by J. L. McCoy
“You okay?” Hagan grunted, calling out while engaged in his own battle, and I affirmed I was.
“I’m fine. Focus on the other two guards!” I answered as my attacker and I rolled over the floor, punching and stabbing each other.
I managed to secure him in an arm bar and broke his arm at the elbow before rolling away from him and getting back up on my feet.
Just then the shrill sound of my phone ringing filled the air, and I groaned as I engaged the first guard again. Whoever was calling had really shitty timing. After parrying the next attack and stabbing the man in the groin, I quickly dug out my phone and glanced at the caller ID. It was Dean Cruz, and I knew it was a call I would have to take.
On the fourth ring, I answered. “This had better be important, Dean,” I grunted, feeling a little out of breath. “I’m kind of busy at the moment.”
“What the hell are you doing over there?” he immediately asked.
The guard smiled then, figuring I was too busy on the phone to fight, so he charged me, and I blocked his advance once again. The screeching sound of metal on metal was deafening. “Kicking a little ass,” I huffed. “Get to the point, handsome. I’ve got my hands full.”
“I need to call in that favor,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the chaos.
Charging me again, the guard moved to stab me, but I spun around and instead stabbed him in the ass. That earned a chuckle from me.
“What’cha need, big boy?” I asked as I parried his furious attack again.
“Remember the girls I told you about? The ones who were helping Nikki?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, the pack master they ran away from a year ago has taken them again.”
Stopping the fight, I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Good grief! Can’t anyone behave for, like, five fucking minutes? I swear to God,” I growled out in frustration. Okay, so maybe two whole weeks of traveling had made me cranky. Can’t blame an ass-kicking vampire, now can you?
“Can I count on you or not?” Dean asked grumpily. “I really need you, or I wouldn’t have called.”
“Of course you can count on me, Dic. I promised you, didn’t I?” I answered a second before the man I’d been fighting reached back and slapped me hard in the face. He was laughing now, and that pissed me off to no end. Stab me, shoot me if you will, but you don’t slap a girl in the face. Who does that shit?
“Hang on a minute,” I commanded before slipping the phone back in my pants pocket.
I had to take care of the guard who slapped me. I walked over to him, easily dodged his punches, and brought my sword up to cut off first the offending hand and then the other. “Slap me again, asshole! Go ahead! Let’s see you do it again without any hands.”
I retrieved the phone from my pants as I surveyed the guard who was screaming in pain. “Sorry about that,” I grumbled into the phone. “Someone has very bad manners.”
“Jesus, Skye! What are you doing over there?”
“I told you. Kicking ass,” I answered matter-of-factly. Was he deaf?
“Skye, is that you?”
“Nikki?” I gasped, completely shocked to hear my best friend’s voice. “Is it really you?”
Another guard charged me then, and I brought my sword up and easily blocked the attack, but not before yet another guard brought up his gun and shot me in the chest. The fight was starting to get crazier, and I needed to wrap up the phone conversation as soon as possible so I could focus all my attention on getting Stanus.
“Nik?” I said, putting the phone back to my ear. “Are you there?”
“Are you okay?” Nikki asked, demanding to know. “What’s happening? Where are you?”
“Nikki, honey, I’m fine,” I answered. The crashing sounds around me said otherwise, though. “I’m in Finland at the moment, and kind of in the middle of something right now. As soon as I’m able, though, I’ll call you back and we can talk. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you, Nik. Do me a favor and tell Dean where I am. I should be back in Austin in a few days tops.”
I turned to chance a look at Hagan and found he was shooting at the two guards fighting him. My guard engaged me again, and I had a choice to make, continue talking to Nikki and possibly lose this fight or let her go and call her back later. I wisely chose the latter even though everything in me was screaming to talk to my best friend whom I missed more than life.
“Skye? Skye!” she called into the phone.
“Gotta go, Nik. Love you!” I called out rapidly, one second before a ricocheting bullet hit my phone and killed it.
“Dammit! I just got that fucking phone!” I yelled as I dropped it with a growl and looked up, searching the room for the offender.
Hagan gave me an apologetic look right before he threw his gun at one of the remaining two guard’s heads. I guessed he was the accidental offender, and he was now out of bullets.
Hagan had killed one guard, and I’d chopped the hands off another, incapacitating him for a while. But there were still two left. Throwing Hagan back his sword, I went after the guard closest to me and deployed everything I had learned in Krav Maga as well as in my lessons with Hagan. The guard and I fought hand to hand, grappling and struggling to make purchase on each other’s bodies, but I was winning as I landed the most hits.
I flashed to stand, gaining the height advantage, and circled his prone body. Finding the opportune moment, I dove on top of him, flipped him over, and put him in a triangle choke hold. Once his body went limp, I broke his neck and stabbed him in the heart with my dagger for good measure.
Flinging his lifeless body off me, I walked over to the man whose hands I’d cut off for slapping me in the face, and I stabbed him in the heart as well.
“So much for not wanting to kill anyone,” Hagan commented as he fought with the last guard.
The guard looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and I realized then that I was walking over to him. Shoving Hagan out of the way, I took my eight-inch dagger by the tip and flung it into the man’s heart. He dropped immediately, and I breathed a sigh of relief. All the guards on the compound had been finally taken out.
“That was my kill, you know,” Hagan said, chuckling.
“Tit for tat, sir,” I said as I smirked over at him.
For the first time, we took a good look around the room. It was empty, save for us and four dead bodies.
“Where’s Stanus?” I questioned. Hagan shrugged, and I took a deep breath in, scenting the room. I faintly smelled him in here, so I began searching.
In the closet stood a vault not much unlike the one we found in Germany. This one only opened using a retinal scan, and I suddenly knew where Stanus was.
“Knock, knock,” I called out in a sweet singsong voice as I lightly tapped the steel door. “Come out, come out where ever you are.”
There was no answer, so I looked over my shoulder at Hagan who nodded his head. “Teleport in and get that piece of shit.”
“Oh, Stanus,” I continued taunting him, as I tapped “shave and a haircut” onto the door. “We found your wife Lucretia and your son Essos. We destroyed your home and left their bodies for the locals to dispose of.”
Angry, muffled words filled with rage poured out from the other side of the door, and I chuckled. “Found him, sir. I need my dagger,” I said holding one hand out, “just in case.” Hagan retrieved it out of the dead guard’s chest and unceremoniously dropped it in my hand.
“Ready or not, here I come,” I practically purred at the door.
Pulling the energy from the room, I forced it deep into myself, into a tiny ball, and then felt the vibrations start a second before I teleported.
Landing gently on the balls of my feet, I opened my eyes and came face-to-face with Stanus. He had a gun leveled at my heart and immediately pulled the trigger over and over again and again until he was out of ammo.
Anger consumed me then, eclipsing the anger I’d already felt as I went up against his guards. My eyes had st
ayed pitch black, but now my fangs snicked down with the rage I felt.
“You should know better than anyone that you can’t kill me, asshole,” I growled a second before I threw my dagger to the ground, fisted his white dress shirt, and pulled him toward me.
His eyes were wide with terror, but he was still somewhat defiant in the way he asked me to spare his life.
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” I said, laughing like he’d just told the funniest joke. “I’m going to eat you.”
“P-please. No. I’ll make you a rich woman if you let me go.”
“Two weeks I’ve spent searching for you... night and day. Now that I finally have you in my hands, I’m going to enjoy a quick bite before I take you back to Atticus to stand trial for what you’ve done.” Licking my lips, I ran my nose up the side of his neck, scenting his fear, a second before I sank my fangs deep into his neck and fed, making sure I withheld every soothing drop of venom I carried. I wanted him to feel pain, so much pain, and I wanted him to know why I did it.
Once I had drained him to the point of extreme weakness, I jerked my fangs out with a guttural moan and dropped him to the floor as I spent the next few seconds cleaning his blood from my mouth. “That was for Nikki, you piece of shit.”
He moaned, but I paid him no mind as I scanned the room we were in. It appeared to be a panic room of sorts. There was a chair, CCTV monitors lining the wall, a fridge stocked with bagged blood, and a telephone. Theoretically, he could have stayed in here for weeks if he needed, and probably would have if I had not been able to teleport in.
“On your feet,” I commanded as I nudged him with the toe of my boot. He didn’t move, only moaned again, so I sighed and picked him up by the back of his shirt and threw him against the wall that held the retinal scanner.
“Open your eyes.”
When he didn’t obey, I fisted his hair in one hand and pried his right eye open with the other. The door beeped and clicked open.
Hagan was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, and he looked displeased as he took in the blood around my mouth and down my neck. “That’s disgusting, Morrison.”
“I was hungry,” I scoffed, tossing Stanus’s limp body at Hagan’s feet. “Sue me.”
“What happened to you in there?” he questioned, taking in the shredded leather over my heart where Stanus had shot me and the other guard downstairs had stabbed me repeatedly in the chest.
“He unloaded a fresh mag into my heart,” I said as the last bit of silver edged its way out and fell to the floor. My heart thundered once, then twice, and was beating again. I doubled over in momentary pain before straightening up again.
“Every fucking time,” I frowned, commenting on the pain that followed a fresh heartbeat. “I hope that’s the last time my heart stops beating for a while.”
“You still astound me,” Hagan said, looking directly at the shredded section of my leather top. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you being truly immortal.”
I watched as he pulled out leather gloves from his back pocket and donned them before unclipping the silver cuffs that were attached to his belt. “Would you like to do the honors?”
“Nope,” I shook my head. “He’s all yours.”
Stanus moaned in pain as the cuffs were applied, and I couldn’t say I was sad for him. He’d given Nikki over to the vampires who tortured her, and if I had it my way, he’d be suffering the same fate he’d given her.
“We’d better go find Corvus,” I stated and watched as Hagan picked up Stanus by the cuffs and dragged him out the door.
We stopped at various points around the house and gathered our discarded guns on the way out. Once outside, we ran into a healed Corvus who was jogging toward the house.
“You got him,” he gasped, somewhat in awe, as he took in first Stanus and then Hagan and me. I knew what we looked like—like two people who’d been rode hard and put up wet. We were covered in blood and viscera, and our clothes were in tatters.
“No thanks to you,” Hagan huffed unhappily as he dumped Stanus’s body at Corvus’s feet.
“I just now healed,” he argued, wholly offended. “I was on my way in there now when I saw you guys coming out.”
“Yeah, because the job had been completed.”
“Hey, mellow out,” I instructed, putting a hand up between them. “We got Stanus and that’s all that matters. We need to focus now on getting back to the plane and getting our asses back in the air. We have to deliver Stanus to Atticus, and then I’ve got to get back to Austin.”
“Does this have something to do with the call you received back there?” Hagan inquired.
“Yes, but I’ll fill you in later.”
Corvus and Hagan wisely shelved their discussion, and we drug Stanus back toward the gate.
Noticing fresh blood around the downed guards I took down, I looked over at Corvus confused.
“I came back and gave them the double tap,” he said, smiling. “We didn’t need them waking up and giving us hell on the way out.”
“Good thinking,” Hagan said grudgingly, and I rolled my eyes.
“Corvus, call the cab, please,” I said, suddenly exhausted from all the fighting I’d done.
“I’ll do you one better,” he said, pulling out a set of keys from his pocket and jingling them. A second later, we heard a car beep and looked over to the far side of the compound. There sat a white Porsche SUV, and I nodded appreciatively.
“You spent too much time out here instead of in that house lending us a hand,” Hagan commented unhappily. I had to agree but chose rather to pick my battles with Corvus.
Corus said nothing as we loaded Stanus in the back, sandwiched between Corvus and me. Wisely, he let Hagan drive back to the airport in Inari.
Chapter Twenty
Once we were back at the airport, we strapped Stanus into a seat and began our return journey to New York. All of us were in dire need of a fresh set of clothes, so I teleported back to Munich, Germany, and picked out all new clothes for us from the weapons bunker. I may or may not have grabbed some more ammo for the Hellfire 3 currently housed in the Doc Marten combat boots that I was keeping, come hell or high water. I’d fallen in love with both the gun and boots and Corvus could just kiss my ass if he dared asked for either of them back.
Once I’d teleported back to the plane, we each took turns in the shower, scrubbing off the blood and viscera covering our skin. It had been one hell of a battle we’d all went through.
“You did pretty well in there, kitten,” Corvus said as I’d come out of the shower wearing my new set of black leather pants and matching corset top.
“I hope you’re talking about catching Stanus and not commenting on my showering skills.”
That earned me a laugh from Hagan as he traded places with me in the bathroom.
“Yes, I was talking about Stanus,” he chuckled lightheartedly.
“How’s our captive?” I questioned, drying my long red hair with a towel.
“Quiet. How much blood did you take from him?”
“Enough to basically leave him comatose. He’ll soon be Atticus’s problem, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Speaking of Father, I called him while you were in the shower and told him the good news. He’s ecstatic as you can imagine.”
“Good. Is my father still alive?”
“As far as I know. We didn’t really discuss the traitor.”
“He’d better be,” I said unhappily as I sat down across from Stanus, eyeing his stone-still form with distaste.
“Can I borrow your phone? I’d like to call Archer if you don’t mind.”
“Your little rendezvous in Paris not enough for you, kitten?” he asked, practically purring with pleasure.
“How the hell did you know Archer visited me in Paris?” I questioned warily, shocked at the admission.
“Please, Miss Morrison, don’t confuse me for a fool,” he said, chuckling slyly. “I smelled his scent all ove
r you the second I walked up to you and Hagan at the bar.”
“I didn’t know he was coming,” I stated quickly, needing him to understand. “He tracked my cell phone, and I had him leave as soon as I could get him to see reason.”
“I know. Otherwise I would have said something earlier. I knew you knew best, so I left him in your hands. If I thought he would have been a problem, we would have addressed this a lot sooner.”
“Thank you for being rational and seeing reason,” I said honestly. “Truth be told, I freaked out when I saw him. I had no idea he’d follow me across the ocean.”
“I knew he would,” he commented, staring into his glass of blood. “If you were mine, I’d crisscross the world for you.”
“Good thing for you that I’m not. I’ve been told I’m a pain in the ass.”
“There is always pleasure found in pain,” he stated before looking up at me.
“Eww, Corvus. Stop flirting with the help,” I said, laughing. “What would your father say?” He laughed too and the tension in the cabin disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
After dialing Archer’s number, he answered on the third ring.
“Archer Rhys,” he said, sounding professional.
“Hey there, hot stuff,” I purred into the phone, walking toward the back of the plane for a modicum of privacy.
“Skye,” he breathed, sounding both relieved and elated to hear from me. “What on earth took you so long to call me? I’ve been worried sick about you. Did you find Stanus? Why aren’t you calling me from your phone?”
“Easy there, tiger,” I chuckled. “One question at a time.”
“I’m feeling rather impatient,” he said sternly, and I knew he’d been on pins and needles waiting to hear from me again. I felt bad about not calling him, but we both knew I had my reasons.
“Sorry, honey,” I placated, my voice full of remorse and affection. “Yes, we captured Stanus, about two hours ago actually. He was hiding in a small town outside of Inari, Finland.”
“Finland?” he asked, surprised at the revelation. “What was he doing in Finland?”