Sometime later, I blinked. Once, then twice, until the two images of the foyer’s coffered ceiling above me combined into one again.
I was on my back on the floor, eyes stinging from dust and smoke, my ears ringing from the concussion of noise. I pushed myself up on my elbows, ribs aching on my right side. Jonah lay across my legs, facedown, arms sprawled. He’d turned his body toward mine as the wall of hot air hit us, and the blast had hit him full-on, throwing us both across the foyer until we’d nearly hit the staircase.
I lifted my gaze. The front doors were broken and splintered on the floor, the walls around them cracked and crumbling, smoke pouring into the House. There’d been a vase of flowers on the round table in the center of the foyer. The table was in splinters, the vase shattered, the flowers scattered across the floor among pieces of the door and spilled water.
Since no one else had come out to investigate, I guessed I’d been out for only a few seconds.
As carefully as I could manage, I rolled Jonah onto his back. There was a large cut across his forehead, streaming blood and sending magic into the air. Jonah and I had complementary magic, uniquely compatible. My body, wounded and eager, wanted that blood so badly my hands began to shake.
“No,” I muttered, grabbing a piece of cloth from the floor, probably part of the foyer table’s cover, and pressed it to the laceration.
I tapped his cheeks. “Jonah! Jonah! Wake up!” And when he didn’t, I put fingers on the pulse point in his wrist. He had a pulse, but it was slow.
Shots began to ring out, bullets whizzing through the front of the House with the speed of an automatic weapon. I ducked, covering him with my body, lowered my lips to his ear. “If you die, I will personally kick your ass.”
The bullets kept coming, spinning through the hallway to splinter the wood of the stairs, the plaster and art on the opposite wall.
There was a break in the noise, probably as guns were reloaded.
Help would come soon. But in the meantime, I had to get him out of here. Wincing as pain shot through my torso, I grabbed him under the arms, pulled him into the parlor.
Merit!
Thank God for psychic connections. I’m all right, I told Ethan, the fear in his voice keen. I’m in the parlor. Front door’s gone. I think they hit it with a grenade, and they’re still firing. Jonah’s down; he shielded me. I’ve dragged him into the front parlor. Too much smoke to see the perps, but this kind of fight doesn’t seem like Reed. Open the arsenal, Ethan. We’re going to need it.
Covering fire en route, Sentinel. Keep your head down.
On that. There wasn’t much else I could do. Not with Jonah unconscious. Bullets wouldn’t kill me, but I could dodge them. He couldn’t, and I wasn’t about to leave him alone.
A bullet zinged through the wall over my head, and I ducked again, covering Jonah as plaster filled the air.
I reached up, pulled down a blanket from the sofa, flipped it over his body. That would at least keep dust out of his eyes and mouth. I belly-crawled across the floor to the far end of the window, used the end of the couch as a shield to raise up.
There was a Humvee in the front yard, the hook and winch on the front still attached to a mangled piece of the front gate.
The human guards who’d been at the gate were on the ground beside one of the giant brick pillars. They were blood streaked, but had weapons in hand, and were shooting the enemy combatants who’d taken positions around the Humvee.
The guards wouldn’t have let someone winch off the gate without a fight. They must have been targeted first, wounded or moved aside, and then the winch was hooked up. And then the Humvee came through, probably lobbed a grenade at the front door.
“You sons of bitches!” A man with broad shoulders, dark skin, and a shaved head pointed an enormous gun at the House. “You goddamn bloodsucking assholes! You wanna fuck with us? We will destroy you.”
Angry magic buzzed through the air like an upended hornets’ nest.
It wasn’t Adrien Reed, or his sorcerer, or his vampire.
It was a shifter.
? ? ?
Claxons sounded as the House went on full alert. Two figures in black moved through the lobby. Guards, although they moved so quickly I couldn’t tell who. Others would go around the back, and temps would be stationed on the roof. Luc hadn’t skimped on the response plans.
Ethan darted into the room with a belted sword, another in hand, and a handgun. Vampires didn’t usually use guns. But then again, sups didn’t usually come at the House with an army’s worth of weapons.
He hit the floor beside Jonah, took his pulse. “Knocked out?”
“I think so. I haven’t been able to wake him.” I swallowed down the ball of emotions that rose suddenly to my throat. “He moved in front of me when they blasted the door.”
“Looks like he took a good blow to the head,” Ethan said, lifting the cloth I’d placed on the wound. “Concussion, I’d bet. I wish Delia was here.”
“She’s not?”