by Billi Jean
It took a second for his meaning to hit home. She didn’t like it. They had always done things together, but she could see he was digging his stubborn in. The ‘don’t get her hurt’ comments had stung.
“This time, but only a little,” she stressed.
That seemed to be good enough for him. He took the hall, Gray at his left, Markee already by the door and Jaxon at his back. He twisted the knob and pushed the door in. It swung inward silently and he motioned her forward.
Inside it was dim, but she didn’t need lights. There was an entryway with stairs going down on the left, and under that, she could see row after row of cages, each one filled with an animal, or she hoped, changeling.
“Holy fucking shit,” Jaxon grumbled. “Move, Kincaid. This is what we came for. Those are changelings.”
“You’re certain?” Rick asked.
“Joey is. So move forward,” Jaxon growled.
“We go when we know it’s clear,” Hunter whispered. “Rick knows what he’s doing.”
“Really?” Jaxon snapped. “I thought—”
“Jaxon, shut it!” At Hunter’s whisper, Jaxon got an elbow from Joey but he winked at Hunter as if he was having fun. He probably was. He and Joey could disappear instantly. She and Rick not so much.
Rick moved, gun still up and ready as he crossed the threshold. Immediately the lights went on. He held up a hand and the men stopped.
“They come on with movement,” she reminded him.
“Right.”
The problem with that was it meant the creatures hadn’t been moving or making a sound for quite some time. Hunter walked over, closer to Jack’s left. Gray shifted, giving her room.
“Oh my god, there are so many,” Joey whispered. “Jaxon.”
“I know. I know. We’ll get them out,” he said, but Hunter had to wonder. There were hundreds.
“Take the lower left. I’ll take the right. Or wait, Hunter,” Rick ordered, sounding confident and sure. The warrior she knew. He freaked her out, but so far they were doing okay. He pointed to the locks on the cages. “Those look electric.”
She scanned the line of cages then met his eyes. She loved him so much in that moment that it scared her. He’d ruffled his hair so much it was standing up all over the place. He needed to shave and she knew he was tired, but all he did was lead, and plan and try his best to keep her—and now everyone else—safe. He was so tall and handsome, and when he scowled all military solider on his mission like that, the reaction she got really was inappropriate, but unstoppable. Like him.
The second lasted longer than it should, she realized, because Rick’s frown grew. “Hunter?”
“Got it.” She was so off balance she had to gather herself before she could lift a finger to do as he demanded. The power flowed, coming to her naturally as she calmed. She nailed a box at the far end of the room. Then she did the same to another. Sparks flew from the boxes and the cages clicked loudly. A big creature butted one open with his head. Immediately that row of creatures pushed their cages open along with him. They stepped out onto the walkway between the cages and, as one, faced them, waiting silently as a tomb.
“Yeah, I’d say, changelings,” Jaxon muttered.
Rick exhaled. “Gate. We need a gate. Hunter?”
“Ah, I think Aubrey should do this one.” Her power was draining. She felt a little like toast, only missing the butter and jam. “I’ve got small ones down, but…”
“Aubrey, can you make the gate? This time to the compound and we aren’t giving them a choice,” he added. He turned and Markee blocked his way.
“What?” Rick snapped.
“Get that door shut. Company has arrived.” Markee gestured back behind her.
Shit. Hunter spun and searched the hallway behind them, but it was empty.
“Not the Vampires. I sense witches, and a lot of them, Hunter. And…” He cocked his head to the side. “Now Vampires and…” His gaze flashed yellow. He speared Jaxon with a hard frown.
“I got it. More like Balrick.” Jaxon tightened his arm on Joey and seconds later, she blended into the background.
“More like Balrick as in half Vampire, half Lykae?” Rick demanded.
“Yes, and coming in fast,” Markee responded.
It was never easy. Life always spun in directions that it shouldn’t, but she knew that.
I’m still kicking ass and no one is going to die here today because I didn’t try my best to keep them alive. Especially Rick.
“Then that’s our call to go,” Rick announced. He waved to Grayson and immediately after, pulled her to his side firmly. She loved him so much. Why didn’t I ever tell him?
“We get the changelings gone, then we leave, too. That’s the mission. Got it?” he demanded.
She buried the emotions and concentrated. “Yes. I think Joey should tell them.”
“You and Joey. Stay out of sight. Can you do that? As much as…you know, possible?” he added in a murmur.
“I can’t do what she does, but I can be fast,” she offered.
That seemed to be enough. He squeezed her hand then quickly turned to bark orders at the rest of the crew.
“Aubrey how’s that gate? Markee, get that door shut with more than that. Use that damn desk,” he shouted, pointing to a massive desk below them. “Jaxon, I want that far end covered. There’s a door at that end, too.”
Joey appeared next to her and gave her shoulder a quick hug. “We’ll get this done, okay? I’ll take the left. You take the right. Just be clear. This is not a question. It’s the only way to free them from something much worse.”
“Much, much worse,” Hunter muttered, but she was already running down the steep steps off the platform and down the walkway.
“We have to go. This is your only chance. That woman is making a gate. You all need to go through it. Once there, yes, we will figure this out, but right now, move!” She shouted and waved to Aubrey.
It was eerie, but they all listened to her, then as one headed to where she could see Aubrey’s gate forming. It was different from hers, blue and round, like a door to a hobbit house, she thought, but bigger. Three changelings paused, glancing from the others to Hunter, then walked back to her. A protection detail, she thought.
“Hunter, get through that gate!” Rick shouted.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she demanded, sparing him a glance. His fierce expression was enough to get her focus back on the changelings. “You heard him. Let’s go,” she coaxed. They didn’t move. “Come on. Go.”
“Joey!” Jaxon called, drawing her attention off the three silent changelings to Joey’s success on the opposite side of the cages. “Hurry them up!”
Joey rushed her group along a little faster.
One of the changelings near Hunter butted her in the leg. She searched its face, but couldn’t tell what it was trying to relay past the fur. “I can’t get what you’re saying, so how about we go?”
The creature tensed and butted her again. At the same time, the other changelings snarled. She spun, taking the warning to heart.
“Ah, fuck,” Hunter whispered, stumbling to a halt. Cloaked figures appeared in the room, hovering over the walkways before they dove down at the changelings and her friends. “Get to the gate. I have this,” she shouted to the changelings. She brought her power up and snapped the first guy who set foot on the platform. He vaulted backward, but three more flew in to take his place.
At her side, the changelings growled and suddenly attacked another that had landed on her blind side.
“Rick! Now!” she shouted. “Aubrey!”
Hunter glanced back and could see Aubrey. Her tattoos were a brilliant blue on her forehead and arms, but Aubrey was struggling. Hunter raced back toward her, fearing that whoever had arrived was also fighting Aubrey for control of her magical bridge. Enchantments filled the air and something like her own electric bolt snapped near her head. She ducked and stumbled into the steep stairs. Rick hauled her next to him wit
hout her even having to climb.
“What’s happening to Aubrey?” she cried, worried even more now.
Aubrey gasped in pain and clutched her stomach. Her face was white and covered in sweat. Hunter reached for her, but Grayson was there before she could move more than a step closer
“Don’t touch me. Someone is fighting me for the gate,” Aubrey gritted.
Light spilled in from the other end of the room, drawing Hunter’s attention. It grew until she winced from the brightness, then it was gone, and in its place, what appeared to be an army lined the back wall.
The enemy had clearly arrived.
So had Torque, Trouble, Agni, Moon…so many…so many in one place. Even Sorcha and Alex and Aidan…and…Alrick. Torment and Tabithia with Aeros and his Spartans.
Sweet Danu. All the leaders of the fight against the Death Stalkers are here—all of them.
“A trap! It’s a trap! Rick! Get them out of here. Don’t you see? The heads of the Immortal Council, the King of the Vampires, Aidan is here! Alrick with more Lykae. The Spartans with Aeros… We need to leave. Now. Everyone needs to leave.” Fear had her by the throat, choking her so the words tumbled out, but Rick listened.
His gaze flickered over her face as if he’d not heard her right, or worse, didn’t believe her. Then with a suddenness that shouldn’t have surprised her after all their time together, he crushed her to him and kissed her on the forehead.
“Genius. You’re a fucking genius.”
Kincaid couldn’t believe how he’d missed something so obvious. A trap. And it was a good one too.
The changelings were here, honey for the pot, and now the players—battling to end the monstrosity—were also here. “We’re all together in one huge trap about to close on us, aren’t we, Sparky?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Rick, do something.”
“Jaxon!” he shouted to the crazy Vampire kicking some shit off the platform next to him.
He spun and a second later was by their side.
“What the hell is so important—?”
“This is a trap, Jaxon. All the leaders, here, in one place,” Hunter repeated, desperate sounding.
“Son of a bitch,” Jaxon growled at his elbow. “I’ll be damned if they’re going to snap it closed. I’ve got this. You two get out as well.”
“Wait!” Hunter cried, but Jaxon was gone.
“Why wait? This shit got real. We need out.” Kincaid took her elbow to get her moving.
“But the changelings—”
“We aren’t leaving them,” he assured her, at the same time surveying the distance from them to the gate and giving that a negative. Aubrey was still struggling, but he knew Hunter could gate four people. He’d made it through when she hadn’t wanted him to, so two more would be a cinch. He hoped.
“Markee!” he shouted, gaining the wolf’s attention immediately. “Get down there and tell your boss this is a goddamn trap. Don’t waste time talking about it. Haul him out of here.”
“Rick!” The shout startled him after years of going by Kincaid in battle. But he got the warning, and without it, would have been Dog Chow. He ducked low, stumbled, but kept his feet and managed to turn to fire before he had fully faced his opponent—the tallest of the Vampires from upstairs. As the shot registered, the Vampire gave him a surprised look then stumbled backward. Gray sliced the back of the guy’s knees and shot another Vampire that appeared right on top of the first.
Kincaid shot the next, aiming for the face in the hopes that a bullet to the brain would slow it down. Markee landed next to him with a snarl and sliced off the head. With a loud curse, Markee drop-kicked another and Kincaid sliced the Vampire’s throat with his knife, just to be certain he stayed down.
He didn’t bother to see if he’d managed to slice his head off, just dropped the dead weight and frantically searched for Hunter. She had fallen off the stairs, but was keeping her own among the slew of cloaked figures flying everywhere.
He didn’t wait, but took the stairs two at time, throwing a Vampire off him in his rush to reach Hunter’s side. She was amazing, fighting for each step as she went and yelling at the changelings to hurry and get through the gate. A Vampire tried to swoop down on her but she simply used the railing on her left and swung out and down, away from the creature, and as she twisted, she flipped her wrist and hit him with a strike of power. Behind her right shoulder he spotted a woman dressed in black and walking—on the air—to reach Hunter. She held a gun. The contrast was so bizarre, the obvious power at her disposal and a gun, it threw him, but didn’t slow him down.
“Hunter! Get the hell down!”
Hunter swung around and immediately dove. He caught her in his arms and twisted so she was behind him.
What felt like fire exploded along his shoulder.
He gritted his teeth as the bullet registered, but didn’t let go of Hunter. They went crashing down. She landed on top but he lifted his gun around her and fired straight at the woman’s chest. Three shots and she gave him the same stunned, open-mouthed expression the Vampire had.
He didn’t wait, but rolled Hunter out of sight of the commotion above them. They were below the cages now, under the grooved walkways fastened like bridges to the platform.
Another shot went off and nailed him in the leg. Above them, the changelings suddenly grew louder, snarling and fighting, creating a buffer of fur and fangs.
“Rick! Rick, are you hurt?” Hunter cried. She had blood on her face and more on the gray T-shirt near her collarbone.
“Damn it, did you get—”
“No, no I’m not hurt,” she said, half laughing. “It’s not mine. Why did you shove us down here? We could have broken a leg. Aubrey—”
“Whoa, slow down. Slow down, Sparky. Aubrey is holding the gate open, but you need to form one for her and us.”
“Then we shouldn’t be down here,” she groaned, trying to get up.
He got to his feet when she did and didn’t seem to give himself away. Hunter was too busy scanning his face, then the area, then his face again to see him limping a little. Something must have warned her, though, that he wasn’t a hundred percent, because she froze and tried to move his parka aside.
“Did you get hurt?” she asked again.
“We gotta go, woman. Save the undressing me for later,” he grumbled. “And remember for the record, I can last that long.”
She shook her head and surprised him with a grip on his shirt and a fast kiss. He pulled her in closer and made it last a bit longer.
“Let’s get out of here and you can prove that boast, big guy,” she said.
“Woman, you have—”
“Rick, mind on the game,” she warned, sounding so much like him he grinned. “I mean it. Whoever those witches are, they are nasty. We need to go.”
“Agreed.” He pushed her to the end, where he’d spotted a stairway, and tried to ignore both injuries. At this rate he’d be weeks recovering and that sucked for his plan of walking along beaches with Hunter. “When we get done, you’re making good on that promise you’ll walk that beach with me.”
He could feel her tense, then she peeked at him when they reached the stairs. “All right. We finish this and it’s a done deal. Besides, if you do that thing I like…you know, with Big Rickie, then it might be more than one beach we walk. How’s that?”
“Woman, it’s as good as over You know once you make a promise, it can’t be broken,” he reminded her, teasing her again.
She grew serious and cupped her hand on his cheek. “I never break a promise. I especially won’t break one I give you, Rick Kincaid.”
It sounded so close to something else—something else he wanted—that he had to swallow the urge to spill every inch of his heart to her.
“I know that, Hunter.” He caressed her damaged cheek. “I know that a hundred percent.”
Someone shouted his name, breaking them apart. Almost all the changelings had made it. He could see only a few more, less than ten f
ighting still, the bigger ones that took down Vampires without any effort at all. He patted her butt as she went ahead of him and prayed his leg would hold out. It was a flesh wound, not a bone splintering hit. He was lucky. The shoulder was sore, but that wound was not deep. As soon as they reached the council, he’d have someone fix him up. Then he’d see about getting a vacation—with Hunter, of course.
A second after that thought filtered through his brain, he realized he wasn’t going to get that chance.
Hunter stood rock solid in front of him, a step away from the ladder they’d climbed. Her hands glowed but that wasn’t what made his future plans go up in smoke.
Facing her was Margaret, but a Margaret he barely recognized from the photos he’d found in the old house. Her eyes were the same though, dull, but full of hate.
In her hand she held a changeling by the scruff of its neck and in her other hand she held power—an angry red dart—aimed right at Hunter’s chest.
Chapter Thirty
“No way. No fucking way,” Hunter muttered, and without thinking, she snapped Margaret in the face with a bolt of pure, icy blue electricity. It hit true and Margaret dropped the changeling and screamed, hands over her face as she stumbled backward. “I hope she breaks more than a leg when she falls.”
“Hunter, baby, I love you so damn much.” Rick startled her so badly she didn’t even cry out when he jerked her around and hugged her tightly. “I thought I’d lost our chance at a real vacation. A life, I mean, damn it, girl, I thought I’d lost you.” He sounded so unlike the man she had grown to love, she couldn’t quite put meaning to the words
Then she couldn’t make sense of anything
Pain, the kind that hurt bad enough to make her gag, struck her in the face then rapidly grew to encompass her hands and feet. It was horrifyingly ice-cold, but all too soon, it turned scorching hot. She would have fallen but Kincaid held her. Just as quickly as the agony was there, poof, it was gone.
She gasped and tried to get air, but couldn’t seem to gather enough to keep the room from spinning.