That sort of murderous emotion was an amateur’s downfall, the kind of thing that blinded you instead of focused you, weakened you instead of made you invincible.
Vishous worked as fast he as could, spot-on’ing chests, guts, heads, until the stench saturated the open air even with the wind blowing in the opposite direction. But he had to compensate for Rhage’s ever-rotating shooting field, staying out of range himself, because shit knew he had no confidence that the brother would differentiate between targets.
And that was the fucking problem when you were half-cocked in battle.
Then it was done.
Kinda.
Even after those twenty or twenty-five lessers were down on the ground, Rhage still spun around and continued shooting, a death carousel with no more riders left on its demon horses that was too stupid to know where its own off switch was.
“Rhage!” V glanced around as he kept his guns up, but stopped his own discharging. “You fucking idiot! Stop!”
Pop! Pop! Pop-pop!
Hollywood’s muzzle kept coughing out flashes of light even though there was nothing to shoot at—except other fighters off in the distance who just happened to be out of range for the moment.
But were not guaranteed to stay that way.
Vishous moved in closer, stepping over the animated corpses on the ground, keeping at Rhage’s back as the rotation continued. “Rhage!”
The temptation to shoot the guy in the ass was so strong, his right hand lowered a muzzle to butt-cheek level. But that was just a fantasy. Giving Hollywood a lead injection would only trigger the beast when V himself was within appetizer range.
“Rhage!”
Something must have gotten through to the brother, because the barrage of do-nothing shooting slowed … then stopped, leaving Rhage in a panting, sagging neutral.
That was so out in the open, they both might as well have had neon arrows over their heads.
“You’re out of here,” V barked. “Are you fucking even kidding me with this shit—”
That was when it happened.
One second, he was moving around to get in front of his brother … and the next, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, one of the not-dead-enough lessers lift an unsteady arm … that had a gun attached to the end of it. As the bullet came blasting out of that muzzle, V’s brain did the triangulation as fast as the lead slug flew.
It was going into Rhage’s chest.
Right into the center of Rhage’s chest—because, hello, that was the biggest target outside of one of the fucking dormitory doors on the campus.
“No!” V screamed as he went to jump into the path.
Yeah, ’cuz him dying instead was such a great outcome? Lose/lose, either way.
No blaze of pain as he airborned, no resounding kick of a bullet’s entry into his side, his hip, his other thigh.
Because the goddamned thing had already found home.
Rhage let out a grunt and both of his arms punched to the sky, that patented, autonomic compression on the triggers in those hands emptying those clips: Bang, bang, bang, bang! up to the sky, up to the heavens, as if Rhage were cursing in pain.
And then the brother went down.
Unlike the Omega’s boys, a direct hit like that would knock out any vampire, even a member of the Brotherhood. Nobody walked away from that shit, nobody.
As V screamed again, he hit his own patch of ground and discharged one of his weapons, plowing the slayer with the hole-in-one shot with enough lead to turn the fucker into a bank vault.
Threat neutralized, he scrambled to his brother, crab-walking on his guns and the balls of his shitkickers. For a male who never felt fear, he found himself looking into the gaping maw of pure terror.
“Rhage!” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ— Rhage!”
THREE
Havers’s new clinic was located across the river, in the center of some four hundred acres of forest that were vacant but for an old farmhouse and three or four new-built kiosks for entry into the subterranean facility. As Mary drove the last stretch of the twenty-minute trip in her Volvo XC70, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror at Bitty. The girl was sitting in the backseat of the station wagon and staring out the darkened window next to her as if the thing were a television and whatever show was on was captivating.
Every time Mary refocused on the road ahead, she cranked down harder on the steering wheel. And the accelerator.
“We’re almost there,” she said. Yet again.
The meant-to-be-reassuring statement was doing nothing for Bitty, and Mary knew she was just trying to soothe herself. The idea that they might not make it to the bedside in time was a hypothetical burden that she couldn’t help trying on for size—and, man, did that crying-shame corset make her feel like she couldn’t breathe.
“Here’s the turn-off.”
Mary hit the blinker and took a right onto a single-laner that was uneven and exactly what all her internal rush-rush didn’t need.
Then again, she could have been on a perfectly paved super-highway and her heart still would have been conga-lining it up in her chest.
The vampire race’s only healthcare facility was set up to evade both human attention and sunlight’s merciless effects, and when you brought someone in, or sought treatment yourself, you were assigned one of several entry points. When the nurse had called with the sad news, Mary had been told to proceed directly to the farmhouse and park there, and that was what she did, pulling in between a pickup truck that was new and a Nissan sedan that was not.
“You ready?” she asked the rearview mirror as she cut the engine.
When there was no response, she got out and went around to Bitty’s door. The girl seemed surprised to find they’d arrived, and small hands fumbled to release the seat belt.
“Do you need help?”
“No, thank you.”
Bitty was clearly determined to get out of the car on her own, even if it took her a little longer than it might have otherwise. And the delay was maybe intentional. The what-next that was coming after this death was almost too terrible to contemplate. No family. No money. No education.
Mary pointed to a barn behind the house. “We’re going over there.”
Five minutes later, they were through a number of checkpoints and down an elevator shaft, whereupon they stepped out into a sparkling-clean, well-lit reception and waiting area that smelled exactly like all the ones in human hospitals did: fake lemon, faded perfume, and faintly of someone’s dinner.
Pavlov had a point, Mary thought as she approached the front desk. All it took was that combination of antiseptic and stale air in her nose and she was flat on her back in a hospital bed, tubes running in and out of her, the drugs trying to kill off the cancer in her blood making her feel at best like she had the flu, and at worst like she was going to die then and there.
Fun times.
As the uniformed blonde behind the computer screen looked up, Mary said, “Hi, I’m—”
“Go that way,” the female said urgently. “To the double doors. I’ll release the lock. The nursing station is right ahead of you. They’ll take her in directly.”
Mary didn’t wait to even say thank-you. Grabbing Bitty’s hand, she rushed across the buffed, shiny floor and punched through the metal panels as soon as she heard the clunk of the mechanism shift free.
On the far side of the cozy chairs and the well-thumbed magazines of the waiting area, it was all clinical business, people in scrubs and traditional white nursing uniforms striding around with trays and laptops and stethoscopes.
“Over here,” someone called out.
The nurse in question had black hair cut short, blue eyes that matched her scrubs, and a face like Paloma Picasso’s. “I’ll take you to her.”