“As long as we get to kill these fuckers, no questions from me,” Axel said.
“Neri, are you ready?” Ghost asked.
She nodded, once. She sheathed her knife and slid it in the back of her jeans before she held out her arms.
Neri!
Frozen when Silas call her, she looked up in time to see Silas jump at her.
You okay, little man?
Silas shook his head. Hunter’s hurt. All I see is black but his body is in pain, around his stomach and back. He’s being poked, like needles. Some are worse. You know he hates needles.
I know, little man. We’ll get him back. Go see your mom and we’ll be back soon.
Neri kissed his cheek and almost cried after Frost, her face etched in concern, reached out and squeezed her hand before she pulled Silas to her chest and hugged him close. She had to close her eyes when Xander kissed Frost and Silas, her heart breaking.
Liv hugged her. “You’ll do whatever it takes to get him back. And he’ll be fine.”
Unable to speak through the tightness in her throat, Neri nodded and turned back to the others. Without speaking, she held her arms out and took a deep breath when twelve hands grasped her arm. She didn’t have to close her eyes this time; Hunter’s image etched in her mind.
Hunter, we’re coming.
One second, they were in Kai’s cozy living room and the next, isopropyl alcohol and bleach were prominent. But Neri’s eyes focused on the slumped figure in front of her.
Hunter’s head hung in front of him and he wasn’t conscious. For a long moment, she watched his chest as it moved up and down in incremental movements, which showed he was alive. As her gaze moved down to his chest and stomach, bared from the waist up, there were areas of muscle gouged out of him.
Red. Pure anger, nothing she’d ever felt before surged through her, but before she let out a roar of outrage and fury, Axel put a hand over her mouth and wrapped an arm around her waist, yanking her back into his body.
“It won’t do any good to alert them to our presence, gray eyes. They are on the floor above and with the machines whirring around us is medical equipment, breaking down Hunter’s blood and DNA, we’re masked. But we need to be smart,” Axel whispered.
Taking deep breaths, Neri nodded. Her body drooped against Axel’s and tried to get herself back under control.
“Ara, can you heal Hunter?” Ghost asked.
Ara gave a quick nod and walked toward Hunter. She kneeled in front of him and Neri gasped as she watched the talented shifter’s hands glowed a pure white light. Neri wanted to absorb Hunter’s pain as Ara put her hands onto his chest and he grunted at the touch. She didn’t interfere.
With wide eyes, Neri watched as the light flowed through Ara’s hands and into Hunter’s chest, moving toward the cuts and gouges on Hunter’s chest and stomach. As the wounds glowed, bringing them into stark contrast, Hunter jerked against the ties strapping him down to the bolted chair where he sat.
Neri moved closer and cupped Hunter’s face in her hands. She held him still as Ara continued to heal him and watched as she gave a thanks to whatever deity had given Ara the healing powers she had. As the light faded, Hunter stiffened in his chair.
“Hunter, love, it’s us. You’ll fine.”
“They pumped him full of tranquilizer. I’ve cleared it from his system so he should come to any moment,” Ara said.
“Thank you, Ara. Thank you,” Neri said.
Ara stood and rubbed her back before moving to stand near Reaper, who had his gaze on the stairwell. Neri noticed the others placed themselves around the room, investigating the equipment and searching for any documentation they stumbled upon.
“Gather everything you can fit it your packs,” Ghost directed.
There was a fluttering of paper, computers being unplugged and stored, and drawers being opened and closed, but Neri focused on Hunter, who blinked open his eyes.
“Hey there.”
Neri, with sly movements, unsheathed her knife when Hunter pulled at his binds, and cut them off with a quick flick of the blade. She pocketed it before he focused his gaze on her.
“Angel, you’re here. Am I dead?”
“No, love, you’re fine. Zahava and Damian came after you and drugged you with too many doses of tranquilizers. Ara removed it from your system. Do you think you can stand?”
Hunter gasped and his hands slapped his bare skin on his chest and stomach, right over where Ara had healed his wounds.
“Are you feeling any residual pain?”
He glanced up, confused. “What? Oh, that… I thought that was a dream. Someone strapped me down and carved me up, taking chunks out of me. Fuck, I’d take a needle any day.”
“I’ll tell Liv.” Neri gave him a small smile.
Hunter reached for her and kissed her breathless. His hands gripped onto her shirt and only then did she notice he was shaking.
“It’s okay, love. How do you feel?”
A tear slipped from his eye and slid down his cheek. Neri’s breath caught on a sob and she wrapped her arms around Hunter and held him tight.
“I thought I would never see you again. I…”
“It’s always you and me, together. We’ll kill this bitch and her little sidekick and get rid of them once and for all.”
Hunter nodded and stood, a look of determination on his face, until he glanced around the room to find every assassin searching through the room, gathering important items they found.
“How the fuck?”
“Neri’s powerful. She pictured you and pop,” Axel said.
Jade and Noah walked back into the makeshift lab where they kept Hunter.
“They gutted the first ten floors. No movement and no one has been living here at all. The two floors below us look like residences, ten per floor, so twenty apartments total. There is no movement from the apartment but we sense movement upstairs. From the stairwell, there is a secured steel door on this floor and the one above it with a touchscreen electronic deadbolt that will be impossible to bypass.”
“Well, we won’t need to go through the door.”
They turned to Neri and smiled at her.
“Ready for a fight angel?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HUNTER
Fury bristled against his skin and it brought his panther to the forefront. He wanted to shift, but he needed to analyze the layout of the top floor, the players including the number of shifters who would fight, and the possible dangers before he shifted.
Neri gave him a quick kiss before she stood back-to-back with him, the others organizing themselves around her. They all hand their hands on her shoulder or arm.
Ready?
Yes. Everyone replied.
She landed them right in front of Zahava, who gasped in surprise. “Holy shit, how—”
“Who gives a shit how?”
Neri’s hand shot out and clutched Zahava’s throat, pulling the smaller woman closer. She growled at the bane of her existence, showing off her fangs. Although they were impressive, along with Neri’s furious face, Zahava scowled at her.
Without warning, Neri head butted Zahava and broke her nose. The evil bitch screeched like a wounded animal as she ignored the blood gushing from her face. She raised her hands to claw Neri, but his mate held her arm out, keeping the other woman’s hands away from her face.
Damian teleported in behind Zahava and blinked her away from Neri. His mate disappeared in the next moment and appeared across the room where Damian stood in front of Zahava trying to staunch the flow of blood. The shifter mix flashed out of the way as Neri landed and she followed them. After several times, Damian and Zahava disappeared again, but Neri didn’t move to follow.
What’s wrong, angel?
I… I can’t sense her anymore. I’m trying to teleport to where she is, but something is blocking me.
Neri turned to see a flood of shifters run into the room. Ghost was the first to make contact, and he decapitated the first one he
’d come across with a swipe of his combat knife. Another leapt on his back, but he stabbed him in the heart and flung him to his feet, where Ghost cut off his head. He turned to take on two more when a loud cry drew Hunter’s gaze from his boss.
Axel shifted into his lion form and the shouts of dismay came from those shifters around him. Being as big as he was in animal form, he bit the head off several shifters and spit them out after they dropped to the ground, dead. He jumped and landed on another one’s chest and tilted his huge head to the side as the man begged for his life.
Why do these fuckers always think pleading for their lives will work after they attack first?
Jade laughed as Noah held a shifter in front of him, his arms braced underneath the shifter’s armpits and his hands laced behind the whimpering man’s head.
I have no clue, but this is getting old. I miss the days where we killed despicable humans who think human trafficking or drug running is a valid career path. Jade back flipped and with ease, detached the shifter’s head from the body.
Noah dropped the body onto the floor and turned to rip another shifter’s throat out before detaching his head from his body.
In the next few minutes, they dispatched many of the shifters who fought.
Neri had ignored the fight going on around her as Hunter guarded her from a possible attack. Hunter justified he should let the others have their fun, but it was because he didn’t want to let his mate out of his sight. Being away from her, even for however long he had been, had given him a healthy sense of fear he’d never felt in all his years as an assassin. He had no clue if it would dissipate, but for now, he couldn’t leave her side.
Drugged and taken away from her, he thought it would be the end of his existence. Luck was on his side, the overabundance of tranquilizer in his system had made every moment since he left Kai’s porch, a complete blank. But from the horror portrayed on her face, they had hurt him, maybe experimented on him from the phantom pain he sensed on his chest and stomach.
Hunter, his gaze returned to Neri, watched her concentrate on Zahava and Damian’s location. He reached for her hand and linked their fingers together, so if she disappeared, he’d be with her.
Holy shit, look at this. Gunnar sounded freaked.
He turned and glanced at Gunnar and then at the floor, following the grey wolf’s gaze. His eyes widened and heard the assassins and the other shifters alike let out gasps of horror when they spotted a man, mid-shift, stuck in a deformed pose, somewhere between human and animal. At first, Hunter couldn’t identify what type of animal he was trying to shift into, but his eyes roamed toward the elongated neck and found the spots of a cheetah. The way his head and neck were bent horrified him. The flesh was bleeding where the fur sprouted.
When the failed shifter let out a miserable whimper, Gunnar pulled out his Glock 17 and shot him several times in the head, putting the poor soul out of his misery.
Reaper stepped forward and cut the dead cheetah shifter’s head off and looked around, trying to find the person responsible. It’s a fucking abomination. We need to find the scientist working on this and stop them.
Axel, with his gun in his hand, opened the door closest to him, finding it dark. He flicked on the light and searched the room, but finding nothing, closed the door and moved onto the next one. Kane, Xander, and Noah followed Ax’s lead and when Kane opened his door, a squeal of fear echoed throughout the cavernous room.
Kane reached for the man, decked out in a lab coat, wearing a button-down shirt, tie, and slacks, flailed as the blond vampire lifted him off his feet.
“Who are you?”
“Dr. Alexis.”
“And those people?”
Hunter glared at the four other scientists in the room, all decked out in lab coats, and all at a separate workstation with experiments bubbling away around them.
“They kidnapped us from Standard and put to work here four years ago. We can’t leave the building and we have to work on developing a better serum to make her shifter’s stronger and faster. Less likely to die in a fight,” Dr. Alexis said.
A young woman, no older than twenty-five, stepped forward. “Is she out there?”
“No, she disappeared. I’m trying to locate her,” Neri said.
“We’ve been sabotaging the serum, diluting it in different ways, so the shifters can’t shift. They aren’t as strong as they should be. They also die within one to two years of being injected.”
“What’s your name?” Ghost asked.
“I’m Dr. Joanna Gaines. I worked in immunology for Standard. Dr. James Alexis worked in biomedical. And these three, Dr. Sam Logan, Dr. Angel Martinez, and Dr. Sylvia Moore all work in research.”
Hunter noted their skin was pale and all of them looked gaunt and unhealthy.
“Did you know Dr. Olivia Sabin?” Kai asked.
“Yes, she disappeared. There was a company wide alert stating she developed a bioweapon, and it killed hundreds, but I never believed them.”
Ghost stepped forward. “Liv is Kai’s mate. Kai turned her into a vampire after Dr. Ames kidnapped her and tortured her, trying to get the bioweapon back from her.”
Dr. Martinez growled. “I hated that fucking man. All he wanted was to steal our research and take credit for our work. I could see him developing a bioweapon.”
“Yeah, well, Liv turned the tables and injected the bioweapon into him. He… well, disintegrated,” Kai said.
Hunter shivered at the memory.
“Good,” the three researchers said in unison.
“I’m glad Dr. Sabin is okay,” Dr. Gaines said.
“Is there anyone else on this floor?” Gunnar asked.
Dr. Gaines shook her head. “No, it’s us, that tall guy who never talks and the woman. She hates the shifters and they avoid her wrath. But she will call them when she has a plan and they act as her distraction. As far as we’ve figured, they live two floors below the lab. The numbers have dwindled over the past few weeks and with these shifters dead, I’m guessing they’ll go out hunting for humans again soon.”
Ghost growled. “How do they get the humans to experiment on?”
Dr. Moore stepped forward. “They are homeless men from Denver. She doesn’t take women, I don’t know why, but she gets Damian to kidnap them and no one ever reports them missing.”
“Do you guys inject—”
“No! We don’t go near them, plus Zahava likes to do it herself. She gets a sick pleasure doing it.”
Neri scoffed. “Figures.”
“Hunter, we need to get these scientists to safety. Can you take them to Kai’s and pop back here?”
Everything inside him wanted to rebel against leaving Neri for even a moment, but Ghost was in charge and he knew he couldn’t refuse. He turned to Neri, who smiled at him and walked closer.
She pressed her lips to the shell of his ear and said, “When you need to come back, picture me in your mind and you’ll teleport to where I am. It’s easier than it looks.”
“Okay, gather around,” Hunter commanded.
The five doctors walked forward, unaffected they were moving closer to immortal assassins. Hunter held out his arms. “Grab hold and don’t let go.”
They all complied and the moment they had a hold, he teleported them into the living room and next to Liv, who jumped.
“Dr. Sabin?”
“Oh, Hunter, thank the heavens you’re okay. Dr. Gaines. Um, this will sound weird but what are you doing here?”
Hunter cleared his throat. “Zahava and Damian kidnapped them from Standard over four years ago. I have to go back, we haven’t killed them yet. In the meantime, can you get them some food and a place to sleep? You guys don’t look healthy.”
“No offense taken. Thanks for getting us out of there,” Dr. Alexis said.
“I’ll care for them. Bring everyone back.” Liv’s voice wobbled, always concerned for her family when they were on a mission.
Hunter hugged her. “I will.”
&nbs
p; He closed his eyes, picturing his mate, he popped out and smiled when he felt Neri’s hands on his biceps.
“I can sense her again. I think they went into a room and masked their sound as they regrouped. They don’t have many shifters left, not enough to distract us at any rate,” Neri said.
“Since the shifters won’t be a problem, we need to concentrate on Zahava and Damian. Damian will keep her out of our reach, so we have to find a weakness in the immortal and take advantage of that. Neri, you have Zahava. We can’t keep her alive, although she’s still human.”
Axel scoffed. “How do you know they haven’t ditched us and headed out of state?”
“Because she took a long time to build what she sees as her empire. She hid the building in plain sight and she even kept five people hostage for four years in the same place. There’s no way she’ll give up what progress she thinks she’s made because of us,” Neri said.
“You’re right there, Nerissa,” Zahava sneered.
Damian stood near the doorway, his face blank and his arms crossed over his chest. Zahava stood in front of him, holding out a gun and trained it on Hunter’s head.
“Holding a gun to another’s mate is the best way to die a painful death,” Ara growled.
The crazy bitch fired at him and he teleported in time to miss being shot. When he teleported back in, she had turned the gun on the rest of the group who had ducked out of the way. The shots were ricocheting off the metal cabinets, the tiled floor, and the steel doors surrounding the room, but no bullets hit their intended target.
Neri let out a roar, more intimidating than anything that had come from Axel in his lion form, and stalked forward.
Zahava’s eyes widened, and she slid the empty magazine out of the 9mm handgun and slammed back a fresh one. She lifted the gun and pointed it at Neri, pulling the trigger and shooting her in the shoulder.
As if it were happening in slow motion, blood splattered the pristine white room when the bullet went through her and blasted through her skin and tissue, exiting near her shoulder blade. But Neri never wavered from her forward momentum, but when Zahava huffed out irritation at not killing her, raised the gun again.
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