Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Feeling like an utter ass, she pointed at them and then headed in that direction. “I thought maybe I could get down into the building and… find your apartment. My grandmother made that scarf.” Which was not a lie. “It’s… priceless to me, and I was all flustered. I get it, I look like a total lunatic here, but I didn’t know what else to do and I wasn’t thinking clearly—but I need that scarf back. And I’m really sorry.”
There was a pause. Then he said, “I found it on my dresser. I was wondering how to get it back to you.”
“Oh, thank you—”
As she all but lunged toward the door he’d come out of, he caught her arm. “You mind if I have a smoke first—”
Pop! Pop! Pop-pop!
The gunfire was muffled, but unmistakable if you knew what it was, and Lyric found herself bracing as if she were the target. As Dev’s head ripped around to the sound, she wanted to curse. Courtesy of her adrenaline load, she couldn’t concentrate enough to get into his mind and manipulate his thoughts.
Except then he just remarked, “That’s close by.”
And went back to where she’d been standing, like he wanted a bird’s-eye view of the action.
Lyric shuffled her body in front of his. “Let’s go inside. It’s not safe here—”
“Whoever it is, they’re not shooting at us.” He took out a pack of Camels. “They can’t even see us if we can’t see them—”
When he went to step around her, she waltzed with him, trading places again. “Stray bullets kill. You don’t have to be in the shootout to get hurt.”
Dev put his hands on her arms, picked her up so her feet dangled, and set her out of his way. “I’m going to go see what’s happening. In case I need to call the police—”
“Oh, please don’t do that,” she whispered.
As he leaned over the ledge, she racked her brain about what to say to get him inside. What if there were more slayers in the building, what if—
The metal-on-metal crunch of a vehicle hitting something immovable echoed up to them. Below in the parking lot, the car that had been started had reversed out of its spot and shot backwards with a good dose of velocity—and then its brakes either hadn’t grabbed or hadn’t been pumped: The shitty Toyota was butted into the receiving dock of the office building that faced out on the far side of the block.
Three figures were closing in on the vehicle, their arms out straight, guns trained on whoever was behind the wheel.
Whatever was behind it.
And that was when she caught sight of what was coming down the alley from the east side: Another knot of figures—at least two of which had hair so white the stuff glowed even in the darkness. The lot of slayers was traveling fast, like they’d been called to the scene, and as her brother and his friends didn’t look in that direction, she knew that they were upwind of the flank of backup lessers.
Without thinking, Lyric put two fingers from each hand into her mouth, pressed her tongue into them, and blew as hard as she could.
The whistle rang out, loud and clear over all the city’s night noises.
It was the warning signal she and her brother had always used as young, when they were getting into trouble and one of them was playing scout—
Instantly, her brother looked up toward the roof, and she didn’t need to worry about whether she’d have to point at the threat and pray he saw her.
The route his eyes traveled to get to her intersected the approach of the lessers.
Rhamp started shooting, the discharges suppressed when it came to sound, the flashes from the end of that muzzle dampened as well. Instantly, L.W. trained his own gun in that direction as he backed up his friend, but Shuli stayed locked on the Toyota. He advanced on the driver’s side door and emptied what had to be an entire magazine into the car, safety glass shattering, the bursts of illumination highlighting the deployed front airbags that had exploded out of the dashboard—
The stray bullet came out of nowhere on a ricochet, pinging off the ledge right next to her.
“Get down!”
Dev tackled her off to the side, but somehow managed to roll them over in midair so that they landed with him on the bottom. As she hit his chest, all his breath exploded out of his lungs on a curse.
Which pretty much said it all, didn’t it.
* * *
Down at the parking lot level, Shuli swapped out his magazine for a new one and turned his attention away from the Toyota so he could join in the fun and games with the new additions to the party: Somehow, Rhamp had sensed that backups were coming down the cross street, and thank fuck for his instincts.