by Adrian, Lara
The desire that had almost won out over his discipline in the corridor with her tonight only drove home that point with razor-sharp clarity.
The sooner she could be gone, the better.
He shook his head and bit off a curse. “Are we going to finish this game or what?”
Wisely, his friends gave up busting his balls and took their banter back to the billiard table. Once Micah had control of the shots again, the game was over in a couple of minutes.
Eli came over and clapped Micah on the shoulder. “You know I’d never go after a woman you cared about, right?”
Yeah, he knew that. None of these males would ever cross the line on their brethren.
And while the denial that he cared about Phaedra stayed glued to the roof of Micah’s mouth, he gave his fellow warrior a friendly flash of his fangs. “Keep on dreaming that I’d even give you a second’s chance to try.”
Eli laughed. “Arrogant prick.”
“Asshole,” Micah said, chuckling along with him.
Jax walked over to them. “I’m heading downstairs to look for a bite. You guys coming?”
Eli nodded. “Hell yes, I’m in.”
“Me too,” Darion said, then looked at Micah for a response.
Hunger gnawed at him. He’d come to Slake hoping to take the edge off his body’s need for more healing red cells, but the thought of going downstairs to select a blood Host from the club’s roster of willing and multi-skilled service workers had grown less appealing since they’d arrived in the suite.
He didn’t have to wonder if his change of heart—or change of appetite, as it were—had something to do with the temptation of the gorgeous brunette Atlantean who’d been doing her damnedest to ignore him for the past hour.
“I’m good,” he murmured. “Maybe I’ll catch up with you later.”
As the three unmated males left the suite, he felt Nathan’s cool stare on him.
“You gonna get on my dick about Phaedra now, too?”
“Not at all.” The former Hunter practically vibrated with seriousness. He looked across the long suite to the living area where the two women had been talking nonstop, the bonds of a deep friendship already formed between them. “She’s exquisite, isn’t she?”
Micah could hardly deny it. “She’s beyond that. I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman in my life. But Phaedra’s not just gorgeous. She’s good, Nathan. She’s just so gentle, so kind. I didn’t want to believe it after what happened in the Deadlands, but it seems like I’m the only one trying to prove otherwise. Anyway, fuck me. It doesn’t matter. She’s going back to Rome tomorrow with Zael and Brynne. That’s for the best.”
He waited for the cool warrior to agree or to offer some other sage advice, but Nathan stayed silent, unreadable. Then the ghost of a smile edged his mouth.
“Did I say something funny?”
“No, you didn’t.” Nathan slowly shook his head, his smile growing broader now. “But I was actually talking about Jordana.”
“Shit.” Micah raked a hand over his head. “You bastard.”
Nathan’s answering chortle abruptly cut off when the comm unit clipped to his black vest buzzed with an incoming message.
Micah’s went off at the same time.
Not even two seconds later, Darion, Eli, and Jax burst back into the suite, their expressions grim with alarm.
“Holy hell,” Micah said when his gaze fell to the notification on his device from Gideon at headquarters. “Five Darkhavens in the city are under attack by Rogues.”
“It’s already chaos downstairs,” Eli said, his words punctuated by the sounds of panic and screaming from Slake’s other patrons and employees at street level. “Everyone’s rushing for the doors.”
Nathan read out the Darkhaven addresses Gideon provided in his alert.
“They’re all close,” Darion said. “Just a few blocks from here.”
“I’ll get the Rover,” Jax said, already starting to pivot away.
“No time,” Nathan said.
Micah nodded in agreement. “We’ll get there faster on foot.”
Jordana and Phaedra both rushed over, less frightened than grave with understanding. Attacks on civilian Breed residences was uncommon, but it happened from time to time. Particularly in recent months, now that the terror group Opus Nostrum had begun weaponizing a narcotic called Red Dragon. The drug accelerated a Breed vampire’s blood hunger, sending the Bloodlust-affected victim into a fevered, murderous rage. Too often, the only cure was a brain full of bullets or the business end of a Rogue-killing titanium blade.
“What can we do?” Jordana asked.
“Stay put,” Nathan ordered. “You’ll be safest up here until we come back, especially with the stampede taking place downstairs.”
“Lock the door behind us,” Micah added, his gaze locked with Phaedra’s. “There’s a panic room in the library. If you need it, use it.”
Neither Atlantean female looked like they were ready to run and cower, not in the suite and certainly not in a concrete-and-steel-reinforced chamber in a tucked-away corner. If anything, both Phaedra and Jordana looked ready to fight.
“Nathan,” Jordana said, but he cut her off with a quick, silencing kiss.
He pressed his comm unit into her hand. “I’ll be back for you.”
Micah could hardly tear his gaze away from Phaedra’s in the moment before he and his brethren took off from the suite, the door banging closed and locked in their wake. Her wide-eyed golden stare was burned into his mind as he, Nathan, Darion, Elijah, and Jax flashed down the stairs then tried to slice through the logjam of a hundred or more Breed civilians and human blood Hosts trying to push their way out the main doors.
The crowd was going nowhere fast, too many bodies attempting to shove through at the same time.
“Side alley,” Eli shouted, already racing for the delivery entrance that dumped out to the service street.
“We’ll split up once we’re outside,” Nathan said. “One man to each location.”
Micah nodded, mentally triangulating the addresses they’d been given. The Order would no doubt be en route to the attack sites at the same time, but the sooner they had a warrior at each Darkhaven to deal with the Rogues, the fewer civilian casualties they’d be risking.
As they headed for the exit, he tasked everyone with a location. “Eli, you’ve got Book Hill. Jax, Wisconsin Avenue. Darion, M Street. Nathan, you take Thirtieth. I’ve got O Street.”
The team burst through the service door into the access alley—and immediately found themselves on the end of incoming gunfire.
Snipers on the rooftops.
What the fuck? Based on the hail of bullets flying at them, there had to be close to ten or more assailants. All of them firing down on the warriors like shooting fish in a barrel.
But it was damn hard to hit one of the Breed when they could flash from one spot to another faster than almost any eyes could track. And these idiots had piss-poor aim on top of that.
Micah and the rest of his comrades returned fire as they dodged the bullets raining down on them. He took out a gunman on the building opposite Slake, hitting the son of a bitch in the head. The body tumbled down to the alley in a bloody, broken heap. The scent of Homo sapiens red cells hit Micah’s nostrils and he snarled a curse.
“They’re humans,” he shouted to the others, astonished by the boldness—to say nothing of their apparent death wish. Because these bastards were going down.
Nathan took out two more, one man slumping over the edge of another building, the other body falling to the street.
Evading still more unskilled shots, Micah dropped another assailant while Jax threw a hira-shuriken with one hand and opened fire on a second man with the 9mm in his other. The razor-sharp star sliced a wide gash in the human’s throat. As the shooter reached up to stanch the blood flow, he stumbled and plunged from his perch.
Eli shot two more assailants as he danced out of the way of the bullets coming at him
from multiple directions.
At that same moment, the side door burst open and some of the patrons from inside the club poured out into the alley.
“Get back!” Micah shouted.
Too late. The group of Breed and human civilians ran straight into the melee. Gunfire from above kept ringing out. One of the fleeing Breed males took a hit. It wasn’t severe, but he dropped to the pavement, clutching his arm and howling in agony.
All too soon, Micah realized why.
Light spidered under his skin, creeping up his neck and into his face. The glow of it intensified in mere seconds, spreading like a disease. The Breed male convulsed, light pouring out of his eye sockets as the infiltration rapidly overtook him.
Holy shit.
“UV!” Micah called out. “They’ve got UV.”
Darion wheeled on the growing crowd still flooding into the alley. “Get back inside!”
Chaos erupted as Breed civilians fled, some scattering to the streets, others frantically pushing their way back upstream of the crowd as they ran for the shelter of the club interior. Terrified humans were shoved along with them or trampled underfoot in the sudden chaos.
Micah and his comrades continued unloading on the attackers, one human sniper after another careening lifelessly from their posts. Beside him, Eli bellowed a war cry and let his bullets fly, a pistol in each hand as he dropped two more shooters, then a third.
They ducked behind a dumpster to reload, while in his nearby position in the alley, Darion provided cover. In his peripheral, Micah saw Eli grab for another magazine on his weapon belt. His fingers slowed, then paused. A strange look came into his eyes. He swiveled his head toward Micah, his irises lit with bright sparks from the combat.
Except it wasn’t amber light in them.
It was another kind of light.
Micah’s blood ran cold. “Ah, Christ. Eli . . .”
Elijah’s mouth twisted into an incredulous smirk. “Fuck. I think I’m hit.”
The UV began to spread like gasoline through his veins and arteries. He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, pain contorting his face. It was too late to do anything for him. Too late to stop what was coming as the light sped through his system.
“No,” Micah growled. “Goddamn it. No!”
He turned his head away as the warrior’s skin and hair ignited. He’d seen a lot of hellish things in his line of work, but he couldn’t bear to watch the moment the poisonous UV incinerated his friend.
Micah roared with fury.
Before he could say another word, he was blinded by a sudden burst of shimmering silver light that filled the entire alley.
CHAPTER 12
Cold, bone-deep fear.
That’s what Phaedra felt as she and Jordana burst out the side door of the club into the middle of a vicious assault on Micah and the other warriors. Neither she nor Jordana had been comfortable with the order to simply wait behind in a secured suite while the men went off to battle, but then the panic downstairs erupted into full-scale terror when a patron shrieked that the alley was under attack by gunmen with UV rounds.
There hadn’t been any reason to doubt it.
Jordana’s blood bond to Nathan confirmed the horror taking place outside.
Now, the two women stood side-by-side just outside the door as the civilians scattered out of the alley under a dome of silver Atlantean light that Phaedra had cast over the area with a sweep of her hand.
She didn’t know how it happened, or how long she could hold it. All she knew was the still-thrumming presence of the crystal’s power—energy that had enveloped her, infused her, from the moment she’d drawn near the crystal earlier tonight—and a desperation to shield Micah and the rest of the Breed warriors and civilians from the incoming barrage of bullets.
Bullets that were somehow enhanced by lethal ultraviolet light.
They kept flying down from several snipers stationed on the surrounding rooftops. But one by one, the rounds hit the exterior of the shield she’d created and disintegrated with harmless puffs of blue smoke.
“Holy shit,” Micah said, throwing an astonished glance at her. His eyes glowed hot amber, his Breed pupils transformed to catlike slits and his fangs enormous behind his parted lips.
He looked fierce and savage, menace rolling off him. Yet the expression on his face when he saw her—when he realized what she’d done for him and his friends—was filled with a relief so profound it nearly broke her heart on the spot.
She managed a faint nod, all her focus centered on holding the shimmering light in place.
Jax threw one of his razor-sharp stars at the corner of it, grinning when it ripped through the shield without breaking the barrier. “We can shoot through this. Let’s take the rest of these bastards down.”
The team opened fire with a vengeance now, safe inside the shelter of her light. Beside Phaedra, Jordana smiled and gave her a grateful nod.
Her palms glowed with otherworldly fire. She unleashed all of it on a gunman who had the poor judgment to unload a volley of now-harmless UV rounds on Nathan’s position. The pulse of Atlantean power streaked through the darkness with unfailing aim. The man flew backward off his feet as if he’d been struck by a tsunami, his dying screams echoing over the remaining shooters’ assaults.
A shot from Micah’s gun took down the last sniper. The body slumped over the edge of the building, his weapon clattering down to the street below.
Silence fell over the alley. The stench of spent rounds, spilled blood, and bitter smoke assaulted Phaedra’s nostrils. The carnage had ended. It was over. Thankfully, the awful ambush and the men who’d perpetrated it were no more.
Jordana ran to Nathan, wrapping her arms around him. He held her close, no one uttering a single word.
Despite the quiet, Phaedra couldn’t seem to release her hold on the shield of light that protected her new friends . . . and Micah.
He looked at her, his handsome face an unreadable mask in the stillness of the battlefield spread out in all directions on the other side of the sheltering dome. Cast in the silver glow that surrounded him, his gaze was as bleak as she had ever seen it.
“Where’s Elijah?” Jordana asked softly, lifting her head from Nathan’s chest.
Phaedra had wondered the same thing—until she saw Micah take a step toward a scattered pile of ashes that lay near an old dumpster not far from where the rest of the warriors stood.
Jordana sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, no. No . . . not Eli.”
She started to weep. Phaedra could hardly hold back her emotion, either. Charming, larger-than-life Eli. Gone.
Jax scrubbed a hand over his face, his dark eyes glistening. Darion’s sober expression looked controlled on the outside, but his gaze simmered with embers, the tips of his fangs glinting as he bit off a low curse. Even Nathan’s measured stare held an edge of shock and grief.
Micah knelt beside the remains of his fallen comrade and retrieved the thick leather belt that bristled with sheathed weapons. Ashes carried on the thin night breeze, skittering across the cracked pavement.
Nathan broke the heavy silence. “I’ll call it in to HQ.”
As the warrior’s deep voice rumbled into his comm unit, Micah rose. Holding Eli’s weapon belt in his hand, he walked over to one of the dead gunmen. He kicked the body onto its back, then crouched to remove the rifle and unused ammunition from the dead man.
“UV rounds aren’t easy to come by,” he commented, as tonelessly as if he were describing the weather.
Nathan’s hissed curse drew everyone’s attention. He’d ended his call, his normally cool gaze lit with chilling fury. “The reports of the Darkhaven attacks were a ruse. I just got word from Gideon. Lucan, Tegan, Chase, and Brock . . . they rolled out to all four locations and found nothing.”
Jax’s fangs flashed. “This was a fucking trap. Someone knew we were here and wanted to make sure we had reason enough to come out for the attack.”
Darion nodded. “The fron
t exits were jammed for a reason. We were supposed to leave out the side alley, right into their crosshairs.”
Phaedra shuddered inside, horrified to imagine the evil it took to concoct such a cruel plan. She couldn’t keep her attention from straying to what was left of Eli. In another few moments, the cold breeze would erase him from existence completely.
God, if it had been Micah who’d been taken by one of those UV bullets too . . .
She looked to him, wishing she could run to him the way Jordana had gone to Nathan. Not that Micah needed comforting. She did. She wanted to feel his strong arms around her and feel the reassuring beat of his heart against her cheek.
None of those comforts were hers to want.
Wishing for them now was only selfish, no matter how much she ached with sorrow over the loss of Eli and the fear that it very easily could have been Micah or any one of his brethren—if not all of them.
Micah’s vacant gaze slid away from the dead gunman. “This has Opus written all over it.”
Nathan gave a grim nod, holding Jordana close. “We need to get back to base.”
“I’ll get the Rover,” Darion said.
Phaedra kept her hold on the light until Nathan stepped over to her with Jordana and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Thank you,” he said soberly. “It’s time to get you and Jordana out of here now.”
She glanced past him to where Micah and Jax were carefully collecting the fallen snipers’ weapons and ammunition. On Nathan’s nod, she lowered her hand and the alley plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 13
There was no talk of Eli’s death when they returned. The anguishing news had already reached the Order’s headquarters from Nathan’s call in the alley. The women’s faces were drawn with shock and grief, but Lucan and the rest of the warriors greeted the returning team with a solemn, yet determined, urgency.
“Let’s get to work,” he announced gravely. “Daybreak will be here soon. We’ve got roughly twelve hours to prepare for nightfall and the pain we’re going to send back to Opus for what they did tonight.”