Night Shift (Kate Daniels #6.5)(86)

Holy mother.

Yasha was spitting a stream of nonstop Russian. I didn’t need translation to know he was cussing a blue streak.

The truck shuddered clear down to its axles when another gargoyle landed on the door, dinting the roof in a good foot. Me, Elana, and the boys hit the deck, and the leprechauns started shrieking their tiny lungs out as a fist the size of Yasha’s head slammed through the weakened steel and proceeded to peel back strips of metal, shucking the roof like it was an ear of corn.

Mike and Steve were firing out the shattered back windows at something I couldn’t see, and the leprechauns shrieked louder.

The gargoyle peeled off the passenger-side door in a scream of tortured metal, and Ian pulled me into the back of the truck.

Yasha retaliated by sharply jerking the steering wheel to the right and aiming the truck directly at a really solid-looking wall in what I assumed was an attempt to scrape the thing off like a cow pie off a boot.

It didn’t work.

Ian wasn’t so confident about the Russian’s plan. “Yasha. Wall. Wall!”

“I know. Hold on. Might hurt.”

Might?

The engine screamed past whatever limits it’d been designed to handle.

“Brace!”

It was all Ian yelled or needed to yell. The rest of us got the message—brace or be bounced.

The Russian werewolf continued to accelerate, surpassing any speed that was either safe or sane. The wall looked plenty solid. The truck was definitely decrepit, and I had a sinking feeling that rust was all that was holding it together.

The metal shelves looked sturdy enough and were bolted to the truck walls. Ian secured the shotgun, grabbed me with one arm and a shelf with the other. I grabbed a double handful of Ian as the right side of the truck smacked into the wall, raking the bricks, and raising a shower of sparks.

A third gargoyle landed on the rear bumper and punched out the last unbroken window in the truck.

One of the leprechauns fainted, and the other’s shrieks stopped as the little guy tried to hide behind a rack of cheese Danish. The gargoyle ignored him, Elana, and the elves.

He only had glowing eyes for me.

The gargoyle had his arm through the window to his armpit, or whatever gargoyles had, and was straining to get to me, stone fingers extended and grasping, the right-rear door panel buckling under the thing’s weight.

Elana pulled out a gun, the likes of which I’d never seen before, one that made Yasha’s look like a peashooter. She aimed, fired, and while I knew the gargoyle and the door it was hanging onto had to be clanking and pounding its way down the thankfully empty street behind us, I couldn’t hear a thing after the blast that’d come out of that gun. My eardrums felt like they’d exploded.

I guessed that was why I saw but didn’t hear the blast from Ian’s sawed-off shotgun that sent the gargoyle that’d grabbed at me tumbling ass over teakettle down the street after its buddy, minus its head.

Elana pointed the still-smoking muzzle up and at an angle toward where the second gargoyle had shucked enough of the roof to wedge itself through. She fired three shots in rapid succession, and after that, all I could see was empty sky.

Elana was looking around for more targets and seemed to be a mite disappointed that there weren’t any more to be seen—at least for now. And I didn’t miss her shooting a glance over at the two leprechauns, who during the ruckus had fainted dead away on a pile of squashed coconut-covered cream puffs.

I staggered up to where Ian was. “If Danescu didn’t send those things, then who did?”

Ian kept his eyes on the sky for gargoyle reinforcements. “I think those were an upgrade from sewer leeches.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “That wouldn’t have looked like an accident.”

“I think our culprit has passed the point of caring.”



THE beep from the tracking chip was continuous and the dot had stopped blinking.

Yasha pulled over where Ian indicated.

McDonald’s?

It was four in the morning. I was in a stolen bakery delivery truck that’d been nearly totaled by three gargoyles. In the truck with me were two hungover elves, a pair of stoned leprechauns with the munchies, a naked Russian werewolf, and a hot partner who was actually more of a bodyguard, in a race against a goblin dark mage to retrieve a leprechaun prince with a tracking chip embedded in his left ass cheek.

And the trail ended at a McDonald’s in the Bronx.

This had to be weird, even by SPI standards.

Thankfully the parking lot was empty. I scanned the roof anyway.

“No gargoyles,” I noted. “Or monkeys.”

Ian and his shotgun slid smoothly from the truck. “Maybe.” He held the barrel next to his leg, the stock resting against his hip. I had no doubt he could snap it up and take out any gargoyles like picking off ducks launching from a pond. I almost hoped they were hiding on the roof, just to watch him do it.

The agitated owner was pacing in the parking lot. To the guys, he was a middle-aged, balding man. I saw the hobgoblin that he really was. Ian started walking over to him; presumably to get some details and calm him down.

“Check it out,” Ian called back to Mike and Steve.

“Sir.”

The stolen Suburban was parked next to the door. Elana had retrieved Yasha’s clothes and was transferring the two leprechauns into it from the remains of the delivery truck. Yasha was presently being reunited with his beloved SUV, murmuring what must have been Russian endearments. He started to follow us.