Page 87 of A Touch of Crimson
A human. What the hell?
Vash charged, ready to take the crazy bitch down, when she smelled lycan. He raced out from beneath the shadow of the hotel’s front awning, chasing the crazy blonde with the death wish.
It hit her then: Shadoe. Followed swiftly by the identifying scent of her guard dog…
The fucking bastard who’d kidnapped Nikki.
Stunned into senselessness, Vash skidded to a halt, earning her another blade in the thigh.
The two people she was in town to capture were coming straight toward her, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Not while she was alone. Not without her weapons. Not with witnesses.
Another blade nailed her in the shoulder, damn near dead center of the first hit she’d taken.
She had taught Shadoe how to throw like that. She had taught her how to hunt, how to kill. It was clear to Vash right away: Shadoe was deliberately avoiding hitting vital organs and arteries. The crazy blonde thought she was going to capture a vamp.
Vash grabbed a blade out of her shoulder and lobbed it at the lycan, then discarded the one in her leg and lunged forward, hitting Shadoe in the chest with her palms and throwing her backward several feet to crash into her lycan guard. The two went down, and Vash fled, leaping onto the hood of a nearby Jaguar and running up to its roof. She vaulted up and over the stone wall that divided the Belladonna parking lot from that of the dinner theater’s next door, her rage so wild she could barely see straight.
She never ran away. She never took multiple hits. She never let anyone live who spilled her blood. But she couldn’t take out Syre’s daughter. She couldn’t kill Shadoe.
“Goddamn! Shit! Fuck!” she shouted.
Her boots hit the roof of a Suburban on the other side of the wall, the alarm activating in an eruption of horn blaring. Her right heel broke off and stole her balance, sending her tumbling down the windshield, across the hood, and onto the asphalt.
She’d barely regained her footing when she heard another body hit the car behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the blonde hot on her heels. Vash took another hit in the shoulder, the sizzle of silver sending agony racing through her veins. Unable to pull a dagger out of her back, she could only run forward and hope like hell an escape route opened up. Ahead of her was a busy street, but that didn’t seem to deter Shadoe. Whatever had crawled up Syre’s daughter’s ass was goading her like a cattle prod.
A white full-sized pickup truck bounced into the lot with too much speed, racing toward her. Vash was calculating the trajectory needed to leap over it when it spun out and swung around.
Salem’s head shot out the driver’s window. “Get in!”
She jumped into the back and he hit the gas, kicking up loose asphalt and leaving behind a cloud that smelled of burning rubber. A throwing knife hit the rear of the cab with a sharp ping. Vash ducked with a curse.
The truck squealed into the swift-moving traffic to a chorus of angry horns and the crunch of metal and fiberglass. They were a good two miles away before Vash felt safe enough to pop her head up.
“You asked for reports of abductions.”
Syre looked up from the spreadsheets on the monitor in front of him and met the gaze of the vampress in his office doorway. “Yes, Raven.”
The dark-haired beauty entered with an unconsciously sensual stride. She wore mile-high black stilettoes, a knee-length pencil skirt, and a button-down shirt that hugged full breasts. Apparently, she was acting the role of naughty secretary, one of the many games she played to keep things interesting.
“There was a raid last night in Oregon,” she said. “A group of Sentinels invaded a nest and took several minions with them.”
Leaning back in his chair, Syre wondered at Adrian’s growing boldness. To infect minions with a disease seemed unlike him. He was a warrior who engaged and excelled in physical combat. Biological warfare wasn’t a tactic Syre would ever have attributed to the Sentinel leader. Something had changed, or was in the process of changing.
For the first time in many, many years, Syre felt the clock ticking with brutal impatience. Torque had been pushing him to act, instead of react, for many years now. It looked like that time might indeed be nigh.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “Send a team out to Oregon. I want to know every detail of the raid. And keep me apprised of any further reports immediately.”
“Yes, Syre.”
Raven left the room. He attempted to refocus on the screen in front of him. The effort was futile. When the phone rang, he reached for it with relief, his thoughts still occupied by Adrian’s offensive moves.
You have no idea of what I’m authorized to do, the Sentinel leader had said just a few short weeks earlier. Perhaps there was a wealth of threat in those words that Syre had been oblivious to.
The raised voice of the caller on the other end of the line was audible before he even placed the receiver to his ear.
“Calm yourself, Vash,” he soothed. “Slow down. I can’t?—”
He stiffened as she continued spewing words in a rush, all but one thought dissipating from his mind. Act, instead of react.
