“No, but I am damn tempted. Your irrationality must be rubbing off on me. If anything happens to you, it will kill me.”
“I feel the same, Ian, so we might as well stick together.”
His hold on me tightened. “I am not letting you out of my sight. Do not think about going anywhere without me, or I will carry you out of there and take your stubborn ass back here. I can find plenty of ways to keep you occupied.” He rose to wrap my legs around his waist and lay me back on the bed kissing my neck.
“Mmm, as lovely as this is… Let’s go get these bastards. Then we can lock ourselves in this room for as long as we want.” When his lips reached my ear lobe, I tilted my head to the side and slipped my fingers into his hair. “Stop that, or we will never get out of here.”
“That is fine with me.”
“You would never leave your clan to fight without you. That’s not who you are.”
With a groan he took my hand and pulled me to my feet. We met our group in the living room. We had our own army going, and there were still more headed to the site.
As we walked in everyone quieted and turned their attention to Ian. He went over what information he had and reiterated that there would be more of Gabriel’s men than usual. He assigned a few of the newer clan members to stay behind with Juliana to help the remaining mortals in the makeshift hospital. Finally, we grabbed our gear and headed out to the vehicles.
Chapter Fifteen
“Dammit!” Ian yelled as he slammed on the brakes, and I was thankful I wore a seatbelt. If I hadn’t, my face would have gone right into the dashboard.
“What the hell?”
“Flip’s bike just… well, flipped.” He spun the car around and stopped where Flip was just standing up, his wounds already healing.
I opened the door and scooted up so Flip could squeeze into the backseat.
“Hop in,” I said as we stopped beside him. Once he was in, I sat back and slammed the door just as Ian began driving again. “You okay?” I asked Flip.
“Pissed as hell, but otherwise I’m fine.” He straightened his jacket. “Gabriel must have his men watching the roads. They shot out my tires. I loved that bike, man!”
“This is worse than I thought. He is waiting for us,” Ian said.
Using the side-view mirror, I saw the rest of our clan was still behind us. Gabriel’s guys were on motorcycles, as were a lot of our men. They had their swords drawn, and our guys took the Angels out in what looked like a modern-day jousting match.
“Do you think we have a mole?” I asked.
“No, these are his decoys. He wants us to come for him. He will be prepared.” He glanced at me, his knuckles turning white as he clenched the gearshift.
“I’ll be fine, Ian.” I covered his hand with mine, stroking it to soothe him. If he got too worried about me, he’d call it off and wait until we could catch Gabriel by surprise. I did not want that to happen, this needed to end.
“I know you will.” His voice was getting deeper reminding me of the last time we’d met with Gabriel. “Be aware. If something appears to be out of the ordinary, or too good to be true, it is. Stay alert, keep your eyes open.”
“Got it.”
Memories of Gabriel’s torture ran through my mind. Then I thought of Flip’s story about his sister. There had to be other clan members personally affected by Gabriel’s evil.
When we pulled up to the gas station where we’d agreed to meet everyone I let Flip out and turned to Ian, “I never thought of why so many of these guys are here.”
“Banshees excel at hiding their emotions, so it is easy to forget that we get hurt. It probably does not help that over the years, I have told you we do not have emotions.”
“True, but I know differently now. Let’s do this.”
As we made our way to the rest of the clan, I scanned the sea of faces for Seth and Bryce and silently greeted them. After the jousting match, I had to make sure they had arrived safely.
Ian addressed the group and decided we walk the rest of the way. We knew Gabriel was prepared, but still we hoped to surprise him. When the mall was within sight Ian held up a hand to tell everyone to stop walking and be quiet and turned to face everyone. He did a series of hand gestures and everyone dispersed and headed separate ways in smaller clans. Ian, Seth, Triza, Bryce, Peder, and I stayed with each other. Sheryl and Slash went with Leo and Flip.
I caught Seth’s eye and smiled. I released a breath when he returned the smile.
“Hey, be careful tonight,” he said as he wrapped his arms around me for a bone-crushing hug.
“Same to you.” I sighed and buried my head in his chest. I wanted to hold on to him as long as I could. “You know how important you are to me, right?”
“I know, beautiful.” He kissed my nose before finishing our trek to the building.
We had studied the layout of the mall beforehand, so we knew the food court was the biggest room, and possibly the staging site for the auctions. We agreed to enter through the back doors leading to the security offices.
They had left the door unlocked. The hallway was dark, only the emergency exit signs lighting the way, and Ian took the lead. We didn’t have to go far before we saw the windows of the security offices. The monitors were the only light in the rooms. There were three Angels in each of the offices.
We split up, and being that we had sneaked up on them, took out those six Angels easily, before continuing. My group moved toward the food court, while the rest of our clan went to check the rest of the mall.
We had been right about the food court being the auction site. In the center of the room stood the catwalk. Seeing it caused a shiver to run down my spine.
“For the love of Danu,” Seth breathed.
“It’s a totally different feeling when you actually see it,” I said.
“Well, hello there,” a voice called from behind us. Gabriel was standing in front of a cluster of well-armed Angels. “Nice to see you all.” He was addressing everyone, but he locked his eyes on me. “I’m especially happy to see your pretty face.”
“Can’t say I feel the same.”
Gabriel barked out a laugh. “Oh, you will learn to appreciate me soon.”
“Doubtful.”
He smiled and stepped back. “Men!” he yelled out and his minions swarmed us.
Even while fighting off the Angels, I took notice as the rest of our clan joined us. We had them out numbered, and these minions were just speed bumps. They had limited fighting skills; some could barely handle the swords in their hands.
Gabriel enjoyed games, and that’s what this was to him. He was playing with us. So, I assumed each group of Gabriel’s men would be more skilled than the last, and harder to fight. This group though, didn’t take long to defeat. I no longer saw Gabriel. I looked around in search of him.
“Gabriel!” I yelled as I ran after him.
“I am here,” Ian said from beside me.
One store had the lights on up ahead and I increased my speed. The only thing left of the sign above the door was ‘Nord’. Mannequins lay in various stages of undress with limbs missing or twisted in odd ways. The Angels were as juvenile as they were evil.
Broken glass covered the floor of what must have been the cosmetics department. This made for a slippery path, but we made it to the escalator intact. I slid to a stop when I saw Gabriel standing at the top.