Her Fierce Warrior (X-Ops #4)

by Paige Tyler

  Chapter 16

  “Stay back,” Derek ordered. “I think I almost had her.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Landon shouted. “You need to figure out how to calm her down or sedate her. We have to go—now!”

  Derek moved closer to the hybrid, his hands up in a peaceful gesture. The woman tilted her head sideways in a curious way, sniffing the air a little. And holy shit, the red glow started fading from her eyes, showing some amazing slate-gray coloring. But then a beam in the ceiling in the next cell over collapsed, sending flaming pieces down all around them. The hybrid’s eyes flared red again, and she leaped straight at Derek. But instead of protecting himself, Derek wrapped his arms around the hybrid, taking her down. She snarled, trying to claw him.

  “There’s a syringe in the top left pocket of my shirt,” Derek shouted as he tried to get control of the woman’s claws. “It’s a sedative. Get it and inject her!”

  It was damn tough with the hybrid flailing around like a Tasmanian devil, but after a few seconds, Landon found the syringe. He yanked the top off it and pushed a little on the plunger to make sure there wasn’t any air in the needle.

  “How much do I inject?”

  “All of it, and pray it’s enough!” Derek yelled, struggling to keep the woman’s claws away from his throat.

  Landon got a tight grip on the syringe and jabbed the needle into her arm, fighting like hell to get it all into her. Then he tossed the needle aside and helped hold on to her. She quieted, but it took way too long. By the time Derek was able to let her go, he and Landon both had to slap their uniforms and her clothes as the burning embers raining down from the ceiling caught them on fire.

  “Get the chain off her ankle and let’s get the hell out of here,” Landon ordered.

  Derek rammed the key into the hole in the manacle. “Fuck, fuck, and triple fuck! She smashed at it so much trying to get free that it’s completely mangled. The key is never going to fit in it.”

  Landon crawled over to check the lock as Derek scrambled to his feet and ran over to where the chain was attached to the wall. He yanked hard, but it wouldn’t budge. Landon joined him, but there was no way it was coming out of the wall.

  Landon glanced over his shoulder at the fire roaring down the wall toward them like some living creature, then turned back to Derek. “We’re not going to be able to get her out of here. Not unless we take off her foot.”

  Derek shook his head violently. “No way in hell am I taking off her foot,” he said, yanking on the chain again.

  Landon grabbed his shoulder, stilling him. “If an enraged hybrid stronger than both of us combined couldn’t get it out of the wall, we sure as hell can’t.”

  Derek stared at him for a moment, then stubbornly went back to pulling on the chain. Landon did the same, though he knew it wasn’t going to help.

  “Get the fuck out of the way!” someone growled behind them.

  Landon turned, expecting to see Trevor, but it was Diaz—with frigging claws, fangs, and yellow glowing eyes.

  “What the hell?” he mumbled.

  “Later,” Diaz said. “I could hear you two bitching and moaning from halfway across the compound. Let’s get her out of here before we all roast.”

  Landon and Derek scrambled to make room for Diaz as the smallest guy on his former A-team grabbed the chain and heaved. The chain immediately started to pull away from the wall. Diaz snarled, growled, and heaved again—then ripped the damn thing out of the concrete wall.

  Landon stared, wondering if the smoke had finally gotten to him because his mind was a completely confused mess. Derek must have had the same befuddled look on his face, because Diaz bared his long frigging teeth at them and growled.

  “You want me to carry the woman too, or would you rather let her die from smoke inhalation?”

  “I got her,” Derek said. Without another word, he scooped up the sedated hybrid in his arms and headed for the exit through the flames and falling debris.

  Diaz looked at Landon, his eyes slowly changing from glowing yellow to their normal brown. “You coming, Captain?”

  * * *

  Angelo was charging toward the big hybrid before he even saw Minka lying on the ground. He was already coming in fast, but when he saw the dark blood staining the ground beside her, anger made him run even faster.

  The hybrid must have sensed him because it turned his way and growled, eyes going red and fangs growing long. But it was too late for the creature to do anything to stop Angelo. He rammed his shoulder solidly into the side of the hybrid’s rib cage. The pistol went flying from its hand, and Angelo felt the creature’s ribs crack from the impact. A few more gave way when he slammed the hybrid to the ground.

  Angelo hoped the impact would stun the creature enough to allow him to stick his knife in it and kill the thing quickly. Unfortunately, the hybrid didn’t seem bothered by a few busted-up ribs. He tossed Angelo aside like he weighed nothing.

  A gunshot sounded nearby, but Angelo couldn’t spare a second to even look in Minka’s direction—everything was moving too fast.

  He and the hybrid came up swinging. Angelo ducked the first few swipes the thing took at his face with those sharp claws, and jabbed with his knife. If he could kill the damn thing, great. But disabling the creature would work, too. He simply wanted to keep it away from Minka. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of the raging monster with the sharp teeth and claws—it was trying to rip off Angelo’s head.

  Another shot rang out, and this time, Angelo instinctively looked in Minka’s direction. He had a fraction of a second to realize she was okay before the hybrid smashed into him and practically caved in his chest.

  Everything went fuzzy as he hit the ground. Pain exploded through his entire body, especially at the center of his back, which had come down on something particularly hard and unyielding.

  Angelo tried to get air into his lungs, but they didn’t seem to work. He opened his eyes to see the hybrid pulling a clawed hand back to tear out his throat. And there wasn’t a whole lot Angelo could do to stop him. But he sure as hell wasn’t going down without a fight, not with Minka struggling for her life a few feet away.

  So he did the only thing he could think of. He lunged upward with his knife just as the hybrid’s clawed hand came down. They met in the middle, Angelo’s left shoulder absorbing most of the impact of its claws while his blade found its way deep into its gut.

  The creature roared and plucked out the knife, flinging it aside.

  Angelo rolled to the right, both to gather himself for a last-ditch punch and to get off of whatever the hell he was lying on. He reached behind his back, expecting to find a rock, but instead came up with something much more familiar and useful—a gun.

  The big hybrid’s eyes widened in alarm. It tried to rake Angelo with its claws, but it was too late. Angelo squeezed the trigger and put two rounds through the thing’s heart at point-blank range, then another under its jaw, just in case. He would have shot the thing a couple more times, but the gun was out of bullets.

  Angelo rolled over, stumbling to his feet as he searched for Minka. What he saw made his heart nearly stop.

  Fuck.

  * * *

  Minka closed the distance between her and the doctor in a single lunge. Renard pulled the trigger on the gun in his hand, but she was too fast, and the round missed her completely. She hit Renard, driving him backward and slamming him to the ground. Then she swiped at the hand wrapped around the pistol, her claws digging in deep and knocking the weapon aside.

  Now that she’d disarmed Renard, Minka screamed at the beast to help Angelo, but the beast was completely in charge now. As Renard tried to take a swing at her, she casually batted the hand away, playing with him. Minka darted her head closer to Renard, showing off the long fangs she was going to use to tear him apart. Renard stared up at her wide-eyed, in fear, as if he knew he was about to die at the hands of the monster he’d helped make.

  And all Minka could
do was watch.

  Gunshots rang out nearby, distracting the beast for a moment, but not long. She leaned forward, her fangs centimeters from Renard’s neck.

  “Minka, stop!”

  She latched on to Angelo’s voice like a lifeline, using it to give her the leverage she needed to turn her head and look at him. The beast snarled at the interruption, fighting her for control, but Minka refused to give it back.

  Angelo was kneeling beside her, a look of concern on his face. She tried to tell him that she needed his help to regain control, but no words came out. While Minka never wanted Renard to hurt anyone ever again, she didn’t want it to be like this. She didn’t want the beast in charge of her body, using her hands to kill while she was forced to watch helplessly.

  Angelo moved closer, and Minka knew it would be okay once he wrapped his arms around her. He would make the beast go away.

  But he didn’t touch her. “Minka, I know you don’t want to do this. You don’t want the animal inside you running your life, taking over like this. But you have to be the one to fight this battle. I know you can do it. But you need to know it, too.”

  Minka began to panic. Why did her angel not simply hold her like he always had and make this all stop? Then she looked in his face and saw the love and concern there—and she knew the answer.

  Angelo would be leaving soon. He wanted her to learn how to do this on her own because he wouldn’t always be there for her.

  Minka’s heart tore a little more with that realization. But she couldn’t think of that now. So she pushed her fear and pain aside, forcing herself to relax and imagine the door of the cage like Tanner had taught her. But when the image appeared, Minka was shocked to realize the door was closed…with her inside.

  The beast had trapped her in the cage of her own making, and as she shoved against the door, the beast shoved back, fighting her for control. The beast was going to take over, and she’d be trapped in this cage in her own head forever.

  Then she felt Angelo’s hand holding hers there in the darkness. The warmth and love coming from that contact felt so very real. This was the anchor Tanner had described to her, the thing that would keep her calm and always lead her back to herself.

  Minka kicked the door of the cage over and over until she saw the bars bend. Then she shoved against the door, pushing it open.

  The big, dark cat she had come to associate with the beast was waiting outside. She knew this was a fight she had to win if she wished to be truly free of the rage inside her, but this wasn’t a battle she could win with rage and anger. The beast was a part of her. She needed it to survive, and it needed her.

  Minka slowly approached the big cat. It snarled and reared up before her. She placed her hand against the animal’s chest, feeling the rage and heat pound against her palm, but she was no longer terrified of it.

  When Minka opened her eyes, the darkness of the surrounding night let her know her eyes had returned to normal. She looked over and saw Angelo still kneeling beside her, his face etched with worry. She let her eyes shift, so she could see him better.

  Angelo smiled and reached out to gently pull her off Renard and move her to the side, a few meters away from the doctor.

  “Don’t fucking move,” Angelo ordered the man.

  Tears trickling down her cheeks, Minka wrapped her arms around Angelo, squeezing him tightly and wishing she never had to let him go. “You saved me.”

  Angelo pulled back enough to look at her. “No, you saved yourself. That was a fight you had to have with the beast, and you won.”

  Minka would have argued with him, but right then Ivy jogged into the clearing. She eyed Renard, then put an arm around Minka.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Minka nodded. She couldn’t describe the feeling of closeness that now existed between her and Ivy, but a part of her thought it must have been what it was like to have a sister.

  A noise in the gravel caught Minka’s attention, and she turned to see Renard trying to reach for the gun Minka had knocked out of his hand earlier. Ivy was on the man before he even got close to it, flipping him over and growling at him.

  “Don’t make me chase you,” Ivy snarled. “Your buddy Klaus did that, and it didn’t work out too well for him. He died of a heart attack just as the chase was getting interesting.”

  Renard’s eyes widened, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I give up!” He swallowed hard, his gaze darting from Ivy to Minka and Angelo, then back to Ivy again. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Klaus and his hybrid research—anything you want, just don’t kill me.”

  Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me about Thomas Thorn and his connection to Keegan Stutmeir.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait until we get everyone else together before we start questioning him?” Angelo interrupted.

  Ivy shook her head. “No. I want to hear what he has to say now—before Powell and Moore show up.”

  Renard looked confused for a moment but then started talking, speaking so fast that Minka could barely keep up as Renard told them how Thorn had funded Stutmeir and his efforts to create man-made shifters for more than four years, and how he’d continued funding the hybrid work after Stutmeir’s death.

  “Klaus communicated with him constantly,” Renard said. “Thorn sent him detailed orders on where he wanted us to focus our efforts. He made Klaus and me very rich men in return for us creating a serum that would give him an army of hybrids.”

  Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “Someone would have figured out they were different from other soldiers the first time he used them.”

  “That’s what we tried to tell him,” Renard said. “But he didn’t care. He wanted us to hurry up and perfect the serum, and when we were too slow, he threatened us. That’s why Klaus found us another backer for our work.”

  “Who was it?” Ivy asked.

  Renard shook his head. “I don’t know the person’s name. Klaus told me that it was someone else on the DCO Committee. All I cared about were the new hybrid protocols that were provided to us.”

  “When did you start working for this new person?” Ivy asked.

  “In December.”

  Ivy glanced at Angelo, her green eyes glinting. “That’s right after we destroyed the hybrid lab down in Costa Rica. Whoever this other person on the Committee is, they must have decided they didn’t want to start from scratch.”

  “So they tracked down Klaus and Renard and bought them off, then turned over all the research from Costa Rica to them,” Angelo added.

  “And it worked,” Renard said. “We blended their work with our process and came up with the perfect hybrid/shifter blend.” He gestured to the dead hybrid on the ground a few feet away. “They possess all of the strengths of a shifter with none of the control issues of our previous hybrid strains.”

  Minka felt sick at the gloating tone in Renard’s voice. How many people had died in horrible pain so he and Klaus and whomever they’d worked for could create their perfect hybrid/shifter blend? Renard had probably never even bothered to count.

  “Where are all these detailed reports and communications you had with Thorn and this new person?” Ivy asked Renard.

  He pointed at a big research building several hundred meters away engulfed in flames. “In a mainframe computer in the lab—or what’s left of it.”

  Ivy turned to see where he was pointing. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh God. Derek and the hybrids are in there.” She threw Angelo a quick look. “Bring Renard.”

  Then she was gone, racing across the smoke- and fire-filled compound so fast she was almost a blur.

  “What the hell did she mean?” Renard asked. “Bring me where?”

  Angelo snorted as he pulled Renard to his feet. “Back to Washington, DC, so you can finger Thorn and send him to prison—or wherever they send psychos like him.”

  “You can’t!” Renard protested, trying to pull free. “I won’t last five minu
tes once Thorn knows where to find me. I’m not going.”

  “I wasn’t asking,” Angelo said.

  Renard swore, yanking his arm away and giving Angelo a panicked shove. Before Minka knew it, the doctor was running. He had to have known he could never get away from them. Then she saw the pistol lying on the ground. Renard wasn’t combat trained like Angelo, but he had a head start. He would reach the gun before Angelo could stop him.

  Minka was moving before she realized what she was doing, her body instinctively responding. She had to get to Renard before he made it to that pistol.

  * * *

  “How long have you…?”

  Landon let his voice trail off as he and Diaz watched Derek slowly come to the realization that he wasn’t going to be able to save any of the unconscious hybrids Landon had carried out of the burning building. Three of them had been dead by the time Landon and the others had gotten out there with the sedated female, but Derek had really thought they had a shot at pulling the last one back from the brink.

  Landon had finally reached Ivy on the radio a few moments ago, telling her where they were and asking for an update. Before that, he and Diaz had helped Derek, taking turns giving CPR to the frail, broken creature and doing everything the medic told them. But there was nothing any of them could do that could repair the damage the young man had endured. He and Diaz knew that already, but Derek was still leaning over the body with fingers pressed to the creature’s throat, trying to find a pulse that wasn’t there.

  Diaz stared down at the ground. “How long have I been turning into a monster you mean? It started right after getting bitten by that hybrid in Washington State. That damn thing infected me.”

  Landon frowned. He remembered Diaz getting bitten in the fight. “You can’t turn into a hybrid by getting bitten, Diaz. Trust me on that one.”

  Diaz shrugged. “Apparently you can, because I sure as hell wasn’t like this until that hybrid took a chunk out of me.”