A muscle in Tess’s cheek twitched. “Maybe I would have been a little more forthcoming if your vampiric friend had ever told me the truth about anything. At al .” She swal owed, shook her head. “Vampire.”
“Yeah, and I’m a witch.” Chloe shrugged, her face stil too pale for Merek’s liking. “So is Aunt Mil ie. Merek is a warlock, and Alex is—”
“A werewolf,” Tess interrupted, stuffing a lock of her dripping red hair behind her ear. “Luca the liar fil ed me in on those little details after his fangs popped out when my boat was capsized by some kind of . . . of force field. ”
“Spel . Not force field.” Chloe swal owed and met Merek’s gaze. “How long do you think we have until the Normal police get here? Or the cavalry you told Luca to have standing by?”
“The spel hit while he was cal ing in. I’m pretty sure his phone’s at the bottom of the Puget Sound.” Tess didn’t look at either of them. “The cavalry’s not coming.”
“I put a silencing spel on the place after the windows shattered.” He didn’t need to tel Chloe the Magickal Council would expect them to die before they revealed themselves to Normals. Their lives were not worth every Magickal person’s. It was the ugly reality of living with magic. “If we’re lucky, no Normals are coming.”
“Luck. Right. We’ve done so wel with that lately.” Chloe’s chest lifted in slow, deep breaths, and he wished like hel they were in a place where he could comfort her, but they weren’t and he couldn’t, so he turned away and did his job.
The women fel silent when he lifted his hand. Something . . . swept along his senses. A person. Magickal.
Hiding under an invisibility spel . He drew in a lungful of air, let half of it out. The brush of a footstep sounded to his left. He swung around the edge of the island. Fired two shots toward what he hoped was the chest.
Flames exploded outward, and he ducked back behind the island, throwing up a shielding spel to protect them, but the effort cost him. Fuck. This Magickal was old, powerful. Fire engulfed them, red and orange light flowing around his shield like liquid. Sweat sluiced down his skin as the heat hit him. Chloe yanked Tess closer to him, threw her own magic around them.
The heat lessened, and he swiveled around, taking a blind shot through the shield. He felt the reverberation as it pierced, but a short scream ended the flood of flames. Chloe col apsed against his side, panting. “Okay?”
“Fine. You? Tess?”
“Good,” Tess choked.
“Me, too.” Chloe patted his arm and chest as if looking for injuries. He used his free hand to catch hers, squeeze in brief reassurance, and then set her aside.
He forced his muscles to cooperate, to not shake from the outpouring of magic. Pushing himself up into a crouch, he kept the shield as strong as he could, and took a quick look at what they were facing. A woman lay sprawled on her back, her mouth gaping open and closed like a landed fish, a clear shot through her throat. Hovering over her was a vampire.
Not Caval i.
Merek squeezed off another shot and tucked himself back behind the island as the vampire returned fire.
He jolted and Chloe screamed in pain as the bul et ricocheted off their shield and exploded into the refrigerator. Shoving Chloe back against the cabinet door, he clamped a hand across her mouth, and looked up. He wasn’t surprised to see the vampire perched on top of the island, fangs bared in a horrific smile.
They both fired. And hit.
The vampire barely jerked as blood bloomed from his chest, and Merek groaned as white-hot agony sliced into his thigh. Chloe dropped her gun to dive for his leg and the crimson that spurted upward.
Femoral artery. His mind registered the severity of the wound, even as his instincts kept him moving. The vampire leaped to the counter across from them, laughed as Tess’s Normal bul ets hit him and did even less damage than Merek’s one shot. He fol owed the bloodsucker with his weapon, but his body felt weak, his muscles unresponsive.
His aim wavered, the vampire’s didn’t, and he knew he’d failed.
A shadow that moved with unnatural speed sailed over the island and crashed into the vampire. Caval i.
They slammed through the wal and into the living room. Furious hissing and blows too swift to sound real echoed through the cloud of white plaster.
Chloe’s healing spel wrapped around his leg, sealed the entry and exit wounds from the bul et, and began to weave the muscle and sinew back together. It fucking hurt. A lot. It felt like hot pokers jabbed into his leg, and stars burst before his eyes. He gritted his teeth and bore it, gurgled on a groan, sweat stinging his eyes.
“Merek! A little help, please.” Alex’s cal was so mild, Merek knew the kid was up to his neck in a fight he couldn’t handle. A short howl ended in a whoosh of escaped breath. Someone had gut-punched the kid.
Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed the counter to keep his leg from col apsing under him. Pain stabbed from his thigh straight to his skul . The healing wasn’t done, but it was good enough that he wasn’t going to bleed out. “You two stay here. Chloe, pick up your gun.”
She fumbled in the pool of his blood to retrieve the pistol. Her hands shook, her lips colorless, her mouth pinched. The look in her eyes was haunted as she wiped the blood off her hands and onto her pants. “Be careful. Help Alex.”
Not bothering to waste time with a response, he turned away from her and stumbled out of the kitchen, almost tripping over the body of the woman he’d kil ed. He had to get to Alex.
Chloe watched him walk away, and it took everything in her not to scream for him to come back. She’d never wanted to hold on to anyone so tightly in her entire life. This need made her childhood clinging to Mil ie seem like nothing. It was terrifying and unstoppable. Only the fact that Alex needed help kept her mouth shut.
Tess shifted beside her. “What can we do? My bul ets aren’t doing shit against these guys.”
“No, you need special ammunition designed for Magickals.” An idea began to percolate. Rocking herself onto her hands and knees, Chloe crawled forward until she could reach the cleaning supplies under the sink.
She glanced back at Tess. “Normal stuff is especial y ineffective against vampires and werewolves.
Because of their healing abilities.”
“I see.”
A sick feeling crawled through Chloe at the expressionless mask her friend wore, but what could she say?
Tess wasn’t an idiot. The conclusions she was obviously coming to were pretty damn accurate. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Tess. I’m sorry we al lied to you.”
“Did you have a choice?”
Pul ing out every cleaning solution she could get her hands on, she lined them up on the floor to see what she had to work with. “No, but that doesn’t make it suck less.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Tess’s voice went hoarse, and her eyes closed for a moment. When she opened them, she was back in control, the mask firmly in place. “What can we do?”
“I can make some explosives.” Chloe didn’t mention that the Council would probably order Tess’s memory altered so she wouldn’t know about magic after this was over. She also didn’t tel her friend that she didn’t have enough magic left to generate a flame spel like Merek and she had blocked. A few nasty potions were the best she could do. She rifled through the cabinets under the island until she came up with a few plastic containers.