Niall burst out laughing, slinging the sledgehammer over his shoulder to rest there and the tension ran out of my body as I recognised him. Though I could bet that pretty much anyone else who found this monster of a man darkening their doorway had a very different reaction to spotting him.
“The cavalry’s here!” he announced in his Irish accent, his voice as deep and rich as his nephew’s. He strode into the room like he owned it, carving his tattooed fingers over his stubbled jaw and taking in the apartment.
“Thanks for coming,” I said earnestly.
“That’s a weird thing to thank me for, but I’ll give your regards to the sock who was a top-notch lover this morning.” He strode forward as I snorted a surprised laugh. “It’s good to see you, lass.”
I glanced over his shoulder, expecting more of Kyan’s family to appear, but no one did.
“Is everyone else downstairs?” I asked.
“Nope, it’s just me. Unless you’re referring to the ghosts of my past, then they’re here too, but they’re not much good in a fight. Or much fun to hang out with all the damn time if I’m being totally frank. And speaking of fights…”
“You came alone?” I questioned in concern as he looked around the place, taking in the possible exits and looking like he was only half listening to me.
“Yep. I thought about bringing the rest of the family, but I’m feeling kinda stabby today and they all annoy the ever loving fuck outta me, so I decided to just go rogue and do it alone. Don’t worry though, I’ve got a plan.”
“What’s that?” I asked nervously, hoping it was a damn good one because if Saint and the others had been sure that we’d need an O’Brien army to get me out of here, then I was inclined to trust their judgement on it over Niall’s.
“Not sure yet. But it’ll come to me. Always does.” He flashed me a grin and I balked, wondering if Kyan had seriously misjudged how good his uncle’s word was because that sounded a whole hell of a lot like he was going to wing it.
No doubt Saint was having an aneurism over the mere idea of that somewhere as we spoke, sensing on the wind that someone had just uttered the words not sure yet about a plan we were already in the middle of.
Shouts sounded downstairs, making my pulse jackhammer and my grip tighten on the gun.
“We gotta go.” Niall picked up the bag on the bed, shouldering it and holding the sledgehammer ready to swing.
I ran to the fridge, taking out the box of vaccines and shoving it into a backpack before putting it on. I slid Kyan’s bat under the straps over my shoulders to keep it there then nodded to Niall. The guy was missing a few screws, but I didn’t have much choice in trusting him now. He’d gotten into the city, so I just hoped he had a way to get us out too.
“Alright, lass, stay close to my side. We’re getting out of here.” He jogged to the door then took a grenade from his pocket and pulled the pin out with his teeth.
“Niall!” I gasped in fear.
“It won’t blow until I’m ready for it to blow,” he said calmly and my throat thickened as he started running down the stairs, keeping his thumb on the trigger. But one false move and he’d blow both of us to hell, so I wasn’t exactly reassured by his words.
I hurried after him as we made it to the foyer and Niall threw the grenade before I even knew what was happening. Soldiers started shouting and running away as the grenade bounced across the carpet and the timer within it ticked down. Niall dragged me toward an emergency exit just as a bang filled my head and a cloud of pink smoke and glitter burst over us. I glanced back in surprise, the grenade clearly just a decoy as it filled the foyer in a shimmery fog while Niall yanked me out into an alley.
“What now?” I demanded, but Niall didn’t answer, shoving the emergency exit door shut and casually hanging a Christmas bauble on the door handle.
“Now you’re gonna wanna run for your fucking life, lass.” He sprinted out of the alley and I didn’t need to be told twice by Mr Psycho, tearing after him and making it around the corner just as a deafening boom came from behind us, making my heart thrash like crazy.
Niall kept running, continually checking that I was behind him as he powered along the street. And I sure as hell was. I wasn’t gonna stray a foot from his side because the guy was showering crazy through the city and maybe that was what we needed to get out.
“Hey – stop!” a woman shouted then a rattle of gunfire rang in my ears and I ducked my head with a gasp, pushing myself even faster.
Niall stopped dead in the street, taking a pistol from his hip and returning fire. “Keep going!” he barked at me. “Down that alley.” He pointed to the right and I fled into it, pressing my back to the wall at the very edge of it and peering back the way I’d come with my gun lifted. There was a huge armoured vehicle at the end of the street with soldiers pouring out of it while two of them stood firing at Niall. The crazy asshole shot at them out in the open, ducking and weaving left and right like that would give him some protection.
“Niall!” I shouted anxiously as bullets whistled past him. He launched another grenade down the street and shouts for cover came from the soldiers as it pinged along the ground.
Niall ran after me as a deafening boom split the air apart and I gawped at him as he clamped his hands over my ears to protect me from the noise.
“Do you even know what’s a bomb and what isn’t?” I asked as he dropped his hands.
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Mostly it’s a lucky dip what I pluck outta my belt. He patted the tactical belt around his waist then charged ahead of me down the alley, hefting the sledgehammer above his head and slamming it through a wooden door in the far wall. He shoved his hand through the hole, unlocking it and swinging it wide, bowing to me as he gestured for me to go ahead. “My lady.”
His methods were next level insanity, but I just had to back them and hope they paid off. I ran inside and he jogged after me, shutting the door and we ran up a dark stairway as more shouts sounded somewhere back on the street. I ran full pelt, the two of us moving faster and faster as sweat beaded on the back of my neck. My desperation to get out the city and reunite with my Night Keepers drove every one of my movements. I wasn’t going to let them down. I’d return to them no matter what.
“Get to the roof,” Niall insisted just before the roaring of a helicopter sounded overhead. “Alright, don’t get to the roof.” He pulled me roughly out of the stairway and shouted a battle cry as he charged down a door ahead of us, sending it flying off of its hinges as he fell flat on his face inside someone’s apartment.
A woman screamed as I followed him into the place and she dove off of her couch, hiding behind it as Niall rolled and leapt to his feet again.
“No need to be dramatic, love,” Niall said, jogging up to the sliding door that led out onto a balcony. He opened it, jerking his head to beckon me after him and I threw an apologetic look at the cowering woman before following.
We were up three floors overlooking a large park that stretched out toward a lake in the distance. There was a stone boathouse beside it and I fisted Niall’s shirt in my hand as I wheeled him around to point it out.
“We could head there,” I said. “We’re not getting out of the city now until they lose our trail.” I pointed to the trees that ran nearly all the way up to it through the park. “We can stay under cover.”
The helicopter circled somewhere behind us and we quickly pressed back against the wall. The balcony was covered by a plastic roof, but it wasn’t worth taking any chances in being seen.
“Alright,” Niall conceded. “We’ll do your plan with a sprinkling of my idea.”
“And what’s your idea?” I asked nervously as he shifted his grip on the sledgehammer.
“I’m gonna cause a distraction and you’re gonna run to that boathouse like the little piggy who went home,” he said gruffly.
“That’s a bad idea,” I growled.
“Why? You just have to go weeee weeeee weeeee all the way-”
I th
umped his arm and his eyes widened in surprise. “No, we’re not splitting up. If they see you, you’re fucked.”
“The army are gonna be crawling all over this place in minutes, lass,” Niall reasoned. “There ain’t time for grand plans.”
I eyed the few people out walking in the park with their faces covered by masks and knew what we had to do.
“Okay, can you tie that woman up and gag her to stop her from giving us away?” I asked and Niall beamed.
“Just call me Christian Grey on speed.” He took a zip tie from his belt and strode back inside.
I followed him, focusing on what I had to do as ran into the woman’s bedroom and tried not to feel too guilty when she started screaming again. I rifled through her closet, grabbing a couple of large men’s coats, a hat and some face masks. I ran back to Niall, finding the woman hogtied on the couch with a potato stuffed in her mouth.
“That’s a bloody work of art,” he announced, taking his phone out to snap a photo. He reached into her handbag on the floor, taking out her purse and reading the name on her I.D. “Telisha Collins, hmm, don’t move now, lass. Let’s see how long you can balance this on your noggin for.” He placed her I.D. on her head then threw her purse back in her bag.
“Come on,” I hissed impatiently, grabbing his arm.
“This is the Sequoia State Hades Defence Squadron, please evacuate this building immediately,” a voice sounded through a megaphone somewhere in the apartment block and my breathing quickened. We were running out of time. And I was not gonna be caught.
We raced to the balcony and I tossed Niall a black coat and a mask as I pulled on my own. I tucked my hair up into the black beanie and pointed at Niall’s sledgehammer. “You have to leave it.”
“But Mary.” He hugged it to his chest just as someone shouted an order back in the building.
“Niall,” I hissed. Did he seriously name that thing Mary?? “Dump it.”
He kissed the damn hammer, looking like he was leaving a beloved child behind as he placed it down and gave it a salute in goodbye. Then he swung over the side of the balcony, reaching for a drainpipe. “You wanna go on my back, lass?”
“I can manage,” I said firmly and he smirked like he was impressed as he started climbing down it. I made my way onto the pipe and followed him, the two of us reaching the ground and darting across the road toward the park without the helicopter making another appearance.
I tugged Niall’s sleeve to slow him down as we walked through the gate side by side, his hand suddenly looping through mine like he was a gentleman escorting a lady. Which was about as convincing as a horse escorting a pigeon, but whatever.
The sound of a heavy truck rolling along the road behind me made me turn and my tongue felt leaden as more soldiers spilled out of it, hunting the area. We slipped into the trees, walking along a woodchip track towards the boathouse as my body hummed with adrenaline. This might have been crazy, but I couldn’t deny I was thriving on the wildness of it.
“She was a good girl. Ten kills to her name,” Niall said, his voice wistful and I realised he was talking about the sledgehammer.
“You can get another one,” I breathed, fighting the urge to look back again as more orders were barked by one of the sergeants.
“There won’t be another like Mary,” he sighed.
“Mary would have wanted you to move on,” I whispered, not wanting him to lose it entirely.
Niall O’Brien was seriously volatile and who knew what he might do if he had an emotional meltdown over Mary. I needed to get him to that boathouse because he was my ticket out of this city and back to my men. And more than that, he was important to Kyan. The only member of his family he really loved. So I wasn’t going to risk anything happening to him for that reason alone.
“She made such a beautiful sound when she hit a skull, it was music, lass, music,” he lamented.
“She must have had a few bad points,” I tried, my nose wrinkling at the unwanted mental image.
“Well…” he started thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, her head got loose from time to time. Bitch let me down at the crucial moment of death once. She made it a real dirty job that day.”
I tried not to picture him smashing skulls in, but it was pretty hard. Niall really was a freaking psycho, but I wasn’t gonna complain about that when he’d risked his neck to save me. “See? You can do better.”
“You’re right,” he growled. “I deserve a weapon I can depend upon.”
I caught sight of the boathouse through the trees and we quickened our pace a little, my heart pulsing out of beat as the helicopter sounded in the distance. But it was nowhere near here luckily.
We hurried over to the stone building, finding a thin chain and a padlock holding the door shut. Niall took a screwdriver from his belt, jammed it into one of the chain links and twisted it hard, using brute force to break it. He pushed the door open, shoving me inside and following after, bringing the broken chain with him and closing the door. He grabbed a paddle for a canoe and used it to bar the door as I gazed around the interior. The place was cold and full of little pedalos and canoes. A shutter was pulled down which stopped anyone accessing the boats from the jetty that led inside so we were completely isolated in here. And that was perfect.
“We’d better wait here ‘til dark,” Niall said as he moved to sit in a rowing boat on the concrete beside the water and jerking his head for me to follow.
I stepped in after him, sitting at his side and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, patting me awkwardly. It was weirdly sweet, especially as I got the feeling the guy didn’t do affection often. I couldn’t help but think of his wife, the woman he’d lost and avenged all those years ago. Had something cracked in him after losing her? Or had he always been like this? Somehow, I sensed it was a mixture of both, but I wasn’t dumb enough to ask him anything about the woman he’d lost. I was guessing he’d find that kind of triggering and he was not the sort of guy I wanted to set off. Hell, he made my Night Keepers look like upstanding pillars of the community. And if he’d been upset about Mary, then mentioning his dead wife seemed like a seriously dangerous idea. It made me sad though, to know he’d experienced such pain and I wondered if he’d ever opened up to Kyan about it. I hoped they were close enough to talk to about the hard things, because if Niall didn’t have him, I had the feeling he’d be all alone in the world. And no one deserved that.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I skewered a barber on a pitchfork?” he asked conversationally.
“No,” I said with a little laugh. “We’ve spoken like twice in our lives, so…”
“Well lass, it’s quite the story. It all started on a day when I woke up tied to radiator dressed as a Moomin…”
W e drove east for several hours, bumping along in the back of the army truck with countless other vehicles just like ours all going in the same direction and just as many empty ones heading back to the city as well.
It was cold in the back of the open sided truck, the flimsy canvas overhead offering only the smallest amount of protection from the rain which had been drizzling down on us for the past hour. I guessed the weather was just mirroring how I felt over the distance which was growing between us and our girl.
Niall had messaged to let me know he was with her and was going to get her out of the city, but I hadn’t heard anything since and the not knowing was driving me crazy.
The four of us had made the other members of our truck move their asses off of the bench at the back of the bed within the first hour of getting here so that we could sit with our backs to the cab in the best position available, but it was still pretty fucking abysmal. And by 'the four of us' I really meant me. Nash had seemed a little less than impressed when I'd gotten my ass up and told the fuckers who had been sitting here to vacate while Saint had a look on his face which said it was about damn time. I didn't care if I was just proving how much of an asshole I was by doing it either. This was a dog-eat-dog world, and I was a wolf come
to devour them all. The sooner they learned it, the faster they'd figure out that it was best to keep the fuck out of my way.
The truck finally pulled to a halt and I blew out a frustrated breath as I stood up, hating how far we'd just come from our girl while running over the best ways for us to get the fuck out of here and back to her as soon as we could. But as Saint had pointed out on plenty of occasions, I wasn't really the brains of this outfit, so most of my plans hinged on me beating the shit out of some soldiers, stealing their guns and shooting our way out of here. No doubt Saint would come up with something a little less suicidal.
"Queue F!" a soldier called out, like that was supposed to mean something to us as he unbolted the back of the truck to let us all off.
I shoved my way through the crowd of people surrounding us as they stood to get off and they quickly cowered back out of the way to let the four of us pass.
My height made it easy enough for me to see over the huge crowds of people to the different queues that had been formed with letters hanging above the entrances to white tents ahead of us.
I hopped down and pointed the way to the queue for Tent F, taking off through the crowd and shoving anyone aside who didn't see me coming fast enough to move.
"I'm not standing around in some fucking queue," Saint growled behind me and I snorted a laugh as I glanced about.
"Of course you're not, Your Highness," I mocked. The thought of Saint Memphis queueing with the norms was damn laughable even if I would have liked to see it.
The soldiers were ringing the crowd in a loose perimeter, each of them armed with assault rifles and looking more than ready to stop anyone who tried to leave.
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