“I’m just gonna be the one who says it,” Nic whispered from behind his face mask as they crouched at the edge of the property line. “This is crazy.”

Shaun wasn’t going to disagree with the man, though he did motion for him to keep quiet. He knew that Nic didn’t mean that the plan was crazy, because just about any plan during a hunt could be considered crazy. It was the state of the plantation-style house that he was talking about. Whatever Ana was expecting, she was apparently the type to plan for any potential avenue of attack.

Situated smack in the middle of a swamp, the house was already protected on all sides by wildlife. Shaun was thankful that none of them had been unlucky enough to meet one of the larger and more aggressive animals. The worst they had to deal with were a few venomous snakes. It had been Nic who had spotted the one that drifted a little too close to Shaun. Shaun really hated snakes, and anything cold-blooded, so it was on that fact alone that he was willing to forgive Nic for the fact that he couldn’t whisper to save his life.

Not that it mattered, but the house looked loaded up to the gills with technology. It wasn’t that there were dishes and devices sitting out in the open; it was all the power lines and cables running across the outside. The source of power came from a nearby building that looked like a small shed. They could hear the faint humming of a generator, but Shaun was betting it was a lot louder than it sounded. There was wiring all over the place and he knew it took a lot of power to keep up with that sort of demand.

“Which one of ya is gonna be the one to kill her generator?” Shaun asked, adjusting his own mask as he waited impatiently.

“You know she most likely has a secondary system in case the first fails, right?” Lucas asked, crouching beside the roots of a large tree.

“And the first one’s gonna be rigged,” Nic threw in.

“Then you should be the one to do it,” Shaun said simply.

“Me? Why me?”

Shaun eyed Nic. “Because you’re the one who blew up my truck. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that. Just means I’m gonna wait till this is over to kick your ass.”

Nic’s eyes went wide. “Hey! I thought you guys were trying to kill me, remember? Strike first and all that?”

Lucas chuckled. “He said he’s going to kick your ass, not kill you for it. That’s a pretty good upgrade from what he was promising to do when he came back after almost going down with the truck.”

Nic huffed, grumbling as he patted himself over. Apparently satisfied that he had everything, he turned to Lucas. “You got a little boom?”

“A little…boom?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah, a small bomb. Don’t need anything big because I know just the right spot to bring something down, but still.”

“I got ya,” Shaun told him, reaching into his “special” bag and pulling out the smaller explosives he had. They were mainly used for taking out a thick lock or the hinges off a stubborn door that he didn’t want to just kick down.

“Perfect,” Nic hissed in appreciation as he turned them over in the faint light coming from the moon above. It wasn’t going to give them a whole lot of cover but it would, at least, give them the ability to see. They didn’t have night vision goggles, and Shaun was betting the crazy bitch hiding inside had infrared on her cameras and who the hell knew what else.

“Meet us at the front door when you’re done,” Shaun told him before he could dash off.

“I’ll meet you inside. If she’s got secondary systems linked up, they might seal the doors up before I have time to meet you guys. Just bust in when you see the power go down, and be quick about it.”

Then he was gone, looking as if he had melted back into the foliage behind them. Shaun stared at the spot where Nic had been standing only minutes before, more than a little impressed. That bit of stealth alone showed just how talented Nic was, and how much skill he had. It also explained how the normally playful and lighthearted man managed to survive as long as he had, while still being a deadly hunter. With skill like that, it was a wonder he hadn’t managed to kill Lucas and Shaun before they had this whole thing figured out.

“You really think she’s got backups?” Shaun asked as he motioned at Lucas to get ready to move.

“Based on how paranoid she’s likely to be about contacting me or transferring information, I would say yes. I’m not willing to put anything past her, or underestimate her paranoia.”

Shaun nodded, not wanting to argue the point. He was more than willing to try simply barreling in through the front door, guns blazing, whereas Lucas always preferred a more careful approach. Then again, Lucas’ planning might very well be the reason Shaun was still alive. It wasn’t that Shaun wasn’t tough or couldn’t handle himself, and he knew the importance of tactics, but he also knew that could be impulsive at the worst possible moments.

He also knew it was better to restrain his desire to blast the door down and go charging for the nearest thing that looked like a woman. If Lucas was right and Ana was as prepared and paranoid as they thought, they could very well be walking into a death trap. Battles could be won by brawn and good reaction skills, but a siege like this required different tactics. Right up until the fighting, Shaun knew he was mainly there as backup. Nic and Lucas were better equipped for the whole sneaking around and sabotage thing.

They moved carefully, eyes ever watchful for anything that might resemble a camera or a sensor. They were taking a risk moving up to the door this early before the power had been cut, but just like choosing the front door had been Lucas’ decision, so was approaching it before the power was cut. Both men were convinced that she would have a secondary power source, and that it would trigger a lockdown when the main power was disconnected forcibly. Shaun hoped that whatever it was, it wasn’t quick enough to lock Nic out, or they would be down one man. The masks had been Nic’s last minute addition to the plan, his reasoning being that them going incognito might give them an advantage. Lucas hadn’t argued with the logic, and that left Shaun to shrug and go along with it.

“Quit looking like you’re about to jump through a window, shotgun in hand,” Lucas whispered faintly to him as they crept along the creaky front porch.

“I ain’t thinkin’ that,” Shaun retorted, trying to keep his voice both quiet and indignant. “Just don’t like bein’ both quiet and then goin’ through the front door.”

“Least expected path to take,” Lucas responded simply, just like he had done before. That was the approach that Shaun would expect, but he wasn’t a shut-in recluse with enough technology to make NASA envious either. The thought made Shaun nervous, but it amused Nic and excited Lucas. His partner wouldn’t admit it, but he loved the hunts that required him to think more outside of the box. This one was probably the one that would require his wits more than anything, and even if it did involve bringing down a former friend, Shaun could still see the excitement in his eyes.

They stood in the shadows on the porch and Shaun tried to keep from moving too much. He might not be the stealthiest of people, but he at least knew the virtue of not moving. It was likely that they had already been spotted by a camera or a motion sensor. No alarm had gone off, and nothing had changed, but that didn’t mean Ana wasn’t warned of their arrival. They were walking into a trap, or somewhere that would quickly become a trap, but it was the only option they had.

There was a faint and harsh noise from behind them, over by the shed. The lights in the house flickered, as the sound of machinery stuttering on the other side of the door broke the silence. Then everything went dark, leaving Shaun and Lucas with only the moonlight streaming down. That was their cue, and Shaun moved without thinking twice. Lucas stepped back just as Shaun rammed his body forward, charging shoulder first into the door. It gave way with an almighty crack of splintering wood, almost sending him sprawling into the open entryway.

Before he had time to gain his feet, the lights sprang back to life. Lucas swore and rushed through the doorway behind him with a wild look in his eyes. As soon as the lights came back on, there was a whirring of machinery around them. Shaun turned in time to watch metal shutters draw across the door behind them, effectively sealing it. There was the sound of crunching wood as pieces of the door were caught in the moving metal. The windows had been shuttered from the outside, but he could see there were already thick metal bars set into the frames.

“Hope he gets through,” Shaun muttered, not wanting to speak too loudly as he gazed around the entryway. The outside of the house had looked worn, even with the signs of modern technology strewn about it. The inside was even less impressive, as the walls and various pieces of old furniture looked tired and old. Dust had settled in a thick layer on most surfaces, from the low tables to the higher cabinets that lined one wall. The bannister of the stairs directly in front of them was rotted and speckled with mold. In fact, the whole room smelled of mold, dirt, and neglect.

“Martha Stewart, eat your heart out,” Lucas said softly beside him, eyes sweeping the room swiftly yet with precision.

“Alright, how do we find her?” Shaun asked.

“If she hasn’t figured out who we are, give me some time and I might be able to feel her out.”

Shaun opened his mouth to tell Lucas to be quick about it when he saw the faintest movement on one of the cabinets against the opposite wall. He barely heard the click as he grabbed Lucas by the back of the neck and slammed him down to the ground with him. There was a hissing sound just above his head as he slammed into the dirty floor, followed by a series of thuds in the wall behind them. As he and Lucas moved slowly to pick themselves up, he heard another soft click from above them. Both he and Lucas rolled away from one another without a sound, hearing the hissing and then thuds once more, this time on the floor where they had been lying.

Lucas was now against the opposite wall to where Shaun had rolled into a readied crouch. The wall to Shaun’s right and the floor in front of them were peppered with thin stilettos, sticking up from the wood where they had embedded themselves. Shaun’s gaze moved up to the ceiling and then to the cabinets with a cautious stare. There was nothing in either to show that they had triggered the trap, and it was the faint movement of a compartment in one of the cabinets that had been Shaun’s only warning.

They stood slowly, keeping their ears trained for any other noises. Shaun walked cautiously to the stairwell, pointing at it to see what Lucas thought about trying the second floor. Lucas shook his head slowly, frowning at the stairs. Shaun followed his gaze up the set of old stairs, thinking they looked like any flight of stairs: albeit, old and poorly cared for. Then again, the cabinets and ceiling hadn’t looked that suspicious, and they had almost killed them.

Lucas’ eyes glazed over with a distant gaze that traveled up to the ceiling. Shaun eyed him carefully, not daring to move or make a sound as he watched Lucas turn slowly. Shaun knew that with the moment’s reprieve, he was trying to sense around the building for Ana. His eyes slid along the walls, turning himself around slowly, trusting that Shaun would alert him to any danger he might miss while he was lost in his other sense. After a moment, he shook his head and shrugged at Shaun before pointing down.

“Basement?” Shaun asked quietly, stepping closer to Lucas.

“Makes the most sense.”

“Ya mean ya don’t know?”

“If she’s here, she’s able to slip my senses. I can’t catch the slightest whiff of anything, not even a ghost, and you would think a place like this would have at least one somewhere, but nothing,” Lucas said, looking apologetic as he glanced between the two large doorways leading out of the entryway.

Thinking that sounded almost similar to what Lucas had described in the hotel room, Shaun scratched his chin in thought. “Ya think this place can even have a basement? Kinda surrounded by a swamp.”

“If there’s a way for her to have one, that’s where she’ll be.”

“How do you know?”

“Because no one would think to look for a basement when this place is surrounded by water, and I mean, werefox, foxes are den animals. I’m making leaps of logic based off what little we know here, Shaun.”

Shaun glanced at the nearest doorway that seemed to lead into what looked like a sitting room. “I just don’t wanna walk through a buncha traps for a hunch.”

“As if you haven’t had worse ideas.”

True, but those were his own ideas, and ones he had already committed to. He personally wouldn’t want to be locked in an underground area if there were people after him. Unless she had some sort of escape route setup, she would effectively be trapping herself if they found her. Shaun might enjoy a good fight, but he knew the value of having an open escape route, too. Retreating to fight another day had saved his ass more than once. Come to think of it, he really hoped she hadn’t set up an escape route and that if they did find her somewhere down below, she would be trapped. The woman was smart, but he hoped she had at least one stupid moment every now and then.

Rolling his eyes at Shaun, Lucas pushed past him, moving toward the open doorway into the sitting room. His partner slowed as he reached the threshold, stepping slowly into the room with an air of expectancy. There was no click followed by a deadly hiss, and Lucas continued moving into the room. Shaun followed behind, keeping his eyes on wherever Lucas’ eyes weren’t.

“Is it only the entranceway?” Shaun asked, hopeful.

“Doubt it.”

Lucas stepped forward as he spoke, freezing as Shaun heard the faintest sound of something snapping, “Down!”

Shaun shoved himself back as Lucas launched himself into the next room, aiming to roll behind the safety of the wall. There was a warm blast of air that scraped hot lines across Shaun’s face as he landed on his back in the entryway once more. Twisting around, he kept himself rolling awkwardly until he was behind the safety of the wall beside the doorway. The wall of the stairs that faced the doorway was peppered with new, smoking holes and Shaun could hear Lucas stifling a cough somewhere in the other room.

“Ya hit?” Shaun asked, wincing as he touched his sore face, drawing his fingers away with streaks of blood on them.

“No, just my pride- oh shit!”

There was a dull thud of something hitting what Shaun thought was the floor but it was the puff of air and dozens of clunks that brought him up straight. “Lucas? Lucas!”

“Fucking bitch,” drifted through the doorway, Lucas’ normal, even voice laced with a harsh bitterness.

Pushing himself away from the wall, he leaned forward to peer through the sitting room, toward the other doorway Lucas had dived through. Whatever had gone off in the sitting room hadn’t done much but pepper the walls with the same holes it had put in the stairwell. The room that Lucas was in however, seemed to have been decorated with strange spotted, dark marks, scattered about randomly. The place he had last seen Lucas moving toward was hidden by what looked like an end table, flipped over to face the rest of the room.

He gripped his side as he walked toward the room, only now realizing that there was a searing pain there as well, in addition to the soreness of his face. Whatever had been in the explosive had caught him along his ribs as well. None of his injuries felt deadly, but they certainly stung like hell. How he managed to avoid the worst of what looked like a homemade fragmentation bomb was beyond him, but he chalked it up to his ever-abundant source of good luck.

The table shifted forward with a kick from Lucas, and Shaun could see a few holes in the soft wood. It was then that Shaun could see that the spots weren’t spots at all, but nails. As he grew closer, he could see the room better: a dining room from the looks of it, covered in several nails sticking out of various surfaces. A centerpiece, what it had been before the explosion Shaun didn’t know, sat shattered in the middle of the table, smoke still rising from it.

“Daggers, a bomb, then a nail trap,” Lucas snarled as he carefully pushed to his feet. “She had a good time setting this place up.”

“She woulda been better living in a castle. Needs a moat.”

Lucas glared at him, “What do you think the swamp was?”

“Good point. Did it get ya?”

Lucas motioned to his shoulder and arm, where a couple of nails had blasted through the wooden table to dig into his skin. They weren’t in very deep, but Shaun could see his eyes scrunch up in a wince as he pulled the nails out. Blood seeped from the wounds to stain his shirt as Lucas tossed the nails away in disgust.

“Ya think all these traps are a good sign that we’re close?” Shaun asked, knowing that asking straight out if Lucas was okay in his current mood would earn him daggers stared at him instead of thrown at him.

“No, she’s too smart for that. Whole place is probably rigged with plenty of her toys.”

“Well, let’s find out what her next surprise is then.”

The next doorway was closed off by a swinging door that Shaun guessed led to the kitchen. The few traps they had already run into made them wary, as they crossed the dining room. When they reached the other side, both men stood on either side of the door as Shaun gave it a hard shove. It swung open wide, swinging back toward the dining room and continuing to swing until the momentum began to die down. There were no clicks, no explosions, nothing in the slightest as they waited patiently on what they hoped was the safe side of the door.

Shaun looked at Lucas, who shrugged without any real feeling behind it. Bracing himself, Shaun pushed through the door and stepped into what he had correctly guessed was the kitchen. He paused in the opening, holding the door ajar as he gazed around with a mixture of surprise and disgust. The tile floor was almost completely covered in a thin layer of water. He couldn’t tell where the source of the leak was, but it had spread out in a large puddle that was rotting away at the wooden cabinets. What wasn’t rotting away was covered in mold and mildew, various colors of the fungus creating a canvas of hues smeared all over the wood. Food had been left to rot in various places along the counters, giving the room a strong smell of dank decay.

“Apparently, she ain’t much for tidiness,” he mused, stepping forward with a faint splash, freezing when he heard another click.

Before he could think of where to dive to next, the muscles of his body seized up. The closest he could compare it to through the fog that was wrapping around his mind, was that it felt like he was experiencing a full body cramp. His fingers clenched into painful fists, his toes curling inside his boots, and his body jerking and twitching at random intervals. The pain screamed through him, but all he could manage was a confused groan.

Then it was over and he was staring up at the ceiling, a ceiling with nails scattered throughout it. The image swam before his eyes, and he could still feel the ache throughout his body, parts of him still twitching without his consent. Lucas stood over him, eyes wide and a terrified look on his face as he bent down to check Shaun over. The large man could only groan, wincing at the gentle touch Lucas laid on him as he tried to force his mind to make sense of the world once more.

“Happened?” he croaked, forgetting part of the question as he spoke.

“Rigged the floor with electricity,” Lucas explained slowly, still eyeing Shaun like he might burst into flames on the spot.

“Boots are rubber on the bottom,” Shaun protested, feeling the whirlwind of his mind easing as he tried to get his body to cooperate.

“Must have had a hole in them.”

Shaun sat up slowly, wincing at the ache that echoed through him. “How’d you get me out without getting a jolt?”

Lucas held up the leg of a nearby shattered chair. “Hooked it around your neck and yanked.”

That explained why his throat felt even more tender than the rest of him. “Thanks for that.”

“Take it slow,” Lucas cautioned, reaching out halfway to him as Shaun made to stand up.

“Like hell, dunno what else she’s got layin’ in wait for us, and I ain’t about to get caught by one of her traps while sittin’ on my ass. That’s probably where she’s at, ain’t it?”

Lucas stared at the door leading into the kitchen. “Probably not.”

“It’s the only room so far that she’s got rigged so that the trap don’t just happen and then stop.”

Lucas shook his head. “It’s too obvious.”

Shaun leaned against the debris littered and scarred dining room table, feeling his frustration returning. Each room they had gone through had a more deadly trap in it, with the last one coming the closest to successfully killing one of them. If it hadn’t been for Lucas’ quick thinking, Shaun might have been fried in his clothes. It made sense to him that this would be exactly where her little hidey hole would be, if she were to have one. Why would someone go out of their way to set up all these traps, but not use the worst of them to protect where they were? Hell, the easiest to avoid trap had been…

“In the entryway,” he continued aloud, turning to stare at Lucas to see if he knew where he was going with it.

Lucas frowned at him, his brow lifting slowly as the idea sank in. “Exactly where we wouldn’t think to look. Holy shit.”

Shaun had to laugh at the unusually vulgar display from Lucas’ mouth, but he was excited that he had finally come up with an idea that might work during this hunt of theirs. Then again, sudden insights into a situation in the heat of the moment were his specialty.

They hurried back to the entryway, only pausing at the entrance to the sitting room to make sure something else wasn’t waiting for them. If there were more traps, they either weren’t set, or they hadn’t hit the right trigger. Shaun would bet that the initial traps were for anyone who went strolling right through the rooms, or maybe even tried to get through the windows before the lockdown. There were probably other traps setup for people who got too nosy.

Lucas paused as he entered the room, his movements becoming slow and careful. As he turned about, Shaun watched as the fingers of his hands danced in the air beside him. There was a look of distant strain on his face as he slowly made his way around the entrance hall. Shaun watched with a sense of trepidation, hoping that Lucas didn’t accidentally trip anything else while he did his thing. Lucas was at his most vulnerable when he dove deep into his power, which he looked like he was doing right now. It was Shaun’s responsibility to keep an eye on both Lucas and everything around them right now.

His partner paused at the side of the stairs that wasn’t marked with holes from the bomb in the sitting room. “Here.”

Shaun eyed the general area where Lucas motioned to. “You sure?”

“My soon-to-be headache tells me yes,” Lucas responded wryly.

Keeping his concern to himself about what kind of strain Lucas’ powers put him through, Shaun squatted down to help search the area. He couldn’t tell if there was any sort of door hidden there, but he wasn’t going to start doubting Lucas now. It didn’t stop his curiosity as to what exactly it was that made Lucas so sure, when he hadn’t even known where to look for her before. Shaun knew Lucas could tap into deeper reserves of strength to search for more information if he really forced it. He also knew that if that’s what Lucas had done, they wouldn’t have long until his little headache became a screaming migraine that compromised him.

“I’m about ready to just find an axe and take it to this thing,” Shaun growled after several minutes of looking for a crack, a breeze, anything.

Lucas said nothing, which didn’t help Shaun’s frustration. Rather than try to direct his irritation onto his partner, who already looked like he was starting to feel the strain of his attempt to search for her, he sat on the floor and stared. His eyes drifted upward, noticing a small etching behind the post of the bannister, at the base near the bottom stair. Squinting, he leaned forward, tracing a finger over the symbol before realizing that it almost looked like a fox.

“Hold on a sec,” he murmured, pressing his finger forward until he heard a faint click.

They both bolted upright at the sound, but relaxed and smiled at each other when they saw a panel appear exactly where they had been looking. Until it had moved, it had blended seamlessly with the rest of the paneling beside the stairs. It opened up into a small staircase. They would have to crouch to enter the stairway, but it opened up so that even Shaun could stand up to his full height as they descended.

“Me first,” Shaun told Lucas, pulling his gun free from the holster at his side. How the damn thing hadn’t gone off when he had been shocked, he didn’t know. Didn’t change that he was thankful for still having ammunition if he needed it.

They entered the doorway, taking their time to walk down the stairs at a measured pace. The stairs and walls were metal, and well-crafted. The decay and rot of the rest of the house hadn’t touched this area, everything holding together and clean. There were lights strung along the sloping ceiling, making sure their path was well-lit and easy to navigate. Shaun could see everything before him, but he didn’t trust the feeling of safety that came from that, not after their short tour of her funhouse.

There was no door in the opening at the bottom of the stairs. Lucas made a soft noise of disbelief behind him, and Shaun heard the familiar singing sound of one of Lucas’ daggers being drawn. His partner wasn’t liking how easy it looked any more than Shaun was. He cautiously stepped into the open room, trying to take in every corner at once as they stepped forward.

Just like the stairs had been a clean contrast to the mess of the rest of the house, this room was in contrast to its ancient state. The outside of the house might have had a few obvious cables, and whatever had been in the shed, but the modern technology was still mixed in among the signs of aging architecture. This room however was filled to the brim with expensive looking, modern equipment. There were more screens at the far end of the room, apparently connected to several systems, than he thought he had ever seen in an electronics store. There were other machines lining the room that he couldn’t begin to guess the function of.

“Where the hell,” he began in a warning growl, realizing that he wasn’t seeing anyone in the room but them.

A shout came from behind him just in time for something hard to slam into the back of his head. Staggering, he tried to turn toward where the blow had come from, only for another flare of pain to light up the side of his head. The room swam, his knees buckling beneath him as darkness funneled in around his vision.

He barely made out the form of a woman above him, holding a long object and with a smirk on her face. “Welcome to my home boys.”