Nick the Carnival Bomber was sentenced to The Fortress. A group of US Marshals would be escorting him there at the end of the day. The SCTU and VCU were celebrating. We had told our armed guard that we would be late returning home. We were going for dinner, as a whole.
Surprisingly, Malachi and Gabriel sat next to each other. They didn’t talk, but somehow an easy truce had formed between them. Whatever had transpired between them in the bomb shelter had formed an alliance. Part of me wondered how many laws they had broken. I could see Malachi breaking lots of them, but Gabriel not so much. He wasn’t a die-hard, by the books, kind of guy, but he played pretty tight to them. Leading us meant he had to, otherwise we would run amok.
Dinner was served. A waitress and two waiters carried out several large service trays. They passed around plates of spaghetti, lasagna, chicken parmesan, and who knew what else. I had gotten a creamy mushroom Alfredo with extra roasted garlic. If any serial killing vampires came my way I’d only need to breathe on them.
I stifled a giggle. In a way, all vampires would be serial killers. Being immortal didn’t change that, feeding on humans would only reconfirm it and each kill would be another tally mark, even if the victim rose from the grave days or even weeks later.
Warmth sprayed my face. Screaming filled my ears. A heavy coppery scent overtook the smell of food. My creamy Alfredo was tinged a dark red and had bits of something not edible in it.
My body reacted. I rolled to the ground and under the table. As we all dove for cover, I felt the wind rush past me. The table made a loud bang as the side of it hit the floor. The table bounced as the edge connected with the hard tiles.
My heart slowed. The blood in my body seemed to stop flowing. The calm came over me faster than it ever had before. My gaze surveyed the area. One VCU agent was dead. His body had fallen into a heap on the floor. He had been sitting directly across from me. I touched my head and my fingers came away warm and slick.
Gunshots followed. The first rattle as an empty clip hit the ground. A second followed within a second. My own gun was drawn, but I didn’t have a target.
The table splintered, showering wooden splinters on all of us. Another person gave a yelp. I didn’t turn to look, my eyes scanned the buildings across from us. Another shot would help, reveal the muzzle fire that I was now searching for.
The third shot buzzed past me, like a bee in my ear. It wasn’t close enough to hurt, just hear and feel. I hadn’t seen the muzzle fire.
“Cain!” Gabriel shouted. “Get out the back, one building over on the roof.”
I hadn’t seen it, but Gabriel had.
“We’ll provide cover,” Malachi told me.
A barrage of gunfire was now aimed at that building. I hoped no one was home in the lower floors. With effort, I navigated my way through the kitchen, out the backdoor and into a street. My feet took me forward without thinking. I moved two buildings up before crossing across the street. The sniper wasn’t facing me, I wasn’t even in his peripheral here. I found a door and went through it, setting off an emergency alarm.
Cursing myself quietly, I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Malachi would have run faster. This pushed me harder, making up for my small stature. I reached an exit marked ROOF ACCESS and shoved through it, gun drawn.
Aside from a handful of spent shell casings, the roof was empty. I moved closer to the edge.
“Clear!” I shouted down to the men below me. From where I stood, I could watch as they swarmed from the restaurant. They coordinated efforts with hand gestures and one-word shouts. I stayed where I was, taking advantage of the height. The city below me was deadly silent except for the platoon of federal officers.
Paramedics arrived, the only sign of life that kept it from looking like a ghost town. Kansas City is pretty, in its own way. The oddball neighborhoods that surrounded downtown were a mix of sketchy and great. This one was sort of Italian with a touch of Hungarian and Latvian. The front of the Italian restaurant was destroyed. Glass littered the sidewalks and streets. Next to it was a grocery store, but the writing was in a language I didn’t understand.
Residents were being evacuated on the floors below me. The federal agents would be searching their homes while they were huddled together in the chilly October evening. The chill was settling into me and I moved around to keep warm. I considered moving off the roof, but the lighting was still good. Moving into the building would cause me to lose my vantage point.
“Medic!” A head appeared out of a window two floors below me.
“See anything?” Lucas yelled up to me.
“No,” I yelled back. How had a restaurant full of federal agents lost a guy with a rifle? Was our incompetence showing through? I supposed it had something to do with being in the middle of a meal.
“Come down,” Gabriel had opened the door behind me. He was shaking his head, his face was crimson with anger. “You look like an extra in a horror movie.”
“I can see the roads from here,” I answered.
“He’s gone,” Gabriel said. “We found his rifle.”
I cursed again under my breath. Slipping my gun into the hip holster, I followed Gabriel into the warm, dark confines of the building. There was something in the way Gabriel walked and carried himself that set my hackles up. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.
We exited the building and entered the street. The injured had been taken off, three bodies were still in the restaurant.
“Ace,” Gabriel looked at me. I raised an eyebrow. “He got Michael.”
I frowned. The words sounded strange, as if I had misunderstood them. Xavier was standing near one of the bodies. Blood had soaked through a cloth that had been put over it. Poison green tennis shoes stuck out the bottom with dark slacks and black socks visible.
“Let me see,” I told Xavier. Michael was my friend. I wasn’t sure of his role in the SCTU, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one. It also didn’t mean that I didn’t value him. Plus, he’d helped keep me sane more than once. Xavier moved slowly, pulling back the cloth. Whatever I had expected, this wasn’t it.
A small hole dribbled blood from below Michael’s left eye. However, the floor was slick and sticky. Someone had bothered to close his eyes. His jaw was slack, his mouth hung open just a little.
There would be no miraculous resurrections, no misidentification of bodies, and there weren’t hundreds of dead clogging the system, making identifications sketchy at best. Gabriel would be notifying Michael’s family, if he had one. He’d never spoken of them. Like the rest of us, his secrets were his to keep until he decided otherwise. We had never pried. No, I had never pried.
Death was a very finalized state. Grief was more fluid. Right now, I was stuck in the calm. No emotions came to me, despite the fact that I knew there should have been.
Thankfully, Lucas had no such problem. He yelled wordlessly, grabbed hold of a table and flipped it. It crashed to the floor, breaking into pieces. Malachi stepped into the room. He lifted the sheet on the other two bodies. One had been a driver for us. The other was a VCU agent.
This sniper had just made it personal, very personal. Not just for me or the SCTU, but for Malachi Blake and the VCU. It didn’t matter who caught him, he’d suffer a bit before being put in a cell. Possibly a lot, depending on who actually got their hands on him. I was far less inclined to vigilantism than Malachi, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t knock out a tooth or two by accident putting him in cuffs or trying to get him into a car.
“Malachi,” Gabriel said his name like it was warning.
“I’m fine,” Malachi answered, standing. He walked over to me and touched my head. The blood had dried and I hadn’t bleed all that much, especially considering it was a scalp wound. However, I felt the urge to jerk away from his tenderly prying fingers and give him a piece of my mind. I didn’t. It would only enrage him further. Malachi’s rabbit hole was a lot deeper and darker than my own.
Xavier walked over, grabbed my hair and turned my head roughly. He pulled out a flashlight as he kept my neck curved. The light danced at the edges of my vision as he ran it over the wound. I knew he was angry, partly at me, partly at the world. I hadn’t told him I’d been grazed. Michael had died. He had every right to be angry, but taking it out on me was not a good idea.
I jerked away from him. His face softened as he realized why. Xavier closed his eyes and sighed.
“It’s closed, you can live without stitches,” he said softly.
“And you?” I pointed to his hand.
“It’s literally a splinter from a piece of table. It will stop bleeding on its own,” Xavier answered.
“What now?” Malachi asked.
“Now,” Gabriel sighed. “We track. Aislinn, Lucas and Xavier go home.”
“I refuse,” I told him.
“It was an order.”
“Not one that I’m going to obey. If you and Malachi can go, so can I,” I told him.
“Me too,” Xavier said.
“You’re bleeding,” Gabriel pointed out. “Ace hasn’t been cleared to resume work and neither has Lucas. I can’t have either of you in the field.”
“I’m bleeding from a splinter,” Xavier protested.
“But someone has to take them home,” Gabriel said.
“To hell with that,” Lucas turned to look at the smaller man. He moved and it felt like the earth shook with him. “I’m going.”
“Fun,” Malachi said, heading out the door. “We have armored SUVs. I’ll take one with Marshal McMichaels and Agent Smith. You three can take the other one.”