by Selina Woods
“Do what you can here,” I told them.
“We will,” Gray replied. “Keep her alive.”
Ramsey put the car in gear and drove through the swirling smoke, accelerating once he’d cleared the fog. Beneath my hand, I felt Kiana’s heart still trying to pump blood out through the hole in her back, but I thought I kept it inside her, in her veins, “I won’t let you die,” I said, using my free hand to stroke her hair. “I won’t.”
“Good,” she murmured.
The sound of her voice reassured me, and I glanced at Caesar, who returned a small encouraging smile. The sedan rocked around corners, but with the attacks on the enforcers all around the city still going on, there was little traffic Ramsey needed to avoid. He drove fast, speeding down the avenues toward the beach.
In less than half the time the trip usually would take, he braked to a halt in front of the guards, still cradling their rifles. “Get Robert up to the penthouse,” he barked at them, getting out of the sedan.
As two ran into the building, Ramsey opened the door to help Caesar and I extract Kiana from the rear seat. Two guards also stepped forward to help. “What happened, sir?” one asked. “We’ve been hearing gunshots.”
Hoping their loyalty still rested with me, I replied, “The enforcers are waging war, trying to kill us. They shot her.”
Caesar carried Kiana while I kept my hand against her bloody wound, and I caught a flash of the guards nearby glancing at one another. “They won’t get past us, sir,” said the shifter who had first spoken.
“Count on us,” another stated.
We rushed across the foyer, Ramsey in the lead, and hit the elevator button while the murmuring guards parted and stood to each side. “The healer is on his way,” I heard just as the doors slid closed with a hiss.
Tony and Albert, awake and eating breakfast with an armed guard, gaped as we charged in from the elevator.
“Kiana!” Tony cried, seeing his bloody sister in Caesar’s arms. He ran toward us even as Albert wept in fear and grief. Ramsey drew the astonished guard to the side and spoke to him briefly, though I didn’t hear what he said.
“She’s alive,” I told the brothers. “Stay out of the way.”
They didn’t listen, however, and crowded around Caesar and I as we hustled her into the big bedroom, then laid her carefully on the bed. By then, both boys were crying, near panic. I couldn’t do much about them with my hand still keeping the blood in her body, but Caesar pulled both of them into his waist in a hug.
“She’ll be okay,” he told them. “She’ll be okay.”
Dimly, I heard the elevator ping, and a few moments later, Robert appeared in the doorway. “What happened?” he asked briskly, setting his case on the bed near me. “Shot?”
“In her shoulder,” I replied tersely. “I’ve kept pressure on the wound.”
“Then you may have saved her life. Now let me in there, please.”
Half afraid to take my hand from her, I retreated slowly, giving Robert room to work. He took my place and sliced her tank top from her, exposing her injury. “What can I do?” I asked.
“Just stay out of my way.”
Looking down at myself, I realized my hands, arms, and clothes were soaked in Kiana’s blood. Though reluctant to leave the room, there was little I could do at the moment except watch the healer work to save Kiana’s life. After staring for a few minutes, I headed for the door, Caesar bringing the boys with him as he followed me.
“Will she be all right, Logan?” Tony asked, swiping at his wet face with his sleeve.
“Yeah, kid,” I answered, my mouth dry, and hoped I wasn’t lying.
“Get cleaned up, Logan,” Caesar told me, ushering the boys to a couch.
Feeling almost as though washing her blood from me meant Kiana would die, I obeyed him. Heading for another bathroom, I stripped my gore-streaked shirt from my torso and washed my hands and arms, finding more on my chest and shoulders. Ramsey stood in the doorway, watching me.
“That was clever,” he said, his voice low, “telling the guards the enforcers made war on you rather than the other way around.”
“It just might buy us some time,” I replied, toweling myself dry. “Maybe they won’t join the enemy immediately.”
“You’ll have to gather a force of civilian fighters,” he told me. “In case those guys downstairs turn on you.”
I nodded. “After I know Kiana will be all right.”
“While I understand your need to be here,” he replied, “you shouldn’t wait. You need to be out there; you need to know if this plan worked, or if the enforcers turned the tables on us.”
Staring at my reflection in the mirror, seeing my cheeks hollow from worry and lack of sleep, the grief deep in my eyes, I said “And if Kiana dies?”
Ramsey paused before speaking again. “You’ll have to go on.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” I said slowly, even though I knew he was right.
“You can. You must.”
I pushed through the door past him and went into the bedroom where Robert still worked on Kiana. Stepping up behind him, I observed her pale features, but that she breathed slowly and deeply, unconscious. “Robert?”
“I’m trying to get the bullet out,” he replied, cranky, forceps buried in her wound. “Get out of here.”
Leaving him to work on her, I grabbed a clean shirt, then strode out to confront Ramsey and Caesar. “All right,” I said, pulling the shirt on over my head. “Caesar will go with me. Will you stay with the kids, and—”
I gestured toward the room I’d just left.
“Yeah,” Ramsey answered. “You’re needed out there more than you are here. I’ll be here.”
Their tears dried, but their expressions still scared and worried, Tony and Albert stared up at me as I approached them. “Logan, you have to stay,” Tony argued.
“I can’t, kid. I need to see this through.”
I tousled their dark hair, and then with Caesar, I went to the elevator. “I’ll get back as quick as I can,” I told them.
Caesar drove us back toward downtown along the empty turnpike, dark smoke still curling into the sky among the broken skyscrapers. “We should drive around the city,” Caesar suggested, “check the neighborhoods.”
My eyes staring straight ahead, my mind on Kiana and my bleak future if she didn’t make it, I barely heard what he said. She has to live, she just has to.
“Logan?”
“Yeah,” I replied, taking a deep breath. “Let’s get back to the fires first. Get Gray.”
“All right.”
The residents of my old neighborhood had ganged together to fight the fires and put them out, smoke still curling upward from the embers. Their faces covered in soot and ash, many others piled the corpses of the slain enforcers in the middle of the street. Seeing me getting out of the car, Gray and Redley walked over.
“Is she—” Gray began, the question in his eyes.
“Still alive,” I answered, my mind shying from the fears that Kiana would still die.
“She’s a tough one, youngster,” Redley said gruffly. “She’ll make it.”
I nodded, surveying the activity as the people continued to pour water onto the still hot structures, their expressions tight and grim. Others came to us to shake our hands, to thank us, to speak of a new hope of a brighter future.
“I, for one, hope you’ll be our leader, Logan,” said a wolf shifter whom I knew from the neighborhood, but couldn’t immediately recall his name. “We need you.”
“Right now, I need to visit the rest of the town,” I replied. “See how successful we truly are.”
“What should we do with the dead bodies?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the pile.
“Feed them to the alligators.”
With Caesar driving again, Gray and Redley in the rear seat, we drove up and down the city’s length. Citizens patrolled the streets with their rifles, the dead enforcers littering the pavement. Caesar pulled t
o the curb to permit me to get out in each neighborhood, where I’d talk with the triumphant humans and shifters.
“We killed three of them,” I’d be told in one area, or, “We got four,” in another, and I’d listen to their stories of how the people surprised the enforcers in their businesses and shot them down.
As we continued to drive around, seeing folks loading the corpses into trucks to haul to the swamps, I kept a running tally in my head. “Thus far,” I said to my companions, “we’ve killed not quite three hundred.”
“Less than we had hoped for,” Gray replied.
“Think the others will see the wisdom in escaping?” Caesar asked. “Running?”
“Where will they go?” I answered. “Risk the alligators and snakes? My gut says they’ll regroup and come after me.”
“You didn’t ask my opinion,” Redley commented dryly, “but I agree. They won’t be run out. They’ll recruit others, maybe even the night hunters. If they kill you, youngster, they may think they can keep the city in their hands.”
“Even with every citizen gunning for them?” Gray asked. ‘They should have better sense.”
“You’re assuming they have sense,” Redley retorted.
“Back to the penthouse?” Caesar asked me.
“Yeah.”
The guards reported all was quiet as I got out of the car in front of the building. “No enforcers within a ten-block radius,” I was told.
“Great,” I replied, passing through them. “Keep up the good work.”
Tony and Albert raced across the floor to me and cannoned into my waist, and for a moment, I thought it was because Kiana had died while I was gone. Panic struck me harder than they did, their babbles at me incoherent, and I glanced over their heads to Ramsey for confirmation that Kiana lived or had died.
He nodded, giving me the thumbs-up sign. “She’s resting,” he told me. “Robert gave her painkillers, so she’ll be out of it for a while.”
The incredible relief that spread through me had me shaking as I gently pried the boys from my waist. “Hey, I told you she’d be okay,” I said, trying to find a smile, but knowing it most likely didn’t look right.
“The healer said she lost so much blood.” Tony wiped the tears from his face as Albert continued to cry.
“But she’s gonna be all right,” I told them.
Ramsey had evidently ordered food, and my stomach rumbled for the first time in a long while. As the others circled the table loaded with stuff, I knew I couldn’t eat until I looked in on Kiana. With Tony and Albert tagging at my heels, I went into the bedroom. Robert sat in an armchair, dozing, while Kiana lay on her stomach, covered with a blanket.
Her face was still frightfully pale, but her breathing slow and even. I caressed her cheek with my fingers, but she didn’t wake, though Robert did.
“I got the bullet out and stitched her up,” he said around a yawn. “I don’t think her scapula was broken, cracked perhaps. But with rest, I think she’ll make a full recovery.”
“Can we sit here with her?” Albert asked.
“If it’s all right with Robert,” I replied, still gazing down at Kiana.
“As long as they don’t get boisterous and wake her up.”
Without the nervous anxiety over Kiana to keep me on edge, the need for food and sleep crept over me. I’d only slept a few hours in the last three days and eaten not nearly enough. Returning to the sitting room, I picked up a plate and filled it with roast beef, chicken, bread, and some cheese. Joining Redley on the couch, who devoured his food with gusto, I ate mine more slowly.
“We’re still at war,” Ramsey commented. “But we have a chance to win this.”
“So you think the surviving enforcers will keep fighting?” I asked, my mouth full.
“I do. They’re arrogant enough to believe they can overcome any obstacles.” Ramsey toyed with the food on his plate. “Now, they mean business, and will start killing innocents.”
“But the innocents have guns and will kill them, too,” Redley snapped. “And we have to get out there and fight with them.”
My eyes gritty and my body tired beyond belief, I said, “I’ll sleep for a few hours. Then go back out just after dark.”
“And risk the night hunters?” Caesar shook his head. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”
“The enforcers will risk them,” I replied, stubborn. “They’ll start burning down homes, killing folks as they sleep.”
“Logan is right,” Gray said. “We can count on our fighters to protect their own, but we should also be out there to keep an eye on things.”
“Maybe it’s time to put some of these guys here in the field,” Ramsey said thoughtfully. “Have a number of guards go to certain areas of town and clean out any night hunters or enforcers they find.”
“Have you gotten any rest?” I asked him.
“A little,” he answered with a small grin.
“Then why don’t we all get some sleep,” I said. “Right after dark, we’ll head out again.”
Kiana was awake when I tiptoed into the bedroom a few hours later, my eyes still gritty. Yet I felt refreshed after the food and sleep, better able to spend another night out in the city hunting predators. Tony was busy feeding Kiana spoonfuls of what looked like broth while Robert watched approvingly.
She still lay on her stomach but managed a tiny smile for me while Tony moved out of the way so I could kiss her. “Hi,” I murmured, crouching beside the bed so I could be on her level. “You look good for having been shot this morning.”
“Ready to get back to the game,” she whispered.
“You don’t look that good.” I grinned. “Sorry. We’re heading out to make sure the enforcers aren’t making pests of themselves.”
“Be careful.”
I kissed her again, then stood up. “I will.”
Leaving her in the care of Robert and her brothers, my heart felt lighter as I joined Caesar, Gray, and Redley at the elevator. “Where’s Ramsey?”
“Sending some of the troops out,” Gray replied. “There’ll still be plenty of guards to keep a watch here.”
Ramsey waited for us downstairs with two cars idling outside. “We should split up,” he advised. “Cover more ground. Logan, here’s a rifle; it might be better than a handgun right now.”
“Thanks. Do we have any word from the streets?”
“Not so far. But I have heard some gunshots in the distance, so we know they’re out there causing problems.”
“Then let’s go put an end to their shit.”
I got into a car with Caesar and Gray while Ramsey drove Redley and a guard in another. Fires glowed on the horizon, dim circles of orange-red that had me gritting my teeth in anger. “Let’s hope our firebugs got shot in the act of setting those blazes.”
Off the turnpike, Ramey went in one direction while Caesar drove in another, yet we saw no enforcers or night hunters upon reaching the city’s heart. However, we were forced to come to a halt upon encountering a roadblock of nose-to-nose vehicles, armed civilians pointing their rifles at us.
Without sticking my head through the window in case they viewed it as a threat, I yelled, “I’m Logan; let us through.”
The rifles immediately came down and the cars were pulled back enough to permit us entry. Once inside, Caesar parked, and we all got out. The leader of the road gang was none other than Jordan, who greeted me with a handshake and a grim smile.
“Glad to see you,” he told me. “We still have packs of enforcers running amok and trying to throw their little bombs.”
“Are there other roadblocks?” I asked him, observing the alert stance of the shifters. Several lions and wolves on four legs prowled restlessly, sniffing the still night air.
“Yeah, all over. We’re trying to contain the bad guys, but we can’t be everywhere at once. The entire city is on alert, ready to kill them if they can.”
“Have they joined forces with the night hunters?” Gray asked.
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p; Jordan nodded. “We think so. If they have, they’re back up to almost the strength they were since the fights this morning.”
“Then keep up the battle until we’ve won,” I said. “There are still more of us than there are of them.”
“The problem is,” Jordan went on, “they aren’t coming out in force. They hit a place, or try to shoot someone, then vanish into the shadows.”
“They aren’t the only ones who can kill from hiding,” I snapped. “I’ll go into every one of their holes and drag them out, bleeding and screaming. Let’s go.”
The three of us piled back into the car, and Caesar drove us on while I pondered how to draw the enemy from hiding. “Perhaps its time to bring out the bait,” I commented, seeing nothing in the darkness we drove through. “End this once and for all.”
“How?” Gray asked. “You can’t just announce you’ll be in a certain place at a certain time.”
“Except that they do know where you live,” Caesar remarked. “Maybe we can organize enough fighters around your building, have them in hiding. Let the enforcers come to you.”
“That would put Kiana and her brothers at risk,” I replied.
“We can get them out ahead of time,” he said. “If the bad guys want you bad enough, they might just storm the place.”
“With the rifle-toting guards all over?” Gray sounded skeptical.
“And we’d never know when they might try it,” I went on. “We could have people there for days and nothing would happen.”
“I don’t agree,” Caesar said. “They have to kill you fast in order to regain their previous authority. If they don’t squash this rebellion fast, the citizens will eventually run them out.”
I snorted. “So I just lurk in my tower and wait to be attacked?”
“Something like that.”
Just then, shadows charged from the darkness ahead of the car, flaming bottles in their hands. “Look out!” I yelled.
Caesar braked to a shuddering halt and put the sedan into reverse. Even as the car retreated, the enforcers threw their bombs, the glass shattering over the hood, the windshield. The liquid inside them erupted into flames that spread over the vehicle, reaching for us like hungry fingers.