“I only got one,” Doc said, wheezing. “The other one, the redhead, got away.”
“Is that how you thought you’d endear yourself to me, by flagrantly violating a directive to leave the boy for my enjoyment?” Baron Geoff Montague’s eyes flashed coal black with rage as he backhanded his lover. “This is not our fight! We are not involved in this squabble, but we are vested in the outcome!”
Black blood splattered from her mouth and painted the red tresses that fell against her cheek. She backed away with fear glittering in her eyes.
“Sa fina and I were going to bring him to you, Geoff. We thought we were following your orders. You said, ‘If the boy leaves the house, he’s mine.’ Our objective was only to bring him to you.” She held her face and lowered her head in submission. “I swear to you… do not dispense with me harshly. I loved her, too.”
“Tragically foolish,” the baron said through his teeth. “I would have mind-stunned him, used his body, and returned him just to let the wolves know that we can get close to their humans anytime we so desire. It would have been a mild warning, but not one that would incite war. Had you been successful, that would have been grand-but you weren’t successful… and not only did you lose my beloved Safina with all of this, now our enemies think that Vampires are involved in the greater conflict!”
For a moment, neither Hunter nor Shogun could move. Horror filled their eyes as three New Orleans Police Department cruisers careened into the parking lot. It all happened so fast that it seemed like everything was moving in slow motion.
Seung Kwon fell into Shogun’s arms, bleeding. Werewolves that had been in hot pursuit turned on the new human threat. Police vehicle lights painted the air a throbbing blood red. Human voices echoed from a bullhorn. Two brave but foolish officers got out of their vehicle with shotguns raised. Hunter lifted his gun to his shoulder, trying in vain to give them a chance to escape. He pulled the trigger and it only clicked. He was out of shells; the officers were on their own.
Werewolves rushed them, taking the non-silver gunshots into their bodies without slowing down. Seeing the huge creatures of the night under a nearly full moon made the officers hesitate, their minds paralyzed by what they could never understand.
The rst officer’s face was swallowed whole inside massive jaws with a scream. All that was left seconds later was the back of his skull and part of his brain as his body dropped and then twitched on the ground. The second officer was caught between two frenzied beasts and summarily severed in half.
A driver in one of the backup vehicles tried to throw his cruiser in reverse, but a huge wolf crashed through the window, dragging the driver out onto the hood to leave no more than a bloody streak. His partner never made it out of the cab. The entire top, cherry lights and all, was peeled away like it was a tin can, and he was extracted by jaws of steel, screaming. Two thick-bodied Weres rushed the third vehicle, knocking it over onto its side and then raking open the gas tank. The wolves fled as a half-transformed bouncer lifted a shotgun, aimed, and pulled the trigger, setting off a massive explosion that cooked the officers alive in their own car.
Shogun’s men caught up to their position, breathing hard, dirty, naked, and bruised. They all looked in the direction of the human carnage, understanding; six human law enforcement deaths would be impossible to cover up. Humans were now involved.
But they also understood that, as tragic as it was, the brief diversion had afforded them a chance to possibly live. It went without saying-they owed the men who’d given their lives… the innocents who had probably shown up to a 911 call about shotgun reports in the area.
“In due time we will avenge the humans as a matter of honor,” Hunter said, pulling back into the denser foliage.
Shogun nodded, half carrying his injured cousin.
But then all men stopped. It was amazingly quiet. Too quiet. Each man looked around into the nothingness of the bayou. Instinct kicked in. They were surrounded. Seung Kwon slowly pushed himself away from Shogun to take a fighter’s stance. In extremely slow moves, like a subtle ballet, each man moved into position, forming a ring, bracing for an attack.
A rocket-propelled grenade hit the building; Werewolves came out of hiding with angry roars. Half of them doubled back toward the Bayou House, the other half charged at the small circle of men.
The dead shotgun butt became one with Hunter’s arm as he swung it like a baseball bat to stun one attacker. Halving it, he then rammed the broken barrel through the skull of the wolf behind him. Shogun’s agility was unmatched by the thick-bodied wolves that rushed him. Tree branches, tree trunks, anything that gave him leverage, kept him out of claw range as he ducked, pivoted, and lobbed throat-ripping jabs. Seung Kwon, even injured, was formidable when paired with his brethren. They worked in fluid coordination like deadly synchronized swimmers, using jagged branches to gouge out eyes and spear throats in bloody hand-to-hand combat.
An M-16 gun report ripped through the air. To Hunter, it was background white noise-he was in kill mode, adrenaline making him high. His wolf was caught inside his human, but his human had become a beast. Strength coursed through his hands; necks snapped at their will. His feet dug into the soft earth, holding his ground as he twisted a jaw into an unnatural position, then spun to land a haymaker that crushed a skull. His voice contained the sound of wolf rage; suddenly the predators had become the prey.
The building was on fire. There were still twenty-to-one odds. Hunter and Shogun exited the tree line to join the battle raging in the parking lot.
Sasha’s howl made them both snap. Shogun left the ground, leaping onto the back of a retreating Werewolf, his jaws powerful enough, even in human form, to rip off an ear. When the Werewolf went up on its hind legs with a howl and spun to disembowel him, Shogun quickly dismounted and Woods caught it in the gullet with a single hollow-point silver bullet. Fisher lobbed a grenade into a cluster of attackers, splattering the side of the burning building with ripe gore.
Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow were a killing blur at Sasha’s side while Sasha ran headlong, squeezing off machine-gun rounds. Hunter’s gaze locked with Sasha’s for a moment. It was enough to send pure insanity through his soul.
In a headlong lunge, he went one-on-one with a massive Werewolf male. A head butt left the wolf stunned for a second with his belly exposed. That was long enough for Hunter to come away with entrails in both hands.
Sirens in the background, smoke billowing from the building inferno, the Buchanan clan in retreat as the sound of grenades and gunfire echoed in the air, and Hunter threw back his head and howled. Dead cops, a burning building, and dead Buchanan clansmen and clanswomen beginning to transform back into mangled human bodies would be inexplicable in any court of human law.
Fisher squeezed off shots, felling the last of the retreating Buchanan fighters in single shots as everyone piled back into the three available jeeps. No one had to say it; they all knew what had to be done. Before local authorities could arrive on the scene, they had to take the vehicles as far into the bayou as possible and then strip them of any VINs and tags, as well as doing a full fingerprint wipe-down, then pray for a mudhole to screw up any DNA evidence.
The sirens were getting farther and farther away, but as Hunter’s fight adrenaline ebbed, his wolf did not. Shogun glanced at Hunter. The men shared a look as Sasha stared at them both.