Jaw hard, Jared sighed. “I don’t know. Well, I have a general idea of where she is, but—”
“What does that mean?” I growled, unease slithering through me. “And why can I hear bullets being fired? What the hell is happening?”
“About ten seconds ago—which was roughly a minute after a small army of vampires appeared and started attacking us—Imani sent me a message to tell me to find you, but she didn’t respond to my reply.”
Healed, I jumped to my feet. Jared and Paige did the same. “Go to Imani,” I urged impatiently.
“Tried that.”
“And?”
“And something bounced me right back to where I teleported from.”
“What the fuck?”
“She told me you were hurt and that she was watching Lazarus and Marco having a standoff,” Jared explained. “I’m thinking that one of them is here to hurt her and the other is here to protect her.”
I suddenly recalled Marco’s words…Good people do bad things sometimes. I cursed. “Lazarus came for her. He’s who we should have had locked up.” And I was going to kill him, and I was going to enjoy watching him suffer. I drew in a slow, steady breath, needing to keep calm and think.
Jared nodded. “That would be my guess. The vampires who’ve arrived all have guns and little badges that have a familiar insignia. That tells me that they and Lazarus are part of The Order. It wouldn’t surprise me if the bastard is Beau Irons.”
“The armed vamps have formed some kind of wall,” began Paige, “so Imani must be somewhere behind it, right?”
“I’d say so,” replied Jared. “Sam’s on the front line with the rest of the two squads. Whenever anyone gets close, The Order starts firing to pin them in place.”
Like the night hadn’t been hard enough until that point. “Why can’t you teleport to Imani?”
“There’s some kind of force-field around her that’s repelling psychic energy,” replied Jared. “It’s obviously a vampiric gift. It’s like your shield in that it deflects whatever power comes at it. But the force-field isn’t solid.”
“So we could walk through it, but not get through it using any kind of preternatural force,” I mused.
“Yes,” said Jared. “That’s why my telepathic messages aren’t getting through to her.”
“If she managed to get a message to you, the force-field doesn’t contain psychic energy and prevent it from escaping; it only deflects it,” I reasoned. “That means if we get through it, we can use our gifts once we’re inside it. We just can’t use them to get inside.”
Jared swore as more bullets rang through the air. “Getting to her will be hard while we have a wall of vampires in the way. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t standing inside the force-field. Our gifts can’t touch them, but theirs can hit us. With gifts and guns, they’re doubly armed.”
Paige’s mouth had a cruel curve to it. “Which will make them double the fun to kill.”
Jared smiled. “There’s always a bright side.” He teleported us to Sam and the two squads, who were all taking cover behind trees that approximately ten feet away from The Order.
It was an impressive wall of defence; their arsenal of bullets, grenades, fire balls, and flaming arrows did its job well. I frowned at Sam. “You’re not fighting.”
Her scowl cut to me, her mercury irises glowing as she grumbled, “I have to take a break while my system recharges.”
“She used up most of her energy on maintaining the shield and then attacking the dragons,” said Jared, a supportive hand on her back.
Max turned to me. “We’ve attacked that force-field in every way we can think of. Nothing is getting through that fucker, and nothing is taking it down.”
“I can get through it,” I said, my voice so carefully controlled that I doubted anyone would sense the turmoil racking my entire system. “I’ll use my shield to protect me while I make a run for it.”
Max’s brows lifted. “That could work. They won’t be expecting someone to charge their way. It will take them off-guard.”
Sam spoke. “You would have to lower your shield to get inside, Butch. The force-field would repel it.”
I nodded. “I’ll slam it back up once I’m through. I can do this, Coach. I’m damn fast. By the time they see me coming, I’ll already be inside.”
Paige put her hand on my arm, her eyes swirling with a soul-eating anxiety I could relate to. “Take me with you. You can extend your shield around both of us; you do it for David all the time.”
“You’re not as fast as me, Paige, and we both know it.” It was an insensitive comment but it was true. “I need to move quickly, I can’t afford to go slower just so someone else can keep up.”
“He’s right,” sighed Max, which made Paige snarl at him.
“I’ll tell Damien to distract those bastards,” said Jared. I guessed he’d telepathically order Damien to run at them in his astral form, since it was a technique we had used before. “When I say go, run.”
“Make sure you bring Imani back safe, you get me?” Paige fairly growled.
Jared turned to me. “All right, go!”
Pulling my shield around me, I bolted at vampire momentum out of the trees and toward the wall of vampires. As I came up against the buzz of energy that had to be the force-field, I dropped my shield, ran straight through it, and instantly slammed it back up to knock down the vampire in front of me.
In a millisecond my brain absorbed the situation; Marco and Lazarus facing one another, vampires gathered either side of them…and Imani in mid-air, falling into a portal.
Fuck.
Heart in my throat, I lowered my shield, reached out, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her to safety before slamming my shield back up to protect us both. Taking her inside me with every one of my senses, I shoved back the fear that had come close to choking me. The sour taste of it still sat on my tongue.
“Don’t shoot!” Lazarus yelled at his vampires, but his eyes were locked on me as I held Imani close, keeping my back to the portal. Everyone had frozen in place, most likely shocked by my sudden arrival.
Almost everyone. Marco threw me a glare over his shoulder. “Where the fuck have you been? Didn’t I tell you to keep her safe?”