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“Help him,” I told Shane.
As they wrestled the massive vampire towards the exit, I kept my gun trained on the remaining guard. His pants were soaked with urine, and he looked frightened and desperate.
“Can you take it off? Without blowing?” I asked.
He shook his head, bloodstained tears welling in his eyes. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for a rogue vampire. He’d made some stupid life decisions to bring him to this point, and part of me felt like he deserved what he was getting.
But the human part of me—a part that didn’t actually exist physiologically—couldn’t just leave some poor crying bastard to die by explosion.
I lowered my gaze to my gun then back up to the vampire. “Do you…? I mean…do you want me to…?”
He nodded.
I fired two shots into his head, and he crumpled between his fallen comrades. He would have been dead either way, but at least now he didn’t need to learn what it felt like to be blown up.
Now if only I could avoid the same experience.
The first explosion went off as I reached the main hallway. I was lifted off my feet and thrown into the metal doors of the elevator bay. I hit the floor in a daze, a dented impression of my body showing in the age-faded bronze.
Small bits of debris fell around me, the larger chunks having been blown farther away. A haze of dust hung over the hallway, which combined with the force of hitting the wall, made me unsure of which way the exit was. I got to my feet, trying to smell fresh air, but my nostrils were full of plaster dust and exploded fiberglass.
If this building was full of asbestos, my lungs were going to be properly fucked for a few days.
“Secret. ” Holden’s voice echoed down the hall, helping me figure out which way to run.
I was four feet from the door when the second explosion rocked the apartment complex. This time I was blown into the front doors, cracking the old lead glass into a spider-web pattern. Unfortunately for me the doors weren’t the kind to open out, so the explosion didn’t expel me from the building, it just hurtled me into the solid barrier of the door.
More rubble rained down, the larger chunks not missing me this time. I covered my head, tucking myself in against the wooden door as the huge bits of concrete and iron half-buried me. I fumbled for the door handle and managed to crack the door open wide enough to drag myself through.
Holden was waiting on the opposite side, prying the door open wider and hauling me out with rough hands under my armpits. He had me down the front steps by the time the third explosion went off. This one was larger than the others, or perhaps the structure had been so compromised a hard sneeze could have taken the place down.
We were knocked down by the force of the blast. I fell flat onto Holden, and he rolled me over, bracing his arms on either side of my head and burying his face beside my neck. Huge boulders of concrete pummeled the ground around us. Judging by the way Holden’s body moved and the tense grit of his jaw against my cheek, some of the pieces must have been landing on him.
When the sky stopped falling, Holden sat back on his heels and helped me to my feet. I was still wobbly from being tossed around like a rag doll, and my jeans were torn in both knees. Probably elsewhere, too, because my backside was experiencing a new breezy sensation.
Shane and Grendel were nowhere in sight, and I was hoping it meant Shane had gotten some vampire assistance. If the wardens—as they often were—had been trailing me from a distance and monitoring my app activity when I’d called Holden, they wouldn’t have been far away when things went down. With their speed and training, they could have easily met Shane outside and helped cart off Grendel before I’d had a chance to escape.
I had to hope that because police sirens screamed closer, and red-and-blue lights ricocheted against the tall brick walls. As cops spilled into the alley, the last thing I wanted to do was explain why we had a seven-foot-tall monstrosity of a man with his knees blown off held captive.
I raised my hands above my head, favoring a sore ankle by standing tilted away from Holden. He lifted his own hands, the sleeve of his blazer ripping loose as he muttered, “This was a thirteen-hundred-dollar suit. ”
Chapter Five
Detective Mercedes Castilla had bigger hips than me—and longer legs—but I’d rather borrow her spare jeans instead of a pair of unknown origin from the lost-and-found box.
At least I knew any stains on Cedes’s jeans were from coffee.
Judging by the triumphant sneer on Barbie the Receptionist’s face when I’d been dragged into the police station, she would have liked nothing more than to see me wearing a pair of baggy sweats abandoned by a homeless guy. Barbie had never been my biggest fan.
In spite of the fact the fallen apartment building was in Brooklyn, Holden and I ended up at the seventy-sixth precinct of the NYPD. Just my luck. Luck in this case was equal parts honest luck and being totally screwed.
Lucky because I got to borrow jeans from my human best friend.
Shitty break because of the pair of disapproving eyes and sternly crossed muscular arms seated across the desk from me. Detective Tyler Nowakowski was shaking his handsome, stubbled jaw at me.
“You know…for someone trying to stay under the radar, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it,” he said.
Blessedly, Mercedes and Tyler were both aware of what I was—all of what I was—and happened to be under my protection. In a fun turn of events, they were also both now protecting me. I think Tyler enjoyed being the hero for once. He was the manly sort, and was probably tired of me being the one to save him.
