“Considering I was ready to trade my life for you, right now, I don’t really care.” She didn’t wait for him to move. Jade shoved him—shoved, and Az flew back five feet.
Her jaw dropped open. “How did I—” She broke off, staring at her hand. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean . . .”
He rose from the floor. The blood. He’d have to tell her what to expect, but . . . he didn’t know what to expect.
Jade whirled around and yanked open the door. She rushed out even as Az called her name. She didn’t get far though. A few steps, and she slammed right into Tanner.
The shifter caught her arms and held her in place. “We’ve got a problem.” A muscle jerked along his jaw.
She pulled away from him. “A problem?” Her laugh held a ragged edge. “Trust me, I think we’ve got a whole lot more than just one problem to deal with here.”
Tanner glanced over her shoulder at Az. “He’s hunting us.”
Az just nodded. He’d figured that Brandt would come after him sooner rather than later.
“We maybe have an hour, probably less than that, before he tracks us here.”
“How do you know that?” Jade demanded as she ran a hand through her hair. “How can you possibly?”
“’Cause I’ve got one friend still in that pack, and he just called to tell me that we need to get the hell out of this place.” He huffed out a rough breath. “Heather’s still alive. Brandt forced her to scry, and she told him exactly where we are.”
So the bastard was coming for him. Fine. “Let him hunt.”
Tanner lifted a brow. “You’re that eager for another ass-kicking? ’Cause I’m not.”
Az crossed the room in an instant. His power might not work on Brandt, but Tanner was one hundred percent shifter. “You knew what he was.”
Jade hadn’t. He got that, now. But Tanner . . .
“Yeah, I knew.”
And with a wave of his hand, Az tossed the bastard through the nearest window. Glass shattered as Tanner sailed toward the dock.
“Az!” Jade spared him a shocked glare before she rushed outside after the now-groaning shifter. “Jeez, a punch would have sufficed,” she yelled back at him. “The slam through the window was a little much.”
Not really. He figured he owed Tanner more.
He conjured a ball of flame and followed her out of the house and onto the rickety dock. Tanner had just risen. He took a look at the flames hovering above Az’s hands and his claws immediately sprang out.
But then Jade jumped between them.
Az held back his fire.
“Is there a reason you didn’t tell us about Brandt’s little, um, side powers?” Jade demanded, voice hot enough to burn like the fire in Az’s hands.
“I thought you knew,” came Tanner’s instant answer. “Hell, I thought there wasn’t anything you didn’t know about Brandt. And if you believed this guy—” He pointed a claw at Az. “Could take him out, then I believed it, too.”
Until the moment Brandt had sunk his claws into Az’s chest. Then they’d all stopped believing. “Here’s some angel trivia for you.” Az let the fire die. He could always conjure it again easily enough. “It takes more than the Death Touch to kill our own kind. Angels, even half-breed ones, can’t be killed with mortal weapons.” Give ’em a few more runs through the blood chain, a few more generations to dilute that powerful blood, then you could have a being that would die with a touch. But full-blood and half-blood angels were too strong.
Their magic fought Death.
“So if you can’t kill him, then what are we supposed to do about Brandt?” Tanner wanted to know as he began to pace the length of the dock. “What? Are we just gonna wait around here, let him come and kill us all?”
“That’s not a good plan,” Jade snapped.
No, it wasn’t. “He has the witch.”
Tanner stopped and nodded.
“We need her.” He didn’t like Heather. Didn’t trust her—especially after what she’d done to Jade—but if they were going to take out Brandt, they’d have to save her. “She knew about that brimstone bullet. She might have even—”
“She’s the one who made him the bullets,” Tanner admitted, stopping Az’s words. “She found a wounded hellhound a long while back. She ground up its claws to make the bullets.”
A hellhound, huh?
“Wait!” Jade held up her hand. “He told me that he got those bullets from a witch in Vegas.”