by Karin Harlow
Liquid pain scorched through her as her vision clouded. Doubling over, Selena dropped to her knees, fighting to remain conscious.
It would pass. It always did when she was fortified with the Rev. She would not die. She couldn’t! Not when she was so close.
He hacked at her back and her shoulders, forcing her facedown onto the cobblestones. Her strength ebbed with each heartbeat. Vaguely, Selena wondered if she was wrong. Had Baphomet accomplished what no one else ever had? Had he mortally wounded her?
No! She would not die by daemon! She had not completed her quest. Her quest to collect all seven nanorians and, with them, possess the power to destroy the being who’d repeatedly raped her mother, driven her to madness, and ultimately killed her: Prince of the Seven Hells, her daemon father, Paymon. He answered to few. But he would answer to her. And once he was dead, she would be reunited with her daughter, her sweet little Marisol. That part of her she’d had to give up, after giving up so much already, because of the danger Paymon posed to everyone she loved.
For the briefest moment, Selena pictured her daughter laughing and playing, but Marisol wasn’t alone. Instead, she was accompanied by the only man Selena had ever loved. Johnny. Marisol’s father and Selena’s biggest regret. Because she had loved him, she’d had no choice but to destroy him. Otherwise, Paymon would have. She gritted her teeth, hating her father more at that moment than at any other time in her life. Because of him, who he was, what he’d made her, her life was what it was. With his death, she would be free.
He’d tried to kill her. He’d failed. She’d be damned if she’d let this Hellkeeper get the bragging rights.
Focusing, Selena moved her left hand into her duster pocket and felt for the syringe there. Deftly she popped the cap and jabbed it into her belly, using the weight of her body to push the plunger.
Power infused every cell in her body. Her wounds closed.
Without turning over, Selena acted as if she were indeed dying. “Tell me before I surrender your brothers’ hearts. What does Apollyon plan?” she breathlessly asked.
Baphomet rolled her over with his dismembered back leg. His hairy goat face was distorted and ugly. His limbs were struggling to reattach themselves, but the damage was extreme.
“Apollyon has created chaos and instability in much of Asia Minor. And with that instability comes opportunity.”
“Opportunity for what?”
“The acquisition of fissile products.”
The hair on the back of Selena’s neck stood. “What kind?”
“A refueled core from a nuke sub.”
“He would not dare!” she gasped, trying hard to appear as if she were dying.
“Apollyon dares what no other immortal would.”
“He’s out of his daemon mind!”
“Do you know how many millions of humans a dirty bomb of this magnitude can destroy?”
“Apollyon plans to threaten the Order with a dirty bomb?” she asked, unable to keep the shock from her voice.
The daemon knelt on his front legs next to Selena, his goat body now nearly intact. He leaned in close, his rancid breath assaulting her nostrils. “Yes,” he breathed. Heat singed her cheeks, burning her eyelashes off. She held steady. “In less than a month, a lead cask full of enriched uranium will be on its way to a human contractor who will construct the bomb. If Rurik refuses Apollyon’s demand for control?” Baphomet threw his head back and laughed. “Boom!”
It was incredible—it was terrifying—it was brilliant and could work! While she had no great love for the Order and had never met Rurik, his iron fist kept all of the Others from destroying each other.
Baphomet lowered his head, aiming a razor-sharp horn at her throat, intending to rip the necklace from her as he gouged her to death.
“Fuck you, Baphomet—” Selena grasped the sword lying next to her; in a wide, powerful stroke, she separated the daemon’s head from his shoulders. She leapt up and kicked back his writhing body and pierced his chest with the other sword. In the precise pattern of a pentagram, she cut into his flesh and around his beating nanorian, severing the arteries, and freed it. What was left of his body dropped to the ground, where it would turn to ash. Selena pressed her prize into one of the empty settings in her necklace and turned to the human. She knelt beside him and felt for a pulse.
She found the barest hint of one. She pulled the syringe from her pocket and injected him with what little was left of the Rev.
She did not wait to see whether it revived him. She had no idea how it would work on a human, but it didn’t matter. It was his only chance. If it worked, it would do more than revive him. She supposed it was a fair trade.
It wasn’t called Revive for nothing.
As she ran, Selena made plans. Baphomet’s news wasn’t information she could keep to herself. She was going to need a little help if she was going to stop the annihilation of humanity.
CHAPTER ONE
One month later
Southern base of Tian Shan mountain range,
Kyrgyzstan
Nikko had a bad feeling about this op.
Flurries salted the frigid February landscape. For as far as the eye could see, it was hard, gray, and uninviting. Lying on the edge of a ragged mountain ledge, Nikko cursed the sudden Siberian cold front that had come in the night before. This part of the Tian Shan was frigid under normal winter conditions; now it was arctic. He should have prepared for changeable weather. Because he hadn’t, he’d spent the last eleven hours in twenty-below temps with nothing more than standard cold gear to keep him warm. He had only himself to blame for the needles prickling in his fingers and the lack of feeling in his toes. Even so, he’d spend the next eleven hours in exactly the same position if that’s what it took.
Ironically, his moniker was Ice, and he lived up to the chill factor. He was cold, calculating. He had disconnected from his conscience the day he killed the only woman he’d ever loved. Not even the guilt he’d buried so deep inside got to him now. He had sunk to the lowest of lows; nothing was too dirty for him to do. Nothing and no one thawed him. It was what kept him alive and made him the perfect L.O.S.T. operative, one uniquely qualified to handle the rigors of his current mission.
He was a machine.
Hardwired to withstand pain, be it torture, the elements, or emotional strikes. It was what he did and who he was. Like the Terminator, programmed to carry out his duty.
Shoot him, burn him, rip his heart out and toss it to the vultures. He’d survive and revive.
Just as he’d survived the worst kind of betrayal a man could endure.
It had made him stronger.
Vigilant.
Alone.
He gritted his teeth and raised his high-powered binoculars to focus on the empty road below. Close by, a highly trained CIA extraction team and a dozen Kyrgyzstan commandos stood at the ready. Miles beyond, a Chinook 47 lay in wait with his L.O.S.T. team.
It was do or die. Since word of a hijacked cask of enriched uranium from the Mayak Processing Plant in Ozersk, Russia, had hit the president’s desk three weeks ago, every federal agency had gone on high alert.
But it was the Last Option Special Team the president had called to locate the lead cask, take possession of it, and escort it to US soil, where it would safely be stored.
Nikko was point man on this mission, and he would die before he let the cask make it to Osh, Kyrgyzstan, where the Russian underground had their own plans for it.
Once Nikko’s team secured the cask, the Chinook would come and haul the almost six-ton payload to the American Transfer Center outside Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and see that it was whisked back to the United States. Failure was not an option.
Nikko shuddered to think what could happen if the uranium fell into the wrong hands. The solid-lead cask made the enriched uranium handleable without taking precautions. Tons heavy, it would require special equipment to move it around—but all a terrorist had to do was pick a site, dig a hole, drop the
cask in, toss in a few hundred pounds of TNT, then boom. A dirty bomb of that magnitude would not only leave a chunk of the world contaminated for centuries, but it could be death to hundreds of thousands of people.
Nikko’s internal alarm beeped. For a mission of such urgency and worldwide implications, it had been a cakewalk.
Too smooth.
So smooth Nikko suspected they were going to pay for it.
He checked his satphone’s GPS tracker again. Their target was five minutes out. Turning, he studied the men who, like him, were willing to risk their lives to protect the world from greedy warmongers with no regard for any life unless it came with a hefty bank deposit.
The four CIA agents were typical government-issue spies. Aloof. Capable. Deadly when they had to be. Once the semi was secured, they’d inspect the cask for leaks; given the green light, they would transfer it onto the Chinook. But first, the commandos would do their part. And God help the Russians. The Kyrg commandos were out for blood. They were tired of the Russian dogs who held them powerless.
They reminded Nikko of his real team. The Last Option Special Team operatives were the only people on earth Nikko trusted with his life. He had not been keen on the idea of splitting up, but it made sense. If something happened out here, only one L.O.S.T. operative would be lost. Not three. They were too valuable to risk losing en masse. Not that he planned to fail. L.O.S.T. never failed. In the seven years he had been part of the covert agency, they had lost only one operative. And that was last year to a—Nikko shook his head, still unable to believe Shane had been killed by a vampire. Crazy shit that was.
All ego aside, L.O.S.T. operatives were the best of the best. Maybe because they’d all been pushed at some point to be their worst.
He turned his attention back to the road and focused through his lenses. Lowering his binoculars, he signaled his crew. It was time.
As one, CIA, Kyrg commando, and L.O.S.T. swarmed down from the ledge and into a concealing crevice, then straight toward the blind side of a steep-graded hairpin turn. As the semi approached, they knew the driver would have to reduce his speed to a snail’s crawl to round the tight angle of the turn. After all, his cargo had the potential to be the most virulent mass murderer in the world.
As it slowed and began to pass, they hit the ground running, staying low, approaching from the rear. Nikko hopped on the back of the trailer as it downshifted to make the turn, then hauled himself up to the roof. He moved to the front of the trailer and sprawled flat. Taking a small, battery-powered handsaw from his backpack, he began to cut a hole in the trailer top. Within moments, the air brakes hissed, and the trailer shimmied and shook as it came to a slow-rolling stop to inch around the sharp curve.
As planned, the commandos swarmed the back of the trailer while two of them broke off, charging toward the cab on either side. Nikko watched from his vantage point as he kept cutting. The Kyrg running along the driver’s side began to signal the driver, who watched the activity intently in the side mirror. Not part of the plan. Nikko rolled over and dropped behind the commando and snapped his neck as the other commando came around the front, yelling to the driver to duck. Nikko pulled his pistol and shot the traitor right between the eyes. They’d been set up, damn it!
Hoisting himself back up to the trailer roof, he leashed his fury. “Abort!” he roughly whispered into his mic.
“Roger that,” one of the spooks said.
“Sir,” one of the commandos said, “we cannot abort!” Without warning, the back doors of the trailer crashed open. Armed men swarmed out. At the same time, rounds tore through the rooftop of the trailer, spraying Nikko in his thigh and forearm.
“Fuck!” he cursed, and rolled off the roof, hitting the rough road below, before taking cover behind one of the huge tires. Swiftly, he scanned the area. Three of the four spooks and half of the commandos were down. Unsure if the remaining commandos were friend or foe, Nikko was not taking any chances. One by one, he picked them off until they all lay motionless on the cold mountain roadside.
Massive chaos ensued among the armed mercs. Gunfire rose above their frantic voices yelling to each other in Russian and, oddly, Spanish as they frantically searched for him.
Nikko kept his cool, methodically picking off one merc, then another, as he moved beneath the trailer. An RPG blasted from somewhere above him, smashing into the hillside. Clumps of earth and rock slammed against the trailer.
“I’m hit! I’m hit!” the last spook standing screamed.
Nikko watched from behind one of the massive tires as three mercs descended on the spook’s writhing body on the hillside. Nikko knew what they would do to him, and once they had the information they wanted, they’d kill him piece by piece. Nikko aimed for his counterpart’s head and pulled the trigger. The man’s body jerked, then slumped to the ground.
Pulling a GPS device from his right thigh pocket, Nikko removed the protective cover on the double-sided tape and stuck the GPS to the undercarriage of the truck. He pulled out his satphone to alert his team it was all going to shit.
Voices shouted back and forth. The mercs were looking for him. Nikko stuffed the phone into the thigh sleeve of his cargo pants, then crawled along the opposite roadside using the trailer as cover and worked his way toward the sheer edge of the road. He would drop if he had to.
Pulling a grenade from his belt, Nikko crawled around the trailer and positioned himself. He noticed for the first time he was losing blood. A warm, damp stream from his forearm dripped onto the road. Heavy boot-steps rounded the trailer from either end. He ducked back under the trailer and changed direction. If he could get to the crevice, it would offer enough cover for him to hold them off until the cavalry arrived.
Blinking against the fog that blurred his vision, Nikko tossed the grenade ahead of him and to the right, dispersing the soldiers who hadn’t, unbelievably, bothered to look under the trailer for him. When it exploded, heavy boots ran from the exact place he needed to go. Quickly, Nikko hoisted himself up on a hot axle and maneuvered his way toward the cab.
“KpoBb!” a merc shouted, his voice closing in.
They had spotted his blood.
Nikko was outmanned ten to one. If he stayed where he was, he’d be captured. Then he’d be dead, but not before he was treated to a bout of From Russia with Love torture. The Russians were the best at it. He had the scars to prove it. Capture was not an option.
He rolled out from under the trailer and tossed another grenade behind him, then another and another until he was wedged into the crevice he’d exited less than fifteen minutes earlier, with the steep incline of the mountain behind him. He had meager cover, but it was enough. He slung his M16 around from his back by its strap and opened fire. He was answered with blinding pain as the percussion of an RPG blew him ten feet into the air and slammed him against the mountainside. Slowly his lacerated body slid down the gravelly surface to the bottom of the crevice. His chest was shredded; his head ached like the morning after a three-day drunk. His extremities twitched as shock claimed him.
Heavy boots stormed toward him. A barrage of argument in Russian over whether he was worth torturing.
“Is dead,” a voice said.
A strange sensation of cool heat swirled within his chest cavity as his life oozed out and death rushed in. But oddly, his hands and feet weren’t cold anymore, they were warm. He blinked away the blood in his eyes. Suddenly the sky was blue. The gray had been absorbed by white, puffy clouds. The sun shone brightly, causing him to squint, and the salt of the nearby ocean toyed with his senses. Overhead, gulls called. A cottage shimmered like a mirage under the sunshine.
He was home.
Nikko tried to smile but couldn’t. That little summer cottage on St. Michael’s Island had been a happy place once; it was the place he’d fallen in love. The place where his life had shattered into a million tiny pieces, killing the most vital part of him long before today.
Now fate was determined to finish what little life Selena ha
d left him. Selena. He choked on the thought of her. There hadn’t been a colder-hearted murdering bitch on the planet. But he’d taken care of her. She couldn’t hurt him again. He still loved her. Guilt dragged down by regret washed through him in waves. He’d killed her. The only woman he would ever love.
His chest burned. His throat constricted.
The sunshine began to fade.
He was dying.
The harsh voices around him trailed off, followed by the slamming of doors, the release of air brakes. He’d been left for dead. At least they hadn’t hacked off his limbs to drag them behind the trailer, a warning of what they were capable of. He had no ID that could link him to the US. Neither did the dead spooks.
He heard the loud beep of the trailer as it backed up, then the deafening rev of the diesel; the sounds shook him to his foundation. This was it. He was going to die here, on a road to nowhere in a Podunk country like a possum on the side of the road.
At least the trailer was trackable, he thought before he closed his eyes. With extreme effort, Nikko moved a hand to his chest, flinching when his fingertips sank into warm, pulpy tissue. He could feel the slow beat of his heart against his fingertips. Blood washed warm and thick across his palm.
Who knew it wouldn’t hurt? At least not physically. It was the memories he’d pushed so far down into his soul that threatened to swamp him, punishing him in a way his numbed flesh could not.
He told himself not to think of the family he had abandoned as a teenager.
Or the child who had been taken from him before he could meet her.
Longing raged inside him anyway. Fury spiraled in harsh thrusts against his damaged heart. If he could, he’d kill all over again the woman who’d taken that tiny life from him.
He cursed. If he was heavenbound, he would see his baby girl, but her mother had taken away even that possibility. Because of what he’d done to her, and for every damn thing he’d done afterward, he wasn’t bound for the pearly gates. No, he was bound where babies did not dare to go.
