“You good?” he asked.
Balthazar nodded. “Let’s do this.”
As he got inside, it was shoulder-to-shoulder room only. With Syphon behind the wheel and Zypher riding shotgun, it meant that Blaylock, John Matthew, and Tohr had only the one bench seat to fit on.
“I’ll ride in the back,” Balz said as he dematerialized into the cargo space and sat his butt on the carpet.
The side door was shut again and Syphon hit the gas. As they started down the mountain, Balz ran some quick math in his head. Blaylock had dislocated his shoulder the night before in the field and suffered a minor concussion. John Matthew’s left leg had gotten kneecapped three nights ago, and still wasn’t right—har, har—and Tohr’d recently been stabbed in the gut.
But they had to use everybody and none of them complained that they’d been called out of mandatory R&R—
The van came to a hard stop on the decline, Syphon stomping on the brake. As everybody lurched forward and caught themselves on whatever they could, guns were taken out.
“What is—”
“Do you see something—”
“Holy fuck—”
“Who has it,” Syphon snapped. As everyone “Has what’d” him, he wrenched around and glared into the back seat. “The Jolly Rancher. Who’s got the fucking Jolly Rancher?”
Cue the eye contact between everybody in the van.
“That fake watermelon smell triggers my gag reflex,” Syphon bit out. “And I get carsick which is why I have to drive. So if the person who’s sucking on that red square of vomit-inducing nasty doesn’t spit it the fuck out now, I’m going to make sure I throw up in their lap.”
Pause. Longer pause.
And then Zypher cursed, turned his head . . . and spit the candy right out—
Onto the window he’d just put up. Where it stuck like a Post-it Note.
As everyone in the van fell into a chorus of Ewwwwwwws, the bastard picked the thing off, put down the window, and flicked it out into the bushes.
“You happy, Penelope,” he muttered as he reclosed the window. “Now, do you want to take a Tums and put a hot compress on your forehead, or can we get on with this?”
Syphon ten-and-two’d his hands and assumed the self-righteous composure of a deacon. “Not everyone has a stomach of steel.”
“No, shit,” Zypher said under his breath as the van started moving again.
In the back, Balz propped himself against the van’s side-wall, tucked his arms in, and closed his eyes. A little catnap was just the ticket. As long as Zypher didn’t decide to replace that Jolly Rancher with anything else that was artificially fruit flavored.
Lord help them all if he broke out the Starburst.
As Syn uttered the word that had been bounding around Jo’s brain, she expected to feel fear or be overcome with shock. Instead, a strange calmness suffused her tense body, easing all her muscles. The relief was eerie.
Then again, on some level, she had known all along, hadn’t she.
“We don’t know about you,” she said to them. “So you hide in plain sight and prey on humans—”
Loud curses rang out in the empty building. And then one of them said, “Don’t put your human bullshit on us. We’re hunted and trying to survive. You are a threat to us, not the other way around.”
Somebody else chimed in, “Those movies and books got us all wrong, sweetheart. So don’t get judgy until you know the truth we live.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she muttered. Then she shook herself back into focus. “So what are they.”
She pointed to the corpses on the ground, the ones with the black blood and the stink. The ones that moved though they should be dead.
“They are our hunters.” The one with the Boston accent stepped forward. “And we just want to live our lives in peace. There’s none of that biting people and turning them, no soulless defilers of virgins, no garlic or capes or bats or wooden stakes.”
“You took my memories . . . I saw you here. Several nights ago. With a man with a goatee—”
“Male, with a goatee,” he corrected. “We don’t use the term ‘man,’ and yeah, you did. But listen, here is not the place for this kind of conversation.”
“But there’s not any place for this talk, is there.” She looked at Syn. “You’re going to take my memories again, aren’t you. Or are you going to kill me here and now?”
Jo was amazed she could be so calm. Then again, when the paranormal became real, it was as if you’d entered a video game. The action was in front of you, but the implications didn’t go further than two dimensions. After all, if vampires existed, was death even a thing?
“No,” the Bostonian said. “We’re not going to kill you.”
She looked at the bent-back man on the concrete again and thought of the decapitated body she’d seen wrapped around the fire escape. And then the one that had been skinned alive in that alley.
“But you’ve killed humans before.” She refocused on Syn. “Haven’t you. So what makes me different? I’ve got a lot of memories to erase. It’s got to be easier just to slit my throat, especially given how many times you’ve done that.”
No one said a thing.
And her eyes didn’t leave Syn.
“Is this what you apologized for?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he replied in a gravel voice.
“So what happens next if you’re not putting me in my grave?” As she spoke, she was aware she was asking about so much more than just the vampire revelation. “Tell me why I’m different.”
Before anyone could answer, a vehicle pulled up outside, the sound of the tires crunching over the debris coming through the hole in the building.
“It’s the doc,” one of the men—males—said. “And Syn, you need to get treated. We’ve also got a van coming to pick up the trash.”
“And what about me.” She wanted Syn to be the one who answered her. “What are you going to do with me.”
A vehicle door opened and closed with a thunch and then there were footsteps on the approach, a figure appearing in the explosion-created, ragged jambs of the building’s newest entrance. The backlighting made it impossible to see his features, but his voice, dry and deep in tone, was crystal clear.
“You guys been redecorating again?” The man—male, whatever— stepped over the threshold. “Can’t you do it with something other than C-4?”
When he made a shift in direction, the side of his face was illuminated—
And the world ground to a halt for Jo.
Dark hair. Dark brows. Deeply set eyes. Square jaw, high cheekbones—
“Manuel Manello,” Jo heard herself say. “Dr. Manuel Manello, former chief of surgery of St. Francis Medical Center. Missing and unaccounted for.”
The man stopped dead. “Do I know you?”
Heart pounding, breath short, head spinning, Jo said roughly, “I’m your sister.”
Alot can happen in twenty-two minutes.
Right after the second explosion of the evening had gone off—said bomb involving three words as opposed to a gas tank and a bullet with water from the Scribe Virgin’s fountain in it— Butch had looked at his watch for some reason. So yup, he was positive that it took exactly twenty-two minutes for Syn to get packed up into the mobile surgical unit with Manny, for the half-breed female, Jo Early, to be driven off by Phury, and for the box van to arrive.