Yasmine Galenorn - Night Seeker

No, but they are close around the other side. Be cautious when you reach the next turn. They are waiting and they know you are coming. There are four. Two waiting on your end, two on the other.

How did they find out? And can you possibly get word to the others? Chatter can hear you if you want him to.

I do not know how they were warned, but I can tell by their stance, they are waiting to ambush you. She swirled around me, a shroud of caution. I will take word to Chatter now.

I sucked in a deep breath and turned to Kaylin and Wrath. “Ulean says they know we’re coming. They’re not around this corner but around the next. Ulean’s taking word to Chatter now. There are two on the other end, waiting down there, and two on our end.”

“I suppose since they know we’re here, we might as well…Hold on.” Kaylin stood back, looking up. “We can still get the drop on them.”

I followed his gaze. There was enough junk nearby to create a pile that would allow us to reach the roof. We could go up and over. Wrath caught our plan and shimmered into owl form, smoothly gliding up to land on the roof and transform back. He leaned over, his hand out, to help us scramble up from the junk to the roof.

As silently as we could, we crawled up the A-line roof. The snow was cold under our bellies as we forged a silent path. The gentle flaking of fresh snow landed on our shoulders, our hair, our backs. My hands were freezing, but I didn’t want to put on gloves. They interfered with using my fan, and I couldn’t afford the time spent yanking off a pair of gloves in order to unfurl the weapon.

As we reached the top of the roof, I cautiously slithered over the apex and edged my way down to just before the edge, peeking over. There they were. Day-runners. They wore the same style of clothing Leo had worn, and I could feel vampire written all over them. Wrath and Kaylin joined me.

The drop to the ground was daunting-we’d crawled up a fifteen-foot pile of crap in order to get on the roof in back. But the snow was knee-deep, so maybe the landing wouldn’t be so hard. The men were still waiting and I was surprised to see that the others hadn’t already engaged their pair, but as I looked down to their end, I saw that they’d had the same idea. They were on the roof, in approximately the same place we were.

I can make others hear me when I choose to, and it seemed a good idea to tell them what you were doing. They chose to approach in the same manner. Ulean sounded almost giddy. The wind was picking up and I could feel her responding to it, even as my own body did. It coaxed us to come, to play, to dive in. My owl self beckoned me to shift and fly out on the gusting currents, but I pushed the urge away.

With a glance at Kaylin, who gave me a thumbs-up, I swung my feet over the edge and dropped directly on top of one of the men. Kaylin followed, landing to take down the other, and within the blink of an eye, Wrath joined us.

I heard a loud shout from the other end-the others must have attacked at the same time we did-but I’d learned by now to keep my eyes on my own opponent. I quickly rolled up off the ground. When I’d landed on the man, I’d gone down on my knees, but the snow had cushioned the worst of the shock. As I rose to my feet, I was surprised to see that he was already standing.

“Who are you? What do you want?” I circled him warily, as Kaylin mirrored my movements with his opponent.

“Stand back. Or you’ll regret it.” With one quick sweep, the man I was facing pulled out something fist-sized and opened his palm for us to see.

“Fuck, a grenade ? What the hell are you doing with a grenade?” My first thought was that Geoffrey had sent them here to blow us all up, a suicide bombing mission. Bloodwhores would do whatever their masters asked. But something in his demeanor told me he was no bloodwhore. No, day-runners were more valuable than bloodwhores.

“You-and the redhead-come with us and we’ll let the rest of them go.” He flicked his finger toward the pin.

I glanced at the grenade, then back at him. “How bad do you want us?”

“My orders are to bring the two of you back with me.” As he spoke, the two men from the opposite end of the building herded Rex, Peyton, and Chatter back toward us. They, too, had a grenade.

“No. You want us that bad, you’re not going to blow us up.” I shook my head. “This is so not going to happen.”

“You think so?” The man stared at me, his duster dark against the snow, and then he nodded to his buddy, who marched over and grabbed Peyton, dragging her in front of me. He tied her hands behind her back, and then pulled out a roll of duct tape and quickly strapped the grenade to her, while his partner kept us at bay with the other grenade. As he looped a string around the pin of the grenade and stepped away from Peyton, unwinding the string as he went, I suddenly realized what he was doing.

“Stop-don’t. Don’t do this.”

“You and your cousin come with us and we’ll let this one go without blowing her into a thousand bloody pieces.”

As I began to panic, Wrath suddenly turned into an owl and headed directly toward Peyton. Kaylin sent a shuriken into the man’s hand. He screamed, dropping the line leading to the grenade’s pin. At the same moment, Chatter turned into a pillar of fire and began spinning toward the man still holding the grenade.

“Get back! Get back!” I screamed to Rex, as I dove for a nearby snowbank. I shaded my eyes, tried to see what was happening without raising my head too far, but a large explosion lit up the area. Sharp screams filled the air, one after another. I staggered out from behind the snowbank, glancing around wildly. As Wrath lobbed something the other direction, yet another explosion rocked the ground.

Trying to catch my breath, I tried to ascertain who was still standing and who wasn’t. Rex was over by Peyton’s side-apparently he’d run toward her instead of diving for cover. He was stripping the ropes off of her hands. Chatter was standing there, looking slightly crazed. I ran over to him and he opened his arm to me.

I grabbed him around the waist, holding tight. “Oh, Chatter, I thought you blew yourself up.”

“My fires are far greater in power than his weapon. But we’d better take care of the one who is left.” He nodded over to where our opponents had been standing. “Best to assess who he is and what they were after.”

The first man with the grenade was nowhere to be seen, but shredded material and body parts told me that he’d gone up in the explosion when Chatter engulfed him. The man who had tied up Peyton was on the ground, bloody and dead-Kaylin was leaning over him with a dripping blade. Wrath had taken out the third man, who was now sprawled dead near his feet. And the fourth was cowering on the ground, his hands in full sight above his head.

I hustled over to him. “Take your coat off. Slowly. Drop it on the ground.”

He obeyed, and then I made him strip down all the way. When he was standing shivering and naked, I nodded.

“No hidden explosives. You can put on your boxers and undershirt again.” He did, as I motioned for Kaylin to pick up the guy’s clothing.

“Let’s get him inside and see what we can find out about him. Blindfold him first, though.” We couldn’t let him go, but on the off chance he escaped, I didn’t want him casing the joint for info on us.

We dragged him inside. Rhiannon gave me an odd look.

“We heard explosions. Are you all okay?” Luna hurried forward. When she saw we’d tied the man up, she pulled out a chair and pushed him into it, firmly knotting the ends of the cord around his wrists to the back of the chair.