Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,58
soon as the fire was out, I would visit them and find out what.
“Or maybe not,” I muttered as my senses told me they were on the move. And heading this way.
“Here, Nin.” I waved for her to take over with the hose. “We’ve got more trouble coming.”
She took the hose, but she also leaned around the corner of her truck, facing in the direction I pointed, a big double-barreled shotgun at the ready. I ran to the truck next to hers, not wanting to draw fire her way. After activating my cloaking charm, I crept closer to the aisle, keeping the truck at my back.
The two people heading our direction paused. I must have dropped off their senses.
They didn’t pause for long. The light of the fire made it hard to see people in the shadows, but my senses told me they were looking at Nin from between two trucks across the way. Finally, I picked out the cloaked figures against the black siding of a burger truck.
They were whispering to each other. I crept closer. The bigger person’s voice carried.
I ducked around a truck, activated the screen on my phone where they couldn’t see it, started a recording, and returned to the other side. As I snuck closer, I caught something about the Pardus brothers and having already been paid.
He drew a handgun and said, “Nobody cares if she gets hurt or killed, and if I killed the Ruin Bringer…”
Whoever his partner was didn’t answer, or answered too quietly for me to pick it up. He strode closer to the aisle—and Nin.
He pointed the gun in her direction. Nin was behind cover but kept leaning out to look for approaching enemies. He might get lucky.
“Not on my shift.” I shot him in the shoulder.
He flew backward, hit the ground crying in pain and rolling, then jumped up. He shifted into an ocelot and sprinted at me.
I fired twice, the bullets slamming into his chest, then switched to Chopper as he reached me, springing for my face. I darted out of the way fast enough to avoid the claws slashing for my eyes, then drove my blade into his side. He screeched and crashed into the truck I’d been standing in front of. As he landed, I lunged in and pressed the tip of my sword to his throat. At the same time, I grabbed Fezzik with my left hand and aimed it toward his buddy, who was watching but hadn’t moved or drawn a weapon yet. The shifter transformed back into human form and tried to roll away, but I stepped on him and kept the blade to his throat.
“How much are the Pardus brothers paying you?” My phone was still recording in my pocket. I wasn’t sure he’d been speaking loudly enough before to pick up his words, so a confession would be nice.
“Not enough to deal with you,” he spat between pained panting breaths.
“They just want Nin out of the picture?”
“Oh, they want you dead too.”
His buddy finally moved, facing me and lifting bare hands, the palms strikingly pale, fingers long and lean. A woman’s? At first, I thought she was showing me that she was unarmed. Then a mental attack poured into my mind like a thousand fire ants burrowing through my ear canals and into my skull.
The shifter rolled away as I gasped, distracted by the pain. He turned into an ocelot again and sprinted down the aisle and out the front gate.
Snarling, I tried to fire Fezzik at the woman, but my finger didn’t want to obey. The mental attack grew stronger, more intense, and it felt like a cable was pulling my arm down as I struggled to keep the weapon aimed at the person. At the dark elf. The magic was familiar and I belatedly recognized those albino hands.
I fired, even though I was aiming at my assailant’s foot. I couldn’t force my arm up to shoot at her chest. She sprang more than ten feet in the air, avoiding the bullet that gouged a hole in the pavement, and landed lightly atop the burger truck.
The attack on my mind lessened, but she wasn’t done. She drew her hand back, as if to skip a rock.
Not a rock. I leaped sideways as a disc glinting orange with reflected firelight sped toward me. I whipped Chopper across but didn’t connect with the projectile. It slammed into the truck next to me and sank in deep.