Dragging on her jeans first, Jade pulled the panic button out of her pocket and activated it as she shoved her feet into her sneakers. She dropped the handheld unit in the process of jerking her shirt on over her head. Just as she bent to retrieve it, the French doors exploded inward and the chatter of machine-gun fire split the night. The bullets cut through the air where she’d just been, slicing the white canopy swags to tatters and pulping plaster to dust as she threw herself flat behind the bed.
“Jade!” Lucius appeared in the doorway, carrying a double-barreled shotgun with deadly menace.
He was wearing black body armor over his T-shirt and a black utility belt slung low across his hips over his jeans. The belt was loaded with spare clips and guns, and a military-style combat knife hung where the magi wore their bloodline blades. The combination of warrior’s gear and human casual should have jarred. Instead, it made him look deadly and capable.
“I’m here! I’m okay.” She scrabbled partway up, grabbed the skull effigy off the bedside table, and then lunged toward him while he laid down cover fire with double loads of jadeshot, spraying the night outside the ruined glass doors. The booms of the shotgun were deafening in the close quarters, but it was viscerally satisfying when they cut through the higher-toned chatter of automatic fire. It was even better when the guns outside went silent. She wasn’t willing to bet that would last for long, though.
“Hurry.” He was right behind her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“No shit.” She yanked on the body armor Jox had found for her, and grabbed the second shotgun while Lucius loaded up on grenades. Her heartbeat drummed loudly in her ears, and she was shaking with a combination of nerves and adrenaline, but her head was clear; she was thinking, not just reacting. And she hadn’t frozen. Not yet, anyway. Not this time, she told herself. Which reminded her of the magic: not the spells, but the ice. “I could—” Something flashed outside, luminous green. “Down!” Lucius shouted, and lunged for her. He hit her with his shoulder and knocked her off her feet and into the sofa, but somehow managed to get his arms around her and turn himself so he partway shielded her from the impact.
They tumbled to the floor as the sitting room windows shattered inward under a hail of gunfire.
Cursing, Lucius rolled them to the sofa, flipped it over atop them, and held her so tightly she could barely breathe. The furniture was scant protection against the heavy-caliber weapons; the bullets had wasted the window glass and the curtains, and were doing a damned good job of chewing through the walls themselves, coming from all directions at once.
“We’re surrounded,” she yelled into Lucius’s broad chest, barely able to hear herself over the thump of gunfire and destruction.
“Did you hit the panic button?”
She nodded into his chest. “They’re on their way.” She’d left the device in the bedroom, but if Strike couldn’t get a good ’port fix off the images from the built-in camera, there was a similar unit mounted atop the Jeep. More important, the magi could use the view from the Jeep to assess the situation, and figure out the safest place to materialize.
“We can’t wait for them here.” His voice rumbled against her cheek, carrying a grim sort of finality. “Whoever’s out there might decide to just fuck it and crater the cottage. We’re safer out in the open than pinned down here.” Though not by much, was the unspoken end to that statement.
“Use the grenades to get their heads down,” Jade ordered. “Then we run. I’ll shield us.”
“You’ve got shield magic?”
“No, but I’ve got ice. It’ll have to be enough.”
He nodded, his jaw tight, his expression set in lines of concentration. “It will be. I believe in you.”
Leaning in, he kissed her hard and fast, and when he pulled back, there was something new in his eyes, something that made her heart lurch in her chest. “I’ll cover you.”
For a crazy moment, those three words rearranged themselves in her head to become something else entirely. So she merely gaped when he heaved against her, overturning the sofa and in the same motion yanking the pins from three jade-loaded grenades. He counted, “One . . . two . . .” On “three” he heaved the grenades through the blown-out windows. They landed on “four.”
On “five,” there was a rending, tearing explosion outside, followed by screams of agony as jade shrapnel tore into their attackers.
“Come on!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her up, and then they were running for the door. As they ran, Jade yanked the combat knife from his belt, used it to nick her palm, and called the ice magic. Power formed around her, coalescing to include Lucius in a circular swirl of cold air convecting with hot. She had originally intended to put an actual shield of ice around them, but saw the better option immediately. Instead of casting the iceball magic, she built it around them. Ahead of them it was clear. Everywhere else around them, sleet whipped in a twenty- foot whirl, obscuring them as Lucius flung open the cottage door and they ran out into the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lucius’s heart rattled in his ears, sounding like machine-gun fire, but that was the only rat-tat-tat he heard as they fled through where he thought the enemy lines had been laid. The grenades had done their work. In the low-lying solar lights planted on either side of the pathway, he saw a hand, a foot, a dark smear he thought was blood, and his gorge rose at the knowledge that he had done that. Not Cizin this time. Him.
But he’d do all that and more if that was what it took to keep Jade safe. Dull rage pounded through him, hatred for the bastards that had come after them, and— Not now, he told himself. He couldn’t think about that right now, just as he couldn’t think about the crazy intensity of their lovemaking, or the clutch of his heart when the first salvo of bullets had ripped through the French doors and he’d seen her go down.
Without warning, a machine gun chattered from nearby, sweeping a wide arc that glanced off the icy shield. The bullets passed through the sleet. Jade gasped and the magic winked out.
“Jade!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her into the lee of the next cottage over. “Are you hurt?”
“I couldn’t hold it any longer.” Her face was bloodless; she was shaking. But she hadn’t been shot.
Yet.
They needed to buy more time. But how? Between the dim illumination from the solar walkway lights and the bright, welcoming porch lights up at the main house, he could see back to the shattered windows of what had been their cottage, and in the other direction to the cottage where the road-
tripping family was—had been?—staying. Everywhere he looked there were dark, slinking shadows and the flash of luminous green eyes. “Makol,” he hissed, the word coming out as a curse.
A few of the figures came clear; he saw a pudgy guy in a cheap suit, another in coveralls, a third in insignia-less fatigues. Their eyes were pure makol but their motions were jerky and uncoordinated.
Trying to look in every direction at once, Lucius nudged her in the direction of the parking area.
“We’ve got to keep moving. Head for the Jeep. Strike and the others should be—” A whistle split the air and their cottage exploded.