that point, they might kill her anyway. We have to do something. Do you have any better ideas?”
“Not really,” she admitted and frowned as she pulled her mouth to the side in resignation. “Let’s do this. I will do all I can to help you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Thanks.” He retrieved the remote device, unlocked the car, and slid into the seat. Riley fluttered to the dashboard and he closed the door. “You might as well do the enchantment right now and get it out of the way.”
She nodded, flew around the perimeter of the vehicle’s interior, and waved her tiny arms to trigger sparkling flashes of silver light that erupted all over the car’s body. When it looked like she was about done, he shifted into reverse, backed out of his space, and pulled onto the street, looking for an entrance to the area beside the warehouse and the pier.
He found it after less than a minute. The downside was that it was blocked by a tall chain-link fence held shut by a heavy cable secured with a padlock. There was also a small, lighted booth from which a security guard had already emerged.
Remy sighed. “I hate to crash a party too early,” he commented, “but if I must, then I must.” He stamped on the gas.
The guard’s eyes widened and he leapt out of the way as the Tesla barreled directly toward the barrier.
He grinned as the rush he’d felt during the derby came back to him and he accelerated even more. The car’s front sheared through the metal and thrust the gates inward. In the next moment, he hurtled across pot-holed asphalt with the warehouse ahead.
Men shouted in alarm and four or five guys with guns appeared from behind the barrels and out of the shipping containers stacked along either side of the long yard.
His grin still in place, he yanked the steering wheel to the left before he reversed the motion immediately to fishtail the vehicle into the two men who were closest. The first thumped into the rear window and rolled over the car’s roof before he could even react. The second managed a short burst of sub-machine gunfire before the car plowed him aside to leave a noticeable blood splatter on the trunk.
Remy was vaguely aware of the stream of profanity that poured from his lips but it almost seemed to come from someone else. He veered right and clipped another of the mercenaries, whose body crunched before he screamed and catapulted into a cluster of barrels.
Two guys remained behind to fire at the vehicle’s rear, but Riley’s magic seemed to do an excellent job of deflecting the bullets. The only thing that made any real impression was the noise. He allowed his jaw to fall open as his skull rattled and his ears rang.
Now the warehouse door—which was shut—loomed in front of them. It appeared to be made of heavy sheet metal. The car might not break through it but he made his mind up to try anyway.
“Hold on!” He pushed down on the gas pedal. Speed was necessary to bust the door down, but he also had to hope the weight of it would slow him down enough afterward that he would be able to avoid Taylor’s casket within.
The world seemed to explode with tremors and relentless noise. Metal screamed and tore apart, the car lurched and rocked, and suddenly, they were driving ahead again into a dark space.
“Boo-ya!” He laughed. “Ugh, I actually said that.”
Another hired gunman disappeared beneath the bumper and the tires, and the wheels spun as they crushed him. More gunfire generated sparks along the sides of the vehicle.
He stamped on the brakes when he saw a mounted platform on which the coffin rested ahead. The car squealed and began to spin. His seatbelt dug into his chest and forced the air out of his lungs.
Thankfully, the vehicle finally stopped. The rear bumper was about three feet from the head of the coffin.
It was a long moment before he remembered to breathe, and Riley, hanging onto the slats of the air vent, stared at him with terror in her eyes.
Remy looked over his shoulder. Several more guards had assembled near the warehouse entrance and aimed their guns—preparing to shoot at them but trying not to hit the coffin, he surmised.
He had an idea. “It looks like we need another repeat from the derby, I’d say,” he remarked. “Riley, we bail on three.”
She nodded and burrowed into his shirt as he wheeled the Tesla around and revved it. “One!”
He pressed the gas pedal again and unhooked his seatbelt as the mercs opened fire at the vehicle, to no avail. “Two!”
The men began to stumble away from the entrance. The car picked up speed.
“Three!” He flung the door open, jumped, and rolled. The concrete pounded into him, but a silver glow surrounded him as he rolled aside and he knew that Riley had softened their landing.
The Tesla powered through the line of men, flattened one, and scattered the others. Its front end deflected off a shipping container and the car, driverless and slowing down now, swerved to the right and out of sight.
Remy scrambled to his feet, confident he wasn’t injured unless adrenaline had masked the pain. He’d care later. He flung himself behind a crate a second before a few bullets pinged off the floor behind him.
The crate was partially open already. “Riley,” he snapped. “Cover me.”
She squirmed out from under his shirt and flapped above his head to create a sheen of light in the air before them that threw sparks when bullets struck it and veered off-course.
Remington leaned into the crate and hoisted out a newer-model Deutsch SMG, along with four spare magazines, which he shoved into his pockets. “Is that deflector shield two-way? I’d like to fire through it if you don’t mind.”
The fairy glanced at him and opened a narrow hole in the sheet of light. He thrust the gun’s barrel through it and fired half a magazine while he wheeled the weapon to spray bullets as widely as possible. The fire directed at them stopped as the remaining mercs took cover.
He glanced quickly toward the coffin. Unfortunately, a couple more men had emerged from somewhere deeper within the warehouse and now tried to cut him off from their cargo.
“Riley,” he snapped, “shield us from those guys for a minute.” He gestured at the two near the coffin. She increased the translucent silver barrier barely in time to deflect their opening barrage.
Something caught his attention and he grinned. Their adversaries stood in front of another crate, one with orange tape on it that said DANGER in bold black letters.
“Oh, this is rich,” he quipped. “I think that’s an explosives crate. Watch this—” He aimed his sub-machine gun.
“Remy, you idiot!” Riley protested. “We’re too close—”
He ignored her and fired. Holes appeared in the crate.
Then, it exploded.
The blast knocked him off his feet and drove the fairy down beside him.
Remy looked up. One of the two guys who’d guarded the coffin had been blown to charred pieces. The other lay sprawled to the side o
f it, his legs in bad shape. He was dazed, but alive.
With a sigh, he jogged toward him and motioned with his hand for the fairy to follow him. She complied, still busy deflecting bullets from the men at the door who had regrouped.
The wounded man’s unfocused gaze drifted toward him and sharpened. He twisted his torso to reach for his gun, which lay on the floor beside his hand.
“No, you don’t,” Remy snapped, raised his SMG, and fired.
Three bloody holes erupted in the man’s chest and shoulder area. Shaking and groaning, he fell back and was still.
Something about the knowledge that he’d actually killed a person—several people, rather—disturbed him deep down, but there were too many important tasks to focus on for him to dwell on it. He had to get that coffin.
A few flames from the explosion were burning themselves out as he strode up to the cargo. He saw, with some annoyance, that the lamp was still functional despite the blast and blazed directly on the coffin.
He reached out and clicked it off. Nothing happened. Behind him, he thought he could hear Riley shout something.
As he turned, he saw the fairy rocket through the air toward him, still maintaining her translucent force-field against the gunfire of the last two guards. He aimed around the edge of the magical shield and fired the remainder of his magazine.
The guards ducked into cover behind large boxes. In the ensuing silence, he said, “Riley—can you levitate this coffin to the car?”
One of the guards took a potshot at him as he said this, but she deflected it.
“Yes,” she answered, “but how will I protect you? I can’t do both.”
“I can manage this.” He ejected the empty magazine and slid a fresh one in. “Luck and daring seem to go a long way, I’ve noticed. They have a kind of magic of their own.”
While he spoke, he aimed at the crate that the closer of the two men had hunkered behind. As if on cue, the guy darted up.
Remy squeezed the trigger. The gun flared and four rounds sheared the corner of the crate off and also felled the guy behind it in a spray of blood. His target’s gun fired aimlessly into the air as he fell.
Last Ditch Effort Page 21
