Free Shadowed Ground by Vicki Keire

kitchen, seemingly unfazed by the fire or the now panicking crowd. They walked with a peculiar, jerky kind of movement and smiled when they saw him.
    His blood ran cold, because he recognized them, and they him. He’d seen them with Mr. Ravenwood at the law offices.
    “I know them,” he hissed softly at Miranda Burke. She hastily gathered the documents and tucked them securely into her messenger bag. “I saw them around the firm, right before they fired me for asking nosy questions.”
    “Is that so, Mr. Tuttle?” the bodyguard asked. He was already standing, his hand underneath his jacket, fingering something. Heironymous got the feeling it had to be some kind of weapon. “Then you would be really stupid not to come with us. And I get the distinct impression you are not a stupid man.”
    Heironymous was not, in fact, a stupid man. So he didn’t know quite what to think when the two strange men headed straight for him in the sea of panicking drinkers and diners. They grinned at him, and he shuddered. He’d seen echoes of that horrible, jack o’ lantern type grin in the law office, but here it was so personal. He felt marked. “I think,” he started to say, but Miranda Burke stumbled away from the death grip her protector had on her arm to lean into him, her huge brown eyes pleading. Cass swore the second she let go. Out came a gun.
    Heironymous could only stare at the pleading Miranda Burke. “You must come with us. We need you. But more importantly, if you do not, Mr. Tuttle, those men will kill you, just as surely as they did my husband and sister-in-law. As they probably killed or co-opted your boyfriend.”
    Heiro noticed she had said “creatures,” and not “men.”
    Then all hell broke loose.
    Cass flashed his gun. The advancing men held out their palms, which danced with a low-burning greenish flame. Cass shoved Miranda Burke so hard she crashed right into his lap, sending the both of them sprawling backwards to the floor. The table followed next, landing perpendicular to the floor just inches from his head. Miranda straddled him, the both of them sheltered by the table as gunfire and flames erupted across the room.
    “We have to get out,” she whispered, terrified eyes wide. “Do you know a back entrance?”
    Of course he did. He used to work at this bar while he was in law school. He nodded and choked out, through the smoke-filled, scream-laced air, “Follow me.”
    “Cass,” she yelled, not even looking behind her to see if he was following. “We’re moving. Now.”
    Heironymous grabbed her hand and ran for the bar, staying low. The gunfire followed; he could only assume the bodyguard was covering their escape. He pulled them, walking low, to the exit to the alley behind the bar and pushed through the heavy steel delivery door. Once outside, he stayed low, Miranda Burke close beside him. “Now what?” he demanded, utterly at a loss as to what to do.
    Fired. Broken up with. Drunk. And now, confronted with the mother of the missing girl, a deadly bodyguard, gunfire and flames. Things were just… absurd, he decided.
    “Run!” Cass yelled, slamming through the door seconds behind them. He pulled Miranda up in front of him and grabbed her hand, pulling her along as he ran. “I suggest you follow,” the man yelled without looking back. Heironymous could hear screams through the restaurant, could hear the distant wail of sirens and see flames rising above the building. He blinked rapidly, unsure if the smoke was making him see things. No fire spread that fast.
    “Uh, coming,” he shouted, following in a stumbling run.
    Heironymous Tuttle, Esquire, had just made a life-altering decision. He’d decided to go into private practice, and take on as his first clients the people who seemed best able to save his ass.

Chapter Nine: Strategize
    “I don’t understand why we can’t just steal another one,” Chloe complained in a low hiss, her arms a twined cage across her chest as she looked at