Chapter Nineteen
Ty
A loud boom, like thunder colliding directly overhead, broke the quiet night and shook the ground beneath me ever so slightly. Almost as one, Sonya and I leaped to our feet. The sound had come from around the front of the house. For a moment it sounded like hail falling. A piece of blue metal landed not far from my feet. Gods, my truck. The snap and crackle of flames—a lot of them—made me realize the “hail” sound was probably shrapnel from an explosion. Unfortunately, it was not a sound I was unused to. Yellow light flickered from around the edge of the house. Wide eyes on Sonya, I took a step toward the path leading around the house.
“Go, I’ll be right there,” she said as she scooped her clothes off the ground.
No way was I leaving her. Eyes scanning the darkness around me, I stepped where my pants lay on the ground when I saw something moving in the trees at the edge of the lawn. Eyes shone in the black: yellow and bright. They held a sense of malice that made me start toward them. I felt the press of two more figures moving in behind me. Dammit. The bastards had lured me away from Sonya just enough to cut me off from her. The soft brush of shoes against grass behind me stopped me. I turned to see Sonya wrapped in the arms of a man. Growling, I took a step toward her, but the two men who had been flanking me cut me off.
Instead of struggle, Sonya found her footing and settled her weight down into the ground. She stomped, hard, coming down on her captor’s foot. The man grunted in pain. Arms thrusting out before her lightning fast, she shoved her butt backward at the same time. The second higher pitched grunt of pain told me she had slammed right into her captor’s scrotum. I laughed as she spun out and away from him.
My own problems moved in on me. Dark as it was, I could not see much more than the shine of his eyes. By concentrating, I adjusted my eyesight to that of my wolf, thereby seeing better in the dark. It was not as good as night-vision goggles, but it was good enough to make out the men’s tall frames. Sliding into a fighting stance, I glanced in the direction of the other set of eyes I had seen in the trees. A second man approached from that direction, shorter than the first, but broader. I growled and bared my fangs at them in warning, but they attacked anyway.
I sidestepped the attack of the man who had first approached, driving a round house kick into his kidney as I moved. He let out a cry of pain followed by, “Bastard!”
Having no time to respond, I thrust a back kick out with my other leg that caught the second man in the gut. Air left him in an audible rush as he doubled over. Before he could even think about grabbing my leg, I whipped it back in to my body, chambering it like an arrow preparing to fly again. No easy feat when your balls were swinging free, but I managed without pinching anything vital. The first man took another step toward me and I let that arrow fly in the form of a front kick that drove the ball of my foot between his pectorals. He stumbled back, arms flailing. Movement out of the corner of my eyes told me I did not have time to watch and see if he went down. The second man started to straighten back up. Leaping into the air with one knee to get more lift, I brought my other leg up high and slammed my heel down toward the man’s shoulder. When the strike connected, I whipped my hip back and down, putting all the power and speed into the move that I could, which was a lot.
The kick was so dangerous that it was illegal in most martial arts tournaments. An axe kick, some called it. It was aptly named considering it could split a person’s skull or crush their spine. In this case, it drove the broad man to the ground, but his bones did not break. It took a lot more than that to break the bones of a varúlfur. I spun back toward the other man, only to find him fleeing into the trees. On instinct, I started to give chase, halting before entering the deeper darkness of the trees to turn back to Sonya. Her attacker had a hold of one of her shoulders and was rearing his fist back.
Swooping in, I grabbed the man by his fist and hauled him backward. He was shorter than me by at least half a foot, but I did not stop once his feet were off the ground. I lifted him as high as my reach would allow, letting him dangle, choking, legs kicking at the air. It forced me to hold him out away from myself so he could not reach my balls, but my varúlfur strength made it easy. Nor did it hurt that I spent at least an hour a day in my home gym.
“You son of a hóra! How dare you come to my home, threaten my nemi, and blow up my truck!” I roared.
Letting out a vicious growl, I threw the man to the ground, following him down to pin him there with a hand on his chest. My fingernails grew into claws that punctured the man’s shirt. The material around each claw began to darken and the tang of blood mixed with the smoke that flavored the air. His heart pulsed directly beneath my hand. Pissed as I was, all it would take was closing my fist. Eyes so wide I could see the whites around them, the man whimpered and went very still.
“James and Calder made me. I didn’t want to come after you, never you, but we had to,” the man said in a voice that shook so badly I barely understood it.
“Isak did not send you?” I demanded in a cold, calculating voice.
If it was Isak, his Alpha, I would kill the man, regardless of what that meant.
“He doesn’t even know we’re here,” the man said.
My fingers clenched a bit and flesh tore beneath my claws. The man cried out, his legs twitching, but he did not try to get up. “And are you prepared to die for what these two want? Neither of them is your Alpha.”
“No, but they’ll hurt someone I care about if I don’t help them,” the man groaned, the word laced with more pain that I would have thought only one word could hold.
The shine of his eyes disappeared as his lips slid closed. His chin lifted a bit as if he were preparing to die with honor, or bracing for the pain. Despite being pissed at him, a reluctant respect bloomed.
“Ty, don’t, please. I don’t want anyone to die because of me, not even this bastard,” Sonya said.
I heard her soft steps approach a moment before she laid a hesitant hand on my bare shoulder. The warmth from her skin and power seeped into me, calmed me. A sigh shuddered through me. I withdrew my claws and rose to my feet. Her hand slid from my shoulder as my height took it out of her reach, but she let it slide to the middle of my back and rest there. Her touch continued to soothe me, helping me to breathe easier, to think past the rage.
“She saved your life today, remember that, because I will not spare it again,” I said through clenched teeth.
The man crab-crawled backward. He did not pause to roll over and scramble to his feet until he had reached the trees.
“Oh God, Ty, your truck,” she said, a piece of metal in hand.
She turned and ran for the front of the house. Hesitating, I scanned the trees, listening hard and smelling the air. It was difficult to tell over the crackle of a raging fire and the scent of the smoke, but I did not think anyone else was around. Barefoot but not even feeling the rocks, I ran onto the gravel drive after her. Flames engulfed the front end and cab of my truck, their orange and yellow fingers reaching high into the night, banishing the darkness. Sonya stood before it, fire extinguisher thrust too close to the flames. I could smell that the heat was searing her flesh. The white foam disappeared into the roaring flames, hardly making a dent. I ran to her, clamped hands around her waist, and hauled her back.
“Sonya, no, it is only a truck,” I said.
Her lips curled back from fangs. “But it’s your truck and it’s my fault,” she protested.
I picked her up and carried her back several feet. She threw the useless fire extinguisher on the ground and turned to me. Fire reflected in her angry eyes. I rubbed my hands up and down her already healing arms, lending my power to hers to help speed the process.
“It is just a truck. We are not immortal, only hard to kill. Fire is one of the things that can do a good job of it, though,” I said.
Her gaze flicked to the impossible inferno that now engulfed my truck, then to her Jeep parked on the other side of the circular drive. “We should at least go after them.”
I shook my head. “Their scent is all over the hood of your Jeep. They disabled it so no one could follow them.”
“But…”
My brows drew together and I took her face in my hands. “But nothing. The truck can be replaced, you cannot,” I said.
She dropped her gaze. I moved closer, acutely aware that I was still naked. My relief over her being all right morphed into something deeper, more profound. Her eyes bore into mine and her hands started to work their way up my bare back as she leaned closer. The loud blare of a fire engine’s siren echoed from somewhere far away.
“Dammit,” I swore as I pulled away.
I took hold of one of her hands as I started to return to the backyard. “I have got to get some clothes on before they get here,” I said.
Throwing a last glance back at my burning vehicle, she followed without a word. The now mostly risen three-quarter moon lit the backyard in an eerie glow, revealing the shape of my sweatpants on the grass where I had left them. Orange and red flames reflected off a metallic garden ball, casting eerie lights on the flagstone pathway. The sight sent a chill through me, along with a sudden desire for this night to be over. It had started out so promising. While I dressed I did my best to recall the names of the men who had attacked us so that when I saw them again in Hemlock Hollow, I could make them pay. For now we had more pressing matters, though. The wail of police sirens joined the fire engine sirens, promising that this was going to be a very long night in all the wrong ways.