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A whiff of burned hair told me just how close it had been. “You son of a bitch. Do you have any idea what it costs to maintain these glorious locks? It ain’t cheap!”
Shadows unfurled themselves at his feet, shooting upward as they held him in place.
“Stay!” I snarled as I fired at him for good measure, taking out his kneecap. With a shout he dropped to the floor, clutching his leg as blood seeped through his fingers.
“I said apprehend her, not kill her,” White thundered. Just a few hours ago her commanding tone would have caused me to stop in my tracks and do as she tell me. Funny how being betrayed could change one’s perspective.
Smiling the huntress stepped forward. “Quinn Delacroix,” she said, her full lips stretched into a wide small. “Don’t worry, Agent White, I’ll get her for you.”
“Do we know each other? Did I kick your ass before?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes on White, Stryker and my sister at the same time as I sized up my opponent. She was about a foot taller than me. Not a problem. I’d spent most of my life fighting people who were taller than me.
“You don’t remember me?”
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Howard,” she said.
Confused I pulled up an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’d recall some girl called Howard.”
Furious she charged at me, moving faster than anyone I’d ever seen. I just barely dodged her fist meant for my face, but we landed on the floor with her on top of me. Both my guns clattered to the ground. Great, she had superspeed. Super rare since most witch attributes look a bit more, well, magical, and I was definitely not prepared for this. “My boyfriend’s name is Howard,” she snarled, clawing at my face and my throat, her fingers digging into any part of my body she could get a hold of.
“Howard? The pathetic little weasel, who followed me around my last semester at the academy? That Howard? Are you fucking kidding me? Nothing happened between us!”
Not listening to reason, the harpy shrieked, attempting to choke me now. Twisting my body, I grabbed the tranquilizer gun and fired. The dart hit her in her left butt-cheek. Her lips formed a perfect “O” before she sagged over, dropping onto me with her full weight. I shoved her from me and got to my feet, grabbing my second gun in one smooth motion since I was out of tranquilizers and aimed at Agent White.
With Dumb and Dumber out of commission and Stryker still out cold, this left only her, and I forced my lips into a sarcastic smirk. “You were saying? I can’t take all of you?”
Unfortunately for me, White was an extremely capable fighter. Had to be, after all she’d trained legions of hunters. And, also unfortunately for me, having trained me she knew all my moves.
Thea White’s specialty was telekinesis, one of the most dangerous powers a witch could have. My gun flew out of my hands before I even had a chance to take a shot at her. It clattered under a table and out of sight.
Just as well. I was a more hands-on kind of girl anyway.
I charged her, shadows surging at her feet, attempting to lock her in place. Easily White dodged my shadows and evaded my fist swinging towards her face. With the same ease I sidestepped her foot flying up toward my midsection. Too bad for her I’d been a star student and had been paying attention to her technique, despite all her talk of me being distracted by the guys in my class. Call me a multitasker.
“This’ll take a while, huh?” I taunted her. My breathing was labored, and my light-blond hair stuck to the nape of my neck.
The smile White gave me looked more like a baring of teeth than anything. “Are you sure your sister has that long?”
A whimper made my head snap around.
“It hurts. Stop, please,” my sister whispered. While White and I had been at it, Stryker had woken up. Rats, useless tranquilizers. You never knew how long these things worked on supes.
Despite being groggy from the drugs in his system he’d been lucid enough to use the chance to carry on with his experiment while I’d been distracted. He’d thrown the lever down that made sickly green liquid run from the glass chambers containing the second specimen into my sister’s blood stream.
“NO!” I screamed, abandoning any attempt to put Agent White out of commission to jump Stryker, desperate to get him away from Becca again. Agent White came after me and, toppling a cart carrying glass tubes and syringes over as we crashed to the ground.
“You need to talk less, Agent Delacroix,” White snarled. “It distracts you. Distraction kills.”
My head snapped forward, my forehead smashing against her nose, breaking it. “Yeah? Maybe you should take your own advice.”
Several things happened at once. Plaster rained down on us as a figure dropped through the ceiling and landed in front of Stryker, grabbing the man by the throat. I lost my grip on the shadowy snares trapping the fire-slinging guy, who’d already managed to get over his kneecap’s early demise. He had to be hyped up on vampire blood to heal this fast. Both advanced on us.
“Thought you’d left,” I gasped as White grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked. Wanted to play dirty now, did she? My nails left deep gashes in her cheek as I clawed at her face in an attempt to throw her off me.
“Told you I wanted to kill the old bastard,” Redmond muttered in a chilling tone.
And just like that he snapped Stryker’s neck.
