A low foxfire smear bloomed amid the crowd, viridescent smoke pouring, coalescing. A wall of force expanded, dilating from a bar of crimson light with two swelling points.
Eyes. They were eyes. Their gaze raked past her, taking in the chaos with one swift sweep, and all the trouble, the noise, the glaring, the restless motion stilled.
She skidded to a stop, bootsoles smoking, her right hand tented lightly against the floor, fingertips just slightly touching a tangle of shattered glass and clinging nasty wetness as substances which shouldn’t mix were smeared together.
I thoughtIwas fast. Simone stared, her fangs fully out and sensitive, pulsing in time to her banging, battering heart.
A single streak of motion tore through the shooters, spreading in a streak-cloud, flickering through black smoke to greenish mist, solidifying only to rip open a hard shell of body armor and the flesh beneath or to wrench a struggling lab-coated form asunder. Blood gushed, sprayed, turned to a fine mist, a storm of iron-smelling droplets underlit with acidic lightning.
None of the vamps she’d killed with such wringing, tearing effort could have possibly fought this… this utter catastrophe. It scythed through the crowd, leaving only twisted, dripping fleshrags and sheared bone in its wake, guns clattering to the ground with their smoking barrels split or torqued into sharp curves.
A bullet insect-whined past her ear. Simone flinched, but the streak of killing intent was already blinking across the room with a soft warm whisper of moving air, resolving into a lean shape dressed in black, one iron fist buried in the gut of a vamp hunter who had survived and managed to squeeze off a single shot in her direction.
The old vampire lifted the hapless bounty-chaser, and Simone realized he had punched through armor and belly to grab the lumbar spine. A single irresistible movement, like a terrier shaking a toy, ended with a deepthunkof snapping bone.
John dropped the limp form atop a broken pile of other, feebly twitching lumps which had once been vamp hunters.
Ringing, blaring fire-alarm screams coruscated through empty space. Thin, acrid smoke rose in curls. A few struggling heartbeats, weak cries, and a terrible copper stench of blood—the sudden cessation of gunfire and other noise was almost stunning.
Simone’s legs quivered. She wanted to stand, stayed nailed in place as John turned, slowly, the crimson glow in his eyes fading until they became shadowed blue-tinted holes, staring at her through fluttering, failing fluorescent light. Half the overheadfixtures were cracked and emergency lighting, vomitously orange, flared and faded in irregular pulses just at the seam between ceiling and walls. The thin crackle of flame merrily snacking on a pool of chemicals was concerning, but she couldn’t move.
A puff of breeze stirring her sweat-stiffened hair, a brush against her cheek, and John again resolved out of thin air, crouched easily before her. He tilted his head, dark hair standing up in wild spikes. His hat was gone, his eyes bright blue, and she was surprised to feel a deep flare of horrible, unforgivable relief.
Even more strange was him leaning forward and inhaling sharply. Something about his stare—wild, vacant, distant and terribly present at once—taunted her.
It was the glare of a wild animal interested in something. Uncertain, warily compelled.
“Simone.” Her name rode a soft, wondering exhale. “Sweet Simone.”
Oh, hell.
CHAPTER 28
Bedraggled and beautiful,she stared at him as if terrified past comprehension. Of course, his entrance left nothing to be desired in the way of violence; he idly catalogued and monitored the various states of those clinging to tenuous mortal life amid the mess, pleased that none were in a position to harm her.
The scent of his leman bore a warped note, a smoky searing of starvation, battle, and the metabolizing of some acrid mortal potion. Her bare arms were striped with blood, both mortal and her own; his fingers flicked out, drawing lightly down the left limb, and he almost winced at the damage to her luscious skin. A good feeding, rest, and the cessation of all this nonsense was in order.
He pressed his fingertips to lips, savoring the spicy, addictive tang of his treasure along with the strange, sharply venomous substance she had been dosed with. She flinched, lovely eyes gone dark and round with pain, and as the flame of her burned away encroaching madness and calcification he remembered the name again—her gift, all the more valuable after being temporarily mislaid.
Jonathan. That is who I am, to her.
“I…” Her cracked, chapped lips shaped the words so elegantly, and her voice was a nightingale’s warble amid all the furious metallic bleating. “They… I didn’t try to?—”
“I know,” he soothed. He could not wait to feel her mouth drawing against his veins once more, but open flame now crept upon a lake of spilled substances, belching nasty discolored smoke. The killing roar was gone, though the thrall prickled deep in his marrow with sharp silver rowels. There was a swollen, blistered band across her forehead, another at her throat—had they sought to strangle her?
She tensed. Fearing she lacked the strength to stand, he grasped her arms and drew them both upward. His leman flinched again, though his grasp was as gentle as possible, and the rage threatened to return despite the anodyne of her presence, the soothing cloak of her scent.
“There.” He steadied her, then let go, slowly, ready to provide more support at any sign of crumpling. “Time to leave, darlin’.”
“Yeah.” A small shake of her tousled, beautiful hair. “Yeah, I —”
“Bitch,” a mortal voice wheezed, from a shadowed ruin of tubes and glass behind her. “Fucking… mess.”
Now Jonathan noted the slab with its straps—silver somehow woven into cloth, no wonder she was raw and suppurating. The daring of mortals to do this…
Well, they were dangerous in swarms. Every sanguinant knew as much.
His leman turned, regarding the smaller mess. She took one uncertain step, then another, and Jonathan suppressed a sudden urge to simply grasp her, take flight, and bear them both through the twisting passageways to the clean, forgiving night outside.