Across the way, the female soldier picked Peyton up in her arms. “He’s not doing well. Where do we go—”
Human police cars screeched to a halt at the head of the block, humans swarming free of the vehicles and pointing down to where they were in the shadows.
“We can’t leave him—”
“Put down your weapons,” came out from a speaker system. “Put down your weapons now or we will shoot to kill—”
And then things got truly surreal. Like something out of a movie, the Brother’s torso rose up from the pavement. And he looked down his chest, cursed, and said something that sounded like, “I just had Fritz buy this fucking thing.”
Then he reached into what seemed to be his own flesh, picked out a bullet, and flicked it across the alley.
That was when he seemed to notice what was happening with the police cars.
“Fucking humans, not again.” He got to his feet and winced, but seemed otherwise fine. “You two, take the wounded and the female and go that way.” He pointed to the far end of the alley. “Manny should be coming—there he is.”
At that precise moment, a large, boxy vehicle pulled across the other end of the lane, where the humans were not.
“Go now!”
At the barking command, Axe grabbed her hand and started running. And the female with Peyton did the same, the four of them hightailing it down the slushy way to what turned out to be some kind of fancy van.
Just as its wide door slid open and she was about to jump in, Elise looked back. Flashes were flooding the sides of the buildings, and there were popping noises, but not from bullets being discharged.
The Brother was stabbing the slayers back to the Omega, she thought with awe. Holy crap, was she actually seeing this?
“Get in,” Axe said as he gave her a shove into a well-lit interior.
He followed and then dragged the door to a close.
“Hang on, folks!” somebody yelled from up front. “This ride is going to be bumpy—stay on the floor.”
There was a roar and a lurch, and then they were moving. And Elise collapsed back against Axe. How had … what had …
So fast. Her mind couldn’t comprehend how fast it had all gone down. It was like … one minute they were walking up to Peyton inside the cigar bar, and the next she was in an action movie, except it wasn’t a film set at all. It was real.
Looking across the way, Elise blinked away tears. The female fighter had Peyton in her lap, and had braced herself against a mounted table in the center of the space—this was an ambulance, Elise realized. A massive ambulance with all kinds of supplies tacked to its walls or packed in glass-fronted cabinets mounted on the sides.
“Is he alive?” Elise said.
The female didn’t look up. “Yeah. At the moment.”
There was so much blood. Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe … the blood …
But at least they seemed to be going even faster—hopefully to someone who could operate in here, Elise thought. And as they banged and crashed, things rattling all around them, Axe kept her from bowling-balling it, his powerful arms locked around her waist, one of his legs braced against the stand of that operating platform.
“How did he do that?” Elise mumbled. “How did the Brother … survive?”
“Bulletproof vest,” Axe said grimly. “He must have been wearing a bulletproof vest—and the damn thing saved his life.”
FORTY-FOUR
Axe’s adrenaline didn’t stop flowing until Dr. Manello’s mobile surgical unit pulled into some kind of downtown garage and the surgeon opened the sliding door.
And even then, Axe was on a hair trigger. Natch.
As he got out, he looked around at a dim, industrial interior that smelled like oil, gas, and old metal—and tried to pretend he wasn’t losing his fucking mind.
He couldn’t believe that not only had Elise gotten ambushed with the rest of them, but that she had discharged about a pound and a half of lead into a lesser who had a gun—and worse, it was all his own fucking fault. If he and Peyton hadn’t been going at it, playing dick toss in that bar, the three of them, and then Novo, and then Rhage, never would have ended up outside, exposed, and wrong-place-wrong-timing it with all those slayers.
And yeah, then her fucking cousin, Peyton the Golden Boy, never would have gotten popped in the head. Plus, what if Rhage didn’t get out of that human cluster-fuck okay? What if the cops got him or another lesser or—
That open-ended nightmare was solved when a side door got thrown wide and the stench of vampire blood and lesser death wafted in.
“How is Peyton?” the Brother Rhage said as he came into the light thrown by the surgical unit. “And what do I need to do to help.”
As Rhage passed by, he clapped Axe on the shoulder in acknowledgment, but focused on Dr. Manello, who had laid Peyton out on the operating table and was hooking up all kinds of shit to him. Before there were any answers, Doc Jane came in through that same door. She was in surgical scrubs, just like Manello, and she was not interested in anyone other than her patient.
Inside the van, Novo was standing against the far wall with her arms crossed over her chest and her head down. Blood was dripping off her chin. She’d been cut there. Also on the forearm.
Someone’s phone started to ring.
“That’s me,” Elise said next to him.
Snapping to attention, Axe put his arm around her as she fumbled with the thing and put it up to her ear.
“Troy? No, I’m so sorry, I can’t talk right now. Tomorrow? Sure. What? Well … I’ve got … a friend who’s in trouble. We’re at the ER right now. No, it’ll be fine. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.”
She hung up and leaned against him as if the interruption had never happened. Which made it less likely he’d stalk across Caldwell to find her professor and black-eye him on principle.
Okay, fine. He wouldn’t do that. At least not in a world outside of his jealous streak.
And why the fuck was he thinking like this right now?
“Is he going to be all right?” Elise asked nobody in particular.
“We just have to wait,” Axe heard himself reply. “We just have to pray.”
After all, he didn’t particularly like Peyton, but that didn’t mean he wanted the bastard to go brain dead or into an early grave. Especially if Elise was even tangentially involved.
After a little while, Rhage ducked his head out of the SUV. “Listen, I want you two to head home. There’s nothing you can do here. We’ll let you know what happens with him, okay?”
“Is he …” Elise just let the sentence drift as if she recognized its futility.
“We’ll do everything we can for him.” Rhage looked over at Axe. “You were a huge asset again, son.”
“It’s my fault.”
“How you figure that? You send up a flare or some shit? Put an ad in Craigslist for your buddy to get shot in the head? Don’t think so. G’on now, get her home and you do the same.” Rhage then met Elise’s eyes. “And you were amazing. You really showed up when you had to.”
“I don’t know how to shoot a gun,” she mumbled. “I’ve never shot one before.”