He gave a ghost of a chuckle and pulled the pins on the grenades. They pushed away from the SUV and raced toward the hallway. While Yolanthe laid down a hail of covering fire, he sprinted hard, spun like a discus thrower, and heaved the grenade belt. He put all the force he could into it, sending the belt shooting deep into the hallway.
He felt an invisible force punch his right shoulder and left thigh and knew he’d been hit, but his body armor blocked most of the damage. When he and Yolanthe had run past the hallway several yards, they spun around.
Fighters poured out, fleeing the impending blast.
One of them was Justine, her auburn hair flying out from her head like a flag.
She sprinted toward the staircase. She was one of the oldest, most Powerful Vampyres present, and she moved faster than almost anybody else in the garage.
Except for Yolanthe and Julian.
Everything in Julian narrowed down to the need to kill. He leaped forward, but his leg buckled underneath him. The hit he had taken in the thigh had done more damage than he had realized.
Yolanthe wasn’t impaired. She shot forward, moving toward Justine like a linebacker. Leaping, she grabbed Justine by the hair with both hands, bodily lifted the other Vampyre, swung around and flung her through the air.
Justine’s body slammed into a concrete pillar several feet off the ground. She dropped like a stone.
Yolanthe said in Julian’s head, Bitch wants to throw down with her lovely locks all loose and shiny? Okay then.
Down the hallway, the grenades blew. The concussion blasted out through the garage. It knocked Julian to his knees.
He shoved up, drew his sword and launched toward Justine, ignoring the nearby fire and the fighting that had broken out all around.
Bitch hadn’t turned to dust either. She wasn’t dead yet.
As he neared, Justine rolled onto her stomach and came up on her hands and knees. Her teeth were bared in a rictus grin. She reached toward her waist and drew a gun.
And turned to level it at him.
Someone ran toward them from his right, aiming an automatic rifle at Justine and firing a constant spray of bullets.
The shooter was a tall woman with blond hair pulled into a tight bun at her neck. She had a cloth wrapped around her nose and mouth, and she was shadowed by a tall, powerfully built Light Fae male who threw combat spells like sparks of deadly fire.
Melly.
Justine’s arm jerked back and her shots went wide.
Julian regarded the other Vampyre with some degree of incredulity. Bitch still wasn’t dead. But her arm was sure shot to hell.
He limped forward the rest of the way to her, swung his sword, and Justine’s head spun away from her body.
It flew straight toward Melly, as it happened, who flinched back and pulled a massive ew face that was obvious even through the masking cloth. Using the butt of her gun, she whacked at the head like it was a baseball, batting it away from her just as it crumbled to dust.
Meanwhile, bullets flew everywhere, and people still pounded the hell out of each other. Julian grabbed Melly by the waist and hauled her around the concrete pillar for cover.
He shouted at her, “What are you doing down here?”
Her eyes went very wide and she flung out her free hand. She looked more than a little crazed as she shouted in reply, “I couldn’t keep watching this on TV!”
Naturally, her Light Fae troops had returned to the garage with her. Their arrival turned the tide again. While pockets of fighting still raged in a few areas, he saw the battle was essentially over.
He turned back to Melly. “All those fantastic kill shots you made when you dusted the ferals, and you damn near shoot Justine’s arm off?”
“All I could see was the gun she had pointed toward your head. I needed to stop it.”
A fine tremor ran through her body. Her eyes were huge and dark. He snatched her close, hugging her with one arm hooked around her neck. With trembling fingers, she touched his face, his neck.
The scene around them was like something out of hell. It seemed fitting that hell might be found in Evenfall’s basement garage. The last of the fighting came to an end.
Overhead, a fire sprinkler system tried to spurt water, but the system was a modernization that had been tacked onto the old, original stone ceiling. The grid of thin, exposed pipes had been too damaged from various explosions.
As a thin trickle of water dripped on his head, Julian looked up. “That’s not going to be enough.”
Yolanthe shouted, “Get fire extinguishers down here, people!”
Melly coughed. “Do you need to be down here anymore?”
“No. Let’s go.” He kept an arm around her shoulders and stayed watchful, just in case. He had seen too many tragedies occur when people let down their guard at the end of a battle. “It’s over.”
At that, she barked out a hoarse, rasping laugh and coughed harder.
“No,” she told him. “It’s not. Annis and Leopold are busily gathering the Nightkind council together. I predict they’ll all be here inside of two hours.”
He thought about that as they made for the staircase. “Well,” he offered after a few minutes. “At least Dominic and Justine are dead.”
She put an arm around his waist. “At least there’s that.”
They made their way back to Julian’s suite, where Xavier hugged them both and Tess gave Melly a wide, relieved smile.
Meanwhile, chaos reigned. Light Fae troops crowded in. People continued to pop into the stairway tunnel, until someone realized Julian and Melly had returned. Then instead of evacuating, they started pouring back through the tunnel entrance. A loud, excited babble of conversation filled the air.
“I’m never going to get my bedroom back again,” Julian muttered, as he watched the influx of jubilant, relieved people.
Xavier told them, “Evenfall still isn’t secure. We need to do a sweep.”
“We also have to take care of Dominic’s troops stationed outside.” Taking Melly by the hand, he hauled her into his office, which was marginally quieter.
Xavier, Tess and Shane joined them. Melly watched as Julian picked up the receiver from the phone set on his desk. He slammed it back down immediately. “The phone’s dead. Goddammit. They did cut the telecommunications cables.”
Xavier said, “With your permission, I’ll command the sweep. If there’s any more fighting, it’ll be minimal and the guards can take care of it. I’ll also coordinate with Yolanthe to make sure the Nightkind troops are purged of traitors.” Frowning, he paused to regard Tess.
Tess’s expression turned determined. “You don’t need me here anymore. I’m coming with you.”
Purged of traitors. Melly swallowed hard.
“Good, go take care of it,” Julian told the pair. He hadn’t let go of Melly’s hand, his fingers laced through hers.
Melly said to Shane, “It’s still daylight. We can handle that much better than the Nightkind. Send fifteen troops to help with clearing Dominic’s forces from the area around the castle. And we have to clear out some of the chaos in here. Would you make sure people are directed to go out of the suite, so they don’t linger to chat? And close the tunnel entrance as soon as you can.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Following Xavier and Tess, Shane stepped out.
As soon as they had left, Melly released Julian’s hand, stepped forward and slammed the door, shutting out the rest of the world. Julian followed her.
As she turned around, he pinned her back against the door panel with his body weight. Leaning both his arms on the door, he bowed his head next to hers.
Torn between holding on to him and running her hands over the surface of his scarred body armor, she tried to do both at once.