Lost Angeles (59 page)

I draw that much closer to Xaine. His welcome hands search me out, fingers digging into my arms. Everyone’s afraid to make a move, and as one, the collective gaze shifts to Jax and Tamsyn.

“Nice one, dipshit, they trailed you here,” Asher says as he sweeps the room, locking the doors so that no one can get in.

Or out.

But the guy with the sword only shrugs. “You were going to blow up the place anyway, right?”

“Yeah, on my goddamn terms and timeline,” Xaine counters, clenching up like he might take the two steps necessary to punch my guardian angel in his butt-chin.

“No time like the present,” Jax says, matter-of-fact. “Besides, you’re going to need some bodies to make that cover story of yours stick.”

“Yeah, except we’re
still in here
.” Xaine dials up the volume several notches, pointing out the obvious to Captain Oblivious.

“I didn’t say it was a perfect plan,” Jax says. “And pipe the hell down, Capello, before you bring the heat down on our heads.”

“Those assholes didn’t follow
me
here. You’re the douchebag that let them in.” Xaine extends a hand toward to Asher, who’s quickly and efficiently distributing UV weapons. He goes to hand me a modified Glock, but Xaine gets there before I can, snagging that gun, too.

Everyone else checks magazines and flicks safeties. Asher reaches behind his back, unsnapping a holster on his belt; a second later he’s slapping the taser into my hand again.

I shoot him a wry look. “Seriously? Am I ever going to get a gun?”

“You get a gun when shit gets real,” Asher says, passing me a bulletproof vest. “Here, put this on.”

Struggling to fit my arms through the holes and Velcro it shut around me, I grumble a bit. “At what point does it get more real than a secret group of angry vampires trying to
kill me
—”

Except I don’t get to finish because he shoves me behind him, shielding me from the silent figures slipping onto the darkened balconies above us. A series of not-so-subtle clicks echo in the aftermath, and the humming charge of UV weaponry spirals eerily upward. Then, like a ghost, there’s another sound that steals my breath, a teasing tinkling that sounds light and innocent, but is anything but.

“Wind chimes.” I wasn’t afraid, not until my mind registered that familiar clink of metal-on-metal. “
Wind chimes.
”

Xaine pulls me closer. I know he hears them, but I don’t think he understands. My hand shoots out of its own accord, seeking the one person who could possibly know. When my fingers locate fabric, I ball it in my fist, gripping Jackson Trace’s sleeve. His face is turned toward the balconies, piercing eyes scanning each and every cowled figure, taking mental inventory as he always seems to do when he stares right through people like that.

Weighing them.

“Little late for the party, guys,” he finally says, raising his voice to carry through the vast space. “Reception ended hours ago.”

I’m still searching, frantically skimming over each and every hood, each and every face, through the crowd and beyond, trying to find
him
. I curse everything, then: the darkness, my mortality, my shitty human eyesight. My fear magnifies every single time that soft metal jingle tears through me.

“Oh, but the after-party’s just beginning.” His voice ripples down my spine, and I can’t help the shudder that races across my flesh. Goosebumps rise to the surface a second later when I realize I’m standing directly across from the man who keeps trying to orchestrate my demise. His silver-tooth smile is all for me when he says, “Surprise, love. Did you miss me?”

Xaine growls. I relinquish my hold on Jax’s arm and clamp my hand around Xaine’s bicep, holding him back as best I can with a sharp, “Don’t.”

“I’d listen to her if I were you, mate.” Tiberius lets his grin slide sideways. “Smart girl, if a little forgetful
.
”

Flanked by two more hooded figures, he stands a mere ten feet from our little cluster. The rest of his group has us surrounded and covered from all angles. Basic strategy says to find the high ground. Keep the enemy beneath you.

Unlucky for us that I wanted to sit onstage one last time.

“Pissed off some very important people, you lot have.” Tiberius fixes those piercing eyes on me again. “Telling secrets.” He gestures to Jess and Asher next. “And you two, blowin’ shit up. Think you’re clever, do you?” He looks past me then, gaze tracing over the rigid line of Jax’s shoulders, sweeping past Tamsyn’s orange head and beyond. “Sin-eaters, angels, vampires, Virtues, and vigilantes. Jesus, it’s like an immortal grab bag, isn’t it?”

“Reaper.” I say the word seriously for the first time. Xaine’s head turns toward me, and I can see the reflective flash of his vampire eyes in the half-light. His gaze caresses my face, dark brows drawn together in consternation. I can only shake my head in reply, because really, I’m not entirely sure of anything anymore. “You forgot ‘reaper’ on that list. I mean, you
are
here with us.”

“Very good, love—”

“Call her that again,” Xaine warns him, “and I’ll wipe you clean off the planet,
mate.
”

Tiberius laughs. “You can’t kill me. Like the lady said, I’m a reaper. Indestructible.
Unkillable
. It’s what makes me the perfect machine. Bleed me, burn me, stab me, shoot me, I’m here until the Big Man says I’m done. Except I’m starting to think I might never be done
.
Like maybe the Almighty’s forgotten all about us.”

There’s a smile on Jax’s face that sends an arrow of fear into the very heart of me. An inferno burns behind those eyes, a righteousness that scares me more than Tiberius and all his minions.

“The Almighty might have forgotten, but I haven’t. I remember you, and I’ll remember you for all my days.” When Tiberius stiffens, Jax’s disconcerting smile widens a bit more. “Don’t think for a moment that I won’t.”

Then there’s a sound, that subtle
whoosh
of ignition when flame catches gas, the genesis of
judgment
. Blue light suffuses Jax’s face, illumination rippling across our respective skins like the glimmer of sunshine on water. A shimmering undulation of disbelief passes over Tiberius’s face, the chains across his cheeks rattling when he gulps back whatever arrogance he was about to hurl our direction.

“Word on the street is that you quit,” the reaper tells Jax. “Hung up your wings and turned in your halo. So what’s one little Virtue soul to you, anyway?”

“To me? Nothing.” Jax offers up a shrug. “But obviously she’s of value to someone very important, if they keep sending you after her. Joke’s on you, though. You’re wasting your time. A soul in Judgment can’t be reaped.”

“Her soul’s already been judged,” Tiberius snaps, but he edges back all the same, his gaze moving from face to blade. “She’s just waitin’ out the clock. We both know it.”

Jax takes a step toward him. “Takes both coins to cross the river, Tibs.”

“You think you’re clever?” The reaper speaks bravely, but those sharp eyes betray his wariness. “Where’s the other coin?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jax says, still advancing. The shadows at the reapers’s flanks fade backward, retreating from the fiery tip of Vengeance. “Until she holds both in her hands, she’s safe from the likes of you, the likes of
him,
and
them
, and everyone, really.”

“You’ve invested an awful lot of energy into a single Virtue,” Tiberius tells him. “What about the other six?”

“All I need is one.” When Jax shifts his weight, the blue flames leap and hiss to match. “Someone with a Grand Plan, well… they’d need the full set.” There’s a smirk on his face that does nothing to quell the anxiety in my belly. “The reaper gig was your chance at redemption. You were supposed to ferry the souls, work off your indenture, and then go
home
. What exactly are you hoping to achieve instead?”

“The tide of war is shifting. I’m finally choosing a side.” Tiberius’s expression is the grim, self-righteous look of a man who’s picked a path and decided to follow it to the end. “That’s the lesson I was supposed to learn, right? That I can’t sit idly by while the Titans clash around me? You’re not going to win this one. Not this time. Your ranks are scattered and outnumbered. You have no army. You have no
chance
. You’re waiting out the clock, too. No wings, no halo, no
hope
.”

“War’s over, Tibs,” Jax tilts his head to the side. “We’re all just men now.”

The smile that spreads across the reaper’s face is cool, amused even. He drags in a heavy breath and exhales it on a heavier sigh. “Well,
General
, that’s where you’re wrong. The war’s not over. It’s just beginning.” He turns to his men. “Take them.”

Gunfire explodes around me, and I duck instinctively, covering my head with my hands. Xaine’s arm wraps around my shoulders, shoving me further down into the huddled circle of friendly protection. I can hear footsteps hitting the ground, the sound of pistols firing, of UV charges humming. The world dissolves into chaos, and here we stand, right at the epicenter.

A glance over my shoulder shows me a veritable legion of dark shadows leaping from the balconies as if it’s nothing. Their feet hit the floor, smashing through glass and wood and concrete, leaving spiderwebs of destruction beneath the soles of their shoes. They advance, silent and stoic, their faces half-covered by fabric and shadow. We’re surrounded, outnumbered, but the hard knot of Asher’s jaw tells me that he hasn’t yet given up. Jess aims and fires over and over again, her expression blank, so different than the woman I knew. Tamsyn throws herself into the fray without fear. Unarmed, she grabs the nearest man by the shirt, slams him into the wall, and trails a single finger down the side of his face.

“Hey there, handsome.” It sounds like a seduction, except a dark line of ash follows in the wake of her touch. Like Benicio’s attack at the warehouse, a trail of darkness spreads across the vampire’s face and down his neck. A second after Tamsyn lets go of his collar, he’s reduced to a pile of dust swirling around her ankles. A little more rapid-fire, she dispatches two more Legacy minions by clapping her hands against their wrist and neck, respectively.

Jax catches her by the back of her shirt and slings her at the nearest door. “Stop, before you burn yourself out. We need to get Lore out of here.”

Because it’s about me. Mortal me. Wounded me. Insignificant me
.
And yet, somehow the reason for
all of this
.

“Go,” Asher orders us. “We’ve got this.”

Jess is already moving forward, looking like some Lara Croft body double as she shoots a just-landed vampire right in the face. He convulses once and then explodes in a shower of ash that she steps through in order to keep shooting.

Before the dust has even settled, Xaine’s got me by the wrist and we’re headed out a side door. “Stick close to me, all right? Bad shit happens when we get separated.”

Jax slams the auditorium door shut behind us, then kicks the knob so hard with his combat boot that the locking mechanisms activate from the outside. Sword still firmly in hand, he turns to us, his eyes at once terrifying and awe-inspiring.

This is what
heavenly wrath
looks like, and woe betide any vampire that gets between us and our escape.

Like the ones standing behind us when we turn around.

“Xaine!” I shriek, trying to warn him.

A millisecond later, a bullet directly impacts his chest, exploding with a tiny burst of concentrated sunshine. Xaine goes down, taking me with him to the floor. I scream again, curling around him and waiting for the inevitable, but he only groans and pulls me nearer to the wall, letting Jax and Tamsyn lead the charge. Our champions disappear down the darkened hallway, Jax cutting through bodies with his sword, corpses falling to pieces with heavy thuds right before it all goes to dirt.

“What the hell, Capello?” My hand goes straight to the hole in his shirt as he drags me to my feet. There’s some kind of reinforced plating under the fabric, the flattened slug embedded over his heart.

“You thought I put clothes on for formality’s sake?” He sounds winded, if that’s possible, the consonants clipped because I do believe he just got the crap scared out of him, figuratively if not literally.

Before either of us can say anything else, someone comes up fast behind us. Any hope I have of it being Asher or Jess is obliterated when a heavy hand clamps down over my mouth and its match does the same to Xaine. We’re dragged backward into the oddest group hug ever, sin-eater juice already snaking through my body and turning my brain to mush.

“If it isn’t the bride and groom,” Benicio hisses in my ear.

I want to scream, but everything inside me is molten and shifting. Next to me, Xaine’s arms jerk once, twice, then his body starts going lax. He’s getting the same treatment, no doubt.

“Oh, man, your
husband
is ten kinds of fucked up, Lo.” The words drip with malice and glee. Benny’s arms tighten down on us, stronger than ever as he feeds off Xaine’s worst memories, four centuries’ worth of sins. “Did he tell you about the redhead?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, nudging me with his nose and licking my cheek.

“Those girls are still tucked away inside him. The one he almost killed. The one he
did
kill. And then there’s you.” He lowers his voice a notch, mouth brushing over my ear. “I owe you some payback for letting him take me apart in that alley. So instead of breakin’ a sweat, I’m gonna let your sweetheart do the hunting for me. I’m gonna pump him so full of fuck-you juice that he can’t see or hear or
feel
anything but that pretty little beating heart of yours. It’ll be like watching Wild Kingdom, him chasing you to ground and ripping your chest open. Don’t know if I can stick around long enough for him to snap out if it, but I wish I could be there when he wakes up enough to realize what he’s done.”

Next to me, Xaine’s hands curl over, fingernails like claws. A low, rumbling growl vibrates through his chest and into me. Eyes wide, I start to struggle, kicking and flailing, scraping my own nails over Benicio’s flesh, trying in vain to peel his fingers away from my mouth. I need to run, to scream, to reach out and touch Xaine. Everything’s jumbled up inside my head, a welter of sex and memories. Like Benicio spun me around in circles until I’m dizzy, the whole world spins away into a whirlwind of sound, smell, and
fear.