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“Vampiric Fae, spotted heading into the parking lot at Anadey’s Diner. Probably light-crazed.”
“Mother!” Peyton grabbed her coat and I was right behind her.
Without another word, we headed out into the growing dusk.
I floored it and we swerved into the parking lot of the diner. The door was ajar and there was a ruckus coming from inside. I pulled out my fan as Peyton raced to the side, transforming into her cougar self even as she ran.
Leo reached into the pocket of his trench and I let out a sharp breath as he pulled out a Beretta . . . by the look of it, an M92. Dane—my mother’s boyfriend—had showed me his collection when we lived with him, and I’d soaked up all the knowledge I could about guns from him.
Slapping in a high-capacity magazine, he cocked the gun in wait. Whether bullets would work against the Indigo Court, I didn’t know, but the fact that he owned one and hadn’t told us caught me by surprise.
As we neared the entrance, screams echoed into the evening air. Kaylin rushed through and I followed.
The diner was a bloody mess. Four of the Shadow Hunters were enough to take on a diner full of people. One of the Lupa Clan was in a fight for his life with one of the Vampiric Fae, rolling on the floor trying to push the Shadow Hunter off as the creature began to transform atop him.
A second Shadow Hunter was feasting on the remains of a woman, and her blood ran thickly across the floor. The doglike monster looked up, a long scrap of muscle hanging from his mouth, but his eyes were intelligent—crazed, but far too smart for our safety. The woman was still screaming—he was devouring her alive. My stomach lurched.
Still another pounded against the ladies’ room door, trying to break through, and we could hear screaming from inside. The fourth was headed toward the kitchen, where Anadey was wielding a huge cleaver.
“Stop him!” I shouted, but Peyton was two steps ahead, leaping on the Vampiric Fae and knocking him to the floor. I motioned for the others to stand back and swept my fan three times.
Winds don’t fail me now. Gale force.
A gust howled through the diner, raging more than one hundred miles per hour, catching everyone off guard, toppling everything not nailed down. Plates went whipping like Frisbees, glasses smashed against the walls, the hurricaneforce winds caught up the chairs from the front tables and sent them sailing through the windows. The lights flickered as screams erupted—the Shadow Hunters were not happy with me.
As soon as the winds died, Kaylin rushed in, aiming his shurikens with deadly accuracy toward the head of the creature who was feasting on the woman. She had passed out—or died—and was a bloody mess of torn flesh. The Shadow Hunter screamed again and rushed toward the dreamwalker.
As Leo aimed and fired off a half dozen rounds, Rhiannon held her hands out and sent a blast of flame through the air. Both the bullet and the flame caught hold of the Indigo Fae and he fell to the floor, transforming as he did so. As he shifted back into his normal form, he jumped up, blackened from the fire and bleeding slightly from the bullet, which had gone directly through his shoulder. But the bullet hadn’t seemed to slow him down any, and he aimed himself directly for Rhiannon.
Her eyes went wide as he launched himself and jumped. Leo dove between them, but not before the Shadow Hunter caught Rhiannon and took her down. At that point, the Shadow Hunter pounding on the bathroom door broke through the wood, and the one heading toward the kitchen ducked as the cleaver came flying out from behind the stove.
“What kind of game are we playing now?” A familiar voice rang over the chaos from the door of the diner and I whirled around to see Lannan enter the room, leading a group of eight vampires. They were dressed to kill, in black leather, and their fangs were gleaming in the dim light. For once, I was relieved to see the bloodsucker.
Without another word, the air blurred as the vamps sprang into action. They were all over the Shadow Hunters and the blood began to flow.
A hiss here. A shout there. The lights flickered again. Outside the snow was falling at a steady clip and people passed by, their car doors locked to keep the monsters at bay. The woman on the floor was dead—one of the vamps had gotten distracted and was licking up her blood. Lannan had the Shadow Hunter by the throat—the one who’d grabbed Rhiannon—and was holding him off the floor, squeezing as hard as he could. Rhiannon scrambled out of the way.
Two of the other vamps had routed the Indigo Court Fae from the bathroom and as I watched, one of them plunged a cast-iron spike through the Shadow Hunter’s heart. He shrieked and dropped, dead.
So iron stakes can kill them.
Ulean swept around me. Yes, they can, it appears. Be cautious of using your fan, Cicely. It has powers that you do not yet realize and they can captivate—
But I shook off her warning. At that moment, Anadey stumbled out, helped by none other than one of the Lupa Clan. She looked dazed. At that moment, the other two Shadow Hunters raced out of the diner, followed by five of the vampires. There were screams from the parking lot, and then all was silent. One of the vamps returned a few minutes later.
“All taken care of.”
I stood very still, keenly aware of how much blood was staining the diner, and how easily it could set off the vampires. I stared at Lannan, who swaggered over to me. He said nothing, but reached down to cup my chin. I waited. He planted a long, slow kiss on my lips and, still in shock, I found myself responding. As I pulled away, he whispered, “You can thank me for saving your cousin later.”
And then, as quickly as they’d come, the vampires disappeared into the darkness and we were alone, knee-deep in carnage. The night closed in and Winter howled her wrath.
Anadey slowly came around the counter to the front. “All right, who’s hurt?” She stared down at the woman’s torn body and shook her head, her expression fractured between shock and pain. “That was Eva. She comes in here every night for coffee and pie . . .” She turned away, looking over the remains of her restaurant.
A handful of people filed out of the restroom. They looked bruised but no worse for the wear. A couple of people were hurt; one man looked seriously injured, but it wasn’t apparent whether it had been the Shadow Hunters who’d hurt him or the broken glass from the windows. As Anadey picked up the phone to call for an ambulance, Leo sidled up to me.
“And you still want to bring one of them into the house. You like fucking danger, don’t you? I bet you even want Lannan—you protest, but you weren’t putting him off last night. He was all up inside you—I saw it. I’ll bet you get down on your knees like a dog for him—” He whispered low enough so that Rhiannon didn’t hear me, but I whirled around and smacked him across the face.
“Better him than you. Just give it a fucking rest, dude. I told you I wasn’t planning on bringing Grieve into the house, but you just fucking didn’t bother to listen.”
