Sylvia Day - A Touch of Crimson

Elijah snorted.

Lindsay moved forward, noting how still the air had suddenly become. Almost stagnant. Protecting her by not blowing the scent of lycan and angel around. Somehow, she knew the angels had taken the high ground. She didn’t look up, but she suspected they were on the hilltop above her.

“I’m thinking basement,” she said, to which Elijah chuffed in agreement.

They moved forward, circling around the horseshoe. An elderly lady sat in a swinging bench on a covered porch. She smiled and waved as they passed, apparently not the least bit concerned by the humongous canine beside Lindsay. Considering the thickness of the woman’s glasses, Lindsay assumed she couldn’t see all that well. It was the only explanation-aside from senility-for dismissing a pony-sized wolf prowling around.

A gravel path marked by two squat brick lampposts appeared before them in the space between two homes. They followed it around the hill. At the end was a surprise-a home marked by antebellum-style architecture and a dilapidated bed-and-breakfast sign.

An icy breeze caressed the back of her neck.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she groused aloud.

While it was obvious the building was no longer in use as lodging, it retained a dignity and style that belied its use as a vampire “nest.” A gardener and a fresh coat of paint was all that was needed to revive the exterior.

As they neared the small opening in the brick fence surrounding the property, a massive shadow and the flap of wings announced Adrian’s graceful landing in front of her. “That’s far enough, Lindsay.”

Her brows rose. “Think nothing of it. Glad I could help.”

His features softened. “Thank you.”

Jason and Damien landed on the other side of the fence in the front yard. To the right was the hill. Behind them, about a half mile away, were the road and the horseshoe-shaped street of vintage homes. To the left were acres and acres of undeveloped land. The nest was hiding in plain sight. Not that Lindsay was overly surprised. The things she killed were usually normal-looking on the exterior. Freakishly so.

She hung back, staying a good twenty feet away from the fence. Elijah sank onto his haunches beside her. The angels moved forward-Adrian in the middle, Jason to the left, and Damien to the right. Two more wolves appeared, startling her. She wondered where they’d come from, then remembered the two drivers, one for each town car. Or a lycan for every angel. One was a mixture of charcoal gray and white, and the other was a rusty brown and taupe. Both panted softly, as if they were barely containing their eagerness.

Yet the three beasts surrounded her . Leaving the angels to fend for themselves.

She reached down and stroked Elijah’s huge head in silent gratitude. The other two took up positions behind him, giving him the lead. Only his ears and eyes moved. Although his stance appeared casual, she knew he could explode into powerful movement in the blink of an eye. All the hunter traits she’d observed in him as a human were multiplied in his lupine form.

Her attention moved to the angels, who approached the house with their wings flexing at their backs. That surprised her. Why expose such a vulnerability when they weren’t flying? Jason and Damien might be able to retreat by air if they were capable of taking off vertically, but Adrian was on the porch, caged in by two-story-high columns and an overhanging roof.

Adrian entered the house through the front door, while the other two found alternate ways in that Lindsay couldn’t see from her vantage. Quiet blanketed the area. She shifted from one foot to the other, twirling a throwing blade in one hand and playing absently with Elijah’s ear. “I have a really bad feeling about this.”

The wind screeched across the vacant plain, making the fine hairs on her arms stand up. Then all hell broke loose.

Glass shattered as angels exploded out of draped windows in unison, followed by a veritable horde of vampires.

“Holy fucking shit!”

The flood of vamps poured toward her, surging over the short wall. Lindsay tossed the blade in her hand, nailing a foaming-mouthed vampire right between the eyes. She kept on throwing, one right after the other, retreating as the lycans lunged forward, forming a barrier to protect her.

She looked for Adrian over the writhing mass of limbs. Oh man…

He was cutting a swath through the throng… literally. Had she thought his wings were vulnerable? They were deadly . He wielded them like blades, slicing through limbs and torsos, spinning with lethal precision. The sight of him and the other two angels was riveting. Their wings flared like capes, snapping wide, then curving fluidly around their bodies. The burning embers of vanquished vamps spiraled around them in glittering clouds. She couldn’t take her eyes off their eerily graceful, macabre dances.

A high-pitched yelp yanked her attention back to the lycans, and the suicidal vampress who’d latched on to the back of Elijah’s neck. Resisting his violent efforts to shake her off, the wild-eyed bitch held on even as Elijah threw himself to his back and writhed, grinding her into the ground beneath him.

Lindsay looked frantically for the other two lycans and found them with their jaws full. Steeling her courage, she leaped into the fray. A male vampire darted toward her head-on, playing chicken. Knowing that changing course would only weaken her footing, she charged ahead with a dagger in hand. She staked him in the heart, then used the protruding hilt for leverage to flip over his shoulder and land on the other side.

She continued without breaking her stride, diving forward as Elijah straightened. Her fist collided with the vampress’s jaw and it gave way with a sickening crack. Dislodged from her hold, the vampress hit the dirt on her back. Elijah rounded on her with a roar, grabbing her by the throat and ripping the flesh to the spine. Lindsay finished her off with a throwing knife to the forehead.

A gunshot echoed off the hillside, followed by the unmistakable whine of a ricochet.

She pivoted. A woman stood on the steps of the house with a shotgun, pumping another round into the chamber. She took aim at Adrian and pulled the trigger. As the report reverberated through her, Lindsay’s lungs seized, preventing her from screaming the warning that howled inside her horrified mind.

Adrian whipped one wing around, deflecting the bullet with the harsh ping of metal on metal.

The gun disappeared from the vampress’s hands and appeared at Lindsay’s feet.

It took a half minute for Lindsay’s brain to lurch into full understanding. Then she caught up the weapon and pumped the fore-end, firing at a vampire charging one of the wolves. She got off six more shots, providing cover for the lycans. When the last chamber was spent, she wielded the shotgun like a club, whacking a vamp attempting to get up from where he’d been sprawled on the ground.

Risking a glance at the house, she searched for Adrian.

He was surrounded on all sides and kicking some serious ass. But the chick on the porch had retrieved another shotgun-a sawed-off one this time-and was lifting it to aim…

Lindsay darted through the opening in the fence, dodging flying bodies and barreling through ash piles. A vamp flew at her from the right and she ducked beneath his sailing body, startling herself with her own agility. She grabbed the last throwing knife from her bag and prepared to hurl it.

The barrel of the gun swung toward her.

Lindsay caught the nearest vampire and hauled him in front of her. The shotgun discharged with a deafening boom .

The vamp jerked against her. Agonizing pain radiated through the forearm she had wrapped around his waist. She dropped to her knees in an exploding cloud of ash, the vampire disintegrating from the fatal shot.