“Fuck you.” I flicked my hands at the group, sending the electrical current I’d pulled in from both the helicopter and the last blow back at the Irish folks. They could dish it out, but could they take it?
The blue lightning danced out of me in six perfect streaks that slammed into each member of Killian’s family at the same time. They were blown back, flipped three or four times each and at least thirty feet away from us, and then finally there was blessed silence.
I deliberately didn’t take out his mother.
I pushed to my feet, wobbled and made my way to Killian while his mother watched with big eyes, her lips tight with anger and pain. I kicked him in the leg. “Get up and tell your mother I’ll kill her if she doesn’t fuck off right now.”
Killian rolled to his knees and then stood. I didn’t try to brace him. Didn’t give him my hand. We needed this to be clear cut—we were not a couple; this was a business arrangement we had and nothing more.
Not to mention, I didn’t want him to look weak in front of his family.
“You are not Irish,” his mother said. I turned only my head toward her, lifting Dinah as I did.
“No shit. And you are not a very nice mother.” I glared at her.
“You have a child?” She arched an eyebrow.
“I do.” I stared back at her. “And let me tell you, a mother who tries to choke the life out of her own son? If you were on fire, I wouldn’t spit on you.”
“My son has been a thorn in my side for many years,” she purred.
I didn’t like that she used the same words for Killian that my own father had used for me. Which made me wonder if there was a connection, and those two pieces slid together. “You’re working for Romano, aren’t you?”
Killian jerked beside me as if I’d shot him. “Mam, tell me you haven’t defected to that piece of shit?”
She smirked. “The pay is far better, and the man is a beast between the sheets.”
I had Dinah up and pressed to her temple so fast, her smirk was still on her face. “Killian, say it.”
His mother looked past me. “He won’t. He be soft, like his brothers.”
I laughed softly. “Wonder why he brought me, then? I’m the bitch Romano made.”
Her eyes slid to me and I smiled at her as I let the emptiness of my killing blood float through me, let the darkness that was death in my world rise until it filled me and I felt nothing but the trigger under my finger and the pulse of my heart and hers. Her eyes were as green as I’d thought they would be and they widened as her smirk slid from her face—finally.
“Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?” I whispered.
Her throat bobbed. “I can guess. Romano said you be traveling with Killian, but I didn’t believe it. I thought you be dead. The Shadow—”
“Is nothing to me. Besides, the dead rise from time to time. You should know that, living in this world.” I pressed Dinah a little harder against her temple. “Killian, what do you want to do with her?”
He stepped up beside me. “She’ll go to Romano, and that’s if she doesn’t try to take us down on our way.”
I couldn’t look at him, but I heard the indecision in his voice. There was some love still there for his family. I did not have that connection with my own surviving parent, but I understood. I dropped my hand, she smiled, and I shot her in the belly.
The boom rattled around us, Dinah howled with laughter, and Killian’s mom clutched at her wound, her eyes widening as the blood spread and slid over her white shirt. “You . . .”
I shot her again, a little higher, closer to her diaphragm.
“That should slow you down,” I said. “And maybe you’ll think twice before fucking with either of us, yes?”
She fell backward, her eyes rolling as she passed out. I stared at her and the wounds that were already healing. Maybe I’d been wrong about how strong she was.
“That won’t hold her back for long,” I said. Killian didn’t move from beside me and I didn’t dare put Dinah away. “Where to now?”
He snapped out of his daze. “This was our destination. I’d planned to come home for a bit and recharge, to gather the things that we could use. None of them were supposed to be here.” Killian’s voice was oddly detached. At least, for him.
I nodded. “They’ll be out for a bit, I think, but we don’t have a shit ton of time. We could grab what we need and go if the place is close enough.”
He nodded. “Aye, let’s do that.”
I went back to the helicopter and picked Abe up, sliding him over my shoulders so my hand could still be free to go for Dinah if need be. He grunted and let out a fart as the pressure on his belly increased.
I wrinkled my nose. “Glad to see everything is working.”
We started away from the still-unconscious bodies and the passed-out, bleeding-out woman who was his mother. “What’s her name?” I asked.
“Ellen.”
“Nice meeting you, Ellen!” I gave a half-hearted wave back at her as we walked away. From the corner of my eye, I saw Killian smile.
And that did a funny thing to my heart that I squashed immediately. I focused on the moment at hand. “What about Bobby?”
“Didn’t make it,” Killian said. “They killed him as soon as they took control of the wind around the helicopter.”
Bobby was—had been—Killian’s pilot. I didn’t like him, but if we had to fly something else, he would have been handy. Especially seeing as he had four arms, notwithstanding the one I’d broken at the elbow. Three was still better than two.
I took a good look around and blinked a few times. We were on what appeared to be the back lawn attached to a giant-ass mansion that made the home I grew up in look like a white trash potato shack.
“Shit, you grew up here?”
“Nah, I grew up in Ireland.” Killian shook his head. “This be the home me mam wanted forever.”
“How the hell did she manage this?” I looked at him, saw the look of chagrin cross his face and then got it. “Shit, you got it for her? You paid for this for that woman who just tried to kill us?”
He shrugged. “I was stupid for a long time when it came to me family. Traditional Irish are tightknit, even if they don’t always get along. You fight, you drink, you make up. Then you do it all over again the next day.”
I blinked a few times. “Sounds lovely.”
He snorted. “Yeah, well, I stopped funding her life a few years ago. She killed someone close to me, and I realized I was fooling myself. My family was never going to be what I thought they were. But I can’t seem to cut the ties with them that I should.”
“Remarkably, I do understand that realization. Mine just came a few years ahead of yours.”
He glanced at me. “Yeah, you’d be one of the few who would get it.”
I did not like the warmth that flushed through me with his words. We understood each other; that was not a bad thing in a working partner. That was one good thing about Killian. For being the head of an Irish gang, he was damn honest. I valued that more than I wanted to admit, even to myself. That was more than I could say for my ex-partner, Simon.