Then I had an idea. It was not a great idea, and it would generally suck, but it was all I had.
I made myself scoff loudly. “What kind of moron goes to this much trouble just to find someone?” Lucy’s head shot up, her eyes burning. “Honestly, Luce,” I went on, “you’ve got to be pretty pathetic to chase some chick around the world for a century because of some imagined slight.”
“Imagined slight?” She reached down to my discarded belt and snatched a knife, then stalked over to me, grabbing my hair and yanking my head sideways to expose my throat. “I could kill you,” she hissed, holding the blade close. “Or so much worse. Don’t you see that? Have you no respect for—”
I spat in her face.
“Ugh!” She jerked back, disgusted. But I’d already hooked one socked foot behind her ankles, so she tipped backward, her arms flailing, and landed hard on her back. I wanted to kick her face, but without my boots I might break a toe, so instead I lifted my leg and stomped my heel down on her chest, forcing the air out of her lungs. A classic Marko move.
The knife fell out of her hands with a little clatter. Her face went pale and shocked, like she couldn’t believe someone had dared turn the tables on her, the famous Lucy Holmwood.
Even vampires who spend time around nulls aren’t used to having the wind knocked out of them. Hell, it throws most humans. God knew it threw me every time I took a bad fall during my training with Marko. While Lucy lay there trying to suck in air, I worked my handcuffs around the railing to get closer to her. If she got enough breath to scream, I was fucked.
I turned as far as I could in the handcuffs, straining my shoulders, but I was able to pull the knife out of her reach with my heel. I hooked my foot around her neck and slid her just a little closer. I managed to position my body over her, and I placed my foot over her neck, pressing down just a tiny bit. “If I step down hard, I’ll crush your larynx and you’ll die,” I told her. Okay, I didn’t actually know if this was true, but the odds were good that a vampire would know even less about the physiological need to breathe than I did. “So just shake your head yes or no. Do you have the handcuff keys?”
She shook her head no. Her delicate face looked terrified as she struggled to regulate her restored breathing. “Does Clay have them?”
She nodded.
Shit. “Call him,” I told her. “Just his name.”
I eased up the pressure of my foot, and she yelled, “Clay!”
The big vampire poked his head in the room, then immediately reached for the holster on his belt. “Stop!” I hollered. “Or I’ll stomp on her throat and she’ll die. Toss the handcuff keys to Lucy’s left hand. Slowly.” God, I felt like I was writing my own bad movie dialogue.
Clay looked at Lucy. I was pushing my foot down on her throat again, but she had rolled her eyes sideways so she could see him. She nodded her head, almost imperceptibly.
Digging into his pocket, Clay pulled out a tiny set of silver keys and carefully tossed them to Lucy. They hit the old floorboards, slid, and came to a stop near her left hand, just within reach.
“Pick them up and put them in my hand,” I told her.
Her brow furrowed into a horrible glare, but she did as she was told, raising her arm and leaning upward a little to reach my hand. I lifted my foot along with her body, ready to stomp it back down if she screwed me over. But Lucy pushed the keys into my palm. Her fingers were damp. I’d made Lucy Holmwood nervous. Yay me.
I kept my foot on her neck, hoping my feet were smelly. The fear and adrenaline pumping through my body were urging me to hurry hurry hurry, but I forced myself to move slowly as I unlocked one of the handcuffs, and then the other. When I finally had my hands free, I dropped down and snatched up the knife Lucy had dropped. With my left hand, I held it to Lucy’s throat as I pulled back my leg, which had begun to ache with tension. I was still practically on top of her, and I had the bizarre thought that it probably looked like we were playing Twister. Hopefully I was winning.
“Clay, I’m gonna need that knife belt now,” I said, sparing a quick glance at him. “Kick it over.” Grimacing, he kicked the belt, which slid over and came to rest against Lucy’s leg. Keeping the blade near her neck with one hand, I reached for the belt with the other, fumbling the buckle closed. Then I looped it over my right shoulder, removing one more knife.
“Stand up very slowly,” I told Lucy. “I’ll take a step back to give you room, but you should know that I can throw these things as well as I can hold them.”
I backed up a tiny step, but I wasn’t even watching Lucy: I was watching Clay. Sure enough, when he thought I was distracted with Lucy’s movement, his hand shot toward his holster.
I extended my radius and threw the first knife, hitting him high in the shoulder. He groaned but kept moving, so I switched the other knife into my right hand and chunked it into his throat.
In action movies, you always see someone throwing a knife into the bad guy’s heart, and when it comes to vampires, everyone automatically thinks of the heart as the best place to hurt them. But it’s really difficult to get enough power behind a throwing knife to push all the way through the breastbone, even of an ordinary human, and I wasn’t sure I had the upper-body strength. The throat, however, was right there in the open, and it was vulnerable as shit.
The blade buried itself in Clay’s trachea. He dropped the gun, his hands shooting up to clutch at the knife. He made a couple of strangled, unbearable attempts to breathe, and then collapsed, his eyes going dull. Lucy, who was facing him, gave a little gasp of surprise, but she didn’t seem all that broken up. She’d probably seen a lot of vampires-turned-human die in a null’s radius lately.
Speaking of which, I could still feel Wyatt’s vampire magic, but it seemed to be dimming. I forced Lucy to move across the large room toward the door we’d come through, mostly so I could get Wyatt out of my radius without shrinking it. I picked up Clay’s gun where it had fallen, and glanced at it just long enough to make sure I could figure it out. Thank God, it was a Beretta. It was a little different from Jesse’s, but close enough for me to use. I tucked the knives back into my belt and pointed the gun at Lucy, who instinctively raised her hands.
Then I paused. I wasn’t actually sure what to do now. I couldn’t leave Wyatt with these people, and I couldn’t carry him out of here, especially not if I was keeping a gun on someone. I was stuck.
Think, Scarlett.
Lucy must have seen the uncertainty on my face, because she sneered. “You’re out of time, little null. Arthur and the boys will be here any minute, and they’ve got a lot more firepower than you can handle with one gun and a couple of pig stickers. If you run right now, you might get away before they kill you.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Wyatt. He hadn’t moved.
“Where is Jameson?” I asked Lucy.
Confusion flickered over her face, followed by comprehension. “That’s why you’re here? He’s your little friend, is he?” She looked at me with pity. “Oh, you poor dear. Do you think you can save him?”
I gritted my teeth. “I can try.”
“But he doesn’t want to be saved,” she reasoned, as if she were explaining something very obvious to someone very stupid. Which, okay, maybe I was. “He hates vampires more than we do. My goodness, he’s just loved killing my kind. I’ve barely needed to lift a finger; he’s been so happy to—”
“Where is he?” I repeated loudly. The gun was getting heavy.
“I’m right here, Letts,” came a tired, familiar voice from the side doorway.
I was unwilling to look fully away from Lucy Holmwood, so I turned my head to the left and peeked out of the corner of my eye. Jameson was standing just inside the room, his hands and his eyebrows raised. “And I think maybe we need to talk.”
Lucy sighed with relief. “It took you long enough,” she snapped, tossing her pretty blonde hair. She paid no attention to the gun I was still holding.
“Sorry,” Jameson said, stepping slowly into the room, his hands still up. He glanced curiously at first Wyatt and then Clay, but all he said was, “The first two gas stations I tried were out.”