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“Stand back. Or you’ll regret it.” With one quick sweep, the man I was facing pulled out something fist-sized and opened his palm for us to see.
“Fuck, a grenade? What the hell are you doing with a grenade?” My first thought was that Geoffrey had sent them here to blow us all up, a suicide bombing mission. Bloodwhores would do whatever their masters asked. But something in his demeanor told me he was no bloodwhore. No, day-runners were more valuable than bloodwhores.
“You—and the redhead—come with us and we’ll let the rest of them go.” He flicked his finger toward the pin.
I glanced at the grenade, then back at him. “How bad do you want us?”
“My orders are to bring the two of you back with me.” As he spoke, the two men from the opposite end of the building herded Rex, Peyton, and Chatter back toward us. They, too, had a grenade.
“No. You want us that bad, you’re not going to blow us up.” I shook my head. “This is so not going to happen.”
“You think so?” The man stared at me, his duster dark against the snow, and then he nodded to his buddy, who marched over and grabbed Peyton, dragging her in front of me. He tied her hands behind her back, and then pulled out a roll of duct tape and quickly strapped the grenade to her, while his partner kept us at bay with the other grenade. As he looped a string around the pin of the grenade and stepped away from Peyton, unwinding the string as he went, I suddenly realized what he was doing.
“Stop—don’t. Don’t do this.”
“You and your cousin come with us and we’ll let this one go without blowing her into a thousand bloody pieces.”
As I began to panic, Wrath suddenly turned into an owl and headed directly toward Peyton. Kaylin sent a shuriken into the man’s hand. He screamed, dropping the line leading to the grenade’s pin. At the same moment, Chatter turned into a pillar of fire and began spinning toward the man still holding the grenade.
“Get back! Get back!” I screamed to Rex, as I dove for a nearby snowbank. I shaded my eyes, tried to see what was happening without raising my head too far, but a large explosion lit up the area. Sharp screams filled the air, one after another. I staggered out from behind the snowbank, glancing around wildly. As Wrath lobbed something the other direction, yet another explosion rocked the ground.
Trying to catch my breath, I tried to ascertain who was still standing and who wasn’t. Rex was over by Peyton’s side—apparently he’d run toward her instead of diving for cover. He was stripping the ropes off of her hands. Chatter was standing there, looking slightly crazed. I ran over to him and he opened his arm to me.
I grabbed him around the waist, holding tight. “Oh, Chatter, I thought you blew yourself up.”
“My fires are far greater in power than his weapon. But we’d better take care of the one who is left.” He nodded over to where our opponents had been standing. “Best to assess who he is and what they were after.”
The first man with the grenade was nowhere to be seen, but shredded material and body parts told me that he’d gone up in the explosion when Chatter engulfed him. The man who had tied up Peyton was on the ground, bloody and dead—Kaylin was leaning over him with a dripping blade. Wrath had taken out the third man, who was now sprawled dead near his feet. And the fourth was cowering on the ground, his hands in full sight above his head.
I hustled over to him. “Take your coat off. Slowly. Drop it on the ground.”
He obeyed, and then I made him strip down all the way. When he was standing shivering and naked, I nodded.
“No hidden explosives. You can put on your boxers and undershirt again.” He did, as I motioned for Kaylin to pick up the guy’s clothing.
“Let’s get him inside and see what we can find out about him. Blindfold him first, though.” We couldn’t let him go, but on the off chance he escaped, I didn’t want him casing the joint for info on us.
We dragged him inside. Rhiannon gave me an odd look.
“We heard explosions. Are you all okay?” Luna hurried forward. When she saw we’d tied the man up, she pulled out a chair and pushed him into it, firmly knotting the ends of the cord around his wrists to the back of the chair.
“We’re okay. We survived to fight another day.” I frowned, feeling useless.
Peyton clapped me on the shoulder. “At least you weren’t tied up with a grenade strapped to your chest.” She tried to force a laugh, but her eyes told me just how drained she was from the experience. Rex came up behind her and led her to a chair, stroking her hair with an unexpectedly gentle hand. I glanced at him and he gave me a soft smile. Right then, I knew that he would love Peyton more than her mother had ever professed to.
“Yeah…that was…unexpected.” I cleared a space on the table and pulled up a chair, looking at our prisoner.
Rhiannon turned then, and her eyes lit up when saw him. “Erik!”
I stared at her, openmouthed. “You know him?”
“Know him? Leo and I double-dated with him and his girlfriend several times.” She suddenly dropped to a chair. “What the hell was going on out there?”
There was no way to avoid telling her. “This guy and three others came to kidnap the two of us. I’m not sure who the hell sent them—”
Rhiannon paled. “Erik is a day-runner for Geoffrey, just like Leo.”
Erik snorted. “Leo ain’t no day-runner anymore.”
