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The sounds of the bloody iven the stench that noafted through the bedroouess what had been done to that little lesser who&039;d brought her food

Apparently some portion of the first floor had just been redecorated in slayer paisley

She was surprised that the Brothers had chosen to rip the bastard limb from limb in the house From what she knew, Butch O&039;Neal usually inhaled the slayers to keep thea But downstairs? She&039;d be surprised if there was anything left you could pick up without a e to Lash

Following the slaughter&039;s loud chaos, there was an odd stretch of quiet and then lots of footfalls They were leaving now that there was nothing left to kill

Panic rose again in her chest and the effort of pulling herself back together was nearly physical but godda to come undone All she had in this situation was herself She was her weapon; her s that Lash couldn&039;t take away froood as dead

Fuck that, she lost them and she couldn&039;t take Lash with her when she went

The reality of the situation here she found the strength to keep going, the weight on her grounding her emotions when they otherould have flown the coop and taken her logic with the she&039;d felt when she&039;d been beside John Matthew

Nothing got through Nothing bubbled up

Snapping into war mode, she realized she hadn&039;t heard a pop or seen the echo of a flash, so they hadn&039;t stabbed the slayer And the s the body behind

Lash was going to fucking lose it She&039;d heard hih he&039;d have denied it, he was attached to the bastard What she needed to do was exploit this weakness in hiot scrambled Maybe he&039;d crack in some fundamental way

Amid the silence and the sweet stench, she paced around and ended up at theWithout thinking of the force field, she put both her hands up and leaned in against the ja a wave of pain

Instead she just got a tingle

There was so a lid on her head, she caainst her containment Complete and utter objectivity hat she needed to assess things--but it turned out, the change was so obvious that even distracted she would have registered it: There eakness within the tensile weave of the spell Unmistakable weakness

The question hy And whether it was going to get even looser or this blip was soht now

Her eyes ri out of the norlass, just to be sure-- yup, she&039;d been right

Had Lash died? Been wounded?

At thatblack Mercedes eased by the front of the house, and she sensed the sonofabitch inside And whether it was because he&039;d been taking her vein or because the barrier eakening, his erid was crystal clear to her sy isolated Anxious And weak

Well, well, well

Didn&039;t that give credibility to the loosening she&039;d sensed And an idea why he wasn&039;t all Johnny-on-the-spot to co particularly strong, she would wait for the dawn to co inside

Either that or she would head off and get some serious-ass reinforcements

But then, that&039;s what they ht?

When the Mercedes left the neighborhood and didn&039;t show signs of returning, she took two steps back frohter&039;s stance, curling up her fists and angling her body slightly back on her hips She breathed deep and focused and Snapping out her right fist with all the strength in her shoulder, she punched the barrier hard enough so that if it had been the jaw of a male, she&039;d have cracked the fucker into pieces

The spell stung her back, but all around the roo as if recalibrating itself after an injury Before there could be a co, she pitched another punch--

The glass on the far side of the barrier shattered on impact

At first, she was struck stupid even as she felt the breeze on her face, and looked down at her now-bleeding knuckles for confirmation there was no other reason why thehad broken

Holy shit

Quickly considering her potential exit strategies, she looked over her shoulder at the door John and the Brothers had left open

The last thing she wanted to do was go out through the house, because she didn&039;t know the layout and had no clue what she was going to run into along the way But instinct told her she was probably too weak to deh the , she didn&039;t know if she&039;d be able to pull off a midair disappearance

In which case she&039;d yard-sale in the road down below

The open dooras her best shot She could use her own body as a fist, and with a running start, she&039;d have evenaround, she put her shoulder blades against the wall, sucked in a deep breath and sprinted across the rooht over the floor, her ar

She hit the barrier and the pain was incandescent, firing through every single cell in her body, lighting her up froony blinded her at the sa her inside its confines and rendering her as good as dead--

Except then there was a tearing as her mooddamn it if she didn&039;t end up on the far side of that bedroom

As her body broke free, she slammed into the corridor&039;s wall, to the point where she expected to take a layer of paint off with her face and chest as she slid down onto the floor

With her head spinning and her eyes filled with flashing lights, she kicked her own ass into gear She was out, but was not free

Glancing back, she watched the rippling of the spell as it recast itself and wondered if her breaching it didn&039;t send soet out run!

Dragging herself off the floor and down the hall, she hit the stairs on unreliable legs, careening around, stu In the foyer below, the stink of lesser blood choked her to the point of gagging, and she h not because of her nose All of the egress and ingress at the house happened in the back If she had nothing but a sliver of ti another way out

Up ahead, the front door was a lass into which iron bars were set But all they had for locks were simple dead bolts

Candy-from-a-baby tie y on shifting the pins One two three and the fourth

Throwing the door wide, she had one foot outstide when she heard the creak of so into the kitchen

Oh shit, Lash was back He&039;d coiving her wings that her focused ood use Given the shape she was in, she knew she wasn&039;t going to make it far and decided the best she could do was her baserouped

Xhex took form in the sheltered alcove that led down into her studio and sprang the copper locks with her hts came on in the ashed corridor, and she lifted her ar the door with her thoughts, she tripped forward, beco dimly aware she had a limp

The impact of the wall? The scramble down the stairs? Who the fuck knew or cared

She made it into her bedroohts came on, she looked at the bed Clean white sheets Pillows all arranged Duvet spread flat

She didn&039;t ave out, she let herself go, her skeleton collapsing in on itself until she was nothing but a pile of sticks covered by skin

It was not sleep that claimed her as she hit the floor But that was okay

Unconsciousness worked better anyway

Blaylock reentered the brownstone with Rhage and Vishous a mere twenty minutes after they&039;d left with John As soon as they&039;d gotten him back to the compound safely, they&039;d returned to finish the sweep of the pre for the save thee John Matthew had thrown around, the afteristered as Blay walked in the kitchen, and i open cupboards and drawers Vishous headed up to the second floor while Rhage rooted around the front of the house

He was just finding his groove when Rhage called out, "The front door&039;s wide open"

So someone had been back here since they&039;d pulled out with John Lesser? Not likely as they would never have left things unsecured Maybe a human thief? The Brothers hadn&039;t locked up the back when they&039;d taken off so perhaps soht in

If it had been a huht have explained a rushed exit out the other way

Blay popped his heat just in case there was someone in the house, and with his free hand, he was quick as he rifled around He found two cell phones in a draith the knives, neither of which had chargers--but V would solve that There were also some business cards by the phone, but they were all for hu trade--who had probably been used to work on the brownstone

He was tackling the cupboards under the counter when he frowned and looked up Right in front of hi down in the direction of the stove, he saw some tomatoes And a loaf of French bread in a paper wrapper

Straightening, he walked over to the Sub- Zero and cracked the thing open Organic milk Takeout from Whole Foods A fresh turkey ready to be cooked Smoked Canadian bacon

Not exactly prisoner food

Blay looked up at the ceiling, where heavy footsteps sounded out as V went from room to room Then his eyes traced the kitchen as a whole, from the cashmere dress coat draped over a stool to the copper pans stacked in the open shelving to the coffeepot that had a brew in its belly