The Darkling Hunters_Fox Company Alpha

by Rhiannon Ayers

  “Since I know you’re not as stupid as that one over there,” she poked a thumb toward Dex, who scowled at her, “I’m assuming you didn’t walk here.”

  “Didn’t walk,” Dex grumbled. “Double-timed it.”

  Syd rolled her eyes. “Note how he doesn’t bother to refute the stupid part. Just the walking part.”

  Sam had to bite the corners of his lips to keep from grinning as Dex muttered curses.

  “Which means you drove back,” Syd continued. “And that means you were seen by the Big Man’s watchers. If you leave now, they’ll kill you before you leave the parking lot.”

  “What? Why?”

  Her expression hardened. “Because there are only two reasons why a man, alone, would come to this motel in the dead of night. Either he’s a john who got invited back for a second helping, or he’s a cop looking for insider information.” One eyebrow quirked. “Which one do you think they’ll assume you are?”

  Sam fidgeted. Damn it, a little slip of a woman shouldn’t be able to make a man his size fidget. “I was careful. I didn’t park in front of your room. You left the door unlocked, by the way. I assumed that meant you were expecting me…or…something.”

  “We weren’t, so get the fuck out,” Dex growled. He still sat in the middle of the bed, blankets wrapped around his lower body. His glare said he hated Sam for interrupting what was clearly the best night of his life.

  “He can’t leave,” Syd said again. “Doesn’t matter how careful he was. I can guarantee someone saw him.” She took in a slow breath. “Doesn’t mean we can’t fix it. Which room did you park in front of?”

  “Uh…” Sam scratched his temple. “Room two, I think. Right next door to the office.”

  Sydney pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Well, I suppose there’s a small blessing in that. At least you didn’t wake up Madge. She would have sicced Merle on you.”

  “Madge? Who’s Madge? And why would she sic her dog on us?”

  “Madge is the owner of this fine establishment,” Sydney replied with a twisted little smile. “Works directly for the Big Man. She sleeps in the front office, but only a fool—or a stranger—would dare to go in there at this time of night. Locals know better than to wake her up just to get a room in this dump. And Merle isn’t her dog, it’s her shotgun.”

  “Her shotgun?” Sam’s eyebrows touched his hairline.

  “She named it?” Dex’s voice had risen an octave.

  Syd gave a little shrug. “She says the twelve-gauge is woman’s best friend, so…yeah. She even bought a dog collar for it. It’s real pretty, actually. Princess-pink with a rhinestone buckle.”

  “She bought a pink dog collar…for a shotgun.” The look on Dex’s face was priceless.

  “With rhinestones,” Sydney confirmed with a nod.

  “But…it’s pink,” Dex said, sounding awed and horrified at the same time.

  “And it’s sparkly.”

  “I thought Merle was a boy’s name,” Sam said with a frown.

  “And she says he likes pink, okay?” Sydney snapped, voice going all high and indignant as she glared at them. “Don’t judge!”

  Both men gaped at her, mouths hanging open—then burst out laughing. Sydney held her outraged expression a moment longer, then shook her head as a big grin lit her features. “Finally. Geez, guys. I was afraid I’d strain a muscle trying to keep a straight face. Better now? Are we all lightened up? Good, because you two need to relax a bit.”

  Still grinning, Sam watched her close the distance between them—and reach past his elbow to flip both deadbolts and slide the chain lock. She looked up at him with a twinkling little smile. “It’s okay, Sam. We can all get out of this. In the morning, I can snoop around to find out just how much trouble we’re in. But for now, you need to stay here.”

  Sam darted a glance toward Dex, who was scowling at him again. “Uh…I don’t think…”

  She wrapped a small hand around his bicep, turned, and gestured toward the other side of the room. “There’s a whole other bed in here, Sam. Hasn’t even been slept in. You’re stuck here, so best get comfortable. We all need a good night’s sleep—or what’s left of a good night, anyway. Pull up some mattress and get a little rest. We’ll recon in the morning.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then shot a questioning look toward Dex. The other man sighed, crossed his arms, and settled back against the headboard. “It’s fine, man. We’ve shared rooms before.”

  True. Just not with a woman like Sydney in there with them. Sam bit his cheek to keep from saying that out loud, and finally nodded. Sydney patted his bicep and disappeared into the bathroom. Sam stood with his back to the front door, trying to gauge his partner’s level of murderous rage.

  “I am sorry,” Sam said quietly. “I didn’t mean to bust in on you like this.”

  Dex glared at him—then heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t think you’d notice I was gone until morning. And by then, I didn’t figure I’d need to draw you a map.”

  Sam snorted. “Obviously you didn’t, since I found out where you were pretty damn quick.”

  The glare returned. “So you thought it would be a good idea to cock-block me?”

  Sam winced. “Look, dude…”

  But Dex shook his head, the glare dimming to a worried frown. “It’s fine.”

  Clearly, it wasn’t. “I can still leave.”

  Dex met his eyes…and slowly shook his head again. “She says you stay. And the way she’s acting…I don’t know, man. I think Boss may have kept us out of the loop on something—either that, or he was missing a pretty fucking big piece of the puzzle. He sent us in to flush out a single darkling. But this is starting to feel like Arkansas, if you catch my drift.”

  Sam nodded and walked toward the second bed. “That story she told us earlier, about this Big Man character. A darkling like that should have popped on Boss’ radar a long time ago. But if Syd’s been here, alone, for six whole months—”

  “It means Boss missed something big, and now we’re hip-deep in the middle of it.”

  “FUBAR,” Sam said with a little sigh. He sat on the thin mattress, paused for a minute, and finally kicked off his boots. “Did you get any more details out of Syd?”

  Dex snorted. “Uh…no. We were sort of…preoccupied.”

  The reminder made heat flush through Sam’s whole body. His cock tightened against his zipper, making him fight the urge to adjust it. “Right. I…” He cleared his throat and forced himself to meet Dex’s eyes. “I’m happy for you, just so you know. About damn time.”

  “Damn straight,” Dex replied with a smug little smile. But then his expression turned speculative. “Although…”

  “What?”

  For the first time, Dex looked uncomfortable. “Never mind.”

  Sam opened his mouth to force the issue, but Sydney came out of the bathroom right then, looking freshly brushed and glowing from the inside. Sam couldn’t help but drink in the beauty of her in that paper-thin terrycloth robe, all those luscious curves so beautifully outlined. The sight of her long, bare legs peeking underneath the hem of that robe reminded him of how they’d looked just moments ago, hidden by a sheet yet still clearly straddling Dex’s waist…

  Sam tore his eyes away and scooted back on the bed until his head met the headboard. He folded his hands together at his stomach and tried to look relaxed.

  Sydney, of course, saw right through it. She rolled her eyes as she crawled into the other bed, beside Dex. “You can get comfortable, Sam. I know you sleep in your birthday suit. I promise my tiny feminine brain can handle the prospect of two naked men in the same room with me.”

  Sam chuckled despite himself. He glanced at Dex again, who rolled his eyes before giving a slight nod. Sam thought about it, then sat up and pulled off his t-shirt. As he pulled the fabric away from his body, he saw Sydney frowning at him. “What? I thought you said…”

  She gestured, not toward his bare chest, but toward
his right arm. “I just noticed you both have the same tattoo. Fox Company Alpha? What does that mean?”

  Sam fingered the raised skin where the tattoo marked his upper arm, right at the ball of his shoulder. “We have the same cut. That’s what they call our tattoos. Fox was the callsign of our Company in Afghanistan. Alpha was our team callsign.”

  She peered at Sam’s tattoo, then leaned over Dex and looked at the duplicate image on his shoulder. Her frown deepened. “I take it the design above the words isn’t standard.”

  “No,” Dex said quietly. Sam watched as he took hold of Syd’s fingers and traced them over the left side of the design, which looked like a stylized fox head. “This part was for Fox Company. The dagger in the middle is for the Marine Corps. Raiders, to be precise. The other half…”

  “Represents a darkling,” Sydney finished for him. It wasn’t a question. She ran a fingertip over the nightmarish creature that sprouted from the right side of the dagger. “From what little I know of the Marine Corps, Companies tend to get the same cut when there’s a significant event attached to the design.” She looked from one to the other of them. “Which means you knew about darklings when you both got this tattoo.”

  Sam nodded slowly as Dex ran a hand down the back of Sydney’s head, smoothing the hair down her back. He tugged her close, until she was settled against his chest, and gave Sam a hard-lipped smile. “Might as well tell her. She’s already part of the club.”

  Sam grimaced. He toed off his socks to give himself more time, then settled on the edge of the bed. He didn’t remove his jeans despite Sydney’s suggestion to get comfortable. Both of them were already naked. If he dared to let himself go that far…

  Too tempting. Way, way too tempting.

  Sam cleared his throat. “We were part of the first Marine Raiders mission sent to that region. Our Company was sent in to secure a small village, to make sure the area was clear of insurgents. But of course, when we got there, they attacked us immediately. Fire-fight broke out.”

  “Our unit was sent in to clear the area,” Dex picked up the story. “We thought we were just fighting the insurgents who’d infiltrated the local population.” He paused, scowl darkening. “But then, the locals joined in on the fight. We didn’t know what was going on. Thought maybe the town was a set-up, an ambush point, something the insurgents built to lure us in for slaughter.”

  “We fought them off, doing our best not to kill civilians,” Sam continued, “but a lot of locals got killed in the cross-fire. Every time we thought it was over, they’d attack again. More and more and more of them. It was a bloodbath. Thirty-seven people, all men, ended up dead before the shooting stopped.”

  “We thought they were just innocent bystanders,” Dex said with a grimace. “We knew we’d be discharged after that, dishonorably, of course. You don’t get to kill innocent civvies without terrible consequences.”

  “So…what happened?” Syd asked.

  “A lot of our men died, too,” Sam said with a dark scowl. “Dex and me were the only survivors from team Alpha. We fought our way back to the Captain’s position, hoping he’d find us a way out of that shithole.”

  “But the captain wasn’t where his coordinates said he would be,” Dex growled. “He’d been taken, kidnapped, by a group of locals. We followed their trail, meeting up with several other guys from Fox Company, and closed in on an abandoned warehouse. When we stormed the place—”

  “We found Cap surrounded by a group of…I won’t call them men,” Sam finished for him. “They had him strung up like a Christmas ham, and they were…eating him. Alive. Blood was everywhere…the walls…the floor…smeared all over the bastards who were ripping Cap apart. We surrounded them, tried to get them to back off, but they didn’t act like insurgents. Fuck, they didn’t even act like humans.”

  “Darklings,” Syd said softly.

  Sam nodded. “We didn’t know that at the time. We thought they were just evil people. Cannibals, or some shit. We fought them off, but then more of them attacked as we were leaving. Seemed like the whole town was in on it.”

  “By the time we mopped up, Cap was dead,” Dex said, remembered pain making his voice sound gravelly. “Nothing we could do for him. We…went a little nuts, at that point. Started shooting anyone not dressed like a Marine.”

  “Staff Sergeant Bailey stepped in after a while,” Sam said. “Called off the killing spree. Then he pulled me, Dex, and the other guys who’d found Cap, away from the rest of the Company. Said he had something to show us.”

  “He took us back to the warehouse.” Dex shook his head. “He had a man tied up in there. A prisoner, he said. We told him he was crazy, that the bastard needed to die. But Sarge said we needed to see this. Needed to see him.”

  “He made us look the captive man in the eye,” Sam said quietly. When Syd raised an eyebrow, Sam nodded. “That’s when we saw it for the first time. The no-light-behind-the-eyes thing. Sarge told us all to take a good look and to remember what we’d seen that day. He told us there was more we needed to know, but it would have to wait until we got back to the States.”

  “When we did get back, we were expecting Court Martial—you know, for all the civilian deaths. But the Company was exonerated. No reprimand. Except that every man who’d been part of the group that found Cap suddenly found himself discharged from the Marine Corps.”

  “Including us,” Sam finished sourly. “We thought it was over—our careers, our lives. But then, we each got a phone call.”

  “DEA recruitment center,” Dex said with a snort. “We assumed we were being shafted. Shoved off into drug enforcement as punishment for what massacre in Afghanistan.”

  “But it wasn’t punishment, was it?” Syd said, a tight smile twisting her lips. “You were being recruited to the shadow agency.”

  Dex nodded. “Fourteen of us, to be exact. Staff Sergeant Bailey had recommended us for a special assignment. That was when we were finally told the truth about what happened out there. The town wasn’t just some random strategic point we had to defend on behalf of the U.S. Military. It was a darkling nest, and they’d sent us in, completely clueless, to take them all out.”

  “That was the biggest trip of all,” Dex said, shaking his head. “Learning that all the bad guys we’d heard about on the news weren’t even human. I’d always figured demons did exist—I just didn’t know they could look exactly like regular people.”

  “Anyway,” Sam said, “we all signed up. All the guys from Fox Company joined the Agency and committed to taking those fuckers down. We all got cut after we graduated from the DEA Academy. To symbolize where we started, and what we were committed to doing.”

  Sydney nodded thoughtfully, tracing the lines of Dex’s tattoo as she thought over their story. Sam tried not to wonder how her fingers would feel on his own skin, tracing over his own flesh, her body pressed tight against his side…

  He suppressed a shudder and drew the blankets over his waist to hide the evidence of his errant musings.

  “I’d always wondered how you two got mixed up with them,” Sydney said at last. She gave Sam a soft smile, then looked up at Dex. She kissed him, sweet and slow. Sam suppressed a groan. “Now I know.”

  “Now you know,” Dex repeated, staring down at her. The fire in his eyes made Sam’s cock throb in response.

  She gave Dex a private, knowing little smile, then patted his bare chest. “We need to get some sleep. Only a few hours until dawn, and then we figure a way out of this mess. See you both at reveille.” She snuggled down next to Dex, throwing an arm over his waist, and closed her eyes. But she popped back up a moment later and gestured toward the foot of Sam’s bed. “Oh, hand me that .22, will you?”

  “Huh?” Sam looked where she pointed and finally saw the gun. “What the hell?”

  She grinned. “That’s the one I pulled on Dex when he showed up. It’s my favorite.”

  Dex frowned as Sam picked up the pistol, flipped it around, and handed it to her grip-first.
“I thought I recognized it. Where were you hiding it?”

  “Under my pillow,” Sydney said cheerfully, shoving it beneath said pillow as if to confirm it.

  Dex was still frowning. “But…you pulled the fifty-cal on Sam.”

  “Yep.”

  “So, where’d you get that one?”

  “From under the other pillow.”

  Sam blinked. So did Dex. “You keep two different-caliber guns under two different pillows?” Dex sounded a little shaky. “Do you always sleep with that many guns in your bed?”

  “I sleep with as many loaded weapons as I can reasonably conceal,” Sydney said pleasantly, snuggling back down against Dex’s chest. “There are twelve more of them scattered around the room. How about you guys go on a scavenger hunt? He who finds the highest caliber wins.”

  “Dear Lord, save me from trigger-happy women,” Dex muttered, making Sam snort.

  “Don’t hate,” Sydney said primly. “You know you’re jealous.” She grinned and winked when Sam looked over at her.

  True, Sam thought, watching the two of them cuddle up together. Very, very true. “Whatever, Annie Oakley.”

  “Get some sleep,” she replied with a chuckle.

  “Until sun-up,” Sam said roughly, hoping they would mistake the gruffness for exhaustion instead of lust. He and Dex exchanged a nod, then Sam pulled his blanket up to his chin and forced himself to close his eyes.

  It was going to be a long, torturous night.

  Chapter 8

  Sydney woke when a shaft of sunlight pierced her closed eyelids. She groaned, thought about shoving a pillow over her head, then thought better of it. Best to get her plan set in motion. The sooner they were out of this dump, the more likely they were to survive another day.

  That thought in mind, she slipped from beneath the delicious weight of Dex’s arm and rolled off the side of the bed. The cold mountain air permeated the room, making her nipples harden in protest. Thankfully, she still had on her little white robe. Otherwise, her body would have turned into one giant goosebump. Shivering, she crossed her arms over her chest—for warmth, not modesty—and looked toward Sam’s bed.