had given me.
It must be a lycan thing, I thought, pushing it away as soon as the line of Vigils and their guns came into view. Shit…
The hysteria in my voice as I screamed for Ryder not to kill me took on a very real tone, only I was directing it at the humans standing sentry outside the building.
Yet other than look at me, they did nothing, their focus intent on the area behind me.
Because those guns were for Ryder, not me.
They didn’t see me as a threat, just as he’d predicted. Given the size of their weapons, I was okay with that. I wasn’t ready to test the limits of my immortality yet.
Instead, I kept up my act and ran right for them while shooting panicked glances over my shoulder. Then I unpinned the grenades in my hands and threw them at the Vigils before diving behind the nearby planter. I crawled as far as I could, trying to get away from the inevitable blast, and collapsed beneath the violent vibration that rocked the front of the building.
Fuck! If it hurt that much with the earplugs, then I didn’t want to know how that would have felt without them.
I curled into a ball, my ears ringing madly.
Come on, Willow, I coached myself, counting the seconds. Come on. Come on. Come on.
There wasn’t a plan after this part, but lying on the ground outside the building didn’t seem like the smartest place for me to hang out.
Gunfire startled me from my inner musings. Glass shattered and Ryder leapt through the air like a god, entering the building just as he said he would.
I blinked, stunned.
Then more shots rang out through the air, each one resembling thunder against my sore ears.
And that damn buzzing wasn’t helping.
Where the heck was it coming from? Maybe it had something to do with the electricity being down?
I frowned, looking around, trying to find the source, when I heard Ryder calling for Lilith inside. Did he just say something about a date? I shook my head. Only he would issue taunts in this situation. I preferred it to his coldness. It helped me feel more at home. This was my Ryder, the confident vampire with millennia of experience.
Was I supposed to join him now? Or wait?
A soft shuffling noise drew my focus to the side of the building. It paused, followed by a soft curse that had my eyes widening.
I was a sitting duck right here without a weapon.
Shit.
A trio of bushes sat just off to my left, the greenery calling my name. I crawled over as quietly as possible, removed the plugs from my ears, and waited for the source of the sound to appear.
Ryder’s deep tones graced my ears, his words indecipherable as a result of the distance between us. But my wolf relaxed, content with his status.
Meanwhile, the vampire in me strategized my next play.
I needed a knife or a gun, preferably the former. While Ryder had showed me how to fire a weapon, I wasn’t nearly as comfortable with it as I was with a blade.
“Ugh,” a female groaned. Then I heard her shake off debris as though she’d been knocked out or had fallen from my blast. The ground had rumbled pretty violently, and the side of the building her sounds were coming from was only a few feet away from where I hid now.
If I’d learned one thing as a new immortal, it was that my senses were much more heightened now. So the explosion would have impacted all the others nearby as well.
A female stepped into view, her shoes a deep red. One appeared to be missing a heel, which suggested I was right about her falling down.
I took in her bare legs and short black dress. Her face was hidden by the branches.
She sneezed, then cursed about dirt and started hobbling toward the entrance. My nose twitched at her ferrous scent. Vampire, I guessed. Because she didn’t appear to be bleeding, just a little roughed up.
I winced as the irritating buzz intensified in my head. What the heck? I tried to shake it off, but the sensation only appeared to grow. It felt wrong. Foreign. Invasive.
The lights suddenly came roaring back to life, causing me to cringe at the abrupt brightness surrounding the streets and building. I blinked, my eyes watering from the unexpected change. It gave me a new appreciation for Ryder’s dislike of the sun.
Fortunately, my senses almost immediately adjusted, the vivid scene taking on a