hundreds of thousands of humans, cops, and assholes out and about in the darkened city. There was no backup to be had, either. The fighters on hand at the mansion to protect Wrath had to stay put.
From the midst of his battlefield assessment, plans began to formulate instantly, and the first was to get Manny over here. The next was to call V and get some mhis up. If the Omega was gone, the Brother should be safe to—
Butch grabbed onto the front of Syn’s jacket. Hazy hazel eyes seemed to not want to focus as he struggled for words.
“Tell me,” Syn said urgently. “What can I do for you?”
Butch’s shaking hand lifted. “Take care of my sister.”
Syn wheeled around, and that was when he saw her. There. Against the alley’s damp and dirty foot, Jo was lying in a heap, her red hair tangled, her limbs all at bad angles.
In a rush to get to her, Syn almost dropped the Brother like a piece of trash—
The first gunshot caught Syn by surprise, sizzling past his left ear. The second hit him in the meat of his shoulder. The third went into his arm.
Years of training took over as his brain got jammed by adrenaline. He ducked and covered, protecting Butch as he dragged the floppy bag of Brother out of harm’s way. Turned out he made a passable bulletproof vest: Another lead slug went into him somewhere in the chest and something must have hit his calf. But Butch was spared. The bad news was that there wasn’t much to hide behind, the alley having been peeled of the normal shit—like big trash containers and abandoned cars—that typically accumulated in Caldwell’s colon. Plus there were the Brothers who were struggling to wake up and defenseless as newborns, and Jo, who he feared was dead.
An inset doorway was the best that he could do, and he propped Butch up as there was a pause in the shooting. The sonofabitch with the gun was exchanging clips.
This was Syn’s only chance.
Diving a hand into his jacket, he—
Felt only slippery shit.
He couldn’t seem to grip anything, and he pulled out his hand in confusion. Red, everywhere. He’d been shot in the palm.
Putting his body in the way to protect Butch, he went leftie—and at that moment, the lights came back on in Caldwell. Sure as if someone had cranked the dimmer switch back in the direction of wouldja-look-at-that, suddenly he could see his enemy. A dark-haired human dressed in black.
The mobster’s son. Carmine Gigante Jr.
He had to have been driving that SUV Syn had bounced off of.
Syn’s shoulder injury meant his second-choice hand was numb, some kind of nerve cut. So when he went for his gun, he had no strength in that hold, either.
Gigante’s progeny didn’t have that problem. Junior readily brought his weapon up again, and this time he had plenty of sight to go by. The muzzle pointed directly at Syn. A death shot, if there ever had been one—
The gun went off with a pop and Syn knee-jerked into his torso—but it wasn’t like he could stop the bullet. Gasping, bracing, trying to stay conscious…
The mobster dropped to the pavement, his weapon skittering away from his palm, the back of his skull cracking as it fell back onto that filthy, hard asphalt.
Syn looked down at himself in confusion.
“T-t-torso.”
He nearly tripped on himself as he wheeled to the voice of his female. “Jo?”
His beautiful, brave, extraordinary female was holding her double-gripped gun straight out with stiff arms. Everything was shaking on her, her legs, her shoulders, her head—even her teeth were chattering. But those arms and those hands were rock fucking solid.
“You t-t-told me…” she stuttered. “Aim for the torso. It’s the b-b-biggest target.”
Syn let out a strangled sound as he lunged for her. His body was full of lead and leaking like a sieve, though, so it was a messy reunion. Not that he gave a shit.
He disarmed her as he landed next to her on the ground and pulled her against him.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he said as he held her to his heart.
“I c-c-can’t stop shaking,” she said into his throat.
“It’s over. It’s okay… it’s over.”
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself one brief moment of reunion. Then he got on his communicator and started barking out orders. When the responses came in, from Manny, from V—and especially from Doc Jane as she materialized out of thin air right next to Butch, he relaxed a little and