Page 22 of Countdown to Murder (A Paranormal Halloween #3)

Mira

Someone told me that security work is ninety percent boring, five percent cool toys, and five percent fight-for-your-life.

I hadn’t seen that last five percent yet, but so far, I figured they probably weren’t far off.

I’d learned sniper tricks for staying focused, and I’d adjusted them over the years when I’d needed to watch a target for a day or two to figure out the best way to take them out.

Surveillance is boring, but it’s okay to look away a few seconds while they’re eating or watching television.

It wasn’t okay to allow my mind to drift for even a few seconds while I was guarding someone’s life, though.

None of the doors in the saferoom suite could be opened from outside the suite.

However, the seals around the door leading to the cave system and the tunnel to the cabin weren’t airtight.

It made sense — the builders used it as a way to get fresh air into the suite.

Nuclear fallout wouldn’t make it into the cave system or the tunnel, and neither would anything chemical or biological used in warfare.

We’d put up three red lasers, shining so we’d hopefully see extra particles coming in around the door in time to react. Alarms were supposed to sound if more particles were present, but I trusted my eyes more than the alarms.

I was standing with my back against a wall, and I knew for certain what was on the other side of the wall — four inches of concrete and a steel plate, protecting the saferoom suite even if the mansion burned to the ground.

Panda was to my left, in lion form. He hadn’t shared his reasons, but if he’d figured out the misting ability, and I thought he had, then he was probably hoping the vampire would have trouble vaporizing a seven-hundred-pound lion who was eating him.

He was right, of course. Most vampires are limited to turning just under twice their body mass into mist, meaning this bastard would have no problems absconding with the client, but wouldn’t have a shot of carrying Panda in either his human or lion form.

But I had no way to get that information to him, so we’d had to move some furniture out of the way to give everyone room when we included the biggest lion I’d ever seen.

I’d been clear that I would have a better chance of killing this bastard than even a full-sized lion would have.

I’d also made sure everyone was aware we had to decapitate him or pulverize his heart with silver, and preferably both.

Even then, I was advocating we burn him and spread the ashes in different places, just to be sure.

I’ve seen decapitated old-ones brought back and manage to grow their fucking head back on, and I’ve seen them brought in with silver in their heart and still reanimate and heal.

They need help from another strong vampire, but I had a feeling this bastard was rich enough to buy anything, and that included other powerful vampires.

From the time I saw extra particles until the vampire was standing before me with his mouth drinking my blood was less than a second, but my response times are fast, and his face was right in front of and a little below my face.

I opened my mouth as wide as it would go, and then stretched the back of my jaw so it opened wider.

When the bone connections dislocated and the muscles pushed everything even wider, my fangs dropped down, and I closed my mouth around the bastard’s face.

I was in the process of a venom dump when everything went black.

* * * *

Panda

The vampire appeared out of seemingly nowhere, his mouth on Mira’s neck.

Sloan’s job was to seal off the tunnel door, and I heard him and others behind me with the sticky plastic.

We’d hung it from the ceiling, so the two bottom edges could be sliced loose and it would fall into place.

The outer edges were sticky, plus there was tape to use to make certain the vampire couldn’t get out.

But I wasn’t focused on them. All I could see was Mira’s mouth open, and then open wider, like something out of a horror movie.

She slammed her ghastly mouth over most of the vampire’s face, and then they were both gone.

I aimed my laser towards the spot and saw the mists moving.

We all watched the mass of particles try to get out, realize it was trapped, and then hover near the ceiling.

He’d misted both himself and Mira. Was she hurting? I didn’t know, but I knew what to do.

I shifted into human form and reached for the metal canister near my feet.

“I have liquid nitrogen. You should come back to solid mass.” Aaron had hypothesized that a vampire who’d gone to mist would sense thoughts aimed at him even without ears to hear the words. Thus, speaking to the vampire would make sure your thoughts were aimed properly.

I wasn’t certain I could spray him when it would kill Mira as well as the vampire, but he didn’t know we were close, and neither did anyone else.

We had a room full of people with strong shields, but on the off chance he made it into someone’s head, he wouldn’t find out how much I’d come to care for the cobra shifter.

The mist moved down and slowly formed back into the vampire and Mira.

This time, he held her hands behind her back with one hand, and kept his other on the back of her skull to keep her from turning her face towards him.

He held her in the air, her feet dangling, and I wasn’t certain she could get enough leverage to kick backwards and do any harm.

“A stalemate, and the lovely Ella isn’t even here.

” He turned Mira’s head a little, enough to see her profile, and then turned her face away from him again.

“This little thing would be a nice consolation prize, once I have her properly trained. Not certain I’d ever let her give me a blow job, though.

” He met my gaze. “If anyone makes a move, she dies. Your play, lion.”

And this is why couples aren’t supposed to work together.

My terror at the thoughts of watching her die could have overtaken all logic, but it didn’t.

Mira gave me three fast blinks, and I decided to keep his mind occupied as much as possible, in the event she was signaling to let me know she was about to act.

I bent forward with my hands out to the side, one of them still holding the canister, the other holding the sprayer, and I held his eye contact while I oh-so-gently set it on the ground.

It’s stable, the gentle treatment wasn’t necessary, and I could tell he was trying to figure out what I was about to do.

And then Mira somehow became flexible in ways humans can’t move.

She flicked around and managed to turn in his arms, and the knife usually along her spine pierced him against the wall through his throat.

He wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t finished.

She drew a handgun and emptied the magazine into his chest, and he finally let her go.

She landed gracefully on her feet, backed up, pulled the knife free, and then swung it as he fell forward.

His head flew across the room, his body collapsed to the ground, and she stuck the silver knife into his back, into his heart, and swept it back and forth for good measure.

She put her foot on him to hold the body down, yanked her knife out, flipped him over, and drove the knife into his heart from the front as well, once again sweeping it back and forth as much as possible between the ribs.

She put her foot on the body again, yanked her knife out, cleaned it on her pants leg, and hooked the handle into a loop on her tactical belt.

I understood why — it’s hard to clean blood from the inside of a sheath.

While she did this, the rest of the room stood still and watched.

From her first slithery movement until he was on the ground was less than four seconds, and it had taken her three of those seconds to fire off seven rounds without jamming her gun. She’d used another ten seconds to put a knife into his heart from both the back and front.

Mira was graceful, efficient, lethal, and beautiful.

She finally stepped away from the dead vampire, shivered, and shook her arms while bouncing up and down.

“For the record, I don’t think I felt being turned to mist, but being brought back hurts every damned cell in your body. Fuck, I need a shower.”

My mic was already engaged, and someone needed to let the team outside the room know what was happening, along with both control rooms. I’m the man in charge, so it fell to me.

“Target is down. Head missing and heart shredded, but we’ll remove it shortly to be certain he doesn’t come back.

We’re opening the door into the hallway.

Let’s get the suite put back to the way it was and bring our client down.

We have some cleanup to do if we’re going to convince her we killed him outside the suite. ”

I disengaged my mic and met Mira’s gaze. “That was bad-ass. All of it. I need to oversee things down here, but you can head up to the room and shower.”

She shook her head. “It can wait. I’m fine. Let’s get whatever images ya’ll need and then I’d like to burn the bastard. Need to make certain he won’t be coming back.”

I nodded. With the FBI involved, we’d have to convince them the target was taken out, but we’d need a good reason there was no body.

This meant moving the client just outside the suite and then having a firefight and explosion down the hallway.

Not a big explosion, nothing bad enough to mess with the structural integrity of the mansion and bring it down on us — just enough to burn the body.

One of Jones’s men specialized in this sort of thing, so it was time to put him to work.