“Yeah, we should totally take that up with our ancient ancestors who created the Slayer line. Bulletproof would have been useful to add alongside prophetic dreams, superstrength, and killer instincts. Though I guess bullets would have been an unfamiliar concept on account of this all happened thousands of years ago.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, be careful, Nina.”
I take a deep breath. I wanted my mother to be mine for so long. Now I have to be strong enough to let her be, to trust that this won’t go away. “I will be. Promise. You too.” I hang up. Cillian, Rhys, and Doug are all waiting for instructions. Tsip has wandered over too.
“Can you teleport me?” I ask her.
“Yes!” The fangs jutting from her lower jaw are showcased in an enthusiastic smile. “But I can only teleport short distances. And you have to be able to reconstitute yourself after being disintegrated on a molecular level while shifting through the void beyond reality. It hurts quite a bit, but you get used to it.”
“I’ll drive then, yeah?” Cillian grabs the keys and starts the car.
Doug looks scared but determined. “Sean?” The fact that he’s willing to come and face the man who held him captive for years speaks volumes about him.
I put my hand on his arm and shake my head. “Mercenaries. With guns. I don’t think you’re going to be any use. Wake Jade up and make sure you’re all on alert while I’m gone, okay?”
Doug nods, holding a hand up in farewell. Tsip waves energetically as we pull away.
“The void beyond reality?” Cillian navigates the forest dirt road far faster than is safe. “Demons. Total nutters, the lot of them.”
“I like Doug.” Rhys checks his crossbow.
I bounce impatiently in the back. “Everyone likes Doug. He’s biologically impossible to dislike.” We always pick a destination with several roads in and out so we can’t be traced, so the warehouse is thirty minutes away. Thirty minutes is thirty minutes too far, though.
“What are we going into here?” Cillian drives at double the speed limit. I’m grateful, and I wish he would go even faster. But we don’t have our get-out-of-tickets-free Doug in the car with us, so we’re risking a police encounter as it is.
“Mercenaries. Two snipers. They have my mom pinned down in the warehouse.”
“Plan?”
“The plan is Cillian stops before we get there and stays in the car.”
“Hey now, I can—”
I cut him off. “I can only focus on saving so many people at a time. I can’t worry about you, too.” It comes out harsher than I intend it, but it’s true. Cillian is one of my favorite people in the world, and he almost died last fall because of it. His dark brown eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. He nods.
Rhys turns back toward me. He forgot his glasses. His crossbow is going to be pretty useless if he can’t see to use it. I want to make him stay in the car with Cillian. But he’s a Watcher. This is his job too.
No. It’s only my job. I’m the Slayer. “Rhys, you’ll take the alleys to cut around to the back of the warehouse. Get a high vantage point and make certain there aren’t any more waiting there for an ambush. I’ll find the snipers and take them out.”
I’m confident I can get it done before Rhys ever gets to his position. I can keep them all safe. I can keep everyone safe.
The image of Leo, unconscious on the floor, disappearing behind the ever-expanding remora demon to meet the same crushed-to-death fate as his mother flashes in my mind, contradicting me with brutal accuracy.
I can, though. I have to. I’m never losing anyone again.
Cillian slows down on the outskirts of the old fishing district where the warehouse is. I open my door and jump, hitting the ground running.
The sound of a bullet pinging off metal is all the direction I need. I don’t worry about cover. I run as fast as I can, and, gods, it’s fast. My red-gold hair streams behind me, my emerald-green trench coat flapping in the wind like a cape. Another shot rings out. There’s a fire-escape ladder fifteen feet up on the side of a brick building. I leap, catch the bottom rung, and climb up, feeling a flash of surprise that I made that jump. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have made it when I first became a Slayer. And I haven’t exactly been training—going to the castle’s gym brings too many painful memories of Leo. But there’s no time to wonder at my skills.
The roof is flat, rusted corrugated metal. At the far end of it, a figure is crouched, holding a rifle. A mercenary. Firing a rifle at my mother and a family.
“Hey!” I shout. Anger burns in me with the same devouring intensity as the black-purple flames that nearly killed me as a child. I can feel them inside, eating away everything else, purifying me, leaving only rage. The mercenary stands and swings the rifle in my direction in the same amount of time it takes me to sprint across the roof and slam into him.
I watch in slow motion as he flies backward into thin air.
3
IN THAT ETERNAL SPLIT SECOND, I consider letting the mercenary fall.
We’re three stories up. It won’t definitely kill him. And he’s been up here, shooting at my mother and a family of werewolves with three small children. Hidden like a coward, sending death down to people who have already suffered and lost more than he can ever imagine.
And a part of me, a dark burning tightness clenching around my heart, snarls that he’s my enemy and deserves whatever end he finds as he connects with the pavement.
He’s human, I think at the snarling, hungry thing.
So what? is the answer.
The spike of fear I feel about that sentiment coming from inside of me is enough to pierce the anger. I reach out and snatch him from the air. The rifle clatters to the ground far beneath us. I hold him dangling as he struggles and swears. A scan of the neighboring rooflines doesn’t reveal the second sniper anywhere.
Which means that this one was probably keeping my mother pinned down while the other one went in.
There’s a jut of metal next to me. I hook him on it by his belt so he’s still dangling but won’t fall unless he struggles too much. Then I jump. I land hard in a crouch that a few months ago would have left me absolutely impressed with myself, and then I sprint for the warehouse. Sure enough, a side door has been pried open, crowbar left abandoned on the ground. I pick it up. The dim warehouse interior reeks with decades of lingering fish scuzz. The cold is a physical presence slamming into me.
Up ahead, next to a concrete pillar, the second mercenary has his rifle lifted. I follow the sight line to my mother, silhouetted against the entrance door, gun raised as she looks outward for the threat. Behind her, sheltered by a huge refrigerator unit, a mother, father, and three children cower.
There’s a soft release of breath as the mercenary gets ready for a kill shot. I throw the crowbar.
It lands with a bone-snapping crack against the mercenary’s right leg. He—she, apparently—screams. I run to her, snatching the rifle and bending it in half. Then I grab her by her black bulletproof vest and drag her behind me as I walk toward my stunned mother and the terrified family.
“Nina,” my mother says.
She turns in my direction. The door behind her opens, and the first mercenary roars inside, holding a pistol I didn’t know he had, gun pointed at me.