Then bolted across the darkened street to escape him.
"Yo, kid. Grab the door for me, will ya?"
It took a second for the Minion to realize he was being spoken to; he'd been so distracted by the sight of the Maxwell woman on the street below the police station. Even now, as he pulled open the door to let a pizza delivery guy carrying four steaming pie boxes enter, his attention remained rooted on the woman as she stepped off the curb and ran across the street.
Like she was trying to leave someone in the dust behind her.
The Minion looked to where a huge figure in black stood, watching her flee. The male was immense - easily six-and-a-half-feet tall, shoulders beneath his dark leather jacket like they belonged on a linebacker. He radiated an air of menace that could be felt all the way from the street to where the Minion now stood, dumbstruck, still holding the station door open, even though the pizzas were currently parked at the receptionist desk inside.
Although he had never seen one of the vampire warriors his Master so openly despised, the Minion knew without a doubt that he was witnessing precisely that now.
It was an opportunity sure to win him much esteem, alerting his Master to the presence of both the woman and the vampire with whom she seemed familiar, if not a little terrified.
The Minion stepped inside the precinct house, his palms moist with anticipation of the glory that awaited him. Head down, positive in his ability to move around all but ignored, he started across the lobby at a hasty clip.
He didn't even see the pizza guy moving into his path until he had crashed into him, head-on. A cardboard box jabbed into his midsection and emitted a blast of garlic-ripe steam before tumbling to the filthy linoleum, spilling its contents around the Minion's feet.
"Aw, man! That's my next delivery you're standing on. Don't you watch where you're goin' dude?"
He didn't apologize, or even pause to kick the greasy cheese and pepperoni off his shoe. Shoving his hand into the pocket of his khakis, the Minion found his cell phone and searched for somewhere private to make his important call.
"Hold up a second, sport."
It was the aging, balding officer standing in the lobby who shouted after him now. Stuffed into his uniform for what he'd boasted was his final few hours on the job, Carrigan had been wasting time bullshitting with the lobby receptionist.
The Minion disregarded the cop's thunderous voice behind him and kept walking, dropping his chin down and making a beeline for a stairwell door located near the public john just off the lobby.
Carrigan puffed out his chest and gaped with obvious disbelief as his self-perceived authority was utterly ignored.
"Hey, pencil neck! I'm talking to you. I said, get back here and help clean this mess up - and I mean now, shit-for-brains!"
"Clean it up yourself, you arrogant slob," the Minion muttered under his breath, then shoved open the metal door to the stairs and began a quick jog down to a level below.
Above him, that same door crashed open, hitting the other side of the wall and shaking the steps like a sonic boom. Carrigan leaned over the rail, his jowls corpulent with rage. "What'd you just say to me? What the fuck did you just call me, asshole?"
"You heard me. Now leave me alone, Carrigan. I have better things to do."
The Minion took out his cell phone, intending to contact the only one who truly commanded him. But before he could press the speed-dial button that would connect him to his Master, the burly cop was launching himself down the stairwell. A hamlike hand cuffed the side of the Minion's head. His ears rang, vision swimming with the impact, as the cell phone jettisoned out of his grasp and clattered onto the floor, several steps below.
"Thanks for giving me something to smile about my last day on the job," Carrigan taunted. He ran a fat finger around the front of his too-tight collar, then casually reached up to pat the sole remaining wisps of hair on his brow back down where they'd been pasted before. "Now, get your scrawny ass back up those stairs before I hand it to you on a platter. Ya get me?"
There was a time, before he'd met the one he called Master, that a challenge like that - particularly from a blowhard like Carrigan - would not have gone unmet.>It rang six times.
Seven.
Eight...
Chapter Fifteen
Lucan grabbed his cell phone from out of his leather jacket, a curse rolling hard off his tongue.
Gabrielle... again.
She had called him earlier as well, but he'd had to let it go unanswered. He'd been stalking a drug dealer whom he'd first spotted selling crack to a teenaged streetwalker outside a seedy tavern. Lucan had mentally steered his prey down a quiet back alley, and was just about to lunge in attack when Gabrielle's first call of the night had rung like a car alarm going off in his pocket. He had clicked the device into silent mode, berating himself for the uncustomary lack of sense that had made him carry the damned thing on his hunt in the first place.
Hunger and injury had made him careless. But the sudden bark of noise in the darkened street had proved a benefit to him in the end.
His strength was subpar and the cagey dealer had scented danger on the wind, even though Lucan had kept to the shadows, trailing his quarry unseen. The guy had been twitchy, anxious. He'd drawn a handgun halfway down the narrow street, and while bullet wounds were seldom fatal to Lucan's kind - unless you were talking a head shot, delivered at pointblank range - he wasn't sure his compromised, recovering body would be able to absorb the impact of a further injury today.