Blay went over to his closet, and as he opened it, the full-length mirror on the back side caught Qhuinn's reflection. Their eyes met for a moment.
"Nice new piece of jewelry there," Blay murmured, looking at the chain that marked Qhuinn's new station.
"Not jewelry."
"No, it isn't. And I'm happy for you two. I really am." He took out a parka... which meant the family was either going "down south" as in Antarctica, or the guy intended to be away a long time. Like, into winter.
John stamped his foot. We're running out of time here. Hello? Assholes?
"I'm sorry," Qhuinn murmured to Blay. "For what I said in the tunnel."
"You tell John about it all?"
"No."
Blay dropped his coat on his Prada duffel bag and looked at John. "He thinks I love him. As in... in love with him."
John's mouth slowly fell open.
Blay's laugh flared and stopped short, as if his throat got tight. "Yeah. Go fig. Me in love with Qhuinn... a guy who, when he's not moody, is a slut and smart-ass. Except you want to know what the most f**ked-up thing is, though?"
Qhuinn tensed as John nodded.
Blay glanced down at his duffel. "He's right."
Well, didn't John look like he'd been nailed in the foot with a spike.
"Yup," Blay said. "That's why I could never get into the females all that much. None of them compared to him. No other guys do either, by the way. So I'm f**ked royal, but then, that's my biz and not his or yours."
Christ, Qhuinn thought. Wasn't this the week for revelations.
"I'm sorry, Blay," he said, because he had no idea what else to do.
"Yeah, I bet you are. Makes things hella awkward, huh." Blay palmed the parka and slung the Prada bag up onto his shoulder. "But it's all good. I'm getting out of town for a while, and you two are solid. So cool. Now I gotta go. I'll text you in a couple of days."
Qhuinn was more than willing to bet that the you there was referring only to John.
Shit.
Blay turned away. "Later."
As his best friend in all the world showed them his back and headed for the door, Qhuinn opened his useless lips and prayed that the right thing would come out. When nothing did, he prayed that something would jump free. Anything -
The scream that came up from the first floor was high-pitched.
Blay's mother.
The three of them were out of that bedroom like a bomb had gone off in it, shooting down the hall, thundering down the stairs. In the kitchen, they found that the nightmare of the war had come home.
Lessers. Two of them. In Blay's motherfucking house.
And one of them had his mother up against his chest in a choke hold.
Blay let out a primal yell, but Qhuinn caught him before he surged forward. "There's a knife against her throat," Qhuinn hissed. "He'll slice her where she stands."
The lesser smiled as he dragged Blay's mom across the kitchen and out of the house, toward a minivan that was parked by the garage.
As John Matthew dematerialized out of sight, another slayer came in from the dining room.
Qhuinn let Blay go, and the two of them went on the attack, plowing first into that slayer and then engaging another as it walked in the back door.
While the hand-to-hand went wild and the kitchen got trashed, Qhuinn prayed like hell that John had taken form inside the open van and was rolling out one f**k of a two- fisted welcome.
Please let Blay's mom not get taken down in the cross fire.
As yet another slayer came through the door, Qhuinn head-butted the lesser he was trading punches with, palmed one of his brand-new spanking forty-fives, and rammed the muzzle under the bastard's chin.
The bullets decimated the f**ker's head, blowing the top of it clear off - which gave Qhuinn plenty of time to stab the thing in the heart with the knife he had at his hip.
Pop! Pop! Fizz-fizz! Oh, what a relief it is.
As the thing disappeared in a flash of light, Qhuinn didn't pause to enjoy his first lesser kill. He spun around to check on Blay and was shocked to his balls. The guy's father had come pounding into the room and the two were hauling ass. Which was kind of a surprise, as Blay's dad was an accountant.
Time to back up John.
Qhuinn beelined it out the back door, and just as his boots hit grass, a brilliant flash of light from the minivan told him that help wasn't going to be necessary.
In a smooth move, John jumped out of the Town & Country and slammed the door shut; he pounded on the quarter panel and the thing reversed at a dead run. Qhuinn caught a brief impression of Blay's mom white-knuckled behind the wheel as she shot backward down the driveway.
"You okay, J-man?" Qhuinn said, hoping like hell that John Matthew didn't get killed on Qhuinn's first night as his ahstrux nohtrum.
Just as John lifted his hands to sign, there was a crash of glass.
The two of them wheeled around to the house. Like something out of a movie, a pair of bodies flew out of the family room's picture window. Blay's was one of them, and he landed on top of the lesser he'd tossed out the house like a stained mattress. Before the slayer could recover from the impact, Blay grabbed on to its head and cracked the f**ker's neck like a chicken.
"My father's still fighting in the house!" he yelled as Qhuinn tossed him the knife. "Down in the cellar!"
As John and Qhuinn shot back inside, a third flare of light went off, and then Blay caught up with them at the basement stairs. The three of them rushed to where new sounds of fighting came from.
When they got to the bottom of the stairwell, they stopped dead. Blay's father was facing off with a lesser, a Civil War sword in one hand, a dagger in the other.
Behind his Joe Friday glasses, his eyes were lit like torches, and they flicked over for a split second. "Stay out of this. This one's mine."
The shit was done faster than you could say, Ninja Dad.
Blay's father went Ginsu on the slayer, carving the thing up like a turkey, then stabbing it back to the Omega. As the glare from the extermination faded, the male looked up with frantic eyes.
"Your mother - "
"Got away in their van," Qhuinn answered. "John got her free."
Both Blay and his father sagged at that news. Which was when Qhuinn noticed Blay was bleeding from a cut on the shoulder and one across his abdomen and another on his back and...
His father wiped his brow with his arm. "We've got to get ahold of her - "
John held up his phone, a ringing coming out over the speaker.
When Blay's mother answered, her voice cracked, but not because the connection was bad. "John? John is - "
"We're all here," Blay's father said. "Keep driving, darling - "
John shook his head, handed the phone over, and signed, What if there's a tracking device in the van?
Blay's father muttered a curse. "Darling? Pull over. Pull over and get out of the van. Dematerialize up to the safe house, and call me when you're there."
"Are you sure - "
"Now, dearest. Now."
There was the sound of an engine decelerating. The slam of a car door. Then silence.
"Darling?" Blay's father grabbed for the phone. "Darling? Oh, Jesus..."
"I'm here," came her voice. "Here at the safe house."
Everyone took a deep breath.
"I'll be right there."
Other words were said, but Qhuinn was busy listening for sounds of footsteps up the stairs. What if more lessers came? Blay was injured, and the guy's father looked wiped.
"We really gotta get out of here," he said to no one in particular.
They went upstairs, put the suitcases in Blay's father's Lexus, and before Qhuinn could count one, two, three, Blay and his father were off into the night.
It all went so fast. The attack, the fighting, the evac...the good-bye that was never spoken. Blay just got in the car with his father and took off with their luggage. But what else was going to happen? Now was hardly the time for a long, drawn-out thing, and not just because the lessers had come for a little house tour ten minutes ago.
"I guess we should take off," he said.
John shook his head. I want to stay here. More are going to come when the ones we killed don't check in.
Qhuinn looked at the family room, which was now a porch thanks to Blay's Hollywood-stuntman routine. There was a lot to loot in the house, and the idea that even a box of Kleenex from Blay's might fall into the Lessening Society 's hands pissed him off royally.
John started texting. I'm telling Wrath what happened and that we're hanging here. We trained for this. It's time we get into the action.