Page 42 of Heart of Dawn
I grabbed another guy by his arm. He swiped at me with a magical fist, hurling a flurry of insults. He got his arm broken for his trouble, along with a headbutt.
“Down you fucking go!” I roared at him, stomping on his chest. His ribcage shattered like clay, his eyes bulging as life left them.
Joe slid off my back. “I’ll give you some space.” He sat on the ground, grinning.
“Bastards!” a woman screamed, charging at me with a baseball bat.
I waited for her, even let her take the first swing. My inner beast loved a scrap, this sort of activity the equivalent of blowing off steam.
“I’ll take that.” I snatched her bat, cracking her in the face with a brutal swing.
That hit would’ve been a homerun in baseball. But seeing another magi twitching at my feet was more fun.
Between us, Daria and I slaughtered every magi who came out of the house.
“One more left,” Daria said, flinging blood from her hands.
I sniffed, smelling the fear of the magi inside, which wasn’t good for Basil. Fear made people dangerous.
“Let’s rescue the poor fae.” Daria moved around the side of the house.
I turned to Joe. “You coming?”
“Leave me here.”
“You sure?”
He nodded.
I went after the vamp, heading through an open door into a kitchen area. I wrinkled my nose under the heady scent of blood, scanning the jars and bottles filled with it, noting the stains on the floor. The room resembled a crime scene after a massacre.
Daria waited at the bottom of a blood-stained staircase in the adjoining hallway. Basil’s cookie scent wafted down at us, along with the magi’s.
Before we went up, I quickly checked the two rooms on the other side of the hallway to be safe. Relying on my senses wasn’t always enough for me. I liked to be thorough.
“Clear,” I said, satisfied.
Daria darted up the stairs. I followed, joining her at a closed door at the end of a narrow landing. There were two other doors, all ajar. I checked them, finding nothing but more blood stains.
A whimper came from behind the closed door.
“He is the one holding your pack,” Daria said, her voice cold steel.
I tensed, going to move past her.
She stopped me. “This door is runed on the other side.”
God, that pissed me off. “Can you break them?”
She waved her palm over the wood. “No.” The vampire faced me. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“The ones warding this house were weak, easily disrupted. They value your pack and the fae behind this door more than themselves.”
Probably Lance’s orders. The magi were in love with him right now, seeing him as their leader.
Yeah. Whatever.
