Just my girl who was waiting up there for me to prove my worth to her. And I’d do it. Even if it killed me.
T he fire alarm blared in my ears after an explosion had rocked the entire foundations of the building. Excitement rushed through me and made me as happy as a damn rainbow. There was only one explanation for it. Well, four actually. Four devils whose souls were linked to mine so deeply that it defied all logic. I thumbed the wedding band on my finger, sensing my connection to Kyan in the depths of the gleaming skull’s eyes. It was the ring of a heathen’s wife and the bastards in this lab should have thought to run for their lives the moment they saw it. It had been their one and only warning. And now time had run out and they were all marked by the creatures of the night creeping in their back door.
Jonas guarded me like a dog, pacing back and forth as he texted his colleagues and got no answers. The light on his phone swung across the floor as he walked, paying me no attention while I eyed his creepy facial hair with my upper lip peeling back.
“If you can’t grow a beard, you shouldn’t try,” I told him lightly and he shot me a sneer as he continued his pacing.
“Keep your whore mouth shut,” he barked.
“Keep your pube face shaved,” I tossed back and he ignored me, shaking his head in irritation.
I slipped out of bed into the cool air, the bland white sweats they gave me to wear not nearly thick enough for this place.
“Get back in the bed,” Jonas snarled, pointing a finger at me in warning.
“No,” I said evenly. “Did you know I have four boyfriends?” I questioned lightly.
He sniggered. “Doesn’t surprise me. I could tell you were a slut the moment they brought you here.”
“Oh Jonas, you poor, sad little dead man,” I purred and his eyes flickered with uncertainty for a moment as I slowly approached him. “On a healthier day, I could gut you myself, but I’m quite looking forward to watching them do it for me.”
“Get back in the bed or I’ll make you,” he warned and I ignored him, continuing on.
“Saint’s the brains, he’s the one who will have found you. He was who I called from your phone by the way.” I smirked as his brows pinched together.
“You fucking-”
“He’s got a real psycho streak too,” I spoke over him. “Then there’s Nash, my beautiful knight looks like an angel but he will have left his heart at home for this job. And Blake? You don’t wanna see him scorned, Jonas. I’ve seen him kill and he goes to a dark, dark place that still surprises me every time. And Kyan, oh Lord, you don’t wanna meet Kyan.”
“Who’s that?” he murmured, like he just couldn’t help but ask.
“Kyan’s vengeance embodied,” I breathed. “He makes men far bigger than you bleed just for fun.”
Jonas swallowed hard, then straightened his spine and fixed on a mask to hide his fear. “So which one pimps you out to the others then?”
I laughed coldly even as my head started to spin with dizziness. “If I’m a whore, I’m the whore of four demons. And they really don’t like when people try to take me from them. I wonder what they’ll do when I tell them how nicely you’ve been treating me.”
A buzz sounded and the door unlocked behind him, making him nearly jump out of his skin but no one came in. He wheeled the flashlight toward it and I gazed out into the corridor where the lights were turning green on all of the keypads beside the other rooms.
My Night Keepers were close, I knew it. I could feel my connection to them thrumming in my chest like the wings of a dragon. They were coming for me. They’d found the viper’s nest and were no doubt cutting off the heads of every snake they found to get to me.
My limbs prickled with anticipation and my breathing laboured as I moved toward the unlocked door.
Jonas stepped in front of it, barring my way forward and angling the flashlight on his phone at me.
“Your best bet is to let me go,” I reasoned. “If you want to live, let me walk out that door.”
“Ha,” he spat. “Get back into your bed, bitch. And keep your mouth shut.”
I stepped closer to him, ignoring his words. “They’re going to gut you,” I warned. “I’m going to see the whites of your eyes as they roll up into your head.”
“Get. Back,” he snarled.
“I’m giving you an out,” I said, lifting my chin as my legs shook beneath me. My mouth was parched and my lungs felt bruised from so many days of coughing. But I’d find the strength to run today. I would be leaving with my men.
“Shut up,” he snapped, lunging forward and shoving me back.
My legs gave out and I hit the floor with an oomph, cursing as I fought to get up. Fuck I hated feeling like this. This weakness that gripped my muscles was insufferable. But I would get up. I had to get up.
I fought my way back to my feet and Jonas shoved me again, a rumble of amusement in his chest.
“You’re dead,” I laughed. Screw this asshole. I’d given him a chance. Which was more than he deserved. “They’re going to make you scream and bleed and-”
“Shut up!” he threw a kick at my side and I doubled in on myself with a groan of pain.
Heavy footsteps pounded into the room and I looked up with my heart jumping hopefully. Jonas whipped around in fear, but it wasn’t my boys. It was four armed guards and the lead doctor in his long white coat.
“We have to evacuate the asset,” the doctor spoke, his gaze skimming down to me on the floor before he clearly decided not to comment on it. “Now.”
Two of the guards stepped forward, lifting me off of the ground and pushing me down onto the hospital bed. I thrashed with all the strength I had as fear took hold of me. I bit and kicked but in my weakened state, my blows felt as hard as feathers and exhaustion crept up on me like a beast in the night. They forced me down beneath them, pinning me in place before one of them pulled strong straps over my body, securing me to the bed.
My heart sank into the depths of my stomach as panic found me. They couldn’t take me from my boys. Not again.
Jonas started wheeling me out of the room and the guards clustered around me with face masks in place and guns in hand.
I did the only thing I could do and started screaming, crying the names of my boys in hopes that they could hear me and find their way here. I couldn’t let these assholes take me. I couldn’t come too close to salvation only to be stolen away into the night once more. My men were so near I could taste them on the air. I refused to be torn away from them again without so much as seeing their beautiful faces.
“Get her to the roof,” the doctor barked, directing us down the corridor. “The emergency generator on this level will have kept this elevator operational. A helicopter is on the way.”
Dread seeped into every inch of my flesh and I bucked against my restraints, screaming louder even though it pained my insides to do so, scorching my lungs like fire.
“Nash!” I yelled. “Blake, Kyan, Saint!”
I was wheeled into the elevator and planted at the back of it as the guards all took up position in front of me.
Jonas pulled his face mask down under his visor to smirk at me. “What was that about me bleeding?” he mocked in a quiet voice.
This fucking guy. I wriggled a hand free of my binds, reaching out and snatching a tactical knife from one of the guard’s belts with a surge of adrenaline. I twisted it around and stabbed at Jonas, missing his gut as he lurched away, but it drove deep into his forearm instead, spilling blood everywhere. He shrieked like a new-born baby, clutching the wound as one of the guards grabbed the blade from my hand and strapped me down tighter on the bed so I could barely move my arms at all.
“Calm down, put pressure on it,” a guard barked at Jonas as he leaned against the wall whimpering and the elevator soared.
“If they don’t kill you, I will,” I promised Jonas and he had the good sense to finally look afraid of me.
Because I refused to believe they wouldn’t get here on time. I ha
d faith in them. They had my scent and they wouldn’t stop tracking me until we were reunited.
I was a ruler of the most ruthless beasts to walk the earth. And they were hunting me down with vengeance in their hearts and bloodlust in their souls. So help anyone who tried to keep me from them.
I t had taken me a little longer than it should have to get back out of the parking lot and make my way around to the emergency exit where the others were waiting by the door. Saint had laid into me the moment I arrived about my unused gas mask hanging from my belt, his face scrunching up with fury at the idea of someone defying him. Luckily for me, I'd still been mostly deaf from the explosion at that point, so I hadn't caught much of his tirade aside from the angry look in his eyes.
I hadn't wasted much time standing about there for him to go off on one though and we were all in agreement that there was no time for that shit, so we'd taken off into the building via the handily unlocked emergency exit. The door opened into a dark corridor and the sounds of people racing our way in a bid to escape reached our ears. Monroe ran across the space to another door and shoved it open as we hurried to follow, my heart beating hard as adrenaline surged in my veins.
The moment we stepped out into the reception, shots were fired in our direction and it was only through luck or chance that we all managed to dive into the relative safety behind the reception desk before any of us were gunned down.
Blake released a shaky laugh as our gazes met, but I was already in attack mode, needing to remove these assholes as they blocked my way to my girl. That was all they were, an obstacle in my path which I would gladly mow down.
I yanked a pistol from the holster at my hip and started firing without so much as blinking. This was where the beast in me thrived, deep in the heart of the fight. Where life and death hung in the balance and the only clear-cut payment for making it out was blood.
Saint ignored me totally, reaching up and yanking the monitor off of the desk as he booted up the computer and began typing. I'd never paid a whole hell of a lot of attention to his nerd habits when he set to work preparing to take over the world on his laptop every evening, but it was becoming more than clear that he could pretty much hack his way into anything when he set his mind to it.
"Keep them busy while I figure out where they're holding her," he commanded as Monroe leaned around the side of the desk to take a shot and almost got his head blown off, a chunk of desk shattering beside him instead.
“Holy fuck,” he breathed, half laughing as a wild look filled his eyes from the rush of coming so close to death. This feeling right here was damn addictive, but I slapped a hand down on his shoulder for a moment to let him know I was glad he hadn’t died.
I drew in a breath and leapt up, taking four shots in a row, hitting two assholes square between the eyes, one in the chest and missing the fourth. I wasted an additional second taking count of our opponents and was rewarded with a flash of burning pain scoring across my bicep half a second before I dropped down out of sight again. But at least now I knew there were only three of them left. At least until their backup arrived - no way I believed there were only a handful of guards working in a place like this. Not while our girl was here. I might fucking hate it, but Tatum Rivers was currently the most valuable commodity in the world. People would sell their souls to get their hands on a vaccine for the Hades Virus and she was the only key to it. They’d be guarding her heavily and would do anything it took to make sure they kept hold of her.
But that was okay. It just meant I had to be willing to sacrifice even more than them to get her back, which I wholeheartedly was.
I cursed and Blake turned to look at me, his green eyes widening as he took in the blood on my arm, but I just shook my head, dismissing it.
"It's nothing," I growled. "It only skimmed me." But I was willing to bet that had just fucked up some of my ink. Assholes.
Blake jerked his head, accepting my words as he pulled a smoke grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin and tossed it over the desk. Niall had really come through for us with all of this shit and I made a mental note to send him a gift basket when we all got out of here alive.
Cries of alarm met the sound of it hitting the floor and I listened to it tinkling across the tiles and hissing as it rolled away, a huge cloud of pink smoke swirling up to engulf the far side of the room.
"Pink?" Saint growled, sounding like he'd just seen someone dick slap his grandma or something.
"What can I say, my uncle is a flashy asshole." I shrugged, not caring if Niall had given me pink smoke, glitter smoke or even smoke that stank of shit, so long as it worked.
No doubt he was laughing his ass off somewhere over this as we spoke though and I just hoped I'd live long enough to tell him the story.
He'd offered to come help us with this rescue mission, but in the end, we'd agreed that he was best occupied keeping my grandpa out of the loop until it was done. The last thing I needed was Liam O'Brien weighing in and fucking everything up for us. He would have agreed to help get Tatum back, I was fairly certain of that. His attachment to the idea of family being the most important thing in the world would have driven him to do that much. But the O’Briens were about as subtle as a porn shoot taking place at a kids’ party. And that just wouldn’t have worked against Troy Memphis. He was a sneaky bastard and we’d needed to play him at his own game if we wanted to get the jump on him and rescue our girl.
Besides, it was only right that this fight remained our own. The Night Keepers didn’t need help from anyone else. We’d made an oath to protect Tatum and we’d keep our damn word on that.
I gave the smoke a couple of seconds to thicken up, yanking the gas mask from where it hung at my belt and pulling it on for the first time as I admitted, in this instance, I actually needed the damn thing.
The moment it was secure, I vaulted over the reception desk and took a pot shot straight at a figure I could just make out moving within the pink smoke. The satisfying sound of a body hitting the ground followed, letting me know we were down to two guards now.
The only light in here was from the streetlamp beyond the glass front of the building, but that was plenty for me. I knew how to move in the dark.
I slipped over to the wall, straining my ears to listen over the lingering ringing in them from the explosion and the sound of a scuffle had me whipping around and shooting another guard straight in the face.
The pink smoke swirled all around me as I dove into it, my grip on my gun tight as I hunted for my prey. I only had two bullets left before I needed to reload, but that was going to be enough.
My heart beat to a solid rhythm, my breaths coming slow and deep as I fell into that primal, base piece of my being. I was nothing more than a beast hunting out enemies in the dark. Just a creature bound to protect its mate beyond all other desires.
I rounded the elevator bank, its doors firmly closed as the fire alarm continued to blare out.
"I need back-up on the ground floor," a voice came from somewhere deeper into the smoke. "Armed assailants. Secure the asset."
A growl spilled from my lips and I ran forward, not caring if I was giving myself away as the crackled response from another voice came over the radio, confirming that there were more guards heading our way.
I fired a shot based on the sound of where I'd heard that voice, but my hearing was still off from the explosion and a moment later the guard returned fire.
A bullet hit me square in the chest, pain ricocheting through my body as I staggered but managed to stay on my feet. My second bullet found the target, but I kept my aim low and the guard screamed in pain as he was hit.
I forced a breath down into my lungs through the burning agony of where the bullet hit and stumbled forward a few steps as my body yelled at me not to move. But fuck that. Tatum needed me.
I found the guard within the smoke, kicking his fallen gun away from him as he tried to grab for it with one hand while pressing down on a seriously bloody wound in his gut with the other.
My second kick caught him in the jaw and I was on top of him the moment his back hit the ground.
"Clear," I called out to the others, ignoring the pain in my own body in favour of inflicting some on the piece of shit beneath me.
I holstered my gun and pulled the hunting knife into my grasp instead.
"Have you found her?" I demanded, looking back towards Saint for my answer.
I wrapped one hand around the guard's throat as my weight pressed down on the bleeding wound in his stomach and he tried to scream.
"The whole thing is coded," Saint growled, the sound of furious typing still coming from beyond the desk.
My gaze fixed on the soon-to-be-dead man beneath me as I squeezed hard enough to cut off his air supply. "We're here for the girl," I said in a rough growl that made it clear I wasn't fucking around. "Tell me where they're keeping her."
I took a good look at the fear in his eyes before loosening my hold enough for him to speak.
"I don't know what you m-"
I slammed my hunting knife down into his bicep and bared my teeth at him as I cut off his air once more.
"Where. Is. The. Girl?" I didn't need to elaborate. He knew which fucking girl.
This time when I let him speak, he looked about ready to piss himself. "T-top floor," he gasped. "Isolation unit. But you'll never-"
I slammed my blade down into his chest just as Blake and Monroe made it to us, stabbing him over and over, purposefully avoiding anything too fatal for the first few blows as I let my beast feed on his pain before finally driving it into his cowardly heart to end it.
I was covered in blood by the time I reared back, and Blake's hand landed on my shoulder as he wrenched me away.
"Were you hit?" he demanded, his eyes widening behind his mask as he looked at the round hole in my shirt right in the centre of my chest.
"Yeah," I grunted. "Hurt like a bitch too."
I reached down to tear the front of my shirt open, using the tip of my bloody knife to pop the bullet out of the Kevlar I was wearing and taking in a deep breath. If I lived to see tomorrow that was gonna leave one hell of a bruise.
Queen of Quarantine Page 6