Not helpful. Over the slayer’s shoulder, the second lesser appeared, and yup, it had a handgun of some sort with an extra long barrel—and the suppressor did its job again, muffling the sound of a bullet discharged from twenty-five yards away.
I may be in trouble here, Murhder thought as he ducked his head and made sure his vital organs were covered by the slayer on top of him.
The lesser with the trigger-happy finger was closing in, striding fast with that muzzle up. No way of knowing how many rounds there were, but what Murhder was clear on was that until you stabbed a lesser in the heart with something made of steel, it stayed animated even if it was full of holes. So the fact that its comrade in harm was being used as a shield wasn’t going to dissuade it from emptying its clip—not that slayers cared much for each other anyway.
More bullets went sailing and Murhder looked around for a way out—
A blazing streak in his thigh told him he’d been hit.
Dematerializing was now not an option, even if he could concentrate enough to try to ghost out—something that was tough to do when you were distracted dodging lead slugs.
“Sonofabitch!” he barked as the slayer on top of him managed to drive a finger—or maybe its entire arm—into the bullet wound on his thigh.
Jacking upright, he held his PITA cover in place and crab-walked backward into a shallow doorway. But like that was going to help much?
The advancing lesser kicked a clip out of the butt of that gun and slammed in another one.
Everything slowed down, and Murhder had only one thought go through his mind.
This is how it happens? This is how I die?
He was more annoyed with his own stupidity than sorry—until he thought of Sarah, back at the training center, working with good faith to save a vampire she didn’t know, as she waited for Murhder to come back to her.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, what if the Brothers didn’t do right by her? What if they didn’t take care of her? What if she went back to the human world and somehow suffered the consequences for Nate’s rescue?
True panic flooded Murhder’s veins, giving him super strength. Forcing himself up off the ground, he kept one arm locked around the bleeding slayer’s torso as he grabbed for the handle of the door—
Locked. Of course.
The lesser with the gun raised that muzzle and pointed it at Murhder’s head. The slayer was fifteen yards away. Ten yards. Five—
From out of the corner of his eye, Murhder caught sight of a figure entering the alley at the far end, the dark shape cutting through the billowing, backlit steam that rose out of a manhole, white and frothing as a cloud.
Something in the way the figure moved, the size of its shoulders, the short crop of its hair, took Murhder back twenty years.
“Darius …?” he whispered.
John Matthew stopped at the head of the alley. Humans working on a sewer main had cordoned off the next intersection of the street, their brilliant lights, clutch of municipal trucks, and official hard-hatted conference around a room-sized hole they’d made in the pavement suggesting that they were going underground with their equipment soon.
But they weren’t subterranean yet, and they all had cell phones.
He refocused on the alley. As steam boiled up around his body, obscuring his view, he didn’t need his eyes to tell him that there was a bloody fight going on in the darkness. He’d caught the combination of vampire and slayer blood on the wind as he’d walked out of that park, faint at first, strengthening as he closed in.
It wasn’t any of the Brothers he worked with.
But he knew who it was. And they were not dying on his watch, goddamn it.
Just as the slayer pulled his trigger at Murhder point-blank, John dematerialized onto the undead and shoved the muzzle of the autoloader away.
The bullet ricocheted off a metal girder on the building, the spark yellow in the night.
And it was on. John fought for control of the gun, two-handing that wrist, grunting, cursing, as he and the lesser landed in the frozen snow tracks that were stained with the blood spilled from Murhder’s fight.
When you fought in a pair, you had to make sure you knew where your other half was, especially if there were firearms involved. Last thing you wanted was collateral damage that was your fault. And