She glanced his way. “Oui. Les hommes se cachent à cet endroit.” The men are hiding over there. She nodded her head towards the side hallway leading to the girls’ rooms.
Michelle often backslid into French in moments of stress. Aaron could see from her aura how she tried to ignore the pain to focus on the job at hand. He slid his arm around her. “We can finish this. Stay here and wait.”
She shrugged his arm off and moved forward, her face filled with grim determination. Ivan followed. By now, anyone else would be alerted by the gunshots. With the element of surprise gone, they were walking into the shit now. They found the hallway empty.
Aaron scanned the rooms with his telepathic probe. There were several more Colombians, but no Katya. “She’s not here. Don’t kill them all. We need to find out where she is.”
Ivan winked and pointed to the ceiling. “Second floor.”
Michelle growled. “Kill them all.”
Aaron pointed with his sword to the door where three men stood on the other side with their guns ready. Ivan pointed and unloaded his entire clip through the wall and door. Two men slammed open another door at the end of the hall and opened fire.
Aaron dived forward into a crouched roll and came up between them. His swords sliced through both their throats simultaneously. Sprays of arterial flow showered him and the walls as they gargled in their blood.
Ivan looked down at his belly to the spreading stain of red from a gut shot. “O iop tvoiu mat’!” Sounded an awful lot like oh shit in Russian.
“Merde!” Michelle staggered but stayed on her feet. The right side of her jeans turned black-red with blood from a new wound. At this rate they’d never make it out alive. Nothing simple about killing.
Aaron stepped up to Michelle and put his arm around her, helping her take some weight off her wounded leg. “Fuck.” Upstairs, Aaron heard thumping noises and men yelling.
Ivan wiped the blood off his hand on his jeans. He gestured towards the stairs with his Uzi. “We’re going up. No matter what happens, I hold you responsible to bring Katya home. This is your mess.”
Aaron nodded. He held himself responsible for this fucked up situation. He assessed Michelle. She wasn’t looking so hot. “Wait here. We’ll deal with this.”
Her eyes flared with fury. “I want Jamison’s head!”
“So I’ll bring it to you.”
“Non.”
She pulled away from his embrace and took the first step up the stairs towards the men waiting with loaded guns. Aaron put a hand on her shoulder. “At least let me go first.” Pain-glazed emerald eyes regarded him with a hint of relief. He would probably end up carrying her home tonight, if by some miracle they survived this shit.
Ivan grabbed his arm and pegged him with a deadly serious look. “No matter what happens, no hospitals. No blood samples, no doctors, and no hospitals. Are we clear?”
Looking at the spreading bloodstain on Ivan’s belly, he whispered, “Whatever you say.”
Aaron went first, Ivan and Michelle right behind him. Shuffling feet and thumps became louder as he headed up the stairs to the first landing, a ninety degree corner. He peeked around and up the rest of the stairwell, and saw no one.
Aaron placed the ball of his foot on the stair step and slowly rolled his weight onto it. Creak. Shit. With painstaking caution he stepped tip-toe onto the other stair. Creak. “Fuck!” No matter how careful he moved, the old wooden steps betrayed his advance.
What the fuck was I thinking?
Breathing in through his nose, seeking out the warning scents, Aaron caught them. Sweaty men perspiring in anxiety. The smells of fear. These people smelled like food. The predator buried deep in Aaron’s mind wanted to feed on their blood, and Michelle needed it too. No point wasting good blood.
At the top of the steps, Ivan right behind him, Aaron peered his head around the corner into the hallway.
Guns barked and bullets ricocheted off the walls as the Colombians opened fire on him. The element of surprise was officially lost.
Ivan jerked Aaron back as a bullet seared a burning line across his forehead. “Son of a Bitch!” Aaron wiped at the blood on his forehead, checking to see how bad he’d been shot. Just a graze.
“You have good luck.” Ivan grinned at him and snapped a new clip into his Uzi. He tipped the barrel of his gun, pushing at Aaron’s sword. Ivan nodded towards the exposed hallway and whispered in his ear, “Put it out there for them.”
Aaron stared at Ivan. “Are you fucking nuts?” He probably was. The blood loss and vodka had taken its toll.
Ivan pushed his shoulder and whispered again. “A distraction.”
Oh. Duh.
Aaron stuck the end of his sword out into the hallway and gunfire spat rapid-fire, plaster exploding mere inches from his face as the bullets thunked into the wall. Several rounds bounced right off the steel.
Ivan moved amazingly fast for his size. In an instant he slid across the hallway floor on his side unloading an entire clip into both men. A few bullets zinged past, but they were too high, exactly as Ivan intended.
Aaron peeked around the corner again to watch two Albanians slump to the floor, twitching in their death throes. Guess they had ran out of Colombians, the Albanian reserves had kicked in.
Someone yelled from an open doorway. “Peter! Armand!”
Ivan tossed the empty clip from his gun and slipped in another one while Michelle made her way up the stairs.
The voice yelled again. “Peter! Armand!”
Ivan stood and nosed towards the door, his gun ready. Aaron reached out with his mind, seeking whoever he could find. There were six armed men … Albanians. They waited in a large open loft, a gambling room with lots of card tables. One man, Bresnik, was arguing with another.
“Get your ass out there and shoot the cocksuckers!”
“They got through ten men!”
“They caught us by the bollocks, but we know exactly where they are. Now, walk into the hallway and fucking shoot them before I shoot you!”
Listening to Bresnik’s thoughts as he berated his gunmen, Aaron realized the man knew his and Michelle’s names. Working with Jamison, the Albanian had set this whole mess up. This was Reza’s boss and cousin.
But Jamison and Katya were nowhere in the room.
Bresnik’s cell phone went off and he answered it, cursing. “What? Of course you’re hearing shots. It’s a bloody battle royal!” He listened to someone going off on the other end of the line. “No! I don’t want the fucking pigs in my house! Don’t call the cops. Send me everyone you’ve got. Now! Anyone with a gun. It’s fucking World War Three in here.”
Aaron held up six fingers to Ivan and whispered, “They’re all armed, and Katya and Jamison are not in there. They just called for more backup.”
Ivan pointed his weapon. “Katya is there, somewhere, I feel her. We need to move, now.”
* * * *
Katya had tried so hard to hold off, to wait for Ivan. If they just left her alone she could have waited for hours, days even. But those damned Latinos kept eye-fucking her.
The one they called Luis stepped into the room and spoke over his shoulder in a whisper. “Deme treinta minutos sin interrupción.” The other man nodded, and locked the door behind him. His plans for thirty uninterrupted minutes were written all over his leering face. She could smell his reeking hard-on. Greaseball probably showered once a week. If he’d come to her clean, she might have let him get his dick wet, simply to buy time. But the thought of this slimy, filthy man inside of her turned her stomach inside out.
She hoped Ivan arrived soon, because it was about to get ugly.
“Que bonita puta. I bet we can get a good price for you. I should take you back to Colombia with me. But first, I need a little taste.” His eyes penetrated through her clothing, assessing her carefully. “I hope you’re clean, I forgot to bring a condom.”
“Keep it in your pants or lose it!”
One second he was feeling her up
with his eyes, the next a vicious right hook slammed across the left side of her jaw.
Her head snapped sideways and her teeth chattered with the impact. Stars bloomed in her vision and she tasted the coppery tang of blood on her lip. “Bloody hell!” She spat red on the bedspread.
Oh yeah, this one was gonna die right now.
He leaped on her, squishing her down into the mattress, and held her cuffed hands high above her head with his left hand. “Ain’t no stopping this train puta. You best go along for the ride.”
With his right hand he slipped a knife under her shirt, right between her breasts, and flicked upward, cutting through her bra. Then he sliced off her shirt to stare at her naked chest with a mean, hungry look.
Fucker liked fear. He enjoyed hurting women. Bloody sadist. Might enjoy killing this one. He needed to die.
Then he let go her hands and put the knife to her throat. “Don’t move, and it’ll all be over real quick.” His free hand began undoing the buttons on her jeans.
“Fuck off!” She slammed a double fist into his nose, feeling the gratifying crunch of his broken face. As she knew would happen, he dropped the knife and reeled backwards in agony and shock.
She shoved him off and he tumbled to the floor. “A la verga!”
She scrambled for his knife and grabbed it just in time to slash at his swinging arm.
“Puta madre!” He backed away, inspecting his arm, trying to distance himself from her.
“What? Don’tcha want a piece of me? Come on you greasy bugger, let’s get it on!”
He backed up and bumped into the door. That’s when she heard the sounds of shooting and men shouting. Ivan had arrived. She sensed him in the building, making his way towards her at this very moment.
Luis looked to the door, then back to her. Realization of the truth dawned on his face. “Pinche diabla!”
His eyes telegraphed his move. He lunged. She dodged and slashed across his shoulder. He hissed and cursed her.
An urgent knock came at the door. “Luis, ellos están aquí! Nos chingan!”
His momentary distraction gave her all the time she needed. She leapt on him in a primal scream of rage and buried her knife in the side of his neck. His cry of surprise cut short as she sliced through his windpipe.
Grasping at his neck, he bled all over the god-damn place, splattering her hands and breasts in scarlet speckles. Death is not neat or pretty, but it can be fun.
She flinched at the sounds of weapons fire close by as she rummaged through Luis’s pockets and found the key to her handcuffs. Hands slick with blood, she struggled to unlock the handcuffs. Click. “Yes!” She exalted in her freedom as she yanked the loaded pistol from the waistband of Luis’s pants.
“A knife and a gun. That’ll do.” She looked down at her naked breasts spackled with blood and realized it didn’t really matter. “If the Greeks can fight naked, so can I.”
Then the door opened and another Colombian stared wide-eyed, shocked into silence at the sight of her.
* * * *
Michelle stepped up to Aaron’s side in the hallway. Her haggard face wore a grimace of pain, but she was ready to rumble. A woman’s scream cut through the loaded silence. “Die you greasy fuck!”
A man’s cry of agony followed.
Ivan looked at Aaron and they both knew it was now or never. Shots fired, Katya screamed again, and Ivan barreled through the door, bullets flying.
Aaron followed, swords drawn, and went straight for the man on the left whose gunfire tracked Ivan. A downward flash of steel severed the man’s hand from his wrist. Aaron followed with a horizontal throat slash. Michelle streaked past, and nailed another guy, sending him flying through the air in a splat of blood.
Bresnik and another man dived for the floor to evade Ivan’s fire, while Michelle moved in on her man to finish the job. Ivan sprayed bullets all over hell, unloading his clip as everyone scrambled out of the way. Several Albanians went down screaming in pain with gunshot wounds..
A door to the right of the room slammed open and out flew Katya, half-naked, barefoot, her little handful breasts bouncing as she looked about with a feral gleam in her freakish, amber eyes. Her teeth gritted in an insane growl, she no longer looked like the Katya he knew. This woman was a killer, a bloody knife in one hand, blood speckled across her naked torso and jeans, and a pistol in the other hand. She found the nearest target, spun and sliced at his chest, and fired into his face point blank. His brains splashed across the wall as he flopped backwards.
“Fucking tosser!”
She grinned with way too many teeth. Long, sharp, wolf teeth.
Mesmerized by Katya, Aaron stood riveted in place, watching her spin, slash and fire. Where the hell did she get the knife and gun? Some fool with a hard-on probably lost his life trying to get up on her.
Searing pain hit him, along with Urvashi’s scream of agony echoing through his mind. Something horrible had happened to his master.
In mid-stride Katya dropped everything and screeched, a terrible banshee howl like all the demons of hell scraping across chalkboards.
A heavy psychic percussion hit Aaron’s mind, a black fog coating Aaron’s tongue and mind. Katya and Ivan’s auras exploded in bright yellow-white and they both grabbed their heads, faces scrunched in agony. Katya hit the floor convulsing and twitching. Ivan dropped to one knee groaning in pain.
What the fuck?
The two Albanians gained their feet and let loose with Uzi’s, cutting a sweeping arc across the room. Aaron dived and snagged Ivan, but as they rolled behind an over turned card table, he felt a thump and watched Ivan’s chest splatter red with the hit. Michelle ran straight for the men, screaming in rage. She was almost in reach when three bullets tagged her in the chest and sent her flying back in a gory tumble of blonde hair and blood.
One gunman turned and sprayed several bullets across Katya down on the ground, ceasing her twitching dance and mewling cries. She slumped flat, a bloody wreck.
Bresnik, called out across the room. “Your friends are fucked.”
Aaron peered his head around the planter to catch Bresnik with his Uzi pointed straight for him, a grim smile of satisfaction plastered on his face.
Urvashi’s warning tore through Aaron’s mind. {{Stay with the wolves, they need you! Two of their pack died in an explosion! Dmitri knew we were coming. The wolves experience the deaths of their comrades, it’s debilitating.}}
Son of a bitch. They should have waited till tomorrow.
* * * *
Chapter 19
Aaron sensed both Michelle and Katya on the verge of death, bleeding out on the floor.
Ivan groaned and sat up. “Remember your promise. I hold you responsible for Katya.” His eyes were amber gold, and his jaw began to move, elongating. Large animal teeth grew in his mouth as he growled and shook his head.
“Move fast or die.” His words came out in growl-speak, a voice not quite human.
Aaron nodded. “If I’m gonna die, I’m taking the Albanians and Jamison with me.”
Aaron watched in horrified fascination as Ivan … changed. He sloughed off his jacket and tore open his button-down shirt, freeing his upper body of the restrictions of clothing. His entire body was … moving. Snarling, growling, and grunting, Ivan’s white skin turned dark with bushy hair. His face sprouted fur and his nose turned black and thick as a dog’s snout. Then his face stretched outward, taking on a canine aspect, and his eyes turned fully golden. He fell forward onto his hands and knees, second by second, as his body reformed into a very large predator.
God awful crunchy-tearing noises accompanied Ivan’s animalistic expressions of agony.
“That’s gotta hurt.” Though he didn’t want to see such a gruesome sight, Aaron couldn’t look away.
Bresnik let off a couple rounds into the other side of the table. “You and your Russian friend have something I want, and that’s the only reason you’re both still alive. I know you took the drugs and cash in Vegas, an
d you will give that to me. But I also know who she is, and I want everything she owns.” He pointed his rifle at Michelle’s head, indicating she was his focus.
Aaron read it clearly in Bresnik’s mind. He and Jamison had dug into Michelle’s background, learned of her estate in Paris and her investment accounts. Bresnik was willing to sacrifice a dozen men and a pile of Colombians that didn’t mean shit to him, to steal Michelle’s fortune.
Bresnik reached down to grab Michelle by her hair, grimacing at the sight of her full-size fangs and blood-splattered face. “I don’t know what the hell she is, and I really don’t care. She’s worth over forty million and I want every penny of it.”
The sound of numerous men ascending the stairs drew Aaron’s attention. Five armed Albanians filed into the room from the hallway, ready to back up Bresnik.
Time to move – fast.
Aaron stood up, swords ready, and kicked the table aside. “Check out this shit.” Three hundred pounds of unnaturally large, black wolf growled menacingly, fixing its golden eyes on each of the men in turn.
“Sic ‘em Ivan.”
The beast snapped its massive jaws and leaped into the midst of the men at the doorway.
Aaron moved lightning fast. He didn’t stop moving until his katana was buried up under Bresnik’s ribcage, straight through his heart. Urvashi would have been proud of his precise strike.
Bresnik grunted, convulsed, and his eyes rolled back in his head as Aaron yanked the sword out of his chest.
Gunshots flew everywhere as Ivan tore through the men. Literally. He ripped the men to pieces, shaking their feeble bodies in his jaws, crunching through bones and sinew, stringing out their guts. Aaron dived low again and slashed at Bresnik’s sidekick standing with his mouth open in petrified awe.
Achilles tendon, then hamstring – the man dropped. Slashing up into his falling body, Aaron severed his spinal column. Wasn’t a clean kill, but it would have to do.
Aaron rolled and crawled to get behind another over-turned card table. Shots whizzed past, some close shaves, and one gouged across the skin of his back. “Fuck!”
The Nightlife: London (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) Page 11
