Page 40 of A Touch of Crimson
Glass shattered as angels exploded out of draped windows in unison, followed by a veritable horde of vampires.
“Holy fucking shit!”
The flood of vamps poured toward her, surging over the short wall. Lindsay tossed the blade in her hand, nailing a foaming-mouthed vampire right between the eyes. She kept on throwing, one right after the other, retreating as the lycans lunged forward, forming a barrier to protect her.
She looked for Adrian over the writhing mass of limbs. Oh man… He was cutting a swath through the throng…literally.
Had she thought his wings were vulnerable?
They were deadly.
He wielded them like blades, slicing through limbs and torsos, spinning with lethal precision. The sight of him and the other two angels was riveting. Their wings flared like capes, snapping wide, then curving fluidly around their bodies. The burning embers of vanquished vamps spiraled around them in glittering clouds. She couldn’t take her eyes off their eerily graceful, macabre dances.
A high-pitched yelp yanked her attention back to the lycans, and the suicidal vampress who’d latched on to the back of Elijah’s neck. Resisting his violent efforts to shake her off, the wild-eyed bitch held on even as Elijah threw himself to his back and writhed, grinding her into the ground beneath him.
Lindsay looked frantically for the other two lycans and found them with their jaws full. Steeling her courage, she leaped into the fray. A male vampire darted toward her head-on, playing chicken. Knowing that changing course would only weaken her footing, she charged ahead with a dagger in hand. She staked him in the heart, then used the protruding hilt for leverage to flip over his shoulder and land on the other side.
She continued without breaking stride, diving forward as Elijah straightened. Her fist collided with the vampress’s jaw. It gave way with a sickening crack. Dislodged from her hold, the vampress hit the dirt on her back. Elijah rounded on her with a roar, grabbing her by the throat and ripping the flesh to the spine. Lindsay finished her off with a throwing knife to the forehead.
A gunshot echoed off the hillside, followed by the unmistakable whine of a ricochet.
She pivoted. A woman stood on the steps of the house with a shotgun, pumping another round into the chamber. She took aim at Adrian and pulled the trigger. As the report reverberated through her, Lindsay’s lungs seized. She couldn’t scream the warning that howled inside her horrified mind.
Adrian whipped one wing around, deflecting the bullet with the harsh ping of metal on metal.
The gun disappeared from the vampress’s hands and appeared at Lindsay’s feet.
It took half a minute for Lindsay’s stupefied brain to lurch into full understanding. Then she caught up the weapon and pumped the fore-end, firing at a vampire who was charging one of the wolves. She got off six more rounds, providing cover for the lycans. When the last chamber was spent, she wielded the shotgun like a club, whacking a vamp attempting to get up from where he’d been sprawled on the ground.
Risking a glance at the house, she searched for Adrian.
He was surrounded on all sides and kicking some serious ass. But the chick on the porch had retrieved another shotgun—a sawed-off one this time—and was lifting it to aim…
Lindsay darted through the opening in the fence, dodging flying bodies and barreling through ash piles. A vamp flew at her from the right, and she ducked beneath his sailing body, startling herself with her own agility. She grabbed the last throwing knife from her bag and prepared to hurl it.
The barrel of the gun swung toward her.
Lindsay caught the nearest vampire and hauled him in front of her. The shotgun discharged with a deafening boom.
The vamp jerked against her. Agonizing pain radiated through the forearm she had wrapped around his waist. She dropped to her knees in an exploding cloud of ash, the vampire disintegrating from the fatal shot.
The three lycans tore up the stairs and attacked the shooter.
Lindsay gulped for air but couldn’t breathe past the pain. She kept her gaze averted, afraid to look at her arm. A vamp galloped on all fours out of the black pit of the front door and leaped toward Adrian. She took him out with the final blade still clutched in her uninjured hand. His ashes billowed over the yellowed, weed-infested lawn just as Adrian slammed his fist into the frothing maw of a snarling vamp.
The vampire hit the ground, unconscious. A second later, Lindsay joined him.
11
Lindsay woke in a shadowed room. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes, her head turning to figure out where she was.
Her cheek touched the cool cotton of the pillowcase, and she saw Adrian. He sat to the left of her in a round, low-backed chair covered in silver damask. He wore only a pair of loose-fitting white pajama bottoms and whatever else he might be wearing underneath them. He watched her with a searing intensity, his mouth straightened into a dangerous line. Although he didn’t move a muscle aside from blinking, she felt a tornado churning inside him.
“Hi,” she croaked through a dry throat. She must have pushed her body too far; she always felt like hammered shit when she exerted herself beyond her limits.
He reached for the clear glass pitcher of water on the bedside table and poured a large ration into a waiting tumbler. Then he stood and helped her sit up, propping her back with some pillows before handing her the drink.
She accepted with a grateful smile. There was a thick cushion of white gauze bandages on her left forearm. Beneath them, pain throbbed dully. She downed the entire contents of her glass and passed it back.
