Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(82)

“Oh, shit,” I hissed. “There are more of them.”

Simon crouched back down. “Humans or vampires?”

“Human . . . there’s another human at the north door. Atwood or somebody else. And that’s gotta be Quinn, on the northwest corner of the building . . .” I opened my eyes, frowning. “There’s a big blank area in the middle, I can’t seem to feel—” Then I got it, and my heart tripped with excitement. “Charlie!”

“So we have at least one extra human, and an unknown number of people in the hayloft with Charlie. What do you want to do?” Simon asked.

“Stick to the plan,” I told him firmly.

He hesitated for just a moment, trying to read my eyes in the shadows, but then nodded. “Go,” I said softly.

Simon took off to the right, around the front of the propane tank. I followed just far enough to watch him march right up to the barn’s gaping east door, the one closest to us. He stood to one side of the doorway, for a moment, mumbling something. Then he spun on his heel, waving a hand into the barn.

What followed was the loudest crash I’d ever heard. It seemed to go on forever, a cacophony of metallic screeching and clanking as metal bits big and small slammed into each other. “Anybody home?” Simon yelled. I grinned. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a signal so much as a distraction. As he reached into the barn, groping for a light switch, I took off around the left side of the propane tank, the Beretta in my hands.

As I was still approaching the barn, Simon must have found the switch, because a beam of light suddenly shot out of the window in the south door, revealing the silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man guarding the door. Caught in the light, he began to move toward me. I cocked the Beretta, pointing it at his center. “Don’t move,” I ordered, but the shadow kept coming. When he was a few feet away, I saw that he was quite young, with a bushy beard and a long, wicked-looking piece of metal pipe in one hand. And I realized that I knew him.

“Chewbacca?” I said, confused. Why would a freshman pledge from CU be here? “What are you—”

But he didn’t even slow down. I couldn’t shoot the kid, not until I was sure what team he was on, but the pipe came swinging toward my head like it was a T-ball. I ducked under it, but the kid was fast for his size. He turned around and started toward me again, and as the light caught him, I saw that his eyes were dazed and cloudy. Shit. He’d been pressed. I definitely couldn’t shoot him.

But that didn’t make his attack any less real. Chewbacca raised the pipe again in an overhead swing, intending to smash the top of my head. I lurched backward, just barely managing to get out of range before the pipe came whistling down. When it hit the ground in front of me I stomped one foot on it, leaned forward and punched the kid square in the nose with my right hand.

He dropped his hold on the pipe and straightened, looking disoriented. “Chewbacca?” I said hopefully, in case the blow had reversed Kirby’s press, but the kid just gave a little shake of his head and started toward me again. I heard a gunshot echo from the far side of the barn. Shit, I didn’t have time for this. I put the Beretta in its holster and dropped to the ground, kicking my left foot out as fast as I could and sweeping Chewbacca’s legs out from under him. He went down on his ass hard, and I picked up the pipe, wound up, and smacked him on the side of the head, praying I’d used the right amount of force to knock him out but not kill him. He folded to the ground, and I sprinted toward the west side of the barn, where I’d last felt the vampire.





Chapter 38



I had the gun ready as I rounded the southwest corner of the barn, but there was no one on that side of the structure. Light was spilling out through the open door, though, and I hopped a decaying paddock fence and raced toward the entryway. I stopped to peek around the rotting wooden door frame.

And had to take a second look.

Simon had warned us, but the inside of the barn was still grotesquely fascinating. Atwood had filled the whole space with makeshift tables built of sawhorses, covered by flat, wall-sized pieces of steel. They were placed at random, so there were no neat rows through the building. Then he’d covered every inch of every surface, including the barn floor, with grimy junk. I recognized bits and pieces of engines, rusted coffee cans filled with nails and screwdrivers, blades for everything from forklifts to lawnmowers. There were larger pieces of metal shoved in there, too, and I didn’t recognize most of these: parts from semi trucks, maybe?

Every bit of it was covered in layers of grease and rust, and Simon was right—everything was sharp. It would have taken me half an hour to walk from one wall to the other—except that Simon had blown an aisle through the very center of the goddamned barn. There was a two-foot-wide path running the length of the space, from where I was standing now to the east door where he’d come in.

I grinned. Well, that explained the clanging.

Cautiously, I stepped into the barn, my gun tracking along with my sight as I took in the mess. The hayloft was directly above me, about ten feet up, forming a partial overhang like a theater balcony. And in the center of the makeshift aisle, right below the edge of the hayloft, there was a pacifier. It had to have been dropped or kicked off the edge after Simon created the aisle. I took in a sharp breath, wanting to dance with relief. Charlie was here.

But I was suddenly very aware of the fact that, despite all the noise, she hadn’t started crying. Why wasn’t she fussing? I took a cautious step forward, into the aisle, but before I could see the edge of the balcony, I heard two quick gunshots from the north side of the barn.