by Laura Taylor
Getting to the second level was easier; the first-floor roof was high and peaked, making for a simple jump to the next storey, but then they had to edge around to the left to avoid any major windows before they could make their way up onto the main roof.
Silent as a ghost and with an impressive rifle slung over her shoulder, Caroline gave him a single nod, then crept away to her designated corner. She settled herself into a sheltered corner of the gable to wait.
The assassin, meanwhile, had a slightly more challenging task ahead of him. Checking that Caroline was established safely, he took a moment to assess his own position, the angles required to take the shots he was likely to want, potential hiding places within his line of sight. Then he took a deep breath, fixing his gaze on the far corner of the roof, and prayed that Baron hadn’t just made the direst possible error of judgement.
By Lee’s reckoning, it would be at least two hours until the Noturatii attacked the estate. But that meant it was less than an hour until they showed up. Before their assault, they would have to assess the estate, position their troops and leave themselves a decent margin of time for mistakes or unforeseen problems. And Lee hadn’t been here herself for all that long, still working out the lie of the land in the dim light. So despite the long period of quiet stretching out before her, she would be far from bored as she waited for the battle to -
She was instantly on alert as a shadow moved to her left. Her gun was in her hand and pointing at the assassin almost before she’d registered he was there, and for a moment, the pair of them simply stared at each other, both tense and unhappy, neither of them moving. He was crouched just beyond the far ridge in the roof, his face covered, but she could tell from his body shape that he wasn’t the one she’d met ever so briefly back on the shifters’ estate. As her heart pounded in her chest, she wondered what his presence meant for her intentions here.
Then, slowly, the assassin held up his hands, showing them to be empty. It was a purely symbolic gesture – it was an iron-clad guarantee that he would have enough weapons on him to take down a small army – but it made his point. He wasn’t here to fight her.
Cooperatively, Lee lowered her gun, giving him a wary nod through the darkness. A moment later he was gone, and while it was rather nerve-wracking to know she was sharing the roof with one of the few creatures in the world who stood a real chance of killing her, she nonetheless appreciated the courteous introduction.
Down below, she caught sight of another shadow, a slow, stealthy movement from shelter to shelter… and then a third shape in the darkness, the flicker of a furry tail… and her heart sped up again, but for an entirely different reason.
They’d come. They’d believed her. They’d come to help her defend the civilians, and defeat the Noturatii, and why the hell was that making her so deliriously happy? Had Drew come with them, she wondered? The thought brought both fear and delight. She couldn’t stand the idea of him being hurt, and yet at the same time, she now knew that this sort of danger, this brash display of honour on behalf of the defenceless, was very much a part of his character and his life. Perhaps, after the battle was over, she might get a chance to see him again, to apologise for… well, for everything.
Lying beneath a holly bush, Alistair watched the team of Noturatii soldiers flow through the bushes like oil. A little over half an hour after his team had got into position – Team Four, for what it mattered, led by a calm and collected Mark – their sharp canine hearing had picked up the sound of soft footfalls, the faint rustle of clothes brushing against leaves. A thin sliver of moon had finally risen, revealing soldier after soldier tramping along as the Noturatii’s troops circled the property. For all their careful preparations, and the fact that they had four assassins and a Khuli on their side (god, he hoped Lee really was on their side), they were still outnumbered four to one, and with plenty of wide open spaces to cross and minimal cover aside from tree trunks and the occasional stone wall, it would be nothing short of a miracle if they all made it out of here alive. The Endless War had stolen far too many of Alistair’s friends in the recent past, and he wasn’t sure he could stand the grief of losing more today.
The soldiers took their time getting into position, creeping closer to the estate, checking for likely spots to take cover or suitable avenues of retreat, all the while oblivious to the eighteen pairs of eyes watching them through the darkness.
Mark was in human form, listening intently to whatever muted information was coming through his earpiece and occasionally muttering a soft reply, as he and the other team leaders coordinated their positions and laid plans for their attack. At his signal, Team Four spread out in a wide arc, the rest of them still in wolf form. The members of the Den were wearing their canine body armour, and they’d brought a few of their spare sets to lend to the Grey Watch, left over from previous members of the pack. Though the Kevlar suits were custom made to fit their specific owner, it was usually possible to find a close enough fit for someone else to make use of them. Some of the Watch had been grateful for the extra protection, while others had refused the suits on the basis that they weren’t used to wearing them, and therefore they could actually be a hindrance in battle, rather than a benefit.
All of them were also wearing bullet-proof vests as humans – though the name was actually a misnomer. It was a fairly sure bet that the Noturatii had access to bullets that could pierce the armour, so as with all things in battles of this nature, there were no guarantees.
Through a series of gestures, Mark indicated to them to lay low and wait a little longer. The main team at the manor was assessing the soldiers who were currently sneaking onto the property from the front of the estate, and they didn’t want to trigger the battle too soon. It was going to be a fine balancing act between getting the Noturatii close enough to be a consolidated target, and not letting them get too close to the manor. If they were too spread out, they could just scatter and end up coming back around to hem the shifters in.
For a brief moment, Alistair imagined Lee up on the roof, watching both the soldiers and the shifters get into position. He still didn’t know what to think of her. In her years of service to the Noturatii, she would have committed some terrible crimes, killed people in horrendous ways, obstructed justice and caused profound grief. She was evil incarnate.
And yet now she was determined to risk her own life to save people she had never met, and more than that, she was willing to team up with the shifters, the very people she was supposed to hate.
How the hell was he supposed to make sense of anything in the world anymore?
Outside the front gate of the unassuming estate, Melissa watched her troops filter through the hedgerows and over the stone wall that ran along the property’s boundary, feeling a tight thrill of excitement, as well as an unexpected pang of nervousness. The latter was ridiculous, she told herself firmly. She had nothing to be nervous about. Leon and a handful of the most experienced soldiers had planned this battle meticulously. They had superior numbers, significant advantages in terms of technology and weaponry, and, of course, the element of surprise on their side.
But even so, they were going up against a pack that had bested them repeatedly over the last ten years, killing high level staff, blowing up their lab, evading them at every turn. Their enemies were smart and powerful, and her lingering nervousness was a reminder that they couldn’t afford to take anything for granted.
Despite Leon’s firm advice to the contrary, Melissa had insisted on coming along today. She wasn’t going to get involved in the actual battle, she’d assured her minder. But she needed to be here, needed to see her enemies finally defeated. After all they had taken from her and caused her to suffer, that much, at least, was necessary.
But that didn’t mean she’d been given a completely free rein. At Leon’s insistence, she was sitting inside a bullet-proof car, a driver at the wheel with the motor running. If shit started hitting the fan, he was under firm instructions to get her to safety, regardless o
f any objections on her part, and while Melissa had scowled and glared over the orders Leon had issued, she hadn’t put up a fight. After all, as much as she wanted to witness the shifters’ demise first hand, there was no sense in losing her life over it.
Dawn was not yet even a flicker on the horizon, and once they were past the first wall, Melissa quickly lost sight of her soldiers. They’d had to pull in some serious favours with the local police, ensuring they wouldn’t be interrupted in the middle of their slaughter by well-meaning neighbours making frantic phone calls about gun-fire. It was going to cost them a small fortune in bribes, but despite the ongoing shortage in funding, Melissa had approved the expenditure without a second thought. If it meant taking down this most bothersome pack, it would be worth it.
Through the car window she saw Leon, fully decked out in camouflage gear and wearing a bullet-proof vest, issuing a last set of orders to one of his lieutenants before he, too, joined the soldiers making their way into the heart of the estate. He sent one last, backward glance her way as he left, although she wasn’t sure he could actually see her through the car window, and the look on his face was unreadable. There seemed to be a strange anger in his eyes that she couldn’t quite place.
He was likely just concerned about her welfare and annoyed that she’d insisted on coming here this morning, she told herself, settling back in the car and asking the driver to turn up the heat a little. By the time the battle was over, the sun would be rising, a golden blessing that would let them see the full extent of the damage they had wrought against the insidious threat of the shifters. The first gunshots cracked sharply through the pre-dawn gloom, and Melissa smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The first shot came from one of the female assassins. The second came from Kajus, holed up in the corner of a low garden wall, as well as the third, and by that time, the Noturatii soldiers had their fingers on their triggers, startled and searching through the darkness for something to shoot.
The fourth shot came from high on the roof, and from the angle, Baron guessed it had been delivered by the Khuli, and after that, it was a free-for-all, Noturatii and shifters alike letting loose a barrage of bullets that was as deafening as it was deadly.
Five Noturatii soldiers went down fast, head shots to all of them, as a convenient workaround to the bullet-proof vests protecting their chests. But the element of surprise wore off quickly, and that was as much of an advantage as the shifters were likely to get. Once they realised they were under fire, the soldiers lost no time in regrouping, adopting defensive formations, and making much greater use of the cover the gardens provided. There was a sudden yell over to Baron’s left, then a sickening crack and a thud, and he smiled; the assassins would never limit themselves to mere bullets, and he imagined they were going to be having fun today, taking down a dozen or more of their enemies each.
For his own part, Baron was sheltering behind a garden statue, waiting patiently for the trio of soldiers to the south to begin taking cautious steps closer. He hadn’t fired his gun yet, biding his time before he revealed his presence, waiting for a clear shot that would kill, rather than just piss them off. The path through the gardens was an obvious one, an easy route of access for any soldier who might lack the sufficient practical experience to think better of it, but if no one took the bait in the next minute, he would have to move and lend his support in another area.
Over to his right, John was displaying none of Baron’s reticence. He darted from cover to cover, rolling and jumping, firing shot after shot, vengeance a living being inside him, and Baron felt a distracting flush of heat in his groin as he watched his former lover move like liquid silk. Two soldiers went down, John snarled in pleasure, and then Baron forced his attention back to his own mark, sending two rapid shots down the path, one of the men collapsing instantly, another cursing and grabbing his neck as he ducked back into cover. A volley of bullets were sent back at him, all harmlessly passing him by as he ducked hastily behind his stone shelter.
At the northern edge of the property, Tank crouched in the low scrub, his finger itching to start pulling the trigger on his gun. Beside him, Simon, Aaron and two of the Grey Watch women were similarly restless, waiting for the fighting to start.
Genna, thankfully, was currently in Germany receiving some much-needed training for her unique abilities, and her absence had bypassed the question of whether she would have been asked to join the fight or not. Though her talent for making objects disappear was a powerful one and undoubtedly an asset in battle, she was also untrained, both with the shifter magic and with conventional weapons. Tank was wholly relieved that he hadn’t had to argue, either with Luna and Kajus, or with Genna herself, about her involvement in a battle of this magnitude.
“Engaging soldiers,” came a brief announcement through his earpiece, and a moment later, he heard the first shots fired on the other side of the manor. The soldiers in front of them were already restless, no doubt as eager to get things started as Tank was, and they started moving more rapidly towards the manor.
Tank signalled for his own group to move up to the edge of the tree line. The back lawn was wide, with no cover of any sort, and he waited while the soldiers crept forward, further from the possibility of retreat.
With a nod to his team, he brought up his gun and shot the closest man in the back of the head. He missed the next one, the soldier moving just at the wrong moment, but Simon got him, and he went down with a thud.
A burst of gun-fire sounded from over to the right, then another from the left, and by that point, the soldiers out on the lawn had realised what was going on. They dropped to the ground, and Tank’s team were forced to take cover as they returned fire. Even so, Tank managed to get a couple of shots off in return, seeing another man go down, clutching his leg, and then he withdrew behind a tree to reload.
“Get back!” He snapped at one of the women on his team who was leaning too far out from behind her tree, too focused on lining up her shot to pay attention to her own safety. She obediently darted back into cover. “Simon, ten o’clock,” he said, noticing a soldier sneaking sideways for a better shot, all but invisible in his dark clothing. Simon fired four rapid shots, and the man went down. But more soldiers from nearer the house had turned back now, and Tank wasn’t sure how long they’d be able to hold this line. If the soldiers made it back into the trees, the shifters could be in serious trouble.
Shouting started up from inside the manor, with the occupants no doubt well and truly awake by now. From Baron’s position a couple of metres from the west wall, several male voices filtered through to him, angry and commanding, and he regretted the current need to stay in human form. Canine hearing was far sharper, and he would have liked to know what was being said; whether the family was bunkering down inside, or if they planned to do anything reckless and heroic.
A burst of gun-fire sounded from the west, well off into the forest; Andre and his team had no doubt engaged the soldiers on that front, and then he heard the distant hum of a machine. A sudden BOOM from the roof confirmed what he’d already suspected about that development – the Noturatii were sending up drones, and Caroline was taking unholy glee in shooting them down. She had what some people might consider to be an unhealthy obsession with powerful rifles, although in their day-to-day work there was little reason to use one. If she’d been recruited under slightly different circumstances, she could well have been chosen by the Council to be trained as an assassin.
More soldiers were approaching from the south-west, and Baron dropped one of them and managed to injure another before being forced to take cover again. The sound of heavy thudding came from within the house, and he tensed. No, no, no, just stay inside. Don’t go doing anything stupid -
“…a whole battalion of fucking cops!” The angry voice was clearly audible through a half-open window, and Baron’s eyes opened wide as he heard the next part, with three or four men involved in the conversation.
“We can’t shoot cops!
Are you fucking suicidal?”
“I’m not going to jail! I told you that right from the start.”
“What about the lab?”
“Fuck the lab…” the voices drifted off to angry rumbles as the men moved to another part of the house… and a moment later, a volley of gun-fire and shouting came from the front door.
Cursing under his breath, Baron took a chance and darted out of his hiding spot, moving rapidly through hedges and potted plants – taking out one, then two soldiers as he went – to where Kajus was positioned, south of the front corner of the house. When he arrived, it was to find Kajus staring dumbly at the front door. Checking they weren’t in any immediate danger, Baron dared to look, and saw that six burly men had just burst outside with a shotgun and several sub-machine guns and begun spraying the garden with bullets.
“What the fuck!?” Kajus demanded, then he smoothly spun around and took out a soldier creeping up from the right, his bullet slicing through the man’s neck at the same time as John took out his kneecap.
“Don’t really know,” Baron told him, “but from a few choice words, I’m guessing they’re drug dealers.”
Li Khuli felt an odd thread of discomfort as she slid down off the highest roof of the manor and onto the second storey. Saving the civilians was a priority, of course, and she was well-trained enough to put her emotions aside in order to get the job done, but each time she pulled that trigger and saw another soldier go down, she felt a stab of guilt. What if these men had been sent into battle against their will? What if they were like she had been for so long, obeying their master’s orders with dire consequences if they tried to rebel?