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She turned, going in low, but she was too slow The h the door at her back slaainst the rail in a hard beat of sound this ti into her lower back as her attacker shoved his arm to her throat

Fangs flashed in her face “It’s so nice when lunch has the manners to present itself on the doorstep”

Having used his self-congratulatory pause to drop a knife into each palm from the arut Her trapped position ot his attention, his blood on her blade He howled in anger, punched her in the stomach—and took a step back

It was all she needed

Breathing past the agony froain Connected hard and true enough to puncture a lung It would’ve taken down a mortal, but her opponent wasn’t mortal

A sound of frothing rage, his eyes appearing to glow in the dark “Bitch” When he swung back, it wasn’t with his fist

Ashas skilled at close-contact coainst a vampire as clearly no neophyte in the art hiht up her knives to ward off the blow, but it was too heavy, too true a strike, the jarring impact brutal Her blades clattered to the floor as he split her left palht forearm open with the tip of the blade, and then that blade was cold fire across her chest

Iron scent, wet and dark, filled her nostrils, her breath co in shallow pants

The vahed

Conscious she couldn’t get out of this now, not with the heavy cla vaht hand ell enough to grab the gun fro a prisoner of as not an option; never again would she let anyone lock her up Of course, that was unlikely to be an issue given that Lijuan liked to eat people, the husk that re to dust in the hand

“Sorry, cher,” she whispered to the ht her to play long after the end of her farcical childhood, and fired The blunt, hard sound of her gun spitting fire filled the stairwell, the bullets passing through her va froered back Only to recover to screaun, she saw him lift his broadsword for a fatal strike

That sword clattered to the floor before it ever reached her, blood spraying her face in a hot gush She stopped firingand heard the dull, wet thud of his head bouncing down the steps, knew it had been sliced off by a fluid steel blade that wasn’t a sword or a knife but so in between, as sharp as a scythe and even deadlier

“No apologies between us, sugar,” Janvier said and, scooping her up in his arms, ran up the stairs

No point in protesting Wounded as badly as she was, she’d only slow the under her own steam Instead, she reached her bloody left hand around his side for the gun she kneore in a holster at his waist It took a second to get a grip, his breath warainst her as he pounded up the steps