EIGHTEEN

Oh, my God,” Tess said. Her face blanched.

Dark figures swarmed out of the garbage truck ahead of him.

Xavier grabbed her, yanking her sideways and down, away from the windshield.

“Keep your head down,” he told her.

At the same time he snapped off his seat belt, opened the glove compartment and grabbed the Glock that was stored inside.

Gunfire sprayed the outside of the SUV. All of his vehicles had run-flat tires, bullet-resistant glass and layers of armored plate inserted into the body panels, but those precautions wouldn’t hold up under a concentrated, sustained attack. All they would do was buy a little bit of time.

Xavier glanced in the backseat. Still swearing, Diego had unbuckled too, slammed part of the backseat flat and was climbing into the back, where a stash of weapons and body armor was stored in a compartment underneath the floor.

More dark figures came up from behind the SUV.

Nobody would have tried such an attack if Xavier had been alone, because it wouldn’t have worked. He could have fought his way out, or climbed the side of a building. But traveling with both Tess and Diego, this type of assault was brutally effective at pinning them in place.

He couldn’t pull both of them out or take them up the side of the building, and he would never leave them.

He said, “I count fifteen.”

“Got it.” Diego threw a Kevlar vest at him.

He caught it and spread it open over Tess. He told her, “Put this on.”

She snapped off her seat belt, pushed her seat back as far as it could go and wriggled into the vest. Diego threw a second vest at him, and he twisted to put it on in the confined space.

More gunfire sounded. Webs of fractures starred the front and back windshields, but they held for now.

“I need guns,” Tess snapped. “Lots and lots of guns.”

Folded into the small space between the front seat and the dashboard, she looked terrified and sounded furious. In spite of the urgency of their situation, Xavier almost smiled. He bent over her, tilted up her face and whispered, “Tell me it’s okay to fall in love with you.”

She gave him a wide-eyed, cranky stare. Her lips were bloodless. “You’d better. I’m not falling in love all by myself.”

He gave her a swift, hard kiss. Something hard nudged his shoulder. It was Diego, poking him with the butt of an assault rifle

He took it, slammed open his car door and rolled out to lay a blanket of gunfire down either end of the alley. He hit some of their attackers, while others dove for cover. The ones he had hit sprawled to the ground then scrambled to get away.

Their attackers were all Vampyres. Unless he struck any of them in the head, the gunshot wounds would be painful and debilitating, but they weren’t lethal.

He said to the other man, “Stay in the car, under cover as long as you can.”

“Yeah, okay.” Diego looked pretty sick, himself, as he crawled from the back. He handed Tess a handgun and another rifle. “Xavier, this is all my fault. I am so profoundly sorry.”

He paused only for a fraction of a second. “You’ll have to explain that to me later when we have time.”

“What are you doing?” Tess said to Xavier. She flung out one hand, reaching out to him. “Get your ass back in here.”

“That’s not how we’re going to get out of this,” Xavier told her. He shoved his cell phone into her hand. “Call Raoul and Julian.”

Her fingers closed over the phone.

“Cover me,” he said to Diego. The younger man nodded, his face tense.

It was time to get to work.

• • •

After wrapping her unsteady fingers around his cell phone, Tess watched Xavier turn toward their attackers, and his expression changed.

All of the light he carried inside of him, the gentle sensuality, warmth and laughter, disappeared entirely, and what came in its place made her shake all the harder.

She had always thought death was a massively indifferent, inescapable juggernaut, for sooner or later it came to every living thing. Through accidents, acts of war and sometimes illness, it even eventually struck down the long-lived creatures of the Elder Races.

But the kind of death Xavier embodied was a fiery, passionate blaze.

The death in his eyes cared far too much to stand idly by and watch an injustice being done. It cared about the thinking that went behind each action, and the reasons for war.

It would never rest, never stop, until either harm had been averted or balance had been restored.

Her limited human eyes couldn’t track what happened next. He simply left her behind on this heavy, solid Earth and went somewhere else, shooting through the air like God’s arrow.

That was when the screaming began.

More gunfire sounded in short staccato bursts. From the backseat, Diego shoved open a door on the driver’s side and angled his body out to shoot at the group of attackers behind them.

Keeping her head down, she punched through the commands on the phone that took her to Xavier’s list of favorites. Locating Raoul’s number, she dialed it.

He answered immediately. “Have you heard anything?”

“It’s Tess,” she told him. “We’re in the city. We’re pinned in an alley and under attack. Marc’s dead. They cut off his head! Whoever they are.”

Raoul’s voice changed. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been to San Francisco once.” As she watched, Diego sagged against the side of the vehicle. He brought the muzzle of his rifle back up almost immediately, but she knew he’d been shot. She said rapidly, “We came across the Golden Gate, we were headed toward the Four Seasons Hotel and now we’re in an alley. Figure it out.”

“Keep this phone on,” Raoul said. “I’ll track you, Tess. Do you hear me? I’ll track you.”

“Hurry the fuck up,” she said between her teeth.

Of course he wouldn’t make it in time. Even if she called Julian and he sent people from Evenfall, or from within the city itself, nobody would make it in time. She disconnected, shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans and scrambled over the seat to the driver’s side of the vehicle where Xavier had left the door open.

With both of the SUV doors open, she had cover, of sorts, on both sides.

Diego had given her another Glock, like the one that had been stored in the glove compartment. It was her favorite of the handguns she’d practiced with, so far. She checked over the assault rifle. It was a SCAR, a special forces combat assault rifle, like the one he’d handed Xavier. While she didn’t care for them, she did know how to use it.