Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set

by Krystal Shannan

  That meant we couldn’t wet down anything. If we couldn’t get out, the smoke could kill us before the fire did. I could already feel the burn in the pit of my lungs.

  I approached the broken window and stared out. The witches remained in a circle, and soldiers gathered behind their ring, continuing to throw Molotov jars at the lodge. Tears welled in my eyes, as much from the smoke building in the room as the pain in my heart. I counted for ten seconds, and five more jars sailed through the air, landing against or on the lodge. And those were only the ones I could see from my window.

  The whole building must look like one big ball of flame, meaning Travis and Garrett were either dead or on their way. The smoke had to be hundreds of feet in the air.

  I coughed again and squinted. Smoke was clouding the room faster than it should’ve. Staring at the doorway I saw the problem: the smoke was trapped inside the barrier just like we were. Nothing could pass through. Not even air?

  “It’s not filtering out,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, coughing into his arm.

  “The smoke isn’t leaving the room. Not through the door, not back out the window. We should be able to breathe fresh air through this hole.” I shook my head. “There’s nothing. The smoke just bounces off the hole.”

  “Fuck,” he growled. He walked toward a wall and reached out gingerly. I cringed, waiting for the barrier to send a shock through him. Nothing happened. His hand rested safely against the sheetrock wall. He turned his head and caught my gaze.

  We were both wondering the same thing. Did the barrier extend beyond the doors and windows?

  He pulled back his fist and punched through the wall. No outcry. No zap of energy. Again and again, he punched until his arm went all the way through. Then he pressed his mouth to the hole and breathed deeply.

  I hurried to his side, avoiding the spots where the fire had caught on the floor rug. At least the hardwood floors were slowing the spread or we’d be crispy already.

  “Breathe through here,” he said, catching my arm and pulling me closer. My body was plastered to his a second later, and our faces shared intimate space in front of the hole in the wall, but when the fresh clean air hit my lungs, I didn’t care anymore.

  “How is it so clear?”

  “Liam said he couldn’t come up the stairs, so that means it’s completely sealed. There’s no window on the hallway, so there’s nowhere for them to throw one through.”

  “Liam,” he yelled, but only a hoarse croak emerged; even with the fresh air, the smoke had already taken a heavy toll. “Punch a wall out into a sealed room for clean air. A closet. Anything.”

  Through the pandemonium of screaming and crying, I couldn’t hear him respond. “Did you hear him?”

  He shook his head, the movement nudging my cheek.

  A terrified scream pierced the air. I couldn’t tell who it was until she cried out my name. “Charlie, save my baby. Please. Karly is upstairs. If you can get her, please.” Then her words changed to screams of pain, and I tried to choke back the sobs. I couldn’t afford to waste our air.

  “Can we make the hole big enough for me to fit through? Her baby is down the hallway.”

  He pushed me backward and then began yanking out chunks of sheetrock and insulation. Within a few moments, he had squeezed his huge frame through the newly enlarged hole. I followed easily and pointed down the hall to the right.

  “The room with the pink door.”

  “Which wall?”

  I stood in front of the door for a second and thought about the room. “Here,” I said, pointing to the left side. “Can you hear a heartbeat?”

  He shook his head. “Too many screams from downstairs.” Rearing back, he kicked the wall, using his steel-toed boot like a sledgehammer. Pieces of the wall shattered, leaving a nice-sized hole, and I touched his arm to stop him from kicking again.

  “I can fit,” I said, leaning down and slithering through the opening.

  The room was filled with smoke, and the carpet in the center burned bright, but the crib was against the hall wall, and Karly was still alive! Her little coughs filled me with hope. I leaned over and snatched her from the crib and thrust her through the opening into Brogan’s arms. A crash behind me sent me hurtling through the hole back into the hallway. Another Molotov had exploded inside the baby’s bedroom. We’d gotten there just in time.

  “Are there more kids up here? Or anyone?”

  “There could be. We have to check.”

  He drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Take the baby and stay in the center of the hallway where there’s more air for her. She’s got bad smoke inhalation. And stay low, the smoke is starting to creep through these holes.”

  I dropped to the floor with Karly snuggled tightly against my chest. The little girl was only fifteen months old. Her daddy had been killed at the Vicksburg Bridge. Tears streamed down my eyes.

  I’d been worried the soldiers would execute the pack, but I’d never dreamed they’d try to burn us alive. How could Victor go along with this; surely he wouldn’t stand by and watch his family tortured and killed?

  “Found another one!” Brogan’s big voice boomed through the hallway, and his feet pounded toward me, vibrating the floor.

  The baby he thrust into my arms was Isis, Sheila’s little girl. She was almost three.

  “Charlie, mama is hurt.”

  I hugged her to my body next to Karly and looked up at Brogan.

  He shook his head. “I think the barrier killed her. She must’ve kept hitting it or fallen against it. I don’t know. There’s nothing I can do for her. I can’t even get her body.”

  Tears flowed down my cheeks, and I nodded. “It’s okay, honey. Auntie Charlie has you. I won’t let anything happen, okay.”

  “Mama’s hurt,” the little girl sobbed. “Fire is bad,” she coughed out.

  “Mama is gone, sweet girl. She’s gone to the stars with our ancestors. She isn’t hurting any more. I promise.”

  My chest tightened, and I gasped for a breath before turning to Brogan. “Did you check the others yet?”

  He knelt down to the floor beside me and nodded. “These two were the only ones alive.”

  I hyperventilated a few breaths before I put a lid on the grief that wanted to come pouring out. But it wouldn’t help these babies for me to lose it now.

  “Can’t we punch out through an outside wall?”

  “I already tried. The outside wall is charged with the energy barrier. Every time I touch it, it’s worse. I felt my heart stop for a second this last time,” he answered.

  “Do you think they are okay downstairs? I haven’t heard much lately, and the fire is burning so loudly. It’s like a roar in my ears.”

  “I don’t know. I hope so,” he answered. “Let me hold the toddler.” He reached for Isis and peeled her off my neck, transferring her to his. She latched right on and continued to sob into his shoulder. I readjusted the baby and leaned against his massive frame. The cracking and creaking above us signaled our imminent doom.

  We just sat in the center of the hallway.

  Praying.

  Chapter 34

  TRAVIS

  I cleared the last hill before we reached the lodge and shouted in agony at the sight. My heart clenched inside my ribcage. The whole building shimmered in a strange red bubble and was burning inside it. I could see flames through the broken windows. But there was no smoke trailing into the sky. The barrier trapped it all inside with…

  “Charlie!” My chest collapsed on itself, and I couldn’t draw a breath. Garrett cursed, but kept running.

  “Come on. You can feel her, just like me. She’s not dead.”

  He was right. But she was close. I could sense her fear and her struggle to breathe. The choking sensation was overwhelming.

  Anger swelled past the fear, and I snarled. “Kill them all!” I ordered as Douglas and Maddock caught up to me. They nodded and followed me as I ran down the hillside, following Garrett.

&n
bsp; If anyone was going to get out of that lodge alive, those witches needed to die. How the hell had Xerxes dug up that many of them, anyway? There weren’t that many family lines left after all these millennia. He had to have been collecting them for decades. Gods, those poor women.

  The four of us approached a small group of soldiers from behind and tore into them before they were able to draw a single weapon. Necks snapped. Throats were ripped. Whatever was fastest. Douglas’ face and hands were covered in blood, and the golden light in his eyes read absolute pleasure. While I felt disgust for the wasted lives, he hungered for more blood to be spilled.

  “The witches, Douglas.”

  He nodded and darted off, slinking up to one and then another, the shadow of death incarnate. They dropped silently one by one, dead before they even knew what touched them.

  We turned our focus on the next group of unaware soldiers. They were so engrossed in what they were doing they didn’t see or hear us approaching.

  “Hey,” Maddock said, pointing at a body a few feet away. “You know this guy? We didn’t kill him. There’s a bullet in his heart.”

  I moved slowly toward the stench of death and nodded when his face came into view. “Victor. He was the man who sold them out.”

  Maddock frowned. “Guess he got what was coming to him then.”

  “The barrier is failing!” The call went up from the other side of the lodge, but it was enough to give me hope. Douglas was making a significant dent in the witch population. We were only a few yards from the next group of soldiers and their crates of Molotov cocktails. Bastards. Trapping women and children and burning them to death. We don’t live in the Dark Ages!

  My fingers curled, claws extending as parts of me shifted while the rest remained in human form. Years of fighting taught me to take every advantage of my supernatural DNA. These weren’t just human soldiers trying to kill supernaturals. These were Lycans turning on their own kind.

  They deserved no mercy.

  Garrett, Maddock, and I lunged at the same time. Blood spewed from their traitorous bodies, and again, all five were dead and spread across the grass in a sea of red before a single man could utter a word.

  We rushed to the other side of the house to find Douglas with his mouth on the throat of one Lycan while he held another in his grasp whimpering and begging for his life. A pathetic excuse for a man who knew he’d chosen the wrong side of things.

  Douglas looked up at me, dropped the body from his jaws, and smiled. “The barrier is down. They are all dead.” His jaws had morphed back to human, and his fangs retreated, but almost his whole body was coated in a layer of blood and human tissue. He pulled the last soldier close to his body and then shoved him down over his knee. The crack of the man’s spine resonated inside my body, but it was justice. Then Douglas drove his hand into the man’s chest and ripped out his heart.

  Any Lycan could regenerate from broken bones and most wounds, but losing a heart was an injury that I’d never seen any being, supernatural or otherwise, recover from. Lycan power resided in blood. It healed from the inside out. But if an injury drained too much blood…it meant the end.

  “Travis!” Garrett shouted from the edge of the burning porch. “Can you see a way in?”

  I backed up a few steps and took in the gut-wrenching sight. The whole building was in flames. With the barrier down, smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the sky, telling everyone for miles around that death had arrived.

  “We need help. It’s too hot to get inside. The air is extra hot from when that fucking barrier was up!” Garrett shouted again, taking a hesitant step away from the burning front door.

  “Charlie is alive. Several other are, too. Focus. Figure out where.”

  A window shattered above our heads, and Brogan’s head popped out between the flames. He coughed and gasped for air. “Catch. I’ve got two babies coming out.”

  “Where’s Charlie?”

  “She’s here. She refuses to jump until the babies are out.” He picked up a small body and hurled it through the air.

  I jumped to the side, catching the infant as gently as possible in my arms. Its pulse was weak, but it was alive.

  “Give it to me,” Douglas growled, appearing at my side as if from thin air.

  I nodded and handed the baby to him before seeing Garrett catch the next child hurled from the upstairs window. He caught the slightly larger child, swinging his arms in motion with the child’s flight to lessen the jolt of being caught.

  “Here she comes!” Brogan shouted.

  Charlie’s dark hair whipped around her head. Her face was red, and her heart beat sluggishly. She couldn’t possibly have the strength to jump. Her legs trembled as she climbed onto the windowsill.

  Time slowed as her legs extended, pushing herself away from the window and into the open air. Flames licked at the edges of the window, and Brogan hurried to follow her.

  I moved to break her fall and caught the brunt of her weight before it slammed into the hard earth. We fell to the ground together. Brogan hit the ground a few feet away, the heavy thud vibrating through my body as I wrapped my arms around Charlie and crawled to my feet. Carrying her tucked close against me, I moved away from the burning building and set her down next to Douglas and the two children he was calming with an old Celtic lullaby.

  Garrett was next to me as we checked over Charlie’s body for injury.

  “I’m fine. You have to get the others,” she said, coughing through each word. “They are trapped on the bottom floor.”

  I stood and looked to Maddock. He was close to the front door, but flames covered the door and the walls. Windows were exploding all around the lodge, sending shards of glass flying out at us.

  “You have to get them out!” She shoved our hands away and tried to stand.

  “Stay,” I growled. “We’ll find them.” I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t about to let her go back into that inferno.

  “We could hear some beneath us in the hallway. Try the back wall. The dining room.”

  I nodded, and the three of us took off around the building. The bodies of the witches Douglas had killed stared at us as we passed them, their blank eyes surely a warning of the inevitable that lay ahead.

  We rounded the corner and saw what none of us could’ve hoped for. People crawling out of one of the back windows. Racing forward, we helped one after the other to the safety of the grass, away from the building. Liam stood just behind the window as I approached to help another woman.

  “Took you guys long enough to kill those bitches,” Liam grumbled. He put his hands on the windowsill and leapt through the opening onto the porch. The small explosion following him made both of us run a little faster.

  The second floor collapsed in onto the first, sending a boom vibrating through our bodies. The whole middle of the lodge fell in on itself, but all I could hear was Charlie’s scream from the front.

  I pushed reassurances through our bond and felt her fear subside slightly. We each took a couple of people, draping their arms over our shoulders. Together we helped them stumble around to the front as they fought to clear their lungs of the smoke they’d taken in. Their Lycan DNA would mend their lungs in the next few hours, but presently, they were weak and vulnerable. We needed to get to a safe place.

  We needed to get them to Sanctuary.

  Chapter 35

  GARRETT

  “We must get away from this building. The military and fire rescue has to be on their way. The rising smoke can be seen for miles,” I said, kneeling at Charlie’s side. I rubbed her back as she coughed. It would be at least a couple of hours before her lungs were healed from the burn of the smoke.

  Douglas stood and handed off the infant he’d been holding to Maddock. “I’ll make sure the bodies are gone.”

  “I’ll help you, Douglas,” Travis said, rising from beside Charlie.

  They walked toward the burning lodge. Douglas picked up a large rock from the ground and hurled it at a front window. I
t shattered into a thousand pieces, and they worked swiftly, tossing body after body into the lodge.

  The fire wouldn’t hide their deaths, but it would conceal most of the evidence.

  I stared a few moments longer before dragging my attention back to the group surrounding me. “Let’s try to move to that big tree about a quarter mile down the road.”

  The group rose; those of us without injury helped the ones struggling to breathe. Ten minutes later, after a great deal of heavy lifting, Charlie was settled with the two children against the trunk of the massive oak. Crawley and the four females Liam had helped survive the fire huddled together a few feet from her. They were it. They were all that remained of the Mason pack.

  After all the fighting and arguing, Xerxes won anyway. He’d managed to wipe out one of the most powerful packs to survive the Riots intact. The Masons had been a beacon to those trapped in the intolerant Republics. Without them, there were none to help.

  Xerxes would decimate the packs left in the SECR and the WR. Packs remaining on the West Coast had a chance, at least, if they didn’t believe Xerxes’ messengers being sent to convince them otherwise. There was more than enough hate to go around. It wouldn’t be hard for Xerxes to trick more Lycans into an alliance.

  The branches parted. Travis and Douglas slipped between the boughs and sank to the ground next to Liam and myself.

  “How is she?” Travis asked.

  “Tired, but healing,” I answered. “They are sleeping.”

  Travis nodded. “The fire department was arriving just as we lit out of there.”

  “They didn’t see you?” I asked, nerves making my skin crawl. The last thing we needed was a bunch of humans hauling us in for questioning or arresting us.

  Douglas shook his head. “No one saw us. They were too focused on the billowing fire and smoke cloud ahead of them. We circled around the side, through some brush, and then to here.”

  A ding sounded from Travis’ pocket. He pulled out his cell phone and swiped the screen. “Text from Rose. They are about two hours away.” His fingers tapped the screen as he wrote back. “I told them where we were and to avoid the lodge,” he said, tucking the phone back into his pants pocket.