Spotlights hit him from behind at the same time, lighting up Enoch Parrish’s grinning face.
“Now, you’re done for, vampire.”
Someone fired a warning shot. Knox glanced back and saw it was Barstow.
“Bastard.”
“Let him go,” the sheriff shouted over the PA.
“You heard my friend.” Enoch cackled. “Let me go.”
Knox sneered. “All right.”
He dropped him, at the same time reaching for the side rail release lever on the trailer’s payload. Enoch Parrish screamed as twenty-plus tons of heavy timber avalanched down on top of him, burying him alive.
Amos Barstow’s voice bellowed to his men. “Kill that son of a bitch!”
An explosion of gunfire erupted from the army of cops behind Knox.
CHAPTER 29
“Oh, my God. No!”
Leni pulled through the gate of the Parrishes’ property just in time to see dozens of sheriff’s department officers open fire on Knox. Throwing the old Bronco into park, she leapt out and ran toward the line of cops whose vehicles were fanned out like they had come prepared for war.
“No! Stop shooting at him, please!”
But they didn’t stop. Amos Barstow was in charge and his voice rose over the din of the gunfire.
“Where’d that bloodsucking son of a bitch go?” he shouted to the other officers. “Don’t let him get away!”
Leni couldn’t tell where Knox had gone, either. He’d moved with all the speed he had at his command, vanishing into the darkness as nothing more than a blur of shadow.
But he hadn’t escaped without injury.
She could feel his pain through their blood bond.
Some of the rounds had found their mark. But he was alive.
He was alive, and he was furious with a rage she could hardly fathom.
“Stop,” Leni pleaded. “You’ve got the wrong man. Knox isn’t the enemy.”
“Stay out of this, Lenora.” Barstow swung a contemptuous sneer in her direction. “You’d say anything to protect your lover. It won’t work. That vampire’s gonna die tonight. We just watched him kill my good friend Enoch Parrish in cold blood.”
“You mean, the way you and the Parrishes killed my friend Carla Hansen? The way you would have killed me too?”
The gunfire died down, then ceased altogether. Some of the other officers stared at her in confusion.
“It’s true,” she said, addressing Barstow’s colleagues. “Enoch Parrish and his sons hired a Breed assassin to get rid of me and Knox so the Parrishes could take my nephew. Sheriff Barstow was going to let it happen. And that’s not all they’ve done. The Parrishes are running a human trafficking ring. It wouldn’t surprise me for a second if Amos isn’t also aware of that too. He may even be participating in it.”
The sheriff sputtered. “You’ve lost your mind. Those are vile lies you’re spouting, Lenora. Dangerous ones.”
“Leni is right.”
Knox’s deep voice rang out, coming from the direction of the lumberyard outbuilding. He stood inside the open entrance of the steel barn, immense, fearless in the face of so many weapons trained on him. His transformed eyes glowed like hot coals. Blood dripped from the numerous gunshot wounds that had managed to hit their mark.
“The Parrishes are responsible for the abuse and murders of dozens of young women. Children too,” Knox announced grimly. “Their evil ends tonight.”
