Pop! Pop! Pop-pop!
Hollywood’s muzzle kept coughing out flashes of light even though there was nothing to shoot at—except other fighters off in the distance who just happened to be out of range for the moment.
But were not guaranteed to stay that way.
Vishous moved in closer, stepping over the animated corpses on the ground, keeping at Rhage’s back as the rotation continued. “Rhage!”
The temptation to shoot the guy in the ass was so strong, his right hand lowered a muzzle to butt-cheek level. But that was just a fantasy. Giving Hollywood a lead injection would only trigger the beast when V himself was within appetizer range.
“Rhage!”
Something must have gotten through to the brother, because the barrage of do-nothing shooting slowed . . . then stopped, leaving Rhage in a panting, sagging neutral.
That was so out in the open, they both might as well have had neon arrows over their heads.
“You’re out of here,” V barked. “Are you fucking even kidding me with this shit—”
That was when it happened.
One second, he was moving around to get in front of his brother . . . and the next, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, one of the not-dead-enough lessers lift an unsteady arm . . . that had a gun attached to the end of it. As the bullet came blasting out of that muzzle, V’s brain did the triangulation as fast as the lead slug flew.
It was going into Rhage’s chest.
Right into the center of Rhage’s chest—because, hello, that was the biggest target outside of one of the fucking dormitory doors on the campus.
“No!” V screamed as he went to jump into the path.
Yeah, ’cuz him dying instead was such a great outcome? Lose/lose, either way.
No blaze of pain as he airborned, no resounding kick of a bullet’s entry into his side, his hip, his other thigh.
Because the goddamned thing had already found home.
Rhage let out a grunt and both of his arms punched to the sky, that patented, autonomic compression on the triggers in those hands emptying those clips: Bang, bang, bang, bang! up to the sky, up to the heavens, as if Rhage were cursing in pain.
And then the brother went down.
Unlike the Omega’s boys, a direct hit like that would knock out any vampire, even a member of the Brotherhood. Nobody walked away from that shit, nobody.
As V screamed again, he hit his own patch of ground and discharged one of his weapons, plowing the slayer with the hole-in-one shot with enough lead to turn the fucker into a bank vault.
Threat neutralized, he scrambled to his brother, crab-walking on his guns and the balls of his shitkickers. For a male who never felt fear, he found himself looking into the gaping maw of pure terror.
“Rhage!” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ— Rhage!”
THREE
Havers’s new clinic was located across the river, in the center of some four hundred acres of forest that were vacant but for an old farmhouse and three or four new-built kiosks for entry into the subterranean facility. As Mary drove the last stretch of the twenty-minute trip in her Volvo XC70, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror at Bitty. The girl was sitting in the backseat of the station wagon and staring out the darkened window next to her as if the thing were a television and whatever show was on was captivating.
Every time Mary refocused on the road ahead, she cranked down harder on the steering wheel. And the accelerator.
“We’re almost there,” she said. Yet again.
The meant-to-be-reassuring statement was doing nothing for Bitty, and Mary knew she was just trying to soothe herself. The idea that they might not make it to the bedside in time was a hypothetical burden that she couldn’t help trying on for size—and, man, did that crying-shame corset make her feel like she couldn’t breathe.
“Here’s the turn-off.”
Mary hit the blinker and took a right onto a single-laner that was uneven and exactly what all her internal rush-rush didn’t need.