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Taking two quick, deep breaths, she—
Threw open the panel, and had to blink as motion-activated lights came on. Then she focused and cleared what was in front of her, swinging the gun muzzle left and right.
The barn interior was not a barn space at all, but a neat-and-tidy suburban garage, with tools and equipment tacked up on the concrete walls, and some kind of hulking vehicle draped in a tarp in the center of everything.
Whatever was under there was big as a mountain, and it appeared to be parked ass in so it could be driven straight out of the double doors.
When nothing moved or came at her, and she didn’t smell the sickly-sweet scent of the enemy—yet—she went over to some windows that she knew, based on what she’d seen from an exterior view, were coated in a reflective, one-way film.
So she could look out and stay undetected—
Across the way, coming through the trees toward the cabin, she saw the attack closing in… and she couldn’t believe it.
There were so many of them.
A dozen… or more, thelessers’bodies moving in a freaky kind of unison, as if they had a hive brain that coordinated their positions and strides. Not all of them had the white hair and skin that showed up over time as the pigment in their coloring leached out. But the newly inducted were dangerous, even if they didn’t have the experience that the older slayers did. As soon as a human was turned, they had an increase in strength and stamina that she’d been told her whole life she had to be careful of.
Sudden terror closed her throat, but she needed to get past that right now. Was Nate calling the Brotherhood? He’d mentioned over day that he’d been kicked out, though. And he’d have no need for backup—in his mind, he was invincible.
She glanced around and saw nothing that was going to help her.
It wasn’t like there was an armored tank under that fucking tarp. She wasn’t that lucky.
As she negotiated with all kinds of bad outcomes, and time funneled out the sink of this shitty situation… there was one, and only one, solution that came to her.
Taking out her cell phone, her hands were shaking so badly that she had to thank Lassiter for facial recognition because punching in her pass code was going to be next to impossible. And then as she went into her contacts, she almost couldn’t move through the short list for the same reason.
As she stopped on the one entry she needed more than the others—on some level, had always needed more than anybody else—tears came to her eyes:
Father Mine.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
When Zsadist’s phone started to vibrate with a call, he was back at Four Toys HQ, and leaning over V’s shoulder to check out the footage they’d managed to get from inside that Lessening Society tunnel.
He pointed at the monitor as he took the cell out of his jacket’s inside pocket. “That nano-drone is a thing of beauty. This is exactly what I wanted.”
“The size of flies, I’m telling you. As soon as thatlessercame out of there, Allhan sent the unit in and none of those bastards knew a damn thing—”
Z frowned as he glanced at the phone screen. For a second, he thought surely this must be wrong because his daughter was not speaking to him. And after the latest Nate/Nalla update from hisshellan, things were progressing in ways that made him want to start digging the fighter’s grave.
So no, she was not returning any call of his.
“Hold on, it’s Nalla.”
Swiping left, he braced himself for the female to tell him she and that out-of-control rage machine were eloping. “Hello—”
“I need you.” Her voice was direct, but also thin as a reed. “Oh, God, they’re everywhere—”
“What’s everywhere.”Even though he knew. Fucking hell, he was going to kill that male. “Where are you—”
“I’m at Nate’s—they’re surrounding his cabin and he’s about to go out there. I’m in the barn, and I have a nine millimeter. The slayers don’t know I’m here yet, but—”
“We’re on our way. You stay where you are.Do not engage the enemy.”
“There’s twelve to fifteen of them in the woods.”
As a shaft of true terror nailed him in the nads, he looked at V and nodded sharply. While the brother palmed up his own phone and sent out an alarm, Z said, “Can you dematerialize?”
