“Shit!” I exclaimed, and shoved him off.
There wasn’t time to ponder Talisman’s suicide. The doors to the house opened and groups of vampires and ghouls came out, led by the guards. There were so many of them, it looked like an anthill evacuating. None of the faces belonged to Bones, however.
I saw Annette amid the throng and grabbed her. “Where’s Bones? Why isn’t he out here? He knows, doesn’t he?”
I didn’t say bomb, not wanting to cause a panic if people didn’t know yet. Annette looked rather frazzled herself, her usual cool composure absent.
“He’s still inside. He won’t leave until all his people are out and he finds the others who are involved.”
“Oh no he doesn’t,” I growled.
Annette yanked on my arm and didn’t let go. “Crispin said to keep you out here,” she insisted, holding me back.
Everything else aside, I enjoyed what I did next. Shallow of me, but true. I whirled and hit her so hard, she dropped to the ground with a dent in her skull. On the practical side, it also kept her from restraining me. See? It wasn’t all for fun.
As I rushed toward the house, I almost barreled into Spade.
“Don’t even think about stopping me,” I warned him, palming some knives to punctuate my threat.
He barely looked at them. “You have to come with me, we need to get Crispin out. Tate is still inside as well. At a guess, we have less than four minutes.”
Four minutes! Vampires could survive many things, but having their entire body blown to bits wasn’t one of them. Fear made me reckless, and I dashed forward into the house at a dead run, Spade keeping pace.
We were in the deserted hallway when he sprung. I’d been searching the corners for danger and hadn’t expected it from the man at my side. His fist shot at my head, but I never even saw it coming. All I knew was one moment, I’d been peering around a corridor, and in the next, I was seeing stars before everything went black.
When I opened my eyes, we were sprawled on the lawn a hundred yards from the house. Spade still held me in an unrelenting grip. Even his legs were tangled around mine.
“You backstabbing son of a bitch,” I managed, struggling without success.
Spade gave me a grim smile even as he tightened his grip.
“Sorry, angel, but Crispin would kill me if I’d let anything happen to you.”
Something moved on the roof. With Spade half on top of me, I couldn’t see what, or who, it was.
“Is that him?” I asked desperately.
Spade craned his neck. “I’m not—”
An explosion cut him off and lit the sky, as bright as if God himself flipped on a switch. I screamed, struggling even as Spade flipped me over with his body covering mine. My face was pressed in the grass while heavy thunks landed everywhere. It had to be pieces of the house raining down on the lawn like proverbial brimstone. The smoke was choking even with my face in the dirt.
Spade didn’t move for a few minutes, ignoring the threats I gasped out. Not until the sounds of falling objects ceased did he allow me to sit up, but he kept his rigid grip.
The vampires and ghouls milling around hadn’t screamed at the sight of the house exploding in the night. They looked discomfited, but not traumatized.
“Charles, give me a hand with these.”
Bones appeared above us in the swirling smoke. I was so relieved to see him, I almost cried. He was covered in soot, mostly unclothed from where his shirt and pants had been burned off, and his hair was in singed patches. He also had three vampires in his arms. When he landed, he dumped them to the ground.
“Hold those two. Bloody sods,” he grumbled, kicking one. The third sat up and shook his head as if to clear it.
It was Tate. Thank God, he’d made it out alive as well. Spade released me as Bones knelt next to me, and I threw my arms around him.
“I’m so glad you’re okay…and don’t you ever tell your friends to hold me back again, dammit!”
Bones chuckled. “Can we fight about that later, Kitten? We still have business to sort out, after all.”
Then he set me back to look at me. “What happened to you? You look chewed.”
He took one of my knives and sliced his palm. I took his blood, feeling the pain in my head ebb.
“Are Juan and Cooper okay?” I asked, trying to spot them among the throngs of people.
“I can hear them,” Tate answered. “They’re all right.”
Bones gave Tate a sharp look. “How did you know what was about to happen?”