be likely to feel any. But James has no doubt, the bastard had stolen his power.
And then Brigit caught his attention with a single word.
“Gone,” she whispered.
His eyes shot back to hers. “Your entire team?”
“Nearly.” She lowered her head then, and he knew she was trying to hide her tears. But she couldn’t hide anything from him. “We were holed up in an abandoned house, and the assholes burned it. I don’t even know how they knew we were there. We lost a dozen good people. I managed to carry four of them out before the flames got too bad, but they were badly burned, too, between the damn inferno and the sun.”
“And the vigilantes?” he asked, noting that Utanapishtim was coming closer now. The resurrected king was watching Brigit’s every move, listening intently to her every word, fascination in his black eyes.
“I sploded ’em,” Brigit said, using their childhood term for her destructive gift. “That’s one—”
Utanapishtim held up a hand, interrupting her. “I know not…sploded. What means it?”
“As I started to say,” Brigit went on, irritated, “that’s one gang down, about twenty to go, and that’s just in the Northeast. They’re popping up all over the place. I’ll get them all as soon as I get enough intel to know where to look.”
“Intel…?” Utanapishtim asked.
Brigit ignored him and kept talking. “I kept the leader alive. He’s in the basement, tied up and trembling, surrounded by sleeping vampires who’d just as soon drain him dry as look at him.”
“You take prisoner. Leader. This wise, for female.
Now, say me what means sploded,” Utanapishtim ordered.
James looked at his hands and wondered how the hell he was going to regain what Utanapishtim had taken from him. “Don’t tell him, Bridge.”
Ignoring the warning, Brigit said, “Okay, watch this, King Tut.” She pointed at a lectern standing in the corner of the church, and then she turned her hand, palm up, touched her fingers lightly to her thumb and then, as she flicked them open, a beam shot from her eyes, following the direction of her fingertips and the lectern exploded into a thousand bits.
From the far side of the church, Lucy shrieked and jumped. “Shit, Brigit, give a little warning, would you?”
“Sorry, Prof.” Brigit looked at Utanapishtim. “That was just a little one. I can cause a lot more damage if I want to.”
He nodded. “This I know… You not only one have power of splode.”
Brigit grinned. “You’ve known others?” she asked.
“One other.” He shifted his eyes to James. “This place…not safe, James. I feel—”
“I feel it, too,” Brigit said, turning her head, looking around.
“It’s daylight,” James said. “We can’t move your four sleeping soldiers until dark. Not safely.”
“Maybe we can.” Lucy, who had been wandering around the church, exploring, held a length of green canvas in her hands. “There are several of these tarps back here. Apparently they used them to cover the organ. If we wrap the vamps up, we can each carry one of them to the dinghy. Just like we did when we took Sarafina and the others out of that cave after the fire. You say there are four vampires here, Brigit?”
“Yes, fighters, too. Two male, two female.” Brigit eyed Lucy. “And while I’m sure that James and I and Utanapishtim can each manage to carry one, I doubt you can. You don’t have preternatural strength like we do.”
“You have hu-mun prisoner,” Utanapishtim said.
“Make him carry.”
Brigit lifted her brows at him. “Good thinking, Kong.”
He made a fist and thudded it against his own chest. “Utanapishtim.”
Brigit shrugged. “Whatev. C’mon, they’re this way.”
She led them through a door beyond the nave, which led to a very rickety and dusty flight of steps leading down into utter darkness. James followed directly behind her, then turned to call up to Lucy, “Be careful, it’s very dark.”
“I’ll just wait at the top, then,” she said softly.
He thought there was something odd in her voice, then realized what it was. She was getting tired of being the only one of them without any sort of supernatural ability. He supposed he could understand that, even though he’d been determined to exist in complete denial of the powers he possessed, with the exception of his power to heal.
A power he’d lost. The reality of that ached in his chest, but he had no time, just now, for grieving.
He continued down the stairs and saw a man, a mortal, tied to a chair. He was a man James had seen before. Just a glimpse, though, as they’d sped