Chapter Twenty-Six
Taber had promised Roni she would be safe. He had told her to lock the door. Not to leave the room. No one would get to her. The acrid taste of failure coated his mouth. He had been wrong.
He entered the back of the house at a low crouch, his rifle held ready as he swept through the kitchen then stood aside so the half-dozen men who followed him could enter. His blood pumped with the demand that he rush upstairs, that he blow the bastards to hell and back, but he knew the risk to Roni would only be greater.
Kane’s men were moving on the balconies to trap the bastards. Now Taber and his men would move up the stairs to catch them on this end. Rage burned low in his gut, making it a fight to maintain control and proceed, as he knew he had to.
“We have a breech.” Dawn’s voice was low, steady and calm, but Taber could hear the horror that backed each word. “We’re compromised, Taber.”
Each man had received the same transmission. Silent as the night, as deadly as the animals whose DNA they shared, the men surged up the stairs. They caught the first four outside Callan’s room as they were opening the door. The assassins never knew what hit them.
Taber wrapped his arm around the neck of one and twisted with a sharp, deadly move that resulted in a muted, satisfying crunch. The others fell the same way, only to be pushed aside as Taber slowly opened the door.
He went in at a crouch, throttling back his roar of triumph as they met the other group of would-be assassins in the middle of the room. Their eyes widened in surprise at the force they met as they turned to make their escape. At the same time, Kane’s men stepped through the balcony entrance.
“Oh look, Callan, they want to play,” Taber drawled as one raised his weapon. It was shot out of his hands before he could pull the trigger.
“Keep the women in there, Sherra.” Callan’s voice was calm, deadly, as he stepped farther into the room and smiled the cold smile of death Taber had rarely seen on his face. “Hello, gentlemen. If you had knocked, we could have conversed civilly,” he stated a bit too mildly. “Your entrance into my home has left much to be desired.”
Taber lowered his weapon as Callan handed his off to him. “Tell me, Taber, what should we do with such rude guests? Make nice, or have a late-night snack?”
Taber allowed the snarl curling his lips to rumble through his chest. There was no mistaking the wary looks the assassins were now giving them.
“I missed dinner,” Taber said clearly. “How about a snack?”
The four men jumped in startled surprise as twelve fully grown Feline Breed males growled in hungry menace.
“Wait.” One of them spoke nervously, holding his hands out, his gun held in a clearly non-threatening manner as he laid it on the floor. “No harm, no foul . . . ”
“No harm, no foul?” Callan eyed the gun on the floor before raising his head to stare at the man with brooding fury. “Wrong. You broke into my home, attempted to harm my woman, and you think you’re just going to walk out of here?”
“We’re just doing our job.” One shook his head desperately. “Come on, Lyons, you’ve always let us go before.”
Taber recognized the voice. One of the mercenaries who had been sent home in defeat years before, smarting from the lazy, amused chase Callan had given him.
“The rules changed, Brighton,” Callan snapped. “You don’t just walk away anymore.”
“Callan, we question them first.” Kane moved into the room, watching the Breeds warily. “You know the score.”
“I know they’re dead.” It was as though the very air itself stilled with that announcement.
There was no mercy in Callan’s voice, no weakness. “We’ll send them back to their owners in pieces. Isn’t that how they sent back our scout last month?”
Taber’s jaw tightened at the memory of it.
The four assassins shifted nervously within the room.
“Come on,” Callan dared them. “Show me what you’re made of. Personally, I smell the stink of a coward.”
“Callan . . . ” Taber warned him carefully. “Step back, man. This is no time for mistakes.”
The mistake being an accidental death. “Think of Merinus and the babe. She would have to go on without you.”
“Callan.” Her voice was faint, frightened.
“Kane, get this shit out of here. Lock them up with the other bastard you’re holding until the garbage runs. We’ll send them out then. Maybe in pieces.”
It was a threat that pushed the intruders into action. A flare of brilliant light pierced the darkness, blinding them as the assassins made their bid for freedom. Weapons were dropped as the Breeds used senses well-honed from years in captivity. They couldn’t see, but they could smell, hear and taste the evil flowing around them.
Taber’s knife cleared its sheath at his side as he reached the first man. The weapon sliced through flesh, severing the jugular vein. Blood sprayed around him as he dropped his enemy to the floor and turned for another. The brilliancy of the light dissipated and he came face to face with Roni’s horror-filled expression.
Rage and grief filled him because he knew what he looked like. He knew, because he had seen Callan in a similar rage. His canines were bared, blood covering the lower part of his face, his chest. Another man’s blood. The animal gloried in the scent of it; the feel of his enemy’s defeat, the knowledge that this time,
Taber had been victorious. But the man he was screamed out in rage against the fates, the cruelties, and the single instant that his mate had seen the carnage and the animal within.
The agonized roar that echoed through the house was one of rage, pain and a protest against the realities of a life never asked for, never imagined. A protest against the loss of innocence he glimpsed in Roni’s eyes.