Cold Blooded by Amanda Carlson
about the author
A Minnesota girl born and bred, Amanda Carlson graduated from the University of Minnesota with a double major in speech and hearing science and child development. After enjoying her time as a sign language interpreter, she decided to stay at home and write in earnest after her second child was born. She loves playing Scrabble, tropical beaches, and shopping trips to Ikea. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three kids. To find out more about the author, visit www.amandacarlson.com or on Twitter @AmandaCCarlson.
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For Bill.
My partner in all things.
1
“Get down!” Tallulah Talbot, the most powerful witch in the country, grabbed on to my arm and hurled us both into the bushes. Seconds later an explosion hit with the force of a meteor. I shielded my face and body as rocks peppered down around us. Once it stopped, I rolled over and opened my eyes, coughing and spitting out dirt as I rose to my knees.
I squinted through the brush. “Do you see what I’m seeing?” I pointed to a crater the size of a city bus in the middle of my office parking lot. The noise had rocked my eardrums, but other than that I was fine. I stood, dusting off my clothes. Tally was already up next to me. “What kind of an explosion was that?”
It had come out of the blue.
Before she could respond, Rourke was in front of me. He had several holes in his shirt, but the small wounds had already closed. He hauled me out of the bushes, his big hands encircling my waist. “Jessica, are you all right?” His gave me a long once-over.
“I’m fine.” I placed a palm on his warm chest. Touching him calmed me and I needed it. After the ordeal we’d just gone through battling Selene, I was still on edge. The Lunar Goddess had put up quite a fight, but in the end I had managed to defeat her immortality long enough to send her to the Underworld. The low growl in Rourke’s chest made my fingers tremble. He was as agitated as I was. Five minutes without someone trying to kill me would’ve gone an extremely long way.
“That wasn’t a normal bomb.” Rourke turned toward the parking lot. “Look at the damage. That hole has to be fifteen feet deep and just as wide.”
“It was a Mask Orb.” Tally emerged out of the brush behind us, readjusting her skullcap. She was dressed in all black, her white hair neatly tucked away, and at five feet tall with zero chest, she channeled a twelve-year-old boy, not an all-powerful spell caster. “It searches out a target and explodes once it finds its mark. It’s an old sorcerer standby. Those guys only have a few tricks up their sleeves, so they tend to use them tirelessly.” She smirked. “The Mask Orbs are impossible to detect until two seconds before they detonate, when they give off a tiny pfft of air. It’s a flaw in their spell. You just became the luckiest people alive, because I have a built-in detector on me at all times.” She patted her backside.
Tyler ran up, followed by Danny and Nick. They were all in one piece. Thank goodness supernaturals had preternatural speed, because most supes couldn’t regenerate from the damage of an explosion.
When Tally had yelled, everyone had moved.
“We need to get out of here,” Tyler said as he started to herd us forward. “The Humvee is armored. We can take it back to the Safe House and figure out our next move. I’m not waiting for another one of those things to explode.”
“If there was another one, it would’ve gone off already,” Tally said. “A Mask Orb is left as a calling card. It was meant to go off right when you arrived.” She nodded toward me, because we all knew it had my name all over it. “But the chunderheads must have activated it by the front entrance, so it took time to find you. Which, considering everything, was a very lucky break.” She bent over and dusted debris off her jeans. “But now that it’s been detonated, they know you’re here, so lingering isn’t advisable.”
I glanced around at the group. We were all assembled behind my office building. We’d just learned that James Graham, my father’s second-in-command, whom we’d thought had gone rogue, had taken off after Marcy Talbot, my secretary and Tally’s niece. According to Tally, Marcy had been recently abducted by sorcerers, the ones behind the new gaping crater in my parking lot. There was no reason to argue with Tally’s logic about who was behind the kidnapping. She clearly knew what she was talking about, especially if she had a Mask Orb detector embedded in her ass.
“Well, we’re certainly not sticking around to see if they show up,” Tyler said. “So like I said, let’s get out of here.”