era, it was shameful to have any male in one’s bloodline wield a gun in defense of the species.
“Things get around in society, don’t they,” Throe murmured as he turned away. “It’s hard to keep secrets. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Walking out of the rear of the room, he went into the study which he had deliberately kept dark—and all he wanted to do was stab the fucker himself.
But that was not how things were going to go.
“Come here,” he commanded into the darkness.
His favorite shadow, the one that he had tasked to protect himself, materialized beside him, a bobbing void with the slightest shimmer denoting its contours.
“You see that male?” He pointed to Altamere. “That is the one they start with. Are we clear?”
More bobbing, not that he’d expected any kind of disagreement. And to hell with waiting for the remaining two people to arrive. It wasn’t as if they were going to make it to the table, anyway.
Throe checked his watch.
Regarded his guests for one last time.
“I think now. I think we shall commence … now.”
John Matthew had been paired with Qhuinn and Blay on the stakeout of the party, the three of them clustered halfway down the flank of the house in the dark wedge between spotlights that shined out onto the rolling, snow-covered lawn. They were to wait for a signal to infiltrate, and as he watched the people circulate in a room that was so elegant, he wouldn’t have wanted to try to sit in a chair there, he really hoped these fancy types weren’t planning to make a move on Wrath.
John had dispatched a lot of lessers back to the Omega. But he hadn’t killed members of the species before. Not that he would hesitate if they were committing treason.
Tohr’s directive was clear. If the signal was given, the Brotherhood and the fighters on the property were going to burst in and take the assembled guests into custody. Things were only going to get deadly if somebody did something stupid.
Throe, on the other hand, was a different story—
John frowned and leaned forward. Speak of the devil. The host with the most had just taken his leave of the gathering and walked into a totally dark room. Silhouetted in the light streaming in from the parlor, his dark form tilted forward, as if he were speaking to someone.
Tapping Qhuinn on the shoulder, John pointed to the window.
“Yeah,” the Brother whispered. “I see it, too. What the hell?”
A sense of foreboding had John reaching for his gun; he had a really bad feeling about all this: Throe was not alone in that room. And yet there didn’t seem to be a corporeal figure with him.
When the male returned to the party, John moved with him, tracking the aristocrat from window to window. Coming up to V and Murhder, John tapped them both.
Something’s wrong—
The attack happened in slow motion. One moment, the cocktail party was in full swing, people talking and gesturing with the exaggerated politeness of the glymera—the next, a figment of John’s nightmares wafted into the room.
A shadow.
Vishous barked into his shoulder mic. “Now. Now. Now!”
Without thinking, John took two running strides and leaped into the air, tucking his head and rolling forward such that his leather-covered shoulders shattered the glass. Swinging his feet over his head to complete the somersault, he landed on his boots with his gun up.
But it was too late for the male who was attacked. Before John could squeeze off a round of the Brotherhood’s sacred bullets, the shadow entity lashed out at a guest, piercing him through the chest, the male’s screams bloodcurdling until they were cut off by a throat slash.
Blood flew from an open artery in the aristocrat’s neck, the arc as graceful as the violence was terrible.
John set his position, leveled his gun … and squeezed off two rounds as soon as he got a clear shot. But that was all he could do. In the panic typical of laypeople, the party guests fell into a disorganized scramble, tripping over gowns, over each other, running in all directions like the spooked sheep they were.
He’d hit the entity at least once, though: Its high-pitched squeal cut through even the yelling and the pounding of feet.
And then the shadow turned on him.
As the crowd scattered away, John smiled. And pulled his trigger again. Two more times. A sixth—
With each bullet, the shadow was forced back, the slugs of lead that were treated with holy water from the Scribe