direction, its icy-bright light skimming down the alley, illuminating the colon created by the buildings that were squeezed in tightly side by side and across from each other. The beam hit the man in his pose of inexplicable supplication, bathing him in what appeared to be, for a brief moment, a sanctification from heaven, as if he were an altar painting of a saint about to be sacrificed for the good of humanity.
Jo knew she would remember the way he looked for the rest of her life—
With a quick jerk, he snapped to attention, focusing on something down at the far end of the alley.
From overhead, a voice piped through a loudspeaker announced, “Drop your gun. Police units have surrounded the area. Drop your weapon.”
Jo looked up at the helicopter in surprise. Were they talking to her—
“We have to go,” the man in leather barked. “Now.”
She heard what he said, but she was not going to run from the police. She just needed to explain to the nice guys with the badges and the landing gear that she wasn’t actually going to shoot this man in front of her. She just wanted to scare him off—
Said man in said leather put his face into hers. Which meant her gun’s muzzle was now pressed directly against his sternum.
“You have to come with me.” He looked down the alley again. “Or you’re going to die—”
“The police are not going to—”
“It’s not the police I’m worried about.”
As the copter made a tight swoop, the down draft from its rotor blades created a gust that nearly blew her off her feet—and that was when Jo smelled the stench again. That baby powder and roadkill smell.
The man grabbed her arm. “You’ve got to come with me. You’re in danger.”
“Who are you?”
“There’s no time.” He looked to the left one last time. “Keep your gun out. You may need to use it.”
With that, he took off—and took her with him. Her legs had no choice but to start running. It was that or she was going to get dragged. And when he took a sharp turn, she lost her stride, her feet tripping. His hold on her forearm was the only thing that kept her up and she recovered as best she could.
In the back of her mind, she knew this was all wrong. She was fleeing the police with the very man she had pulled a gun on.
Talk about out of the fire and into the frying pan.
Or shit . . . something like that.
Butch closed in on the slayer in front of him, the distance between their churning bodies tightening up as sure as if they were beads on a string. The lesser seemed to be tiring, and this, like that heart in that bucket at the abandoned outlets, was a news flash. The fuckers usually had Energizer Bunny endurance in their favor and just kept going, and going, and going.
Unsheathing his black dagger, he didn’t know where Z was. The two had lost track of each other when he’d gone after this motherfucker. He knew the brother could handle himself, however, and there was backup called in already. But he would rather have had them stick together.
The corner in the alley came up quick, and the lesser skidded on the oil-slicked pavement as he hung a louie, his footing slipping out from underneath him, his body going cockeyed. And that was Butch’s cue to skidoo. Leaping up in the air, he flew with dagger outstretched, gunning for the back of the slayer’s head. His aim was impeccable. His trajectory sublime. His impact—
Got fucked in the ass when that slayer lost his balance entirely and went down early.
Butch had a passing glance at the skull he had intended to stab as he flew over the sonofabitch—and he was reminded of the truism of SUVs on ice. Four-wheel go did not mean four-wheel stop, and the same was true for nearly three-hundred-pound vampires when they were not in contact with the ground.
Torqueing in midair, he twisted his body and swung his legs out in front of him so they were the bow of his shit-canned ship. The maneuver didn’t slow him down, but it made it possible for him to land in a crouch.
Or he would have.
If he hadn’t run into the hood of a car that had been abandoned and stripped for parts.
The front grille split him like a wishbone, one leg going north and peeling off the Chrysler emblem mounted over the radiator,