by Anya Nowlan
“Lynx Four, nest set up,” Thor announced.
Now the games could really begin.
As if reading one another’s minds, both of the Tyren boys broke into a run, shouldering their guns. The hotel came into sight as they rounded a corner on Main Street, a casual but well-kept yard looking oddly out of place around the hotel where everywhere else they could see signs of disrepair and lack of care.
“This is it,” Rio said.
“Lock and load,” Ryker called, touching his headset to transmit the battle-cry to the rest of the teams.
On cue, another explosion sounded, making the earth tremor beneath their feet as the second road got blown up. A bullet whizzed by Ryker, which would have been dangerously close if Ryker hadn’t known who shot it. A split-second later, someone crumpled into a heap to the left of the twins, caught between the eyes by Thor’s bullet. The game was on and apparently the twins were getting a little bit too close for Sawyer’s comfort.
Lights were on in the hotel and occasionally Ryker could see some movement behind the drapes as they came nearer. Now, they started taking to walls, trying to make themselves into slightly smaller targets. The next gap between buildings saw them being stormed by three Wanderers, handguns drawn, manic looks on their faces. Each of the men had face-paint on, reminiscent of what they hyenas had worn the day they’d slain the Meadow Valley pride.
Ryker took all the pleasure in the world in mowing them down.
He caught the first guy in the face with the butt of his gun and then shoved him back with a foot to the chest, putting enough distance between the two of them so he could whip around the rifle and shoot the man. He gagged out a scream and collapsed to the ground, making the guy behind him stumble a little.
Rio had pulled out his knife because of how close the third guy had gotten, two shots going off from the guy’s gun and narrowly missing Rio with the first one and Ryker with the second bullet before Rio could shove the blade in the man’s neck. Ryker stepped on the neck of the third guy and held him down while blood from his two fallen comrades pooled around his body.
“Is Sawyer in there?” Ryker growled, keeping the muzzle of his rifle trained on the man’s forehead.
“Fuck you, pussy bitch!” the hyena snarled, his eyes taking on the feverish glint of brownish gray that Ryker had come to know too well and which was noticeable even in the dim light.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ryker said, raising his booted foot and crushing it down on first the man’s windpipe and then his face, stomping down three times for good measure.
He was going to be alive for a few more minutes and Ryker hoped it would be enough for him to realize that it just wasn’t good manners to talk back to a lion on a mission.
“Let’s go,” Ryker said, waving Rio along.
They broke into a trot again when the third explosion sounded, followed immediately by Sy’s voice coming over the comms.
“Roads secure, Lynx Seven and Eight falling back to observe and catch any stragglers.”
Both of them breathed a sigh of relief, the twins sharing a quick look. It meant Kayla was okay and she was going to be a little bit further from the action. It pained Ryker like nothing else to have her here, so close to trouble, but he knew that arguing about it with her would get them nowhere. She needed to be involved and she needed to see this through.
He understood that. Nothing would have kept him away either.
“Lynx One, moving in,” Dice said, having apparently reached the back exit before Rio and Ryker had come to the front.
They jumped over the yard posts and crouched down as they ran across the manicured grass. Ryker had made it to the shadow of a large ornamental column that stood in front of the main entrance when he was met with a barrage of gunfire after a window was shattered in what had to be the foyer.
“Finally, someone gives a shit,” Rio said with a grin, having to duck and roll to make it to Ryker’s location.
“I feel like the prettiest girl at the ball,” Ryker quipped back, looking at his brother standing at the opposite column.
Nodding to one another, they rushed toward the main door but before they could shove it open, it was opened for them and they almost fell on their faces as they were allowed into the pristine, marble and hardwood hotel. The doors closed behind them immediately.
“Shit,” Ryker murmured.
He hadn’t been wrong about the welcoming committee.
Twenty-Two
Rio
Rio had seen some shitty gunfights in his time but he hadn’t been outmanned ten to one in the cramped space of a hotel lobby before. A quick count gave him twenty-one rifles and handguns being pointed at every possible location on his or Ryker’s body, with the two lions standing in the middle of the room with their guns drawn.
At best, they could shoot maybe five of them before someone landed a hit on them. The best case scenario would have assumed that they could have maybe taken down a third of the guys before being nothing more than a pile of blood and guts on the polished floor.
“Drop the guns,” one of them said, a tall, wiry-looking guy who could have been Sawyer’s stunt double in another life.
He had thick black lines painted over his right eye like he was a tribesman going into war. But then again, this was war. There was something familiar about him and Rio frowned, considering him. When he recognized the man as one of the fuckers who’d been there to tear apart his mother, his grip only tightened on his gun.
Almost makes me think that dying just to shoot him would be worth it.
“Or what?” Ryker asked, his voice low and dangerous.
“Or we shoot you,” someone snorted, rousing a round of laughter.
“Yeah?” Ryker asked casually, letting his gun drop to his side as he slowly and obviously went for a cigar, putting it in his mouth and lighting it. “How about we shoot you first?”
He grinned and Rio didn’t hide his smirk when he saw the faintest movement of shadows behind the reception table, on the wide stairs that led up to what must have been the second floor.
The first shots took out three men that had been closest to the stairs and Rio and Ryker took off running, throwing their bodies over the reception island and hiding behind it. Rio popped up, keeping his head low, unleashing the full power of his semi-automatic rifle on the veritable crowd of Wanderer meat now available to them.
Dice, Prowler and Price were on the stairs, plucking off the hyena shifters as fast as they could, though Rio didn’t miss the hiss of pain that came from Dice after a few quick bursts of gunfire. He didn’t have time to think about it though and Rio took aim again, searching out the retreating back of the man he’d pinpointed as one of his mother’s murderers.
The next bullet from his rifle caught the guy right in the back of the head and a plume of bright red blood splattered on the pristinely white wall right in front of him, with the man slumping against it a moment later. It felt good.
“I fucking told you!” Ryker roared, gunning down one soldier after another as they tried to find cover or even worse, make it out the door.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel and within a few minutes, there was nothing but the stench of gunpowder, blood and sweat hanging in the air. Rio breathed it in with a heavy huff, reveling in it. Fuck, it felt good to be the king for once.
“Did you miss us?” Prowler called as the dust settled, wood having splintered from the wall panels and marble having shattered.
His trademark ghostly laugh still made Rio twitch a little every time he heard it but with a smile, he nodded and skipped back over the reception table. Right onto the dead body of a Wanderer, complete with the stupid facial markings and everything.
“Like a werewolf misses the fucking full moon,” Rio said, clapping his shoulders together with Prowler for a moment before they pulled away from one another. “You okay, Dice?”
“Yeah. Fuckers caught me in the shoulder. That’s never happened before,” their squad leader snorted, o
bserving his bleeding wound for a moment. “I’ll be fine. Move out?”
“I think we need to split,” Price said, arching a brow at the rest of them. “You may not have heard over the shots but there’s movement down in the cellars and Thor reported motion upstairs as well. Clearly they knew we were coming but we need to use the momentum to sweep this place fast, considering what happened with the factory…”
“You mean the smoking pile of rubble at the outskirts of town?” Prowler questioned with a smirk.
“That’s the one,” Price said, grinning.
“Sounds like a plan to me. You two game for it?” Dice asked, glancing at Rio and Ryker.
“More fun for us if there are fewer of us. We’ll take upstairs,” Ryker said with a nod.
Rio bumped fists with Price after the plan was set and they split up, giving a short overview of what had gone down in the hall to Sy, Thor and Kayla on their way upstairs. Heavy bootsteps trundled up the stairs while Dice, Price and Prowler took the opposite path lower into the hotel’s cellar. If their guess was correct, they’d just taken out the majority of the Wanderers’ prepped attack force and from here on out, it would be a cakewalk.
But as usual, assumptions hardly proved to always be correct.
The hotel was a statuesque building, finely built and pristinely maintained even despite the change in ownership. It had a certain turn of the century charm to it with its polished columns and delicately crafted ornate banisters, none of which Rio took much pleasure in observing, really. All he wanted was to get Rhamos, stomp his booted foot into Sawyer’s face and be done with the day.
The explosion at the factory was still too fresh in his head and he wasn’t particularly keen on staying in any enclosed space for too long.
The next two floors of the six-story building were completely deserted, with the doors closed and locked for each suite. After a while of kicking down doors and finding nothing there, Rio and Ryker started just passing by the doors unless Thor reported seeing a light in the room.
In all of the cases where the lights had been left on, it turned out to just be a distraction and Rio didn’t get the pleasure of killing anyone, unfortunately enough.
His finger was itching on the trigger by the time they hit the fourth floor.
“Shh,” Ryker said urgently, slamming himself against the wall before the doorway onto the floor.
Rio mirrored him and listened quietly, catching the faint sounds of chatter and nervous voices. Sharing a look with Ryker, they both grinned, gold flashing through their eyes. One of the speaking voices was definitely Sawyer’s.
We’ve got you now, you motherfucker.
Reaching into his pack, Rio quickly set up a tripwire at the door, attaching it to a small-scale explosive that wouldn’t bring the building down but would definitely blow off the legs of the next guy unfortunate enough to walk into it.
“Lynx Five, fourth stairwell armed,” he said softly into his comm. “Motion detected on the floor, moving in.”
“Lynx One, acknowledged,” came Dice’s terse response.
Right then, they heard the sound of distant gunfire and Ryker’s brow shot up. Something was going down in the cellar and odds were that the rest of the squad didn’t really have a lot of time to converse about it.
Carefully, they both stepped over the wire and snuck down the corridor, their rifles drawn up and their bodies tense. Rio could hear the beat of his heart thrumming steadily in his ears, the adrenaline kicking in hard and fast. A part of him felt like a little boy again, the feelings of desiring revenge and justice for what had happened to his family bubbling up to the surface and clouding the clear, rational mind of a trained mercenary.
He’d have to balance both sides that day to make it out of everything alive.
“They’re gonna be here any minute,” Rio heard, the snippet of conversation reaching them from a room further down the hall.
Ryker brought his finger to his lips and their movement became so damn feather soft that a ghost couldn’t move lighter if it needed to. They matched one another’s steps perfectly, creating this seamless space between noise and quiet with their movement that was the perfect sound of silence.
“Let them,” Sawyer said irately.
“No one’s reporting in from downstairs, boss. They were supposed to be brought up here as soon as they could, even if it was just their bloody heads. We should go check or something,” the other man commented, followed by the sound of someone pacing back and forth.
“And walk into a trap if there is one? Fuck that. They can come get me here,” Sawyer snorted.
“It’s suicide,” the other man said.
Just as suddenly as the conversation had started, it stopped. A single gunshot sounded and was then immediately followed by a heavy body hitting the ground.
“He wasn’t wrong,” Sawyer said, the faint makings of a yawn in his tone.
Rio glanced at Ryker, whose eyes were so golden now that there was little difference between what they were now and how they would be when he was in lion form. Sawyer had shot one of his own in cold blood just for speaking out. As much as Rio wasn’t opposed to retaining a modicum of control over a team, that was going a little too far.
“Harsh, boss,” someone else said, though there was a tint of humor to it.
Rio couldn’t take it anymore. Motioning to Ryker, they moved together as one and when they reached the door, they were both primed to step in and shoot up the whole damn room. Before Rio could grab the door handle, the door was thrown back and banged into him, making him stumble back a step.
The startled watery brown eyes of a hyena shifter in the ‘traditional’ markings stared back at him, dumbfounded. He opened his mouth to say something but before he could, his head was blown into a million tiny, bloody little pieces by Ryker’s rifle. Rio closed his eyes just in time to avoid the blood splattering in his eyes.
“Motherfuckers,” Sawyer hissed, hurling himself out of the chair as Ryker shoved back the headless body of one of the Wanderers and pushed in.
There were four men in the room other than Sawyer and one of them was fast enough to react in time. He trained his gun on Rio and squeezed the trigger and a sharp pain shot through Rio, the bullet biting into his thigh and coming out clean on the other side.
He snarled and whipped his body in the direction of the man, his aim shaky from the sudden shock. The first shot hit the guy in the chest but the second one was right on the money, entering in the neck and making the man keel back and collapse on the ground.
Ryker in the meanwhile had taken out another two of them while Sawyer and the last hyena shifter ducked behind the wide back of a large sofa, right in front of the windows.
“You okay?” Ryker asked, his tone almost conversational, though he looked gory as fuck with all the blood that had spattered on him.
Rio knew he had to look much the same.
“Just a fucking flesh wound,” Rio grounded out, tapping his thigh with a fist.
It hurt like a son of a bitch but that was nothing new for him.
“Sawyer, you know, I expected more,” Ryker continued, slinging his rifle back over his shoulder and reaching behind for the nozzle of the flamethrower.
“Fuck you, Ryker,” Sawyer shot back.
Rio couldn’t help but chuckle. Sawyer sounded a lot less menacing now that he didn’t have a five-year-old to use as immediate leverage.
“Sure, maybe later. Where are you hiding the boy?” Ryker asked, keeping his tone light while Rio smacked a quick bandage around his thigh.
“I’d hate to have to beat it out of you,” Rio added.
“I’m sure you would,” Sawyer commented, just when Ryker tested the flamethrower for a moment, producing a superheated, angry plume of flame for a split second.
“Whoa. That’s damn pretty. You sure you can’t be reasoned with a little here, Sawyer? I mean, we can burn you alive and I’ll be fucking fine with that too, but we’re supposed to be civilized creatures here.
Our mate has this whole thing about us not killing at random so I thought, hey, maybe I should be nice and just let you off with a stern warning about not fucking with other peoples’ families. Wouldn’t we both like that way better?” Ryker asked, tossing a wink at Rio.
Rio caught the moment when Sawyer’s little friend peeked out from behind the sofa, his gun drawn. The hyena was too slow though, because Rio sent a bullet in his shoulder before the guy could even hit the trigger of his gun. He fell back with a yelp, clutching his arm.
“Is that what you call reasoning?” Sawyer asked.
It was weird, having the murderer of his family and friend crouched behind a couch, throwing back snark when he was minutes from ending up very, very dead. There was something poetically sick about it but between the wound in his leg, his fear for his mate and sons and the adrenaline screaming in his veins, Rio didn’t really have the time to focus on it.
“We didn’t say anything about your friend,” Rio said glumly. “He’s not in the equation.”
“I don’t think I am either,” Sawyer said, his voice scraggly.
Somewhere further in the hall, Rio’s ears picked up movement. He frowned, glancing over his shoulder at the open door. Before he could go and investigate, an explosion rocked the floor and a chorus of screams filled the air somewhere in the stairwell. Rio and Ryker grinned at one another, shaking their heads.
“I guess that was the cavalry,” Rio said leisurely.
“Fuck it. I say we torch him and find Rhamos ourselves. He can’t be far,” Ryker said, lifting a brow.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Rio agreed, though his gut twisted at the thought of adding another variable of uncertainty to their search.
“Lynx Three. More incoming to the fourth,” Thor noted, making Rio’s jaw tense up.
Ryker’s reaction was a lot more visceral though. Without another word of warning, he cranked up the flamethrower and doused the room in flames. The golden filigreed wallpaper caught fire like it was the Fourth of July and the bed and ornate couch were the next ones to go. The flame was long, violent and angry as it shot out of the nozzle with a six-foot radius, consuming everything in its path.