“Weapons?”
“Armed to the teeth. They’re the ones you should go after! They would’ve had their way with your girl,” said the man who’d called dibs.
“You got any females for sale?”
Turret Guy smiled, no doubt thinking he’d been handed a lifeline. He had no idea he was digging his grave. If he admitted to hurting women . . .
“Not here, sonny, but we got a batch of young ones coming in.” He stroked his beard with a sly look. “Sweetest pieces of ass you ever saw. Trained and everything. Hell, I’d let you sample for free—”
Jack shot the man between the eyes. “Fuckin’ hate slavers.” He collected his arrows.
The radio blared a moment later: “I heard that gunshot earlier, you assholes. I ain’t gonna tell you again—no wasting bullets on straggler Bagmen. Do you dipshits copy?”
Jack lifted his gaze. Toward the slaver’s house? The one packed with fifteen armed men?
“Jack . . . what are you doing?”
He’d already dropped off the other side of the bus.
“Your mortal’s storming the slaver den.” Aric’s tone was half-amused, half-approving. “I’m hereby inviting myself on his incursion.” Eyes lively, he spurred his horse up to the razor wire—and didn’t stop.
Like a bulldozer, Thanatos barreled through, catching the wire on its own armor, dragging the snarl free. Barricade destroyed, Aric charged after Jack. I followed.
The slaver boss lived in a sprawling two-story farmhouse that was lit up like a home from before the Flash. Off to the side, gas-guzzling generators hummed. His business must be flourishing.
Aric galloped past Jack to the front entrance. Jack cussed him in French, sprinting on foot to catch up.
In one fluid motion, Aric dismounted his still-moving horse. Never slowing, he strode with superhuman speed toward the front door, right up the freaking porch steps! He knocked, as if he were about to drop off a casserole, then raised his hands in surrender.
The men would have no fear of answering, would just see some strange armored guy—who had no gun.
A slaver cracked open the door with a threatening look—and a pistol aimed not a foot from Aric’s chest.
Death spoke. Whatever he said made the man pull the trigger. The bullet ricocheted, plugging the slaver in the face.
Jack did a double take, then headed toward the back of the house. Aric drew his sword and breached the room.
Then . . . pandemonium.
Lamps crashed to the floor, dimming the area. Shadowy figures moved. Muzzle flashes blazed. Bullets bounced off mystical metal, a repeated ping ping ping.
An amoeba would’ve learned by now not to shoot at Aric’s armor.
Yells came from the backyard. I spurred my mare toward Jack. But he didn’t need any help, was firing on any who fled. The hunter had known a sight like Death would drive the men out the back. Then he’d merely waited.
The skirmish concluded in minutes. Aric had slain everyone inside; Jack outside.
The line of bodies stretched from the backyard into the house. Right where the arrow corpses stopped, the headless ones started.
The enemy was done. Neither Jack nor Aric had allowed me to contribute whatsoever. No witch invocation necessary.
With a nod of acknowledgment toward me, Jack retrieved his arrows, his bruised face flushed with aggression—and excitement?
The heat of battle.
At the back doorway, Aric lifted the grille of his helmet, smirking at him. “Eight to seven.”
“Only one ahead of me?” Jack snagged a two-way radio from a dead man’s belt, clipping it to his own. “And you got body armor from head to toe.”
The two of them were acting like such . . . guys. I wanted to strangle them. Neither should have been this reckless going in—or this pleased with himself afterward.
Or maybe I was aggravated that I hadn’t gotten to carry my weight.
At the threshold, a man with an arrow in his eye whimpered. Still alive. Jack strode forward to finish the kill, but Death beat him to it, removing his gauntlet on the way.
Aric stared at Jack as he laid his hand over the man’s face.
Ghastly black lines branched out over the half-dead slaver. He gulped a lungful to shriek, clawing Aric’s hand in a frenzy.
There was no greater pain than Death’s touch. It did outstrip even the plague—and my poison.
“Think twice about trying to strike me,” Aric told Jack as the man went still. “Oh, and now the score’s nine to six.” He stood, donning his gauntlet.
Jack snared the arrow, avoiding contact with the dead man’s putrefying skin.
Aric chuckled. “My touch isn’t contagious, mortal. The Black Death was a tribute to me; I wasn’t a tribute to it.”
“All the same . . .” Jack wiped the arrowhead across the bottom of his boot. “If you’re done showing off, I’m goan to clear this place.” He kicked the body out of the doorway and motioned me inside so he could lock up that entrance. “We’ll stay here for a spell and rest the mounts.”
I bit my bottom lip. “Do we have time?” Dolor was only a day’s ride away, and I burned to get to Selena.
“We’ll make it up with fresh horses. Come on, you.”
Claws at the ready, I followed Jack and Aric toward the front of the house. I gaped at Death’s destruction: heads and bullet holes everywhere. Sofa tufting clung to the blood splatter on the walls. Guns smoked in clenched hands. The fire in the hearth flickered on, oblivious.