She could hear breathing—heavy breathing. And voices. She could pick out Russ’ voice and Sal’s voice, although the words they were saying were muffled. And she smelled blood. Lots of blood. It set her nerves even further on edge, and she could only hope that it wasn’t Wes’s.
I’m here, she thought, hoping that he could hear her. I’m here, and I’m coming for you.
Rounding to the back of the building, Jordan saw another guard posted at what looked like an entrance. She had the gun in her hand, but firing it would mean bringing down the whole building herself, and she wanted to avoid that unless it was absolutely necessary. Instead, she whistled, pressing her slight frame against the building, sheltered by the shadows.
The guard’s head turned towards her, and he stepped away from his post, looking for the source of the sound. When he had walked far enough away from the door that she could run up behind him, Jordan put on all the speed she had and ran towards him. He saw her seconds before it was too late, and he never got his gun all the way up to point at her. She hit him across the side of the head with the gun she was already holding, and he fell to the ground as well.
Two down, and she didn’t know how many more there were to go.
Pressing herself up against the back entrance, she tried to peer through the small window to see what was waiting for her inside. There were bright lights spilling out of the window to illuminate the heavy darkness outside, but she couldn’t see anyone walking by. She couldn’t tell what might be on the other side of the door.
When she tried the door, it was unlocked, the guard having served as security rather than the lock itself.
You would have been better off with the lock, Jordan thought to herself, twisting the door handle open slowly and slipping inside. She could hear Russ and Sal arguing now, but she didn’t focus in on their words. She listened for footsteps or breathing around her, and she heard very little.
And then she heard a shout of pain.
Jordan ran. She didn’t care about being seen. That was Wes’s voice, and he was in a dead panic. He was screaming for his life, and if she didn’t get there now she was going to be too late. As she ran, several guards wandering the halls spotted her. She leveled shots at each of them, not taking shots to kill but to incapacitate. She shot one in the thigh, another in the gut, and a third in the shoulder. But she didn’t hear any of the shots or the guards’ cries of pain, curses, and calls for help.
She was past discretion now, and she couldn’t worry about any of that. All she could do was get to Wes before he was unable to keep screaming for her.
“Wes!” she shouted his name as loud as she could, still running and searching for him. “Wes! I’m here—Wes!”
Another sound of agony ripped through her, and Jordan fell against the door that she was sure was blocking her from Wes. She twisted the knob, but it was locked, so she pounded on it with all her might. Hurrying, Jordan stepped back and aimed the gun at the knob, pulled the trigger, and heard the empty click of the barrel. She swore in frustration, tossing the gun aside as it became useless to her. She hit the door again.
“Wes! Wes!”
“Get down!” There was a voice behind her and the sound of footsteps rushing towards her. She counted instinctively—three, four, no—six men. There were six men running up behind her, and one of them was Sal. “Get down on your knees and put your hands in the air,” Sal’s voice demanded. “You’re surrounded.”
Within the room, Wes continued to scream, and Jordan knew that she only had moments left. There was no way to get to him. The door was heavy. It wasn’t wood that she could kick her way through. The lock was strong and there were multiple mechanisms. The men behind her would shoot her before she could break through all of them.
She only had one choice, and it was one she had never made before. If asked a day earlier, she would have said she would never make it. But the man she loved was trapped in that room, suffering the kind of pain that no person should ever have to endure, and she wasn’t going to let it happen. It didn’t matter what the consequences were.
Jordan spun around, her hands in the air. She stared at Sal, and she saw Russ behind him, his face twisted with worry and confusion. Clearly he hadn’t expected her to go running through the halls, shooting people, and he didn’t know what to do next.
Well, he was about to be even more shocked.
“Don’t shoot,” Jordan said. “Don’t shoot—I surrender.”
“On your knees,” Sal ordered, his own personal gun pointed right at her head. “Now!”
Jordan stepped forward, scanning the large hallway, as she pretended to get down onto her knees. But as she began to lower, instead of falling to the floor, she jumped into the air, shifting mid-jump. When her wings unfurled, she knocked over several people, all of whom were too stunned to move out of her way. She was a smaller dragon, proportionate to her smaller human size, but the hallway was still too small for her. As she lifted up on her back legs and roared outward, her wings crushed against the hallway walls.
The men who had, moments ago, been so confidently rushing her were now all falling backward, covering their heads and shouting their horror at the sudden appearance of a beast right in front of them. Jordan spat fire at them, sending it coursing down the hall to scatter them further.
Then she looked over her shoulder, and she lifted her large tail, thrusting it against the door that was separating her from Wes. In just three strikes of her tail, the door had cracked down the middle, and she could see into the room. Her heart leaped into her throat at the sight of Wes sprawled on the floor, lying in a pool of blood, and she wasted no time.
Shifting back into her human form, she ran naked through the door, heading straight for Wes. But a man was there—a man she hadn’t seen in her haste to get to Wes’s body. He had a knife in hand, dripping in blood, and his face looked crazed. She had dropped her gun when she transitioned, and she had already shown who she really was, so she shifted again, her wings unfurling much more easily in the large, open room, uncluttered with furniture.
Jordan soared above the man, using one wing to knock him backward. He went sprawling on the floor, and Jordan circled above him, seeing Alana’s dead body for the first time. She swooped down towards Wes, but the sound of a shot rang out and a bullet sang past her ear. She whirled towards the attacker, seeing several of the men spilling through the doorway of the room, shaking but holding their weapons and aiming them at her.
Lifting her head, Jordan roared with a ferocity even she hadn’t known she possessed, and she rained fire down on the entire group. More shots rang out as the fire swept downward, and she felt one lodge in the sensitive underside of her throat. It was painful, but it wasn’t about to stop her. She rained fire down on the men, and she thrashed her tail back and forth, releasing all of her rage at what they might have done to Wes.
When a wall of fire had been erected between her and the men attacking her, Jordan swept down again, knocking over the man with the knife with one sweep of her tail and sending him crashing into the wall, where he quickly slumped down, unconscious.
Landing beside Wes, she shifted again, pressing her hands against his chest, as she peered anxiously down at his face. His eyes were closed, his arms were bleeding, and his shirt had huge gashes in it that matched slices across his torso. There was so much blood. He looked like he had been slashed at wildly.
But his chest rose ever so slightly, and when she touched him, he groaned and struggled to open his eyes.
“Wes,” Jordan breathed, turning his face carefully towards hers. “Oh my God, Wes. I’m so sorry—baby. I’m so sorry. Oh God. I love you so much. Look at me, sweetheart. Look at me.”
He mumbled something unintelligible, and Jordan bent down to kiss him, pressing her lips to his as she let her healing energy flow through her touch. It wouldn’t heal him, but it would help.
“I’m here,” she said. “God, look at you. How did you survive this?”
“Jordan,”
Wes whispered, his voice barely audible. “You came.”
“I came,” she said, looking at him lovingly but in the back of her mind watching for any attack that might come through her wall of fire. “I’ll always come for you. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Wes said, his eyes closing again. “My superhero.”
Chapter 36
Wes
Wes had fought with Jake tooth and nail. Jake had come at him with his knife, pushed beyond reason, and he had begun to slash at him. Wes had grabbed at Jake, managing to wrestle him backward, and they had both fallen on the floor, rolling through Alana’s blood as they grappled. Jake had had a knife, though, and Wes hadn’t. He had known he was fighting a losing battle, but he wasn’t leaving this world without putting up a fight—futile or not.
He had shouted as loud as he could, hoping to bring someone—anyone—to the room to help save him. And somehow, he had brought the best person of all. Jordan was above him and around him, her healing, peaceful presence like a balm after he had been immersed in a fire.
He smelled fire.
“What …” Wes said, opening his eyes again and looking over towards the door. Fire blazed there, creeping along the floor and clamoring at the walls. “What …how…”
“Shh,” Jordan said, getting to her feet. He realized for the first time that she was naked. Combined with the fire, that fact made it very clear to him that she had shifted to protect him. She had shifted in front of people. She had exposed herself, all to save his life.
And she had told him that she loved him.
It was too much to think about all at once, especially when the gunshot wound, the drugs in his system, and the blood loss were all working together to keep his brain sluggish and slow. He reached for Jordan, trying to find her hand. “You have to be careful … Sal—he’ll kill all of us. Shot Alana. Cold blood. In the head. Dead—right in front of me.”
“I know,” Jordan said, lifting his hand and kissing it. “I know, baby. Hold on. I have to get us out of here, and I don’t know how yet.”
Wes glanced around the room, seeing that there was no good way to break through without going back out the door she must have come through. The door was blocked with fire. The door was also blocked with men who were currently thinking only about bringing down the dragon that had flown through their headquarters.
He drew in a shuddering breath, Jordan’s healing power helping to ease some of his pain. “I can walk. I can go out a window. Like before. Like earlier.”
“No,” Jordan said. “No, you can’t.”
The wall of fire was beginning to spread, surrounding the room and offering a deterrent but no longer a barricade. They could faintly see the guards on the other side of the fire now, and they were standing there with guns, ready to aim at the dragon they expected to find. When they saw Jordan standing there, naked, Sal was the first to shout out, “Fire on her! Now!”
There was a chorus of shouts as Sal and his guards open fired on Jordan. But before the bullets could make it even halfway towards them, Jordan had shifted again, her dragon form spreading out in front of him to shield Wes from stray bullets. He panicked, worried that the bullets that would inevitably hit her and take her down, but Jordan only winced and wobbled slightly as the shots rained down on her.
In mere seconds, she had recovered and was flying toward the door, breathing fire and roaring with all of her might. She shook her head back and forth, raining down her deadly fire on the men who ran from her, darting around the flames and filling the room. The heat was beginning to consume Wes, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe as the smoke began to fill the air heavily.
Nearby him, one well-aimed flame set a man on fire, and he fell to the ground, dropping his weapon as he rolled around, trying to put out the flames.
Reaching his hand out, Wes closed his fingers around the gun and painfully lifted it. He had never shot a gun before, but he knew what to do with the weapon in his hand. With effort, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, and he looked for one man and one man alone.
He wanted Sal’s blood.
He wanted Jake’s blood, too, but he refused to shoot an unconscious man—even one who had slashed him with a knife.
Sal, on the other hand, had shot Alana right in front of him, and if he had the chance, he would kill Wes and Jordan, too. If he got a good shot at the man, he would take it, and if he killed him, he wouldn’t lose a moment of sleep over it.
Wes spotted the man working his way behind Jordan, gun in hand. His eyes were zeroed in on the dragon, and Wes reached for his thoughts.
If I kill it, I’m sure I can sell every single scale. It’ll be millions. I’ll sell the story. I’ll write a book. My backup phone—I need a picture for the book.
Sal reached for his phone in his back pocket, and Wes took aim. He pressed down on the trigger, sending a bullet flying towards Sal. It landed right between Sal’s shoulder blades, and the man sank to the ground with a cry of pain. He writhed on the floor when Wes shot him again. Wes had aimed for the head, willing to bestow a swift death on the man, but the bullet landed low in Sal’s neck causing him to twitch and flail before going still.
But when Sal did go still, he made no move to get up again. There were no thoughts coming from him. He was dead, and Wes had killed him. He had done his part.
Shoving the gun into the waistband of his pants, Wes started to try to drag himself away from the spot where he had fallen after Jake’s last strike against him. The fire was encroaching, beginning to take over the room, and he couldn’t breathe. His hair and his skin were starting to feel singed. People were screaming, and the flames taking over those who continued to fight. Wes saw several flee the room to save themselves, and he worried that they would be a problem later.
He didn’t know what was going to happen to Jordan after this. She’d exposed herself completely, and Sal couldn’t be the only one who had wanted to get it on camera. Images of her, in her dragon form, could show up anywhere—everywhere. And all for his sake.
Wes dragged himself further from the flames, gasping through the pain. The flames had forced him closer to Jake, and as he lifted his head up to look at Jake’s face, he could see that the man’s eyelids were fluttering. When Jake opened his eyes and stared at Wes, confused and unseeing, Wes pulled his gun and killed Jake with one thought. The man had tried to kill him, and he would expose Jordan in a heartbeat.
It was his second kill in five minutes, and his second kill in his lifetime, and Wes realized that he was fine. These were evil men. Killing them was a gift to the world.
It was also more than his body could take. Lowering the gun from shooting Jake, Wes sagged, the smoke starting to overwhelm him. He was struggling to breathe, both from the smoke and the slashes across his chest and the bullet wound in his shoulder. He should be dead right now, but he was clinging to life. Clinging to it for his family, for Jordan, for the future that he still wanted to have.
But it was slipping away as the room began to spin, and his vision began to darken. Every breath was a struggle, and he once again found himself on the cusp of losing consciousness.
“Jordan,” he murmured, letting his head sink down to the ground. “Jordan …I do love you. I just …rest …I’ll get backup…I’m not done …Jordan…”
His words were nonsensical, and they faded off into nothing as his body began to shut down from blood loss and pain. He was going out, and he knew it. But damn, he had gone out with a fight.
As his eyes closed, Wes didn’t see Jordan sweep her wings across the remaining men, knocking them onto the ground as she breathed fire at them. He didn’t see her throw her entire dragon body up towards the ceiling, shaking the foundation of the building. He didn’t see the guards begin to choke on smoke or the bullets rain down against Jordan. He didn’t see her fighting in front of him the whole time to keep his body sheltered from the fire and the bullets. He didn’t hear Barrett and Ryan run into the building, as it started to burn to the gr
ound. He didn’t feel their hands dragging him out of the fire. He didn’t see Jordan shift and run back out after them, or know that he was flying through the air on the back of a dragon, leaving the wreckage of the building and Sal’s organization behind.
In his mind, he was back in the woods with Jordan, kissing her sweet lips and stroking his hands over her skin, reveling in her beauty and the sweetness of her body moving with his. And he was happy.
Chapter 37
Jordan
Jordan walked into Barrett’s office at 10:00 the next morning, taking a seat in the chair across from his desk without him having to ask her to. She knew why she was there, and she was ready to face the music for what she had done—for what she would do again, if the circumstances were the same.
“You’re looking well for someone who fought a battle to the death with fifteen people last night,” Barrett said, closing his laptop as Jordan got settled. “Minimal damage to you then?”
“A few bullets left their marks,” Jordan said, casually referencing the pain that was pulsing through her entire body at the moment. Getting shot at in her dragon form was a lot better than getting shot at in her human form. She would be dead if she had taken that much lead in her human form. But there were still consequences to injuries sustained while she was a dragon. Her body was black and blue, and she had a number of lacerations and unexplained aches all through her frame, even after working to heal herself. She would be limited for several weeks while her body healed from the events of the night before.
“I’m sure they did,” Barrett said, dryly. He folded his hands in front of him and looked at Jordan, with both kindness and reprimand in his eyes. “Jordan, you know I had to bring you in here. You’re my friend and my family above all else, but you are also under my supervision here as a Rockwell Agent. And last night, you broke every protocol we have and possibly caused a shit storm for the agency. Nothing about what you did was subtle. You shifted into a dragon in front of at least ten witnesses—probably more. You burned down a building with fire breath. You partially cracked through the top of that ceiling with the force of your body. You know what our rules are here. Exposure of our true identity is strictly prohibited, even—and I stress this—even when there are lives at stake.”
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 47
