by Anya Nowlan
Realizing the situation, Sawyer and his companion burst into action. Sawyer shoved the other man forward, making him stumble into the flaming couch. By the time the guy could straighten himself up, he was doused in flames and screaming as his skin started peeling off. Sawyer threw himself at the window, smashing through it before Rio could land a clean shot.
“Shit!” Ryker howled, shoving off the flamethrower from his back and running past the couch and to the window.
Rio grunted out a huff of agony as he tried to move on his injured leg. He could cope with it, but not for too long.
The room was completely on fire now and it was certain that it would spread in a few moments outside of it as well. The flames were creeping closer to the tanks filled with deadly liquid propane and the room would explode in a matter of minutes.
Looking out of the window, they could see Sawyer speeding down the street in his hyena form, long, slim legs covering the ground. He must have shifted in the air or right after landing.
“Thor, do you have a shot?” Rio asked, practically screaming into the comm.
Sawyer’s companion was nothing but a pile of burning flesh on the floor of the large suite and it was so hot now that even the seasoned lions, accustomed to pain, were feeling it all too clearly. The open window was making the fire roar even more violently.
“Lynx Three, negative,” Thor said, sounding unflappable as ever.
As soon as he’d said that, Rio swung himself over the windowsill, Ryker close on his heels. The fall was going to be a bitch but there was no way in hell they were going to let Sawyer get away.
“Lynx Five. Be advised that the fourth floor has been compromised and the building is on fire. Get out as fast as you can. Sawyer heading east down Main Street, Lynx Five and Three in pursuit,” Rio snarled into the comm before throwing himself out of the window.
Twenty-Three
Kayla
“Shit,” Sy grumbled, the word sounding like the unofficial Shifter Squad Nine motto by now.
It seemed something was always going straight to shit.
“What is it?” Kayla asked, peeking over his shoulder in the cramped tank.
They’d taken out all three of the roads and blown up about three cars filled with what looked like Wanderers. Kayla hadn’t felt a single bit of remorse for it. They could all burn in hell for what they’d done to her and her family and the families of all of the children they’d captured and kept over the years.
“Looks like we’re about to get company,” Sy said, pointing at the small radar screen in the tank.
Three bright green blips were moving in fast and hard on Oakley from the south. Kayla bit her lip, her shoulders tensing. Whoever they were, it had to mean trouble.
“Helicopters?” she asked.
“Looks like it,” Sy confirmed.
When he was about to report the bogies – most likely guess being that it was The Firm come to chide them for playing vigilantes on their own – the comms came alive with chatter between Rio and Thor. Kayla held her breath, listening to what they were saying. She knew that it meant that they still hadn’t gotten Rhamos back, or otherwise she would have been the first one to be notified of it. Rio’s voice sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before, full of guttural snarls like he was almost a lion already.
“That can’t be good,” she whispered, looking at Sy with a frown.
“Nope,” he confirmed in his usual short way. “Lynx Seven, incoming bogies. Looks like three choppers. You better move fast,” he said.
As soon as the comms were shut down, he cranked the tank into gear.
“Get up there, see if you can see anything with nightvision mode on,” Sy said, pointing at the slightly raised seat that would allow Kayla a view out of the periscope and side-slit windows. “We need to find that motherfucker before The Firm gets here.”
The tank roared to life with a threatening growl, speeding forward with a lurch. It was light and fast for its size, which was the reason why they’d managed to go around Oakley so easily. Kayla scrambled to her seat and pressed her eyes to the periscope as Sy drove them forward, pushing the tank to go as hard as it could.
They stayed in silence for a few minutes, though Kayla’s heart was anything but quiet as it throbbed in her throat, making her mouth dry and her ears thrum. Her hands were rolled into fists as she swiveled around, looking for any sign of movement. When she finally caught the slightest hint of motion, she frowned and leaned in closer to make sure she was seeing the right thing.
The slim, athletic form of a dark hyena galloped out of Oakley, leaving the city behind him and a sliver of dust blooming at his heels.
“Northeast!” she said, her voice coming out as more of a little squeak than anything else. “A hyena!”
“Got him,” Sy said, correcting their course to interject with that of the shifter.
Kayla studied him closely as the tank tried to get to a point where it would be close to the animal. When she glanced behind it, she could see something even more amazing. Two fully-grown African lions were a few hundred yards behind him, their thick, muscular bodies stretching and contracting with each step.
Both of them had thick, lustrous manes and their maws were bared, showing their pristinely white teeth. The slightly larger one was a bit ahead of the other one, who seemed to be limping on one of his back legs. Still, both of them were covering ground almost effortlessly, the look of true hunters rightfully about them.
The sun was coming up on the horizon, turning the blackness of night slowly into pinks, reds and oranges as night had to give way to morning.
“He’s going to get away,” Kayla murmured, her expression stiffening. “He’s going to get away!”
The realization hit far too heavily. The hyena was faster than the two lions, especially with one of them seemingly wounded. Kayla knew she had to do something and weighing her options didn’t leave her with a lot of choices. She turned around slightly in her seat, bringing the console that controlled the armaments closer to her. Tapping over the controls, her fingers went to work lightning-quick, determining the shooting vector so she could buy the lions some time.
“The fuck are you doing!?” Sy asked, obvious trepidation in his tone.
“I’m going to buy them time,” she said feverishly.
There was no doubt in her mind that the lions were Rio and Ryker and the hyena had to be Sawyer. He was the only one they would attempt to hunt down like that. Gritting her teeth, she carefully calculated where she should shoot. Even a small error with something as plainly deadly as tank shells could leave her not only with failure, but without the two men who had quickly become so important in her life again.
“You better know what you’re doing, girl,” Sy warned, shooting her a look.
“I assure you, I’m hoping just as hard as you are,” Kayla said, biting down on her lower lip.
“The choppers are almost here,” Sy said, and one look at the outside confirmed that much.
The three large attack-helicopters were closing in fast and it would be a matter of minutes before they were on their location. That could only mean bad things for Kayla and Shifter Squad Nine. No way Spade would let the lions exact their own brand of vengeance on Sawyer.
Finally, she had the shooting pattern keyed in. Taking a deep breath and praying that she was right, she tapped the button that launched the shell. It shot out of the tank, making it shudder violently for a moment.
Kayla held her breath as she watched it fly and then dig into the ground, bringing a moment of stillness before it exploded, throwing up dust, sand and smoke a hundred feet into the air. Kayla squealed, seeing Sawyer being thrown back, his step stumbling as the shockwave hit him. He was flung about fifteen feet back, with the lions having been too far behind to be too strongly impacted by the explosion.
Sawyer almost got himself up by the time the lions were on him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Both of the large felines pounced on him and Kayla could hear their roars inside
the tank, eardrum-shattering in their anger and fury. She couldn’t look away from what happened next.
Without losing a moment, and with the dust and dawn as their backdrop, Rio and Ryker tore into the hyena savagely. Within minutes, the fully-grown shifter had been reduced to nothing but strips of flesh and bone, his echoing screams dying right along with him until they only seemed to reverberate in Kayla’s ears.
Sy brought the tank to a stop close to the lions, who stood back, both heaving for breath. Their intense golden eyes glowed with something completely primal, so raw and powerful that it took Kayla’s breath away yet again. Both of them were painted red with blood, the whites of their maws tinted pink and maroon, fresh blood dribbling from their fangs. Sawyer was beyond recognition. Kayla doubted there was even a big enough cut of his teeth left to identify him by his bite.
She opened the top of the tank and clambered up in time with the arrival of the choppers, which flew over them.
Rio and Ryker looked up at them and the next things Kayla knew, just as she was throwing her body over the edge and about to run to her lions, both of them shuddered with the impact of several shots hitting them in the chest and sides. Kayla’s vision went black as she screamed, watching Rio and Ryker slump over lifelessly on the desert floor.
Twenty-Four
Kayla
When Kayla woke up, her first reaction was to throw a punch at the closest person to her. In a drug-addled haze, she threw herself from whatever it was that she was lying down on, and shot straight into the arms of Ryker, who crushed her against his chest, completely ignoring the hit he’d taken in the cheek while catching her.
“Calm down, baby,” he murmured, holding her close. “It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re safe.”
Kayla breathed in heavily, hyperventilating with her eyes wide with shock and surprise.
Is it really him? But I saw him die!
“What happened!?” she demanded, pushing herself away from Ryker enough to see that Rio was sitting on the other side of her bed, smiling at her softly.
He, too, looked completely alive. Which was both exhilarating, awesome and… completely impossible, considering what she’d witnessed.
“It’s okay. We’re back in The Firm’s Nevada compound,” Rio said, shuffling closer on the bed and putting his hand on hers as Ryker released her from his strong, soothing grip.
“But… How? I mean… I watched you die!” she protested, feeling tears burn in her eyes as the memory flooded back into her brain.
The sight of the two powerful, unbeatable lion twins slumping down on the cold desert floor right next to the man who had stolen her son was something that would forever haunt her dreams, she was sure of it. Kayla felt herself shaking and both Rio and Ryker slipped a hand around her, soothing her softly with their presence.
They certainly felt alive. She had to touch them both, first their arms, then chests and faces, cupping their chins with a confused frown on her face. Ryker smirked and she sort of wanted to smack him for it – bastard! Then again, if she was pissed at him, it meant that she had to be alive as well. And that was good news, right?
“Spade had us tranquilized,” Rio said, his face twisting into an annoyed snarl. “One of the Shifter Squad One boys hit us both with tranqs from the chopper. Used enough shit to take down two elephants for each of us. I’m not sure if I should be touched or all the more pissed for it.”
“It was Ra. We’ll just get him back at one point,” Ryker said with a shrug, though his expression was clouded as well.
“Did they get me too?” she asked, touching her neck and examining her arms, remembering how she’d collapsed as well.
“No, I think you passed out seeing us go down. But they did sedate you later because you woke up and went mental on Shifter Squad One’s medic. He didn’t appreciate the scratch marks on his face and the dislocated jaw you gave him,” Ryker said, practically beaming with pride.
Only her lion twins could be glad that she’d managed to kick the ass of a full-grown ex-SEAL. Anyone else would have been mortified, including Kayla herself.
“Well, they shouldn’t have done that to you then,” Kayla snorted, throwing her hands around Rio’s neck and hugging him tight.
He winced a little but when she tried to pull back, he wrapped his arms around her tighter, pulling her closer to him for a long, safe embrace. It felt damn good, being in his arms like that, just like it had when Ryker had grabbed her first. Kayla felt the stress slowly seep out of her body, the combination of finding out that both of them were alive and waking up to familiar, loving faces around her doing a ton to soothe her fraying nerves.
She could sort of remember waking up once earlier and being surrounded by people she didn’t know, each looking like they ate babies for breakfast, but after that it had gone black again.
Guess that explains it, she mused to herself, frowning slightly as she pulled back from Rio and leaned back on the pile of pillows fluffed up behind her.
The room they were in was as nondescript as most of The Firm’s holdings. Whites and grays, pristinely clean and completely devoid of personality – that was all she needed to know that Rio and Ryker had to be telling her the truth about where she was. The slight smell of various medications and that distinct hospital smell that seemed to linger around places like that was just the cherry on top of the whole thing.
“How’s everyone else?” she asked, her heart rising to her throat again.
Rio and Ryker passed a glance between the two of them and Kayla knew immediately that they’d understood what she’d asked. Sure, she hoped that the rest of Shifter Squad Nine was alive and well, but what she really wanted to know about was how her sons were doing. If she even had sons still…
“I think she needs to see for herself,” Rio said, giving Ryker a long look.
Ryker nodded in agreement and a moment later, Kayla found herself being scooped up by two strong arms, cradled against Ryker’s wide, safe chest. She yelped, lacing her arms around his neck though she knew he wouldn’t drop her. Wearing some sort of a flimsy hospital gown, she felt a little bit vulnerable, but Ryker’s and Rio’s commanding presences were enough to calm her down and smooth over her self-consciousness.
“I can walk, you know,” she protested, receiving a snort in response.
“That may be true, but I don’t want you to,” Ryker said with a leisurely smirk as he walked out of the room, Rio in tow.
Rio was the one with the slight limp, his left leg seeming to cause him pain. Kayla looked at him over Ryker’s shoulder, scowling slightly.
“It’ll be fine, baby,” Rio told her, reading her mind as he usually did.
She nodded in response and turned her attention to where Ryker was carrying her. They walked past several rooms like the one Kayla had been in, some with the doors open and some that were sealed away from curious eyes. She spotted a man in what seemed to be a full-body cast and made the assumption that the floor housed some Firm members who needed medical care.
When they came up to the door that Kayla recognized as belonging to the same room that they’d kept Rylen in before, her heart skipped a beat. Her grip on Ryker stiffened a bit and she practically crawled up his body, trying to see in as soon as the door was pushed open. The sight that opened to her made her jump out of Ryker’s lap with a squeal and a wide grin.
The vat that Rylen had been kept in before was now empty and the power had been shut off, the top still left open. Two matching beds had been brought into the room, one without any machinery attached to it but the other with various equipment used to monitor heart rate, dispense medication and so on. Rylen was lying on the bed with several tubes still attached to him and his eyes closed, but he was definitely alive and still breathing.
Rhamos was sitting next to him on the edge of the bed, holding his hand with a slight frown on his face. As soon as their eyes met, Rhamos jumped up and ran across the room to meet Kayla in the middle of it. She pulled him into a tight, squeezing hug, tears s
treaming down her cheeks freely.
“Oh my god! Rhamos, you’re… you’re here!” she choked, her lips quivering as she pulled back a little to look at her baby boy.
He looked skinny and tired, but he was taller than most kids his age and his mop of unruly blond hair matched that of his brother’s. His eyes still looked exactly like his fathers’ and there was a glint of defiance in them that she’d seen often in Rio’s and Ryker’s as well. He was definitely his fathers’ son.
“Mom!” he said, looking just about as shocked as Kayla felt. “They told me you were here but I didn’t believe it.”
A tear rolled down his cheek as well and Kayla quickly wiped it away, pulling him back into a hug. It felt so good to have him back, to feel him against her and sense the flutter of breath in his body. It had been so long that she had at times almost given up hope of ever holding him or Rylen ever again and now she was in a room with both of them, safe. If there was a heaven, this had to feel pretty damn close to it.
“I’m here,” she said, beaming a smile. “It’s been so long… I was afraid you wouldn’t even remember me anymore.”
Kayla brushed away tears and cuddled him for a while longer, not wanting to let go. She only released him when Rio came up to them and put his hand on her shoulder, making her look up with a smile.
“Shifters don’t forget their kin. We always know,” he said, giving her a look and then turning his gaze to Rhamos. “It comes with the animal.”
One glance at Rhamos told Kayla that he’d already met his fathers and the sense of awe that was evident on his expression made her heart swell with joy. She wasn’t a shifter and could never know if what Rio was saying was the truth but she could recognize admiration when she saw it. At the very least, Rhamos was looking up to the two lions in the best of ways.