My heart pounded and I could smell David’s rising tension. His hands were opening and closing as if they hurt. Maybe they did. I gasped at the sound of safeties going off.

“Rhombus!” I shouted, my word lost in the thunder of weapons discharging.

I staggered as my thoughts tapped the nearest line. It was the university’s, and it was huge. I smelled gunpowder. Straightening, I patted at myself frantically. Nothing hurt but my ears. David’s face was white but there was no pain in his eyes. A shimmer of molecule-thin ever-after shone around us. The four men were straightening from their own crouches. I had gotten the circle up in time and their bullets had ricocheted right back at them.

“What do we do now?” one asked.

“Hell if I know,” the tallest said.

From the floor of the vestibule came Lee’s shout, “Just fix it.”

“You!” came Ivy’s faint demand. “Where’s Rachel!”

Ivy! Frantic, I looked at my circle. It was a trap. “Can you take two of them?” I asked.

“Give me five minutes to Were, and I can take them all,” David all but growled.

The noise of fighting drifted up. It sounded like there were a dozen people down there, and one angry vampire. One of the men looked at the others and ran out. Three left. The pop of a gun downstairs brought me straight. “We don’t have five minutes. Ready?”

He nodded.

Face twisting, I broke my link to the line and the circle fell. “Go!” I exclaimed.

David was a blur beside me. I went for the smallest, knocking his weapon aside with a foot as he tried to backpedal. It was my training against his slower magic, and my training won. His gun skittered across the floor, and he dove for it. Idiot. Following him down, I elbowed his kidney. He gasped and turned to face me, far short of the gun. God, he looked young.

Teeth gritted, I picked up his head and slammed it into the ground. His eyes closed and his body went slack. Yeah, it was crude, but I was in kind of a hurry.

The crack of a weapon discharging pulled me around. “I’m fine!” David barked, popping up with a Were’s quickness from a crouch and jabbing a small, powerful fist at the last witch standing. Eyes rolling to the back of his head, the witch dropped the gun from slack fingers and toppled to fall on the first man David had downed. Damn, he was fast!

My heart pounded and my ears rang. We had brought them down with only one shot fired. “You got two,” I said, exhilarated at the joined effort. “Thanks!”

Breathing hard, David wiped his lip and swooped to get his briefcase. “I need my paper.”

We stepped over the downed witches. David went out before me. He stopped, eyes narrowing at the man on the balcony taking aim at Ivy. Grunting, he swung his briefcase. It smacked into the witch’s head. Staggering, the man turned. I spun on one foot, slamming my foot into his solar plexus. His arms pinwheeled as he fell back into the railing.