Neecy leaned out her apartment window, her hands gripping the window frame.
Her index finger tapped restlessly against the metal. Where the hell was that cabbie?
If she missed this train there would be hell to pay.
The vibration of her cell phone against her hip made her cringe. Probably Yager.
She bet he thought she would bail out of this at the last minute. Hence the no sex rule for the entire week. Still they needed to get some things straight and it wasn’t like she was heading toward Africa. It was Long Island…it only felt a million miles away.
She pulled her phone out of its holster and frowned at the number on caller ID.
Flipping it open, “Delia?”
“Neece…” Delia’s voice faded and returned. Neecy could barely hear her fellow team leader. But snatches of things kept hitting her. “Your team” and “problem.”
Neecy straightened up, thoughts of a wild sex weekend wiped out in seconds.
“What? What problem?
“Arri…trouble. Janelle…”
“Where, Dee?”
“Village. Sharky’s Comics.”
Neecy had no idea why Arri and possibly Janelle were at a comic bookstore, but she didn’t care. She knew where Sharky’s was and all she needed to hear was Arri’s name. Slamming the phone shut, Neecy shoved it back into its holster and tore off her jacket and sweater, leaving just her requisite tank top, jeans, and boots. She stepped through her open window, spread her wings, and took to the air.
Janelle and Katie looked at each other and just as quickly turned away. They had to or they’d explode into laughter. Janelle had never seen anything like it. A line of young boys and men stretched out the door of the big shop. All of them there to see and talk to Arri. Painfully shy, painfully weird, Arri.
She signed everything they put in front of her except body parts. And when it looked like one guy was going for his Johnson, Janelle moved on him so quick, she scared the guy right out of the store. After that, the rest of them watched her warily. Suddenly she became Arrianna Days’ bodyguard. Typical.
Everyone always expected the “big girl” to protect the tiny women. No one ever tried to protect her.
She’d do this for Arri, though. She realized she liked the kid more than she thought. Little Long Island princess that she was, she was still a good person.
And Janelle tried really hard not to compare other people’s lives against hers.
Although her family lived in the “wrong” neighborhood and struggled to make ends meet, they still loved each other in their own way. Her father’s past did eventually catch up with them all, but not because he was still in the “life,” but because he’d left it behind at the request of his wife.
The one thing Janelle knew that a lot of these rich kids didn’t—her family did love her.
Katie motioned to her. “How much longer?” she mouthed at her.
Janelle shrugged and looked at the enormous line still snaking out the door. She sighed. It looked like she was going to be bodyguard chick for a little while longer.
Neecy destroyed a kneecap with one brutal kick while she used one of her blades to slash the throat of the man behind her.
When she landed behind Sharky’s shop, she didn’t find Arri or Janelle or any other Crow. But before she could even figure out why Delia would send her here for no reason, they’d come out of the shadows. Hunters. Big, older white men who moved around her like a wounded lion they found on the African plains.
A setup. A really good one. They must have been recording their cell calls for months. And it took nothing to clone a phone number to fool her caller ID. And she’d bet money that Janelle and Arri were around this store somewhere in case Neecy called back at the house to check. A freakin’ brilliant plan, but considering her past life as a drug dealer, she still should have known better.
There were a lot of them. Fifteen by her count. A lot, even for her. But now she was pissed. She’d had plans this weekend and they pretty much consisted of having Wilhelm Yager inside her until her eight a.m. Monday morning class.
Knowing these assholes got between her and what she, at the moment, considered her cock, only enraged her beyond anything she’d felt before.
Without even turning around, she grabbed another one coming up behind her.
He would have screamed, she guessed, if her talons hadn’t torn through his throat like a knife through butter.
She ripped through men like paper, tearing them apart from groin to neck. A blade in one hand and her talons unleashed on the other. One of them actually had a spear, which she got off him easily and proceeded to impale him with. That was kind of cool, but she was too pissed to even enjoy it.
Now, as she yanked the throat out of the man with the shattered knee, she was down to two. And she planned to get rid of them as quickly as possible, catch the first train she could get out of Grand Central and get to Yager. She knew him.
He’d think she stood him up. Changed her mind.
That thought kicked her rage up a notch as she grabbed one of the two and slammed his head into the alley wall—a lot—until his head was no more than a pulpy mess.
When she realized she couldn’t do any more damage to him, she released what was left of him and turned to the last man. He backed up. She saw the fear in his eyes, but it didn’t stop her. Nothing would stop her.
She extended her wings and flew at him, but hands she didn’t know where there grabbed hold of her wings and flung her across the alley.
Another had been hiding, waiting for the right moment to kick her ass. It was times like this she wished she had the Shifters sense of smell. She bet nothing ever snuck up on them.
Neecy landed hard against the dirty concrete, grunting as her body hit the ground. Growling, she scrambled to her feet, but a boot in the back, shoved her down.
She fought to get out from under the heavy weight on her back, looking behind her in time to see the ax blade swing at her.
“No!”
But it was too late. The blade, glowing with powerful runes, slammed into the part of her wing connecting it to her back, nearly separating it completely. Pain arched through her as blood flew. An artery severed, Neecy knew she only had minutes…if that much.
The man raised the ax and she looked into his face. Christ, some average motherfucker was taking out Neecy Lawrence. Well, she’d never hear the end of this in Valhalla.
Grinning, he lifted the ax that would split her spine in half.
And that’s when they attacked. She didn’t call them this time. She didn’t even think about calling them, too stunned by the sudden turn of events.
They landed on her attacker with a viciousness she’d never witnessed before. It took them seconds to rip him apart and move on the other one who’d been scrambling for the exit out of the alley.
As blood filled her mouth and her crows surrounded her to escort her to Valhalla, Neecy only had one regret. .
Until Yager made it to Valhalla himself, he would always think she stood him up.
Chapter Fifteen
“She totally stood you up.”
Tye grabbed hold of Yager’s shoulders before he could rip the little pissant apart.
“She didn’t stand me up,” he growled between clenched teeth.
“Was she at the station?”
Yager stared at Mike, in the middle of his living room, and wondered what it would be like to rip one of the bastard kid’s arms off and beat him to death with it. Why the hell were these two even out on the Island? Knowing Mike, he probably had a bet with Tye that Neecy wouldn’t show up. It looked like he won that bet.