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"You can be an ass**le, you know that, Sullivan?"
Ethan smiled. "I do. We do what we must to protect our own."
Catcher looked at Mallory. "It's your call."
She nodded. "I already said yes. It's the right thing to do."
"We go in in two waves. Jeff, Catcher, Mallory, through the front. Me, Merit, Jonah, Luc, Lindsey, through the back. We find him. We capture him. We preserve evidence as we can. And we nail his ass to the wall."
"I assume you'll want us to lay down magical cover for the rest of you?" Catcher asked.
"If you can do it?" Ethan said, a dare in his voice.
"You know I can," Catcher said.
"You know what we need?" Jeff said, rolling up the map. "A rallying cry, like 'Avengers, assemble!' or 'Regulators, mount up!'"
"How about 'Bring back the head of John McKetrick'?" Ethan suggested.
"Grim," Jeff said, "but I think it works."
"For the sake of saying it, Liege," Luc said, "do you really think you should go? You know, for safety purposes?"
The chilling look in Ethan's expression left little doubt about his answer to that question.
"Alrighty then," Luc said. "Earbuds for all." He passed out the earbuds, which now rested in a jar on his desktop like the world's worst candy. "Good luck, and do try not to get killed."
"It's my nightly goal," Ethan said, rising from his chair. Jonah and I followed, and we walked back into the hallway and climbed the stairs.
We paused in the foyer when Jonah held up his phone. "I'm going to give Scott an update."
Ethan nodded and looked at me. "While he's doing that, you'll want to go upstairs and change."
I frowned and tugged at the bottom of my jacket. "I don't have anything to change into; my leathers were toasted in the fire."
"Just go, Sentinel," Ethan said, clearly with some other plan afoot. It didn't seem worth making a scene in front of Jonah, so I climbed the stairs again and headed back into our apartments.
Hanging inside the closet was a set of new leathers - sleek and black with crimson trim. A small white envelope was tied to the hanger with a crimson ribbon. I slipped out the card and read it.
"'To my favorite Sentinel,'" I read aloud, "'with love on belated Valentine's Day.'"
Smiling gleefully, I removed the jeans and suit jacket, then slipped the leather pants from the hanger. They were buttery soft and fitted, with a thin strip of crimson piping down each leg. I climbed into them and zipped them up. They fit like a glove, with the slightest flare at the bottom to cover the boot.
The jacket was heavier than my old version, although it had the same segmented shoulders and elbows for freedom of movement. The crimson trim was subtle, but gorgeous, a secret vein at the edges of the leather. Ethan wouldn't have overlooked that, and he probably picked them particularly because of it. Because it hinted at who I was beneath the clothes, the fire that lurked inside the brunette.
I pulled the jacket on, and of course it fit perfectly. It wasn't hard to imagine that Ethan had learned the curve of my body and could guess my size. I modeled the ensemble in the mirror, more pleased than I probably should have been at how it looked.
It looked . . . perfect. Perfectly me, perfectly Sentinel, perfectly Cadogan.
Now, if I could just keep them from catching fire.
-
We met in the foyer. Catcher, Mallory, and Jeff would drive together, as would Luc and Lindsey. Neither my loaner nor Ethan's Ferrari was big enough for three, so Jonah volunteered - once again - to drive us in his vehicle.
We were going to have to start reimbursing him for mileage.
Jonah was a man on a mission, and he slalomed through traffic - nothing reckless that would raise the attention of cops, but enough to make the trip as efficient as possible.
The House was a twenty-minute drive from Hornet Freight. Jonah took the longer but faster freeway route to Midway Airport, then squeezed between taxis into the exit lane. But we diverged from the line of sedans and followed a second road through an industrial neighborhood.
Hornet Freight was on the left side of the road. A giant black and yellow sign bearing the business's name and a photograph of the bug lit up the night. It was a brick building, two stories tall, the last in a line of eight identical buildings. None of them appeared to have been occupied recently.
We parked in a row in a designated lot about a quarter mile away. "From here," Jonah said, "Hornet Freight looks legit."
"Looks," Ethan emphasized.
"Agreed." We got out of the car and belted on swords, the eight of us gathering behind our shield of vehicles.
"Earbuds in," Luc said, and we maneuvered the little buggers into our ears. Preparations made, we looked at Ethan.
As always, he was prepared to speechify.
"We are here for a reason," Ethan said, "because we've decided hatred and manipulation can only go so far. Be brave, but moreover, be safe. Bravery only gets you so far. Let's get into position."
There were nods all around, and we formed a sort of line, with the aspen-immune sorcerers at the front and the rest of us at the back.
"Tomorrow," Ethan whispered beside me, "we make time to celebrate Valentine's Day. But tonight, Merit, my Sentinel, my warrior, let's go find John McKetrick. And let's kick his ass."
Chapter Twenty
VAMPIRES, ASSEMBLE!
We descended into the low - and thankfully empty - ditch that bordered the road, and we walked toward the building. We stopped when we were a football field away. From this distance, it looked utterly innocuous. It was an unremarkable building in an unremarkable part of the city, remarkable tonight only because it had become a bastion of hatred.
When we reached the parking lot, we separated into our groups and ran full out, dodging lampposts and ruts in the concrete. We separated from the sorcerer/shifter crew, running toward the back of the building.
"Luc, you and Lindsey take the door on the west," Ethan said. "We'll take the east. Don't let anyone out of the building."
"On it," Luc said. He kissed Lindsey, her eyes darting with surprise, and they ran low across the back of the building to the other side.
Ethan looked at me and Jonah. "You ready?"
We both nodded.
"Then let's go."
We moved around to the door, which was rusted and a couple of steps above the ground. We lined up against the wall, Jonah on one side, me and Ethan on the other.
Jonah moved closer, pressing an ear to the door, listening for anything on the other side of the wall. After a moment, he shook his head, then pulled two dangerous-looking knives from his jacket. Ethan and I drew our swords.
