Angie raced over. Without a suggestion from any of us, Angie ran straight to the angel statue where we had found the key. She dropped to her backside and scooted around the base. At the rear of the statue, she rolled to her knees and crawled back around it, to the winged foot where the key had been hidden. Her jeans were dusted with plaster particles and construction filth, which only made her more adorable. I moved closer and she beamed up at me, patting the statue’s foot. “He was here. Right here. In this one. But he’s not here now.”
“I—”
A boom sounded. The building shook like a minor earthquake. Gunfire erupted, close. Too close. I grabbed Angie from the statue and practically tossed her at her father.
“Get to cover,” Eli said to the Trueblood witches. “Liz. You and Cia too.”
Eli and I were holding weapons. Crouched.
Bruiser was standing near a support column, his eyes searching for something I didn’t see. All Onorio, his posture that of the warrior, protector, lover, killer. All that, and more than that.
I wasn’t watching, but I felt the prickle of ahedge of thornsopening over the small family. Thehedgewas a powerful one, but bloodless. No time for drawing a circle to set the energies properly.
A second boom sounded and for a heartbeat of time the walls of the church glowed with energy, letters or symbols painted on them. Greek? Hebrew? Gone before I could identify them.
The little grindy was suddenlythere. Riding Brute. Its front paws holding on to his ears. Together, they galloped to the side door where we had entered. Bruiser was on comms to our backup on the outside. Weapon moving back and forth, Eli stepped to the back of the church; I went to the front entrance. We were mind-joined in this battle situation, but the attack didn’t feel like the others we had seen and experienced. No rocket. Just the small arms fire and the sound, like a huge drum being hit.
Another boom sounded. The dome overhead shifted and shuddered. A shower of plaster dust and bigger particles of building material rained down. “Oh crap,” I whispered.Angie saw a hole in the ceiling.
A fourth boom sounded. Heavy plaster fell in clumps. One of the statues toppled over. Shattered when it hit the floor. I glanced up to see a small hole in the ceiling far overhead. Like Angie’s vision.
A fifth boom sounded, followed by a crack like a tree breaking in a storm. A huge wooden beam dropped from the dark hole and began a slow, tilting descent, one end still in place, the falling end splintered and broken. Sunlight gleamed in.
The Everharts’ makeshift bloodlesshedge, one that would allow the Everharts to make a run for it, would not be enough if the roof came down. Stay? Or run outside? That might be what our attackers wanted, where they could see us. Pick us off. Which was safest?
“Outer perimeter backup, close in,” Eli said into his comms. He was holding a handgun, facing the back entrance on the other side of the altar. Bruiser had drawn a nine-mil handgun from a holster at the small of his back and gripped a .32 that had to have been strapped at his ankle. I stood with an H&K in a two-hand grip. We made a triangle of protection, each of us given some cover by a column.
Gunfire sounded again. The rat-a-tat of an automatic weapon. An abrupt silence. Likely jammed. Three bursts of gunfire followed. Our people, making the shots count.
Over comms I heard a woman say, “Two vehicles racing away. Got descriptions and plate numbers.”
“Clear,” a deep voice said.
Alex said, “One of the vehicles is carrying a tracker from when the null prison was attacked. There’s a signal booster in the SUV you drove to the church, bro. Get out and follow. I’ll give directions. Downloading its previous locations.”
Angie under Big Evan’s shoulder, Cia, Liz, Evan, and Molly huddled beneath the portablehedge of thorns. Eli took point and Bruiser and I followed at the Everharts’ and Truebloods’ six. In a tight group, we all sped through the door where we had entered.
We should have taken a different exit, except we hadn’t opened a second escape route on the other side of the altar. Stupid all around. Not expecting this. Not expecting whatever this weapon was, not here, in daylight.
Eli covered us as we sped into the into the cloudy day. We tripped over bricks that hadn’t been there when we entered. I got a glimpse of a circle of disturbed soil. Witch circle that hadn’t been there before. Empty. But for how long?
Running to the cars—six of them, the Everharts piled into one and it raced away before they even slammed allthe doors.Safe. I looked back to see the ground at the witch circle vibrate, grass and soil rippling. I followed Eli and Bruiser into the vehicle we had arrived in and our four-car motorcade took off. Alex’s voice gave us directions.
Out the rear window, I examined the church. The clock and bell tower was missing an entire top corner down to about thirty feet, the brick all over the ground. The ceiling and roof of the sanctuary had not fallen in, but it looked precarious, as if an earthquake had shaken it from the top down instead of from the ground up.
That damage hadn’t been made by mundane weapons. A rocket would have come straight in. Ruined the church. Killed us all. Which meant the attackers wanted something other than us dead. Something other than the church destroyed. I had no idea why I thought it, but I had a feeling Mainet’s witches hadn’t known we would be there.
Just before we turned a corner, three women appeared in the circle. Ursula, Fiona, and Endora trotted to the door we had left open. Behind them in the circle, three armed humans appeared and followed them.
I didn’t believe in coincidence, but if they had known we would be at the at the church, they would have come through the circle they had opened sooner and killed us. And they hadn’t. If they’d had access to the timelines, they had missed the opportunity to take us all out. So what had just happened?
The key? They wanted the key? They didn’t know we took it earlier?
The booming was the sound of the circle opening? Too many questions, too few answers.
It looked as if whoever the Heir’s seer was, they could see some timelines and not others. They were limited in what they could find out. Good to know. Other possibilities did jumping jacks in my brain, vying for attention.
Eli whipped the wheel and we took a corner too fast. I rammed against Bruiser. He put an arm around me and belted me in. Put a bottle of tepid water in my hand. I downed it. I needed to pee. We rocked to the other side as Eli zigged and zagged through Algiers.
