Hannah
She looked fiercely at her brother. He needed to speak, and speak slowly.
“At one point, J mentioned that he expected all of you here. I don’t think he was ready for it to be as quickly as you did, but he was ready for it. Could this whole thing have been a setup for him to have a chance at getting all of you?”
Jared’s head snapped around, as did the others.
“It’s a trap,” Josh said.
Hannah was looking back and forth wildly. “What is?”
“Hey guys,” Justin said from his spot in the corner. “This box just started making a beeping noise.”
“EVERYONE OUT!” Josh bellowed.
Hannah screamed as he grabbed her and Chad, holding them aloft as he ran for the door. Justin was right next to him.
They didn’t make it.
Time seemed to slow as Hannah looked over Jared’s shoulder as he hurled them and himself toward the exit. The crate in the back beeped loudly, and then seemed to balloon outward to twice, then three times its size. She gasped in amazement as the seams came apart, yellow-orange fire now visible as the box containing the bomb came apart.
The wall behind it simply ceased to be, the force of the explosion pushing it back and away. It had enough strength in it to ensure that most of the blast was directed out, and into the room.
Toward her and the others.
Hannah ducked her head behind Josh as the giant ball of flame reached out for them. Time then seemed to accelerate. The explosion ripped through the room in the blink of an eye, picking up the group and throwing them through the wall already weakened by Jared’s passing, and through the wall beyond that. Fire licked at their exposed skin and singed hair off. Bodies tumbled left and right, colliding with things and being forced through others like a brutal version of a ping pong game.
Josh was between her and the brunt of the force, and she heard him grunt in pain and his body jerked multiple times as they were flung around like ragdolls in a hurricane. Someone cried out in pain, and Hannah screamed as she landed on a bed of what felt like glass.
Her ears were ringing from the blast, making hearing anything very difficult. She blinked, trying to get her eyes to refocus. When they did, she wished they hadn’t.
“Josh!” she screamed in terror. The figure in front of her was burnt to a crisp. In some places the skin was so dark it was black.
Even now fire lapped at the walls around them as the blaze built.
Somewhere behind her she heard a noise. Turning, she saw Chad get to his feet. Wood and other bits protruded from his skin in numerous places, but most of them came out easily as he brushed himself off. Little streaks of blood flowed down his skin but stopped almost immediately as his body healed the minor wounds.
“Find the others!” she commanded, reaching down to see if Josh was still alive.
The body seemed to cough, and then a long groan came out from it. Hannah flipped him onto his back, feeling some of the burnt flesh come off in her grip. To her amazement, his front side was in much better shape. There was a metal pipe through his bicep, which she pulled free, ignoring the cry of pain from the form.
Between her and Chad, they accounted for the five of them. Madison was the least injured, having been about as far away from the blast as anyone. Still, everyone except for Hannah and Chad had been hit by the blast, and they were in very bad shape. It took her several minutes to get them to the hallway, and then into an elevator.
“Come on,” she said, trying to urge them along. “We need to go. Now. Before the Agency finishes what they started.”
Madison shook her head from where she was sitting against a wall. “The Agency doesn’t use explosives. Not their style.”
“Except, judging by the fact we had to fight them to get in here, J bought off the mercs. He could have told them to get rid of us, knowing we wouldn’t expect it.”
Madison was forced to concede that point, but Hannah didn’t feel victorious. Things were looking grim. Even Hannah could feel her body protesting in pain. They shouldn’t have survived that. Only the fact that they had been clustered closer to the door than the middle of the room had saved them. Justin was in a bad way, having been closest to the blast. His right leg wasn’t working and he’d lost a lot of skin from his back and arms, along with receiving a face full of metal pipe when he was flung forward through a wall. They only survived because they were shifters.
It was still going to be touch-and-go for several of them, including the man she cared for. The lobby was empty, the building having been evacuated, though no firefighters had yet shown up.
“They’re not going to fit in one truck,” Chad said as they emerged from the elevator.
Madison was still worse for wear, but she helped remove the others from the elevator. Jared tried to stand, but his leg snapped and gave way beneath him. Hannah gasped as she realized he was missing a huge chunk from his calf that must have been ripped away in the explosion.
Chad was right. Then an idea occurred to her.
“The mercenary van!” she said.
At that moment Shay appeared inside. “Oh no. No no no,” she said, dropping to Justin’s side. “Justin, can you hear me?”
There was no response.
“We need to get them into the merc van,” Hannah told her.
Together, the three women and Chad loaded up the four savagely wounded Sentinels. The fire-suppression systems had kicked in, and the thin coating of water on the tiled floor was stained red by the time they were done.
Thankfully the military-esque vehicle had plenty of room for them in the rear.
Shay got in the driver’s seat without hesitation and the vehicle rumbled to life.
“Back to base,” Hannah said from the back, where she stood a nervous watch over Josh and the others.
It could have been her imagination, but was that pink skin forming on Josh’s back?
“No,” Jared croaked as the van began to move. “They’ll be following us. Can’t lead them back.”
He collapsed into unconsciousness.
“Where the hell do we go?” Hannah asked, trying not to panic.
“We’ll have to use a safe house,” Madison said, then started giving directions to Shay, who simply nodded and drove them out into traffic. The big van was so immense and official-looking that other cars moved aside to let them pass. Their progress was remarkably swift.
To no one’s surprise, the police didn’t follow them.
By the time they arrived at the safe house, the Sentinels were beginning to show signs of healing. Neither Justin nor Josh had awoken yet, but Hannah could see their skin healing. The burnt skin was falling off them as they moved them into the house as quickly as they could, and beneath it there was fresh pink skin. She just hoped he hadn’t sustained some sort of brain injury, if that could even happen to a shifter.
“Chad,” she said before closing the door behind them.
“Yes?” he said from just inside.
“Look over my right shoulder and tell me if that big black SUV doesn’t look suspicious at the end of the street.”
Her brother looked quickly and then ducked back inside. “Yes, I would say it does,” he agreed.
“Shit. They followed us,” she said. “The other merc team must be here to finish off the job. They probably know as well as we do that J isn’t someone to piss off by screwing up.”
“What do we do?” her brother asked, looking around at the savaged Sentinels. The bear shifters were in no shape for a fight. They needed more time to heal. The only ones who were mostly whole were him and the two women.
Hannah frowned. “Are you ready to make up for what you’ve done?” she asked, as behind them the sound of a vehicle rumbling to a stop outside reached their ears.
Moments later they heard doors open and close.
“Yes,” Chad said.
She snarled. “Then let’s show them why they were right to fear werewolves.”
Around them the Sentinels struggled to rise. She thought better of telling them to stay down, though they weren’t really making it off the ground yet.
Just as she and Chad headed for the door, Madison hot on their heels, she saw Josh begin to stir.
Buoyed by the knowledge that he would survive, she lowered her shoulder, letting her wolf flow into her. The increase in strength washed over her at the same moment she hit the door. The wood disintegrated under the blow and she charged out to meet the men who dared threaten the one she loved.
Love.
The word echoed around in her head as she brought the first mercenary down, catching him completely by surprise as her powerful wolf lunged up and closed its jaws around his face.
A hammer-like fist caught her in the midsection and sent her flying, but she took a chunk of his face with her, leaving him looking like a puppet that was falling apart from neglect.
The man had just long enough to begin to smile before he was hit by a freight train named Madison. The woman entered the fight, and Hannah saw what she was capable of for the first time.
The mercenary’s bones turned to mush where she hit him, the sheer force of her bodycheck snapping his head back and sending him flying through the air. The man landed limply in a heap.
Hannah’s wolf lips peeled back in a fanged snarl as she skittered across the grass. Giant paws found purchase and she sprang back to her feet, charging at another shifter across the front lawn of the house. The man turned to face her and she saw the shift begin to occur in him.
But he was used to fighting loners. Most bears worked by themselves. Werewolves on the other hand, hunted in a pack.
Chad’s sleek, lethal form landed on him, bearing him to the ground. Incredibly strong jaws closed on the mercenary’s neck and ripped a huge chunk free. Blood sprayed out, coating the grass in a dark layer around him. The mercenary was forced to shift back immediately, clamping his hands over the wound.
Hannah and Chad were already gone though, attacking another target. The element of surprise was gone, and now the mercs were working against them. Three huge bears stood nearby, growling and swatting at anyone that dared to come near them.
The two wolves tried to use their speed to separate one of them from the others, but their efforts netted them nothing but more opened wounds from paws that barely missed landing a full blow on them.
The trio retreated across the lawn, past the remnants of the front door and toward the driveway. Hannah was out of ideas. Though it was three on three, a bear was more than a match for a wolf one on one. That was why she had used surprise, and then had fought with her brother in tandem. That was how they would win.
The bears prepared to go in for the kill.
A loud, bestial roar sounded, and suddenly the rest of the door frame blew apart as one bear after another charged out from within the house. They were ragged, bleeding profusely, skin hanging off them in places, and missing fur all over. They were slow and ungainly looking. But there were four of them, and each of them weighed close to two thousand pounds.
And they all concentrated on the nearest bear.
Hannah and Chad reacted instantly, and Madison was only a step behind as her bear shot forward. She, Hannah knew, was more than a match for a single bear.
The Sentinels didn’t have much fight in them, and in moments their opponent had them laying strewn across the lawn. But he was hurt, and they had served as a distraction for the others. Almost at the same time Hannah and Madison delivered the killing blow to their foes, turning to face the last bear.
It was over in moments.