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In the split second between making sure Fritz was free of the impact and hearing the click of the detonation’s ignition, he braced himself for the blast of heat—but when it came, it was so overwhelming, it didn’t even hit as any kind of warmth. Like the pain was so great, his body literally could not register it.
And funnily enough, there was no sound. At all.
Just a weird, sickening swirl as he was carried up, up, and away.
His final thought was…
Oh, shit. Beth, I’m so fucking sorry.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Lassiter held nothing back as he and Lash went at it, two immortals throwing each other around the inside of a conservatory. Bouncing off furniture and miniature fruit trees. Getting scraped up, silver blood mixing with black. Glass breaking, sculptures knocked over, vases shattered.
After one particularly violent kick, Lassiter went into a tap-dancing retreat he did not intend—and when he hit something very hard on the small of his back, a ripple of discordant music played out.
Piano. A Steinway had caught his fall.
Across the ruined space, Lash was gearing up for a running offensive, the evil sinking down into his thighs and wiping the black blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. Malicious eyes stared forward with maniacal glee, and as he opened his mouth to hiss, his fangs were a pair of enameled daggers, long as elephant tusks.
The Omega’s son started across the black-and-white marble floor, and Lassiter, who’d managed to get one hell of a thigh wound, needed to find his breath before he could keep going with the goddamn arm wrestling.
So he picked up the motherfucking grand piano and slung that bitch right at the piece of shit with the bright ideas.
Talk about your sonata in the key of ouch.
The ringing cacophony was satisfying, even if rough on the ear, and the force sent Lash pinballing into the next room.
Lassiter glanced over his shoulder. Out on the side lawn, battles were ongoing in the smoke and the shadows, the Brotherhood and fighters engaging with what seemed to be an army of slayers. He could hear guns discharging, and saw a good news pop-and-flash as someone managed to stab one of the enemy. But there were so many lessers.
No rest for the weary.
And really, given what had happened up in the Sanctuary with Rahvyn, he didn’t give a shit—he was so in his feels, fighting was the only release that could distract him for even a moment from his pain.
Bleeding, limping, pissed off and violent, Lassiter went in search of his prey—
Without warning, he was tackled from behind, Lash’s attack so competent that he was on the ground and sliding like a floor mop down some kind of hallway before he knew what hit him.
The rest of it was a blur of ruined furniture, paintings that were shredded, carved doorjambs that were cracked, and walls punched through with bodies. They were so equally matched as they hand-to-hand’d it through the first floor of the house that they might as well have been a pair of wrecking balls. And then he picked up Lash by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants, and threw him, headfirst like a battering ram, at the front fucking door.
The evil opened the way out nicely.
Well, not nicely at all, really. The evil blew the heavy oak panels right off their fucking hinges.
The shot of fresh air was reviving, and Lassiter dragged himself across the foyer, sidestepping a crystal chandelier that had fallen in a crash, lagging a leg because one of his ankles was probably broken.
The last thing he did before he stepped out was glance up, for no particular reason. Well, what do you know. His own blood was smeared across the ceiling. Guess the ground game had taken to the roof for a bit.
As he stepped outside, he looked at the sky and took a deep breath to try to ease his panting, sawing respiration. The pain that shot through his sternum was intense, but not because he was physically wounded. No, that was his broken heart, fuck him very much.
How was he going to go on without his female…
That was the thought that went through his head as Lash pulled his own sorry, wounded ass off the ground and faced off, again.
Lassiter didn’t know how much more he had in him—or what exactly was going to happen if he stopped, or more likely couldn’t go on. He had seen what the evil had conjured up in his hand when he’d been about to do in Eddie.
That black void shit was lights-out time, whatever the hell it was.
And maybe he wanted that, he reflected as he gave the enemy time to get back on its—
The explosion that went off was distant, not on the property, but close enough that the noise gathered attention.
