The words struck her like a blow, and Dominick quickly stepped between them, ever the peacekeeper. “It doesn’t matter how it happened. We need to leave. Now.”
Raven agreed. “We can’t assume the escape routes are not compromised. If they’ve been watching, they know exactly who’s inside the cave. They won’t leave without the purebloods or me. They’re not about to lose such coveted prizes.”
For the first time, Nadia looked young and lost. “They came for you. You’re important. We’ll hold them off. Just get as many of my people to safety as you can.”
Raven stilled, a crazy idea forming at the back of her mind.
There was only one sure-fire way to get to Rylan…let them take her.
Since she didn’t know his location, she would never be able to reach him in time otherwise.
“No. It’s me they want. You’ll just become collateral damage. You need to take those who can’t fight, those who would be used as fodder, and get them out. They’re not the targets, so whoever’s hunting us won’t follow you. It should give you enough time to escape.”
Durant looked pissed, but he didn’t try to change her mind, knowing he wouldn’t be able to budge her.
Dominick didn’t have any such qualms. “They will take you back to the labs. You know what that means. If they start testing again, you could be giving them exactly what they want.”
She licked her lips, unable to swallow. The fate that had been looming over her for years finally caught up with her. There would be no more escape. “We always knew that I would have to go back.”
He began to shake his head, opening his mouth to argue, when she spoke over him. “You know I’m right. They will all be killed, and we’ll still be taken. Your mate will be taken. You need to protect her. She’s your duty now, not me.”
The truth hurt to say aloud. They’d been a team since they escaped together. She would’ve hidden herself away, alone and afraid, if it hadn’t been for Dominick. He made her care. He made her see that she could still help people.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen. We were supposed to go back together. I was supposed to be there to protect you, and help you destroy them once and for all.”
“You know as well as I do that if we leave, they will plow through these shifters in a matter of minutes, then keep following us. They won’t give up until we’re caught. It doesn’t make sense to sacrifice these people for nothing.”
While shifters were exiting out the back of the cave in groups of two or three, a few remained behind to set up traps, London and Griffin helping them make preparations by rolling boulders the size of a car, building stockades to slow down the soldiers.
If the soldiers wanted to take them, they were going to have to work for it.
Before Dominick could protest again, she grabbed his arm. “If you want to help, then make yourself useful, and find a way to slow them down even more. The more time we can give the rogues to get away, the better chance they will survive. The soldiers won’t follow if it’s too much work.”
“Raven…” He seemed to be at a loss for words. “I know you’re doing this for me. You’re protecting Nadia for me.”
“Of course. She’s ours to protect now. Neither of you can be taken. If they suspect you are mated, they will make your life a living hell, trying to find a way to duplicate the bond. They would take you both apart, piece by piece, to find out how it works. If you think your wolf is hard to control now, think what would happen when you’re separated, knowing they are touching her.”
His eyes slashed to green, his fangs descended, everything in him prepared to rip her apart for even suggesting it. He snarled so violently, everyone immediately backed away, averting their eyes to avoid antagonizing the beast.
Nadia came to stand next to Dominick without an ounce of trepidation in the face of the nearly feral wolf, and studied Raven for a moment, before she tipped her head in a bow of respect. “Thank you. I’ll make sure he gets out of here alive.”
Without giving him more time to protest, Nadia grabbed Dominick’s arm and dragged him away.
As soon as they left, Durant stalked toward her, his eyes having turned a molten gold.
He was pissed.
She wasn’t aware of backing away until she slammed into solid rock.
He didn’t stop until he was right in her face. “You wanted this.”
The accusation stung…because he was correct. When she reached out to touch him, he caught her wrist, holding her hand away from him.
The rejection hurt more than if he’d smashed his hand into her chest and squeezed her heart. “I need to do this. I can survive anything. Rylan and these people can’t.”
He cupped her chin, his touch rough when he saw there was nothing that he could do to stop her. “You are more fragile than you realize. It’s too risky.”
“Please.” Raven leaned into him, trying not to care when he didn’t gather her close. “Trust me.”
His growl thundered in the confined space, not the possessive and pleased rumble she was familiar with and treasured, but the kind that said he was all kinds of pissed off. He kept his gaze trained on her, like she was prey, just seconds away from sweeping her up in his arms and taking her away, her wishes bedamned.
“I have a plan. I’m not doing this rashly.”
His face hardened further if possible, and he leaned in closer. “I don’t care.”
The snarl should have frightened her, but Raven wanted nothing more than to pull his mouth down on hers to show him he was just as terrified. “You need to let them take me. You and the rest of the pack need to escape. You’re the only ones who will be able to find me…afterward.”
When he opened his mouth to snarl more words at her, she placed a gentle finger over his lips. “Check the news for any unexplained storm patterns. Once you narrow it down, search for any place with abnormal energy consumption. Then come and get me the hell out of there. Understand?”
She was going to be thrust back into the hell she spent most of her life trying to escape, horrors that still gave her nightmares.
She was trusting her pack to come for her.
Durant leaned down, his forehead resting against hers, finally understanding that her plan was the best option. “You better stay alive until I come for you.”
Stark terror swelled in her chest with the knowledge she was finally going to have to face her past.
She just hoped she lived through it.
It took ten minutes to clear the caves of innocent shifters. The maze was now in place on the cave floor, so they would be able to bottleneck the soldiers and take care of them one at a time. About a dozen people remained behind.
Raven nodded to Nadia. “I can hear them coming through the tunnels. You need to collect the rest of your men and leave.”
Energy crackled along Raven’s skin as she struggled against the need to bring the fight to them and collapse the tunnels. Only the last time she did that, she ended up taking down everything. She couldn’t risk her people being crushed in the backlash.
No, she had a plan. She needed to stick to it.
It was the only way she could find Rylan in time.
That didn’t stop her stomach from twisting itself up in knots over the pain and horror awaiting her.
When Raven turned away from the entrance, it was to see that no one had moved.
One of them shouted from behind a boulder, “We’re not going anywhere. This is our home, and we’re going to defend it.”
The fools!
“You’re going to get yourselves killed, you idiots. I’m trying to buy you time to escape.” She didn’t need more deaths on her conscience. Her hands were already stained with enough blood.
“Not killed. We’re going to help delay them. If it looks like we can’t defeat them, we’ll retreat, and make sure the others aren’t followed.”
Raven didn’t like it. “Fine, but your group will remain behind me. If I go down, you leave immediately.”
&nbs
p; Nadia nodded then gave a sharp whistle. Her wolves leapt and shimmied up the walls like monkeys—gravity not affecting them in the least—while others slipped into cracks and crevices so tiny, Raven hadn’t noticed them.
In seconds, they’d vanished.
It wasn’t good enough. “If they stay, they will die.”
The wolves had the innocence of children.
It hurt to know that they would be harmed.
“They volunteered, wanting vengeance against the people who did this to them. They might appear innocent, but they still remember their time in the labs. They know what they’ve lost. They want their vengeance.” Nadia held up her hand before Raven could protest. “If things get too bad, I’ll pull them back with us.”
“Promise?” Raven turned and confronted Dominick. “Promise you’ll get everyone out.”
She gave a tiny nod toward the rest of her pack. He seemed to understand her command. “Promise.”
A second whistle sounded.
All the lanterns in the cave went out at once.
No sense in giving the humans an advantage, when shifters could see in the dark.
The wait had to be nothing more than a few minutes, but it seemed to last an eternity. Durant took up a position to her left, while Griffin stood firm at her right. Though she didn’t like it, London and Randolph stood closer to the entrance of the cavern. They were the best fighters, and planned to use guerilla tactics, snatching the soldiers away one at a time, and thin the herd before they reached the rest of the group.
Both men promised to remain hidden, and fall back before they could be overwhelmed only when she threatened to wade into the battle and retrieve them if they didn’t obey.
Then all discussions ceased when half a dozen green flares were tossed into the cave.
Caustic chemicals seeped into the air, interfering with the shifters’ sensitive noses.
Underneath, the smell of humans swept through the cave, along with the oil they used to clean their guns. Raven prayed they weren’t an extermination team. The labs had learned by experimentation what kind of bullets would do the most damage to shifters.
The first soldiers slipped into the cavern, staying low to the ground, wearing full tactical gear and body armor, including night vision goggles.
They came prepared.
The first few men darted forward, seeking shelter behind boulders and stalagmites, kneeling to lay suppressive fire, while more and more men poured from the crack like a swarm of cockroaches.
Static from their radios was a constant undertone, every sound amplified in the confined space and absolute darkness only found in caves.
The soldiers split up in smaller teams of five, the leaders using hand signals to direct their men. None of the shifters so much as twitched until the soldiers were more than halfway through the cavern. When they made their move, she almost missed it.
One shifter reached out of his crevice and yanked the last soldier in the group inside with him. Besides a small scuffle, there wasn’t a sound.
Another shifter inched down from the wall, grabbed a soldier by the throat to cut off all sound, and hoisted the man clear up in the air, so it appeared that he’d just vanished. Soon dead bodies littered the cave.
It only took seconds for the soldiers to notice their missing men.
“Back-to-back, people.”
The soldiers immediately partnered up, leaving no side unprotected as they continued to push forward.
A small burst of gunfire came from the right, tiny flashes of light from the muzzle giving away their positions. The concussion from the gunfire was deafening. A man screamed, and more gunfire erupted.
“They’re in the bloody walls. Look up! Look up!” The frantic cry had all the soldiers tipping their guns and flashlights toward the walls, and the real fighting began.
Raven hated sitting on her hands doing nothing. When she tried to stand, Durant grabbed her arm and yanked her back down. “Wait.”
The wolves were no longer being stealthy. They would streak past a soldier, their claws extended, slashing and hacking at anything they could reach. The side of one soldier’s face was filleted, his skull clearly visible as he screamed and fired his gun at anything that moved, not caring if he hit his own men.
Another streaked behind a second soldier, cleaving the flesh from the back of the man’s leg.
The soldier crumpled with a scream and bled out within seconds.
Body armor protected most of the soldiers, a special neck guard blocking the claws from penetrating, so the shifters used force to crush the armor.
One shifter picked up a man and slammed him into the cave wall, ignoring the bullets riddling him, and cracked the armor open like a walnut.
Blood began to flow freely on both sides.
Randolph and London were nothing but shadows as they moved through the cavern, disposing of men quickly and brutally. London picked up one man who had a litter of shifter bodies piled up around him and squeezed. A terrified scream escaped the soldier, while blood began to pour out of every orifice. Even from the distance, she could hear bones crack as London literally crushed the man into a ball. There couldn’t have been any bones left unbroken when he dropped the corpse.
“They’re not even bothering to capture them.” Raven was appalled as the soldiers began to systematically exterminate the rogues one by one.
“If they wanted to capture the wolves, they could have come in at any time over the years and taken them.” Durant’s eyes were grim. “They are after bigger fish.”
Bile rose at the back of her throat at the senseless loss.
This was all her fault.
If she had never come here, they would have gone on surviving for years.
Raven turned toward Nadia. “Call them back.”
Tears crowded her eyes, then her chin firmed and she shook her head. “They won’t listen. Their hatred is too strong.”
Nadia had known this would happen.
Though Raven understood the tactic, she’d hoped Nadia was different from other alphas.
London darted forward, pulling back some of the wounded, finishing off the soldiers who were injured. When a sniper began picking off the wolves from a protected spot behind a column, London lifted a boulder the size of a horse and threw it at them.
The resounding crash shook the cave. The shooting halted as men shrieked in pain.
“Fall back! Fall back!”
The soldiers darted toward the entrance. A few of the wolves yipped in excitement, and gave chase. But the soldiers didn’t leave. They flattened themselves against the wall, weapons at the ready, when a second team entered the cave.
“Shifters.”
These men were armed with nothing but teeth and claws.
Worse, they were healthy, and twice the size of Nadia’s rogues.
Though Nadia’s wolves were well trained, these guys were better.
The wolves didn’t stand a chance when the shifters began to use their senses to track the rogues down one by one and systematically tore them apart.
They were vicious and brutal, not hesitating to rip out throats with their claws and teeth, or plunge a hand in a man’s chest and rip out his heart.
There was no healing from that.
They seemed to take pleasure in the hunt, yipping and howling, instilling terror in the younger wolves. They would chase down any rogue who tried to run to safety, no compassion in their expression, just the pure, wild joy of an animal taking down its prey.
Raven couldn’t sit back and do nothing, not anymore.
Dodging away from Durant, she darted forward, wincing when he swore viciously. Knowing she only had seconds before he caught up with her, she dropped the shields she’d spent her whole life building. The air around her began to crackle, and she gathered the energy in the center of her palm until a sphere formed, then lobbed it at a shifter who lifted his foot to crush the wolf he’d just beaten to a pulp.
The impact knocked the shifter back, his
eyes nearly rolling up in his head as the voltage jolted through him. Without the ability to shift, the extra energy had to be sheer torture. When the creature finally straightened, there was nothing human in him remaining. He snarled, his inch-long fangs bared, and he charged directly toward her.
Raven braced herself, refusing to retreat, gathering more current. Griffin leapt between them and tackled the beast to the ground. The fight was brutal, bones cracking with each blow as they struggled for dominance. Griffin took a beating, but didn’t pay any attention to the injuries as he grabbed the shifter by the throat and twisted. Blood gushed, bones snapped, and vacant eyes, so full of hate just moments ago, now stared up at her blankly.
When a second shifter darted for his back, Raven didn’t hesitate and launched another sphere. It hit him square in the face, nearly flipping the man head over heels.
Griffin whirled, but Durant was there. He reached down, yanking the shifter’s head back. The shifter snarled and tried to heave the tiger off him, but it was too late. Durant gave a vicious twist, snapping the man’s neck.
The violence sickened her, but something in the darkness of her core woke, reveling in the mayhem. She barely resisted the primal urge to let it loose, not sure she would ever be able to pull it back if that happened, afraid it might consume the last of her humanity.
Movement at the far side of the cave caught her attention.
Randolph and London were cornered, fighting back-to-back, giving some of the younger wolves time to retreat. That they could kill this time evened the odds, but there were just too many of them.
Only a handful of the rogues managed to retreat, darting past Raven at full speed and disappearing in the escape tunnels, but far too many were left behind to be slaughtered.
Randolph finished off his soldier, nearly ripping the man’s head from his shoulders. Instead of helping London, the bastard disappeared into one of the hidden crevices, where Raven knew he would remain hidden until the fight was done.
Chapter Eleven
Electric series- Raven Investigations BoxSet Page 39