by Kyla Stone
“What the hell!” one of the Headhunters shouted, shooting at the bomb as it landed a few feet from him. The sphere clicked open with a faint hiss. Smoke poured out from all sides, filling the air with dense gray smoke.
“Snipers, activate now,” Cleo said into Amelia’s earpiece.
From above, their tactical team could still see clearly enough to shoot. But the disoriented Headhunters, who could barely make out their hands in front of their faces, wouldn’t be able to tell the direction or location of the shooters, keeping their own people as safe as possible.
“Remember, not a single bullet better hit that truck,” Gabriel growled.
He aimed carefully and took a shot. A Headhunter in a German Shepherd pelt dropped to the ground with a shriek. Two more fell to the right, each taken out by Silas and Willow. Amelia couldn’t see what was happening on the other side of the truck, but by the sporadic gunshots and the cries of the Headhunters, the plan seemed to be working.
Cerberus shouted something. Several Headhunters crouched and staggered through the smoke toward the transport truck. While four men did something to the truck’s rear doors, two provided cover, shooting wildly into the trees.
Amelia ducked again, dropping the rifle and covering her head with her hands. Bullets chewed through the air, striking trees and smashing into the hillside behind them. A pulse blast hit a large maple branch. It thudded to the ground with a sizzling crash.
Gabriel lifted his head, aimed, and cursed. “They’re too close to the truck. I can’t risk a shot.”
“What are they doing?” she asked.
Gabriel cursed again.
Amelia lifted her head, risking a glance. The Headhunters were dragging people out of the truck—their hands bound and cuffed behind them—and forcing the prisoners in front of themselves. They were using the prisoners as human shields.
Fear speared through her, icing her veins. “Tell them to stop shooting!” she gasped. “Stop shooting!”
“Cease fire!” Cleo commanded. Her voice was tinged not with disgust or rage, but reluctant admiration. “Those filthy scumbags outmaneuvered us.”
No one fired as the smoke slowly dissipated. A dozen Headhunters held prisoners—mostly women and children—while the others crowded in close to the truck, weapons pointed toward the woods. They had figured out what their attackers wanted.
“We have more hostages inside the truck,” Cerberus announced loudly. He pressed a woman against his chest with one hand. With the other, he held a gun to her head. “Now, I think this is what we call a stand-off. So why don’t you put down your guns and show yourselves, and we can talk turkey like real men. That is, if you have the balls to face us.”
Her friend, Willow Bahaghari, let out a stream of curses into Amelia’s earpiece. Willow was short and solid but fearless, fierce and unrelenting as a bulldog. Amelia always felt better knowing Willow had her back.
“I’ll show him what real balls look like,” Willow snarled.
Amelia might have laughed. But she recognized the long, curly auburn hair of the woman gripped in Cerberus’s meaty fingers—the perfect, ramrod-straight posture, the elegant profile and high cheekbones. Even now, every inch dignified and graceful.
Elise Black was alive—and Cerberus’s human shield.
Amelia froze.
“I see her,” Gabriel said softly. “Target sighted. She’s with the leader—the white wolf.”
“Don’t shoot,” Silas said. “Target not clear. Not even close.”
The cold wind blew more of the smoke away. Soon, they would lose their advantage. Her whole body went numb. Icy tears stung her eyes. They were so close. Yet everything could still slip away between their fingers. Cerberus could still kill her mother in the space of a heartbeat.
She took a breath. “Gabriel.”
He turned to her, a questioning look in his dark eyes. She swallowed. She knew what she was asking.
Gabriel gave a short jerk of his head, his jaw set. He clicked off his comm. “I’ll get her. I’ll bring her back to you.”
She should tell him no, that it was too dangerous. But the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. She hated the part of herself willing to trade Gabriel’s life for her mother’s, but she didn’t stop herself, didn’t stop him. She needed her mother. “Be careful.”
He nodded once, and then he was gone.
2
Gabriel
Twenty-one-year-old Gabriel Ramos Rivera left Amelia tucked safely behind a boulder. He clicked his comm back on. “Silas, are you with me?”
“Already moving,” Silas said.
“I’ll provide cover,” Willow said, her voice calm and steady.
“Me too,” Gabriel’s brother, Micah, said into his earpiece.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cleo snarled. “I haven’t approved—”
“Apologies, cupcake,” Silas said sweetly. “Let’s continue this nagging session at a later date, shall we?”
Cleo sputtered. Willow laughed.
Gabriel ignored them all. They had less than two minutes before the smoke dissipated. He had to act before then. “I’m going in. Cover me.”
He moved swiftly but silently through the trees, his rifle high and ready, careful not to trip on a root or stumble over a jutting rock. He made his way parallel to the road until he reached the still burning motorcycles destroyed in the explosion. The biker who’d smashed into the boulder lay crumpled on the side of the road, dead.
Gabriel reached down, unhooked the cheetah pelt strapped around the dead man’s neck, and pulled it free of the body. He draped it around his own shoulders and hurried back toward the transport truck, the milling Headhunters, and the smoke.
He was betting everything on the New Patriots maintaining the ceasefire. Otherwise, he’d just painted a giant target on his back.
The smoke shifted and swirled around him in a thick, eddying soup. He blinked his stinging eyes. Everything was a dingy gray, every shape more than a foot away dark and indistinct.
The truck loomed in front of him in the haze like a monstrous beast. He turned to the right, resisting the urge to flail his arms.
Fear and adrenaline pumped through him. He might die here, on this road, surrounded by Headhunters and this bitter, choking smoke.
But his sense of purpose was stronger than his fear. He would save Amelia’s mother. He knew he could do it. It would never pay back the wrong he’d done to Amelia, the betrayal that had almost cost her life, but it was something.
And he could take his revenge for Nadira’s death. Nadira, who’d been kind and sweet and gentle, the only one to offer him grace and forgiveness when he—a murderer and terrorist—had least deserved it.
He didn’t have the time to reach into his pocket and feel the square of pale blue cloth, part of Nadira’s head scarf. He knew it was there.
In the battle at Sweet Creek Farm, Nadira had leapt in front of Cerberus’s gun. She had taken the bullet meant for Gabriel. She had sacrificed her life for his, offering him a redemption he’d believed was beyond his grasp.
Nadira had given him a new life, a new purpose. The least he could do was kill her murderer.
Gabriel skirted carefully around the truck, passing within inches of several Headhunters. His pulse thundered in his ears. If they even glanced at him…but their eyes were on the hills, their panic causing tunnel vision, blinding them to the enemy in their midst.
He moved among them, unseen, unnoticed.
Several men cursed, aiming wildly at nothing. A skinny Headhunter in a coyote pelt leaned against the truck, clutching his leg as blood gushed between his fingers. The women being used as human shields whimpered and cried softly.
A Headhunter in a bristling black bear pelt held a child to his chest. A girl, tiny, not more than five. Gabriel glimpsed wide, panicky blue eyes and stringy blonde hair before a swirl of smoke rose between them.
Bile churned in his gut. An image of the little girl in a yellow bathrobe flashed t
hrough his mind, her black hair flung around her delicate face like a halo, blood seeping from a hole in her chest. The girl from the heaving, burning deck of the Grand Voyager. The child who’d died because of Gabriel’s actions, his single-minded determination to win at any cost—even innocent lives.
He forced himself to turn away from the blonde girl. Helping her now would only doom Elise Black and the other hostages. He wasn’t abandoning her; continuing with his mission was his best shot at saving them all.
A few Headhunters let loose a volley of automatic fire into the hills.
“I’m out!” someone cried.
“I’m low, too,” a man in a leopard pelt said.
“Save your ammo!” Cerberus hissed. “Don’t shoot at ghosts!”
Gabriel turned toward the voice and caught sight of the wolf pelt a few yards away, a dazzling streak of white in a haze of gray. He smiled as he stepped over another Headhunter’s body and inched closer to Cerberus’s exposed back.
He was about to show Cerberus just how deadly a ghost could be.
He let his rifle drop against his shoulder strap and slipped his pulse gun out of its holster. He pressed it against the side of Cerberus’s skull. “Long time, no see, asshole.”
Cerberus barely flinched, but his lips curled back in a snarl of rage, revealing his canines sharpened like fangs. He was caught in a trap, and he knew it.
“Nobody move!” Cleo shouted from behind a massive tree just up the hill. “We outnumber you ten to one.” Which was an outright lie, but the Headhunters didn’t know it.
“Come out, little girl, so we can blow your head off,” said a burly Headhunter to Cerberus’s right. “Every single one of you. Are you gonna shoot these innocent women and children to get to us?”
“We don’t have to.” Cleo’s cool, confident voice cut through the chilly air. A gust of wind dissipated more of the smoke. “From my count, your automatic weapons are nearly empty. While you’re busy attempting to reload and hold on to your hostages at the same time, we’ll pick you off, one by one. Besides, we have a gun trained on your leader. Make a move, and he goes. Then so do each of you.”
Silas materialized out of nowhere, his semi-automatic pointed at the burly black Headhunter directly to Gabriel’s right—likely Cerberus’s righthand man.
“We’ll take some of the hostages with us,” the Headhunter growled. He wore a panther pelt and silver hooks in his ears. His skull was thick and angular, his nose blunt, his eyes dull and deadly.
“We only care about one,” Cleo said, the shrug evident in her voice. She wasn’t bluffing, either. Cleo might be on Gabriel’s side, but she was cold as a mountain glacier.
Gabriel shoved the barrel of the gun against Cerberus’s head. “Let Elise go.”
“You kill me, and my men will open fire on you, consequences be damned,” Cerberus said.
Now Gabriel shrugged. It was a calculated risk. But he had seen the way the Headhunters obeyed Cerberus’s every word back at Sweet Creek Farm. He was their alpha. His men wouldn’t risk his life if they didn’t have to. “I’m willing to take that chance.”
“Just let me go,” Elise said in a trembling voice. Gabriel dared not take his gaze off Cerberus, not even for a second. Elise was only a glimmer of pale face and dark hair out of the corner of his eye. “They’ll have mercy if you let me go.”
Cerberus let out a bark of laughter.
“Did they hurt you?” Gabriel asked her.
“No,” Elise said. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”
“We’re traders,” Cerberus said darkly. “We never damage the merchandise. Well, almost never.”
Gabriel’s heart jolted as he sensed movement. He had no time to react. The burly Headhunter in the panther pelt moved swiftly, his gun lifting toward Gabriel.
Silas pulled the trigger. The Headhunter lurched, blood spraying from the bullet that entered the back of his skull and exited somewhere in the vicinity of his shattered left eye socket. Blood splattered Gabriel, Cerberus, and Elise.
Gabriel didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. He couldn’t afford to. “Thanks,” he said to Silas.
Silas smirked as he wiped a spray of blood from his lean face. He was tall and wiry, his short brown hair spiked off his forehead, his gray eyes glinting with amusement. “Anytime.”
Behind Gabriel, a second Headhunter fired. The bullet whizzed past his cheek. One of their people further up the hill shot once. Gabriel heard rather than saw the body crumple. The hostage screamed, though she was unhurt.
“Guess a girl can shoot after all,” Willow quipped from behind a pine tree ten yards up the hill. She stepped out into the open, a semi-automatic half as large as herself grasped in both hands. “Well enough to take out a few filthy mouth-breathers, anyway.”
Silas spun around to level his gun at the Headhunters behind him. “Looks like you just lost.”
“Surrender now, Cerberus,” Gabriel said.
Cerberus sighed and dropped his gun. “Stand down.”
One by one, his men lowered their machine guns, grumbling in protest but obeying. The hostages staggered forward, crying with relief. The little girl with the blonde hair dashed into the waiting arms of an older woman—likely her mother.
“Drop the weapons and kick them aside. Lose your handguns and knives, too,” Gabriel ordered. “And release your hostages.”
Cerberus dropped his gun and lifted both hands, palms out. Elise Black stumbled away from Cerberus, clutching her neck and gasping.
“Mother!” Amelia sprinted down the hill, her arms already opening wide. Amelia and her mother clutched each other. Elise burst into sobs. Amelia put her arm around her mother’s shoulder and whispered soothingly into her ear.
Gabriel’s chest filled with warmth as they embraced. He watched as Amelia pulled her mother out of the road and back up toward the safety of the hill. “You’re okay now,” she said over and over. “You’re okay.”
Cleo strode down the hill, her rifle leveled at Cerberus. One of her trusted soldiers, a well-built black guy named Jamal Carter, came down with her. He was in his mid-twenties, with a full beard and a bevy of piercings in his lip, nose, and ears. In spite of the hardware, he was quiet and laid back—until it was time to fight. He knew his way around guns, and he didn’t hesitate to shoot to kill.
Cerberus eyed the patch on Cleo’s arm, a closed fist raised in the air against a field of blood-red. “Before you shoot me, I have a proposition your leaders would very much like to hear.”
Cleo cocked her brows. The scarred left side of her face was smooth, the burned skin stretching from below her left eye across her cheek and jawline to the side of her neck. “I’m listening.”
“You know who we are, just like I know who you are. We’re traders and service providers. We collect valuable resources—items, people, information—and exchange those resources in fair trade to surrounding communities for services rendered.”
“You’re monsters!” Willow strode down the hill. She was a Filipina firecracker, short and thick but incredibly strong, and a gifted fighter. She huffed her bangs out of her dark eyes and glared fiercely up at Cerberus. “Thieves and murderers.”
“Only when we have to be,” Cerberus said evenly. “Our mercenary skills are in high demand in communities all over Georgia and beyond. Don’t mistake business for anything but what it is, girl.” He lifted a hand and rubbed his right shoulder, right about where a scar from his bullet wound would be. The bullet wound Gabriel gave him after he murdered Nadira. “At least, until certain members of your group made things personal.”
“I’m just sorry I missed,” Gabriel said, fresh rage filling him. “Lucky thing I have another chance to get it right. It’s time to put you in the ground.”
“Wait.” Cleo lifted one hand. “What do you think you have, trader?”
Cerberus straightened his broad shoulders, the white wolf pelt rippling in the cold breeze. Digital tattoos slithered over his neck and the back of his hands. �
�Information.”
“Speak now or forever hold your peace. I don’t play games.”
Cerberus tilted his head as he studied her. “Let me speak with your leader, girl. This is a subject for men to handle.”
Cleo patted the gun holster at her hip. She wore a knife sheath at her other hip and strapped around her right thigh. Her eyes blazed. “I am the leader, you misogynistic bastard.”
Cleo was smaller and younger than Cerberus, but she held her own without flinching. Her hair was shaved to her skull on both sides of her head, with a knot of purple braids on top that tumbled down her back nearly to her waist. She was Indian, with rich brown skin, cunning eyes, and a vicious smile.
Cerberus frowned in displeasure. He and the Headhunters liked the old ways, he’d said at Sweet Creek Farm, back when women knew their place. “The leader of your Patriots, then.”
Her smile widened. She glanced at Gabriel, amused. “Oh, you mean General Reaver.”
“Yes, him. He’ll want to know this information, I assure you.”
Cleo lifted one shoulder in an insolent shrug. “Well, I’m afraid she is busy right now. And if it’s up to me, which it is, I’d rather just kill you all right now. So if you have something to say that might save your worthless hides, I advise you say it.”
Cerberus’s face purpled with anger. But he maintained control. Which was unfortunate. Gabriel was tired of this back and forth. Anger ate at him. His hands trembled with rage. It was time for justice for Nadira, for all of them. It was time to kill this jerkwad. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Cerberus seemed to sense Gabriel’s movement. He set his jaw. “So be it. I know what you want. We’ve heard the whispers in the surviving communities we trade with. Your people have been searching for certain high-powered weapons.”
A shadow crossed Cleo’s face. She bit her lip, frowning. Her sharp gaze darted to Gabriel, then back to Cerberus. “I’m listening.”
“The Settlement. It’s southeast of here. They have an armada of airjets—”
