Mila

“I love you too,” she said, hoping he’d heard her over the increasing sounds of fighting.

A dart abruptly appeared in the leg of the body she was using as cover, the six-inch-long metal sliver quivering violently as it dispelled its momentum into the body around it.

Her eyes narrowed and she rose up swiftly, firing three shots at three targets. Two of them jerked as they were hit, but the other was already moving before she fired and the dart must have gone wide.

There were half a dozen men in the hallway behind them now. Apparently her estimate of twenty-four guards was inaccurate.

Of course it was. That was the number of guards on hand before they had five rather angry shifters imprisoned here. Why wouldn’t they increase the number?

Angry at herself, Mila moved to the side of her barricade, sliding out from cover to lean against the far wall. She emptied the magazine down the hallway, firing as fast as the gun could manage. Seven darts went zipping down the hallway, sending everyone for cover.

She pushed off the wall and back behind her blocking bodies. Shots rang off the wall and she felt the living flesh of her blockade vibrate as several darts hit it as well.

Tossing the emptied gun away, she took the second one from her belt. Looking around, she saw another weapon lying on the ground where someone else had dropped it. Snatching it, Mila rose and began to fire both guns down the hallway. Guards dropped left and right before her onslaught.

But there were more behind them, and something tugged at her side and spun her around.

Mila let her legs collapse out from under her and she disappeared back behind the barricade once more.

Frantically she felt for the dart that must have hit her in the side. The tranquilizer was working fast, because she couldn’t feel any pain whatsoever. The whole side must be numb. Her fingers encountered the dart at last and she looked down at it.

“Oh fuck,” she said, sighing in relief.

The dart had caught her thickly padded shirt, catching in the material. It was the force of that that had spun her around, not of the dart embedding itself into her side.

Without taking another second to ponder her luck, Mila shot back to her feet. This time she steadied her aim before firing. The onrushing human guards had thought she was down and out for the count, so they had been focused on closing with the shifters in an attempt to take out Pierce and his brothers, without missing and hitting one of their own.

All of which meant that when she popped back up from behind the stack of bodies, none of them were prepared for a target so close. Three guards went down in the first seconds of the fight, and she continued to pump darts out. The gun in her right hand clicked on empty so she dropped it, switching to a two-handed grip. A dart whizzed by her head, pulling at her hair, but Mila just closed one eye and sent a dart into the exposed leg meat of the man who’d shot it.

He collided and went down. That only left one guard. Mila pivoted slightly, focused down the barrel on the sights, and then let fly.

The gun clicked, but nothing happened.

“Shit,” she cursed.

It was empty. The lone remaining guard had his sight on her, so Mila did the only thing she could think of. She threw the gun at him and then followed after it. Vaulting herself up and over the manmade barricade, she grabbed a knife as she went, sliding it from the sheath on one of the downed men. The blade gleamed in the bright white light, showing her the slick wetness of the blade. It was coated with tranquilizer. All she needed to do was draw blood.

The guard knocked her gun aside, but she was closing too fast behind it. He tried to take aim, realized it was a losing proposition, and instead used the weapon as a shield to block himself from her attack. He turned the blade left, then right, deflecting her strikes.

Mila jabbed, then flicked her wrist around and out, trying to draw blood as she withdrew, but the guard was good. He let go of the gun with that hand, now only holding it by the slide, pulling his hand wide even as he danced back from her.

With Mila going one way, her opponent the other, it created enough space for him to pull his own knife. He held onto the gun, trying to get a proper grip, but Mila glided back into the fight before he could. Her strikes came fast and furious, putting him on the defensive. He locked her up with the gun, but a swift turn and yank sent the weapon flying.

It also opened her up to a return strike, but she flung herself to the side, narrowly avoiding his blade as he tried to open her up from stomach to sternum. Mila bounced off the wall and came right back at him, her arm moving so fast it was almost like a blur as she struck, pulled, struck again, like a snake in a frenzy as it tried to bite its prey.

But fast as she was, the other man was her match. Eventually he began to counter her attacks, and then slowly went on the offensive himself. Now Mila was being forced back down the hallway. In moments her back touched up against the stack of bodies she’d been using for cover. All her forward progress had been lost.

But as he pressed her back, Mila saw her opportunity. Instead of trying to go forward, she let him come in for the attack, then leaned back and flung herself up as hard as she could. Her back pivoted over the barricade and her foot came up, connecting hard with his knife-wielding hand.

Mila flipped onto her back, landing heavily on the floor while the knife bounced off the ground nearby. The guard smiled as he reached for the holstered gun of the top body on the mound, thinking he’d won. But his confidence faltered as Mila returned his smile with interest.

Then she flung the knife at him. He automatically brought a forearm up to deflect it. In normal knife combat that would have been the right move based on the situation. If he ducked or dodged, he’d lose his grip on the gun and they’d be back at square one. But his instincts had forgotten that this blade was covered in tranquilizer. It tore a long gash up his forearm that would bleed a fair amount, but wasn’t anywhere near fatal or even immobilizing.

Except for the tranquilizer.

“Fuck me,” the guard said as his entire body began to droop.

Then he collapsed to the ground. Mila smiled and rose to her feet. All she had to do now was grab a gun and start taking out the attacking shifters, and they could get out of there. Then she could tell Pierce once again that she loved him, and was ready to leave all this double-crossing spy shit behind. If she was lucky, he might give her yet another chance. Not that Mila deserved it, but she desperately hoped that she might get it anyway.

It was, after all, only hope which kept her going.

But all of her plans were derailed as the cool metal of a gun barrel pressed itself against the flesh of her neck.

“Don’t. Move.”