“Bad timing. A bed. Later.” He dropped me and handed me my Walther. Drew his long-barrel. In sync, we moved down the hall, Bruiser at point. I tried to remember how to breathe.
Wrassler should have been down, as a wound bled at his left side near his waist, soaking his dark blue pants black, but he was on one knee, firing single shots out the back, clearly low on ammo. Esmee was at the window, sighting down a target pistol. Eli was outside; he sprinted across the yard, zigzagging. Esmee took three steady shots, cover fire. A form behind the pool fell forward and then rolled back into the foliage. Eli tore for the garage. Someone rose from the garage roof, aiming down. I started to shout, but Bruiser raced through the short hallway and into the yard, into the sunlight, raising his weapon. Moving. Faster than I had ever seen a human move. Or almost human.
He leaped, his body going horizontal over the hood of the car. In midair, he fired. Up. Three shots. He landed on the other side, somehow on his feet. Wrassler cursed at the speed and the perfect landing. The man on the roof fell forward and slid down the roof tiles. Dead.
That was seven shots. Bruiser had to be almost out of ammo. “How many bad guys left?” I called out.
Esmee shouted from the mudroom, “One in the yard, three o’clock. I got him in my sights.”
“One in the garage,” Wrassler said.
“Esmee, hold fire,” I shouted. I dove into the yard. Esmee did not hold fire. Instead she laid down cover fire, each shot behind me but so close I wondered if they were tearing through my clothes. I reached the side of the garage, stepping over the dead human on the ground. He was staring at the sky, his mouth open, eyes already drying. I smelled feces on the cool air.
Bruiser whirled at my movement, checking himself before he fired. “There’s one in the garage with Eli,” I said. “Blood-servant.” Which meant faster than human, better eyesight than human, better reflexes than human. Eli was good, no doubt, but none of us knew how good yet. “Kid’s supposed to be in the limo,” I reminded him.
Bruiser nodded once. “I’m faster.”
Yeah. He was. I checked the yard. Safety’d, tossed him my Walther, and drew the one at my spine, surprised it had survived the romp in the hallway. “Go,” I said.
Bruiser leaped straight off the ground in a move so catlike that Beast hacked with delight. Still in the air, he soared through the open garage door. I heard him land, a faint scuff of sound. Two shots sounded, echoing in the garage. Behind me, Esmee fired two shots. The last bogey in the yard fell into the bushes. I ran from cover and checked each of the downed. One was still alive, gut-shot, in agony. He’d probably live if he got to a hospital in time.
A barrage of shots sounded in the garage, then silence. Eli and Bruiser carried a woman from the garage and tossed her to the dirt. Dead. The Kid peeked around the garage door, his face white and eyes wide, an armful of electronic devices clutched to his chest.
It was only then that I realized I hadn’t fired a single shot. I started laughing.
*
This wasn’t something that we could cover up. Sirens sounded in the distance, closing fast. Neighbors, or maybe Esmee, had called 911. To avoid questions, I took my unfired gun upstairs and secured it. In minutes the house was surrounded by cops. Esmee trotted out to them, a big smile on her face. She had taken the time to smooth her hair and put on lipstick, and she looked the perfect hostess in her bright floral scarf and her pearls. Bruiser, still in his dress slacks with an unbuttoned shirt, the tails billowing out behind him, followed her, his cell phone to his ear. He looked like a fashion shoot from GQ—one titled “The Morning After.” Around and in the house were dead humans, their blood soaking into the parquet flooring and the sculpted garden loam.
Only in the South.
*
An ambulance pulled up, the EMTs treating Wrassler’s wound and the wounded bad guy before leaving with the injured man and two cops riding shotgun. More cops arrived—more than half the cops in the county and the town gathering, with plenty of plainclothed guys all trying to be the big dog. Alex and I were the only ones who hadn’t fired a shot. To prove that assertion, neither of us had any GSR on us. The others of our group were herded into different parts of the house and questioned, the cops relentless and suspicious. Alex and I sat on the couch, Alex intent on his electronic searches, shaking from time to time, his body odor sour with hormones, fresh panic, and old fear.
At one point, however, the OIC—officer in charge of the shooting scene—made a call. Then, newly elected Adams County sheriff Sylvia Turpin, who was the many-times great-granddaughter of the county’s first sheriff, drove up in her marked car. Turpin took her job very seriously, especially when she discovered that Leo Pellissier’s primo was on-site. Seemed that Leo had contributed a hefty sum to her election campaign. After that discovery, Turpin made a series of phone calls, several of the plainclothes cops took calls, and things began to move along.
Within half an hour, the state crime lab had arrived, bringing a medical examiner, and we were free to go, though not free to leave town. I wondered who had called in the big guns. Remembering the cell phone at his ear, I was guessing Bruiser. As the MOC’s primo and point man, he might be the most powerful human—part human—in the South, governors and senators included, and when he called in favors, things would naturally go his way. A New Orleans blood-servant pulled up in an SUV and consulted with Bruiser, the cops, and the petite, pretty, redheaded little sheriff. While the powers-that-be conferred, the rest of us retired to the dining room.