I pulled out two of the four guns I had on me, handed one to Lord Pippin and one to Lord Otto.
Felicia pulled out one for Lord Xenon, and Nial lent two of his five to Lord Cato and Lord Belshazzar.
Nial rumbled, “Remember that you only have those rounds and one spare clip. Don’t go walking around like you’re a fucking terminator, shooting willy-nilly.”
“What’s a terminator?” Lord Otto asked.
Nial rolled his eyes. “Oh, for—”
“Never mind!” I snapped the words off. “Just don’t fire at everything, since it seems you’ve forgotten to take care of your military training. Spears and cannons aren’t used anymore.” I glanced at Felicia. “Schedule them all for range time.”
She grinned. “Yes, your highness.”
“Nial, go right and stay low. Look for the breach. That’s where they were shooting from.”
“I suggest we assume that they’re as conservative with ammo as we are,” he said. He pointed to Lord Otto, Lord Xenon, and Lord Belshazzar to follow him. Hunkered down, they walked behind the rocks that had fallen out of what we were all assuming was the line of sight for the shooter—or shooters.
“What are we doing?” Lord Pippin asked, hefting the gun. “This is nice. I’m out of practice.”
Felicia grumbled, “We’re looking for the same thing they are—the person who shot at us and who blew up the side of a mountain.”
Cato looked at me. “You realize this was probably mistimed? That this was supposed to go off hours ago and crush the dais.”
“You think?” I leveled my gaze at him. “That would have taken out the five of you, me, and anyone close by, and left this place in tatters.”
“And the whole damn vampire population with no guidance.” Lord Pippin tapped his nose.
“So we are attacked—”
Another explosion went off, and a hail of explosive rounds followed it in the direction of the others. I moved, running out of the way of the bits of falling debris and following the bullets back toward the origin. Cato, Felicia, and Lord Pippin were right behind me, and we were able to scramble out of what I thought was their field of vision.
More bullets and we moved again.
Closer to where we could see a touch of daylight streaming in.
A body moved ahead of us in the breach.
I took aim and fired.
By the spray and smell of blood from the exploding round, I guessed I must’ve hit whoever was in there.
That was confirmed a moment later. “Bitch!”
I grinned in feral delight.
“So this was an attack,” Felicia said.
Cato snorted in agreement of the obvious.
There was a small hail of bullets aimed at where we were, and they ricocheted off the rocks they were hitting, exploding when they finally found a target. Carefully, slowly, I crawled up the broken walls of the chamber, staying low and remaining out of view.
“You know, as queen, you really should have evacuated with everyone else,” Lord Pippin stated not so helpfully, crawling right along with me.
“As overlord, you should have too. But here we are, trying to sneak toward the gunfire and hoping we don’t get shot by exploding rounds.”
The gunshots were sounding much closer, and I suspected we were close to the source.
Nial’s voice cracked through the air. “Run! Get out of here!”
