The Shadows

THIRTY-FIVE

“The check has been taken care of.”

Trez paused in the process of taking his wallet out. “Excuse me?”

“It’s been taken care of.” The waiter smiled and bowed. “It has been our pleasure to serve you.”

Jesus, if he hadn’t known the guy was human, he’d have assumed one of Fritz’s staff had followed them here. The service had been phenomenal all night.

“Enjoy your cappuccinos at your leisure.”

Trez looked across at Selena. Her eyes were on the view again, but she was not smiling. Her perfect profile was cast in grave lines.

Reaching over, he took her hand in his, a spike of fear going through his chest. “You all right?”

Surreptitiously, he ducked into his coat and palmed up his cell phone.

“Oh, yes.” Except she didn’t look at him.

The soft patter of conversation around them dimmed down and the striding movements of the waiters disappeared from his periphery.

“Selena, what’s going on?”

“I don’t want it to be over.”

“We can come here again.”

“Yes.” She squeezed his hand. “Of course.”

As the restaurant continued to turn, turn, turn, the Commodore’s flank came around into view again, the building’s tall expanse speckled with random lights—including some in the penthouse.

Guess Rehv was in res.

Trez looked down at the coffee cup he hadn’t touched. The steam rising up was spiced with cinnamon, which he’d never been a fan of. He’d ordered it only because his queen didn’t seem to want to leave.

“It was so nice of them,” she murmured. “To pay for dinner.”

“I’ma take care of that when I get home.”

“You should let them be kind.”

Trez searched what he could see of her body, looking for signs that she was having problems that would require a quick call downstairs to Manny and Rhage.

“Selena?”

She shook herself and glanced over. “I’m sorry?”

“You want to order another dessert?”

“No.” She gave his hand another squeeze before releasing her hold and folding her napkin and placing it on the table. “Shall we?”

He popped out of his chair to help her so fast, the four feet squeaked over the glossy floor. “Here, let me—”

But his queen rose to a stand on her own with an elegant shift, her body perfectly stable, perfectly at ease. At least physically, that was. He could sense the weight of her mood.

Escorting her out, he was aware of the eyes of the room on them once again, hushed comments being uttered behind the rims of wineglasses and the squares of napkins as the humans tried to place them upon the grid of celebrity. There was satisfaction to be had in the fact that the peanut gallery would never be able to.

At the great glass doors, he opened one of the panels for her, and as she stepped through, she paused and stared over her shoulder, as if she were worried she would forget some nuance of the way the place looked or smelled or sounded.

“We can always come back,” he repeated.

“Oh, yes.”

She flashed a smile at him and continued out into that minimalist open space where the elevators were. Going ahead, he hit the down button and then stood next to her, putting his hand on the small of her back.

“So where do you want to go next?” he asked.

“You mean tonight? I’m rather tired—”

“No. Tomorrow night.”

She glanced over at him. “I . . .”

“Come on. Give me the next destination so I can get things ready for sundown tomorrow.”

The elevator doors opened, and he urged her inside—and he was so focused on her, he barely noticed that hideous glass wall that was open to the lobby. Pressing the L button, he stroked Selena’s shoulder.

“So . . . ?” When she didn’t reply, he leaned in and kissed the side of her throat. “This is not the only night we’re going to have.”

“How do you know that.” She met his eyes. “I don’t want to ruin this, but how do you know?”

“Because I won’t have it any other way.”

Turning her to face him, he deliberately put his hips against her body and dropped his lips to hers. “Unless you’re sick of me. Or seriously unimpressed by my being a vertical pussy.”

Her eyes seemed very blue and very scared as they met his. “Boat.”

He’d expected something else. “I’m sorry?”

“I, ah, I want to go on a boat ride on the river.”

“Fast or slow?”

“Both?”

“You got it.”

“Just like that?” she whispered. “Can you make everything happen?”

He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Come back to my room and I’ll show you just how talented I am.”

As her scent changed, he nuzzled her, kissing her neck, nipping over her vein. He wasn’t playing fair, of course. He knew that she was likely to get distracted, and he wanted her to be. In fact, he couldn’t guarantee her tomorrow night or even the coming dawn, but like forever memories, the illusion of them having all that time had to stand in for whatever fate had waiting for them.

Kissing her, holding her, feeling her body against his own, he discreetly took out his phone and brought it up behind her back. The text to Manny and Rhage was short and to the point: Owh tx.

On way home. Thank you.

The elevator reached the lobby just fine, and all the kissing helped him stay good and distracted, too. And then they were walking out of the building, into the cold, blustery fall night. Fritz was across the street in the Mercedes, and the doggen brought the car over the second he saw them.

There was no waiting for the butler to get out and do the duty with the door.

Trez wanted to be the one to wait on her.

Just as she was sliding into the warm interior, the last sound he ever wanted to hear when she was in his presence caught his attention:

Pop-pop-pop.

Gun fire.

Fuck.

Trez jumped into the sedan with her, and jacked up between the seats. “Get us out of here! U-ie now!”

Fritz didn’t miss a beat. Throwing the S600 into reverse, he pounded the gas so hard Trez nearly ended up playing air freshener on the rearview. Recovering fast, he covered Selena with his body—so he could get to her seat belt. Yanking the band across her, he’d just gotten the catch home when centrifugal force threw him against the opposite side of the backseat, ringing his bell—but he didn’t give a shit. Bracing his feet against the wheel wells and his palms against the roof and the door frame, he kept himself from battering Selena as they finished the spin that got them pointed in the right direction.

Make that the wrong way on the one-way they’d come in on.

“Let us proceed,” Fritz shouted over the squealing tires.

The roar of the Mercedes-Benz engine and the explosion forward reminded Trez of an airplane takeoff. And as his body was sucked into the bucket seat, he looked over at Selena.

Her eyes were popping wide. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

The buildings on either side of the three-lane road were steel and glass and pale concrete, and they started to flash by, faster, faster, faster. Glancing up in the front, Trez checked the road ahead, the grilles of the parked cars facing them like disapproving parents as they went in the wrong direction.

“Nothing’s up!” he yelled over all the noise. “I’m just really excited to get you naked—”

Selena’s brows rose even higher. “Trez, I heard something—”

“—’cuz I’m that desperate to have you!”

“—that sounded like a gun!”

They were both hollering over the engine, going back and forth as Fritz bat-out-of-hell’d it away from all the bullets.

And then the fun really began.

They’d gone about two blocks when the Caldwell police cars started showing up. And unlike the Benz? The blue-and-whites with their flashing lights were going the right way on the street.

“I shall have to go onto the sidewalk,” Fritz called out. “Just a bit of a bump—”

That crazy bitch-ass butler yanked the steering wheel to the left and hopped the curb, capping a fire hydrant that promptly exploded in their wake, sending a gusher of water up into the air. And then, by the grace of God, the Benz landed like a gentleman, its superior shock absorbers cushioning what was no doubt a slam and a half.

Wrenching around, Trez looked out the back windshield. Cop cars were spinning around and breaking rank to follow them as Fritz hit a wall of newspaper dispensers, sending the red and yellow and green plastic boxes flying behind them. The flimsy things broke apart as they crashed on the sidewalk, sheets of papers fluttering off like doves released from cages.

As he turned back to Selena, he braced himself, trying to think of a way to reassure her—

Au contraire.

Selena was alive with excitement, her fangs flashing thanks to a huge smile, a giggling laugh bubbling out of her as she hung on to the door.

“Faster!” she yelled at Fritz. “Let’s go even faster!”

“As you wish, mistress!”

A fresh roar from that massive piece of German engineering under the hood sent them careening not just down the sidewalk, but right up to the very edge of the laws of physics.

Selena looked over at him. “This is the best night ever!”

“Okay, time to pull out.”

Rhage nodded at Manny. “I wonder what they had for dinner.” He checked his phone again and wished he had actually gone to that steakhouse. He’d only flown that shit to put Trez at ease. “He said nothing about the entrée or dessert. I mean, come on, he could have given a few deets. We only got eight letters from the guy.”

“Actually, it was five.”

“That’s what I said.”

The Doritos had worn off an hour ago. Then again, sometimes he could say that about three-course meals.

Manny put the RV in drive and started off, the ambulance trundling over a pothole, then gathering speed. “I’d better get a move on. Fritz has a heavy foot.”

“Like, did they have the roast beef? I saw a picture of the way they do it up there in a magazine—”

Boom!

Just as they came to a four-way juncture of alleys, something big flashed out in front of them and bounced off the hood. As Manny slammed on the brakes, the massive weight rolled off.

“Jesus Christ, was that a deer?” the doctor hollered.

“Try moose.”

Rhage palmed both his guns and was about to jump out when the bullet shower started. High-pitched metallic pings ricocheted off the RV and spiderwebbed the thick glass.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Manny bit out. Then he screamed through the windshield to the shooters, “I just got this thing!”

Rhage went for the door handle, but got nowhere with it. “Let me out!”

Ping-ping-ping. “No way, you’ll get killed!”

“We’re sitting ducks!”

“No, we’re not!”

All at once, the RV settled about four inches and metal plating dropped down over every square inch of glass there was. Instantly, the sound of the gunfire was dulled to a distant snare drum.

Rhage glanced over in the relative silence. “You are a genius.”

“Harold Ramis is.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You ever see Stripes? My favorite movie of all time. I based this thing on Bill Murray’s ride.”

“I knew I liked you.” Rhage quickly glanced at his phone. No Brothers were in the vicinity, and that was a good thing given the firepower. “Only one problem—we can’t just sit here. The human police are going to be all over—”

An LED screen the size of a TV rose vertically from the dash, taking up most of the now-blocked windshield space. And on its flat surface was a green pictorial of the streetscape in HD—so they got a really good picture of the shooters as the pair of trigger-fingers ran into their headlights. The two were both sporting long-nosed guns, AKs in his opinion, each discharge causing a bright flash from the muzzles as they kept those rounds pumping.

They didn’t pause as they went by Manny’s vehicle.

“Those are lessers,” Rhage muttered. “They’re going too fast for humans. Plus only slayers would be dumb enough to make this kind of racket. Let me the fuck out of here.”

“You’re not going after them—”

Rhage reached over and grabbed the front of the man’s shirt, dragging him into the aisle between the seats. “Let. Me. Out.”

Manny met his eyes. Cursed. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“No. I won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I got fun and games no one can handle.” He nodded to the window. “Crack it and I can ghost out through the slats between your armed plates. Unless you have steel mesh in there somewhere.”

Manny started muttering all kinds of vile things as he went for the requisite button and Rhage’s little slice of see-through went down about two inches.

“As soon as I’m gone, hit the gas,” Rhage demanded. “We need you on Trez’s tail. No joke.”

Closing his eyes, he concentrated and . . .

. . . dematerialized out of the interior, re-forming beside the RV and then pounding on the door. The shooters had gone past them, tracking their prey, which put him in a perfect position. As the engine under all that metal plating revved up, and Manny’s little portable clinic rambled off, he started to run. The scent in the air told him he’d been right; this was a pair of slayers with a very expensive set of toys—something they hadn’t seen in how long?

Not since Lash, that bastard, had been Forelesser.

Thighs pumping, guns ready, he was closing the distance when the sirens came behind him. Suddenly, he was spotlit from the rear, and not in a good way. With two autoloaders in his palms, they were liable to think he was the goddamn problem, instead of the solution trying to catch up with his enemy.

Sure enough, a male voice projected out of a high-res speaker came down the alley. “CPD! Stop! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

God. Damn. It.

Humans: Nature’s remedy for an otherwise good time.