CHAPTER 22
With a low-throated scream, a horned owl swooped off the bough of an immense pine in front of Kaya and her comrades as they crept into place in the forest that surrounded Lars Scrully’s enormous lakefront estate.
The warriors had split into three teams once they left the city. With Nikolai grounded alongside Lucan back at the command center, Mira and Sterling Chase were in charge of the unit tasked with surveillance as the other two teams got into place. Kaya, Mira, and Chase watched the northern border of the estate. Keeping an eye on the southern perimeter were Torin and Tavia, along with Lucan and Gabrielle’s son, Darion. Although Tavia had limited combat experience, it was the Breed female’s immunity to ultraviolet light that persuaded the Order’s commanders to permit her along on the mission.
For the same reason--along with the added bonus of her ability to shadow bend like Aric and her father--Carys Chase had been assigned to the second team of six, which was moving into position at various points around the property, running reconnaissance and waiting for the command to sweep onto the grounds and take out any guards who tried to block the assault. Led by Dante and Rio, the team also had the experience of Rafe and Kellan, both proven warriors. And while Carys’s mate Rune was new to the Order, he had earned his fighting skills in illegal cage matches back in Boston before he met her.
Rounding out the mission’s operatives was the third team, the vanguard consisting of Aric, Balthazar and Webb. None of the units were cleared to move in until Aric and his partners gave the all-clear.
“Shouldn’t we have heard from them by now?” Kaya could hardly keep the edge of worry from her quiet whisper to Mira.
Her friend nodded. “They should be approaching from the lake any minute now.”
As if on cue, the team’s earpieces crackled with an incoming transmission from elsewhere in the field. But instead of Aric’s deep voice announcing that he and Bal and Webb had emerged from the water as planned, it was Darion Thorne’s low growl that came over the communication link.
“Alpha. Bravo. We’ve got a problem down at the southern gate.”
Mira’s grave stare flicked to Kaya and Commander Chase. “What kind of problem?”
“Two security guards with acute lead poisoning. They’ve both been shot execution-style.”
“Shit.” Mira touched her ear and spoke with clipped urgency. “Torin, can you get close enough to pick up a reading for us?”
“On it, captain.” Silence fell for a handful of seconds that felt like days to Kaya. Then the warrior with the ability to psychically detect shifts in the energy forces of a place came back on the line. “I’m sensing a lot of fear and panic radiating from within the residence. There’s more death inside there too.”
Kaya’s stomach clenched. “Something’s not right.”
“No, it’s not,” Chase replied. “We’re too late. Opus’s assassins have already been here.”
The sudden staccato report of gunfire ripped through the quiet of the surrounding night. Mira’s face went grim. “Holy hell. They’re still here.”
As she said it, a bolt of lightning lit up the inky black sky near the lake. Then another.
Kaya looked toward the large body of water, where Aric, Webb, and Bal were currently swimming in as an amphibious team to breach the estate’s weakest perimeter. More light exploded in that vicinity. The bright illuminations reflected on the lake’s surface like fireworks.
Cold dread swept through Kaya’s veins. “It’s UV. Oh, my God. They’re shooting at them with ultraviolet!”
“Abort,” Mira called over the comm link. “All units abort right now!”
A reply came back at nearly the same time. “Bal’s down.” Webb’s usually calm voice had a catch to it now, and an edge of fear that Kaya had never heard in the arrogant male before. “Ah, Christ. They just ashed Bal. Fuck!”
Kaya’s hand flew to her mouth. A jagged moan leaked past anyway, anguish she couldn’t hold in. No. Not him. Not Balthazar.
Mira’s face held the same bleak disbelief, but the captain kept her composure. “Where are you, Webb?”
“Near the dock. Motherfuckers have me pinned down with UV fire.”
In the few seconds it took to receive that awful news, Tavia, Torin, and Darion arrived from their lookout points to rejoin Mira, Kaya, and Chase.
“We’re pulling out,” Mira told them. “If Opus has already been here, I doubt Scrully will be any use to us now. And I’m not going to lose anyone else over that asshole.”
“Aric’s already inside,” Webb reported. “As soon as we came out of the water and ditched our gear, we started taking heavy gunfire and UV. Before I knew it, Bal was down. Then Aric turned into shadow and I lost sight of him.”
“Oh, God,” Kaya murmured, every instinct she had twitching with the need to go after him. Even though Aric was more than capable of taking on a small army of human assailants purely by virtue of his Breed genetics, the thought of him charging into danger alone was too much to bear. Both the warrior in Kaya and the woman wanted nothing else but to be alongside her partner. “I’m going in too.”
“So am I,” Tavia and Carys announced at the same time. The pair of daywalking Breed females were united in their fury and their determination.
“You’re not going in there without me,” Chase demanded, his stance as unyielding as his hard gaze. “Neither one of you leaves my sight.”
Tavia’s eyes crackled with amber fire. “We’re going. And you’re staying.” The tips of her fangs glinted in the low light of the fading UV rays. “Don’t you dare try to override me on this. There’s no room for argument here, my love.”
The commander’s jaw went taut, but the only protest he uttered was a low growl as Tavia briefly touched his rigid cheek.
“All right, that’s settled,” Mira said. Then she spoke to the other Breed warriors who’d gone silent on the comm link. “The rest of you, stand down too. We’re going in.”
Carys’s Breed gaze glittered with the same fierce determination as her mother’s. “I’ll go provide cover for Webb.”
“Be careful,” Tavia said. Then she glanced at Mira and Kaya. “I’ll head for the house. Aric knows what he’s doing, but he may need some help. I’ll look for Scrully while I’m inside.”
At the captain’s nod, both daywalkers vanished into the woods.
“Let’s go,” Mira said.
Heart racing, Kaya fell in beside her friend and comrade. They made much slower progress than Tavia, who was likely already at the mansion and finding her way inside. Kaya and Mira raced through the thick forest that hemmed in the expansive limestone brick house and its sprawling footprint.
Up ahead, the rapid chatter of automatic gunfire. More explosions of UV light flashed in and around the house from attackers unaware that those Breed-killing weapons were no good against the daywalkers who had infiltrated the place. Men’s voices shouted orders near the stronghold; here and there, a human scream cut short as either Aric or his mother took them out.
With their own weapons in hand, Kaya and Mira reached the edge of the woods and hunkered down, peering out at the frenzy of activity near the mansion. They unleashed a hail of bullets on four guards jogging around from the back of the house, dropping them one by one. Kaya’s training kept her focus laser-sharp, her remorse for killing on a back burner.
She only wished she could say her soldier’s training was enough to stanch her concern for Aric. But as she and Mira rushed out of the trees and down to the lakefront mansion, all she could think about was the man she loved.
No sense in denying that fact, especially to herself.
She was in love with Aric Chase. The thought of losing him--the mere idea that he could meet with harm at the hands of their enemies tonight--put a hollow ache in the center of her breast.
“Around to the back,” Mira said. “The house is nothing but glass looking out over the water. All the easier to blast our way in from that side.”
Kaya nodded, reloading with a fresh magazine. “Let’s do it.”
She and Mira shot out the wall of soaring glass, standing back as the sharp, heavy shards rained down on the bricked terrace where they stood. The breach brought three men running into the large great room inside. Before they could open fire, Kaya and Mira mowed them down then stepped around the corpses to enter the residence.
Just as they did, bullets sprayed at them from the open loft area above. Mira squeezed off a volley of shots as she took cover behind an imposing carved wood bar that dominated one whole side of the room. Meanwhile Kaya dove out to the adjacent hall just as another armed man thundered her way. Rolling into a crouch, she squeezed the trigger of her semiautomatic pistol and the big human went down like a rock.
“Aric,” she whispered urgently into her comm’s mic. “I’m in. Where are you?”
His sharp, angry curse was a relief all by itself. “Kaya? Damn it, stay put.”
A deafening cacophony of gun blasts ripped over the open link before it went dead silent. “Aric!”
Ultraviolet light couldn’t hurt him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be shot to death with enough rounds to the head or vital organs. There were other ways he could be killed too. Possibilities she dared not even imagine.
She started moving even before she realized her boots were chewing up the floor beneath her. From the schematics of the house the team reviewed before leaving base, Kaya recalled the location of a back staircase that led to the second floor. The gunfire she heard over her comm had come from above. If Aric was up there too, she had to find him.
She found the stairs and started bounding up them on silent feet. Halfway to the top, a gunman rounded the corner and spotted her. He swung his weapon up and took aim at her. Kaya fired first, but had no choice other than to leap over the railing to avoid the returned shots.
She dropped to the floor below, bullets spraying her from behind. More than one struck home. The searing pain made her let out a scream.
Blood streaked the floor where she’d fallen and in a path behind her as she staggered on a wounded leg into a sheltered position against the wall of the stairwell. As soon as her assailant peered down to look for her, she raised her gun and filled his chest full of lead, ignoring the fiery protest of her bleeding biceps. The man fell over the banister in a heavy heap at her feet.
To her horror, as she sagged back against the wall, panting from blood loss and agony, three more guards closed in from all sides.
She struggled to lift her bloodied arm to defend herself. But in that next instant all she saw in front her was a blur of shadow and quicksilver movement. When it stopped, Aric was there, standing between her and the broken bodies of three dead gunmen whose necks had all been savagely twisted.
As for Aric, he had never looked more lethal. Eyes blazing like burning coals, his narrowed pupils were all but devoured by the fire of battle rage that lit his gaze. His fangs filled his mouth, bright white, sharp as daggers. The dermaglyphs that tracked up his arms and disappeared under the short sleeves of his black fatigues were seething with dark, vicious colors. His clothing was torn and bloodstained, bullet wounds riddling him in too many places to count.
“Aric.” She exhaled his name on a broken whisper. “You’ve been shot.”
He didn’t answer, just went down on his haunches in front of her and tenderly caught her face in his palms. On a curse, he slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her, slow and deep, as if he needed the contact even more than she did. His Breed gaze traveled over her, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled a shallow breath.
It took her a moment to realize just how quiet the place had gotten. No more gunfire. No more thudding boot falls or sounds of violence. The fighting had ended.
Tavia materialized as if from thin air, her speed of movement far too fast for Kaya to track. “Thank God, you’re both all right.”
“Kaya’s been wounded,” Aric said, still hunkered beside her. She didn’t miss the odd pitch of his voice as he lingered so near to her bleeding injuries. His voice was rough, unearthly. Filled with an unmistakable hunger . . . and torment.
Sterling Chase strode in from the adjacent hallway now, accompanied by Mira and Kellan. Rio and Dante followed along with Darion Thorne.
“Carys brought Webb up from the waterfront. He took a few rounds, but fortunately he’s fine. Rafe is healing the worst of them.” The commander glanced over at Kaya. “Better let him have a look at you too.”
Aric’s answering growl was barely audible, but the possessive, animal sound vibrated against her. Something deep inside her responded with a blooming heat that throbbed through her veins and into her marrow.
“Scrully’s dead?” Chase asked Tavia.
She nodded. “I found him in the master bedroom. Someone wanted to make sure he didn’t get up ever again. Large caliber round delivered point-blank between his eyes and his throat sliced open for good measure.”
Dante blew out a low whistle. “Opus’s cleaners sure are messy motherfuckers.”
“And they came prepared for a fight from the Order,” Tavia added. “There are two crates of UV ammunition sitting in a van parked inside the garage.”
Chase cursed, running his hand over his jaw. “Opus’s assassins knew to expect us. And they were obviously ordered to take out as many of us as they could.”
Aric acknowledged that fact with a grim nod. “They blasted me with UV half a dozen times on my approach. You should’ve seen the looks on the bastard’s faces when I kept coming.”
Chase’s scowl deepened, then he glanced at Mira. “Captain, your call for us to stand down was a solid one. You probably saved our lives.”
“All except one,” she murmured thickly.
Kellan wrapped his arm around Mira’s shoulders and drew her close to him. “We all signed on for this mission knowing we might not come back. I’m sure Bal would tell you that too.”
Rio nodded. “The Order goes into every mission with the understanding it could be our last. But after seeing what happened here tonight? We’ve never had to be prepared for anything like this before.”
Dante slanted his comrade a sober look. “The rules of the game have changed, my friend. Opus is making that point loud and clear.”
“Yes, they are,” Chase agreed. “And that means we either adapt fast, or die trying.”
From his crouch beside Kaya, Aric glanced up at his father and the rest of the Breed warriors gathered in the small space. “If this is our new reality, the Order’s going to need more daywalkers.”