by Anya Nowlan
“Smoke bombs. We shift. One of us gives covering fire. We run through the length and take the fuckers out on the other side,” Tex said, eyes flashing gold.
Thatch frowned, looking at his brother. It fit the bill of what Thatch himself had said, but there was a chance to it. Maybe if they were fast enough. Maybe if they were brutal enough, they could make it. Not without taking a loss, sure, but if one of them could get through…
“I’ll do it,” Thatch said blankly.
“We’ll both fucking do it,” Tex growled.
“I can’t let you run in there like that,” Connor said, reeling them both in a little.
“You can’t go. You’re a fucking bear. The biggest target we have. We’re wolves, we can rush through before they even know what hit them,” Tex whispered, his eyes now a solid gold, matching Thatch’s.
Thatch’s wolf agreed wholeheartedly. It was stupid as fuck and had a hundred things that could go wrong, starting from there being too many guys on the other side, to the both of them getting shot down before they could make it through. But he could sense that Madeline was close and The Arctics were no pussycats. He would not be surprised at all if those guys were more than willing to die for their mission.
Just then, a message came through, Grant’s voice tinny in their ears.
“On ninth, heavy resistance on seventh. Got three of them. They’re starting to scatter, though. I don’t know if they got what they need... shit. Sorry. I don’t know if they got what they were after, but they’re starting to run like rats off a sinking ship,” Grant said, the sound of a bullet whizzing by far too close for comfort and throwing him off for a moment.
“Fine. Suicide it is,” Connor agreed with a growl.
Grinning, both of the Crawleys tossed off their shotguns. They took smoke grenades off their belts and handed them to Connor, who weighed them in his hands for a moment.
“Shift. I’ll throw both of these in and give you cover. Stay low, I’ll aim mid-high. If there’s too many of them, try to make it back. Good luck,” he said, while the wolf twins were already starting to shift.
It was like he’d been holding a long breath and could finally release it as Thatch felt the wolf starting to take control. He felt his body get loose and fluid and the familiar, comforting power starting to throb through him in growing quantities. A thick maw with sharp teeth and almost brilliant white fur with deep black markings sprouted from his muscular forms, his legs becoming lean and strong and his eyes gleaming a threatening, almost demonic shade of gold now.
Snapping his teeth once, Thatch looked at Tex and both of them snarled. Connor threw the grenades in and whipped the barrel of his rifle down the corridor. Lock and fucking load.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Madeline
Madeline had been kicking and screaming the whole way down to the bottom floor, getting dragged through corridor after corridor by uncaring arms. She didn’t see a single other person in the hallways, other than the men clad in black and brandishing weapons that promised swift death regardless of what she did. Somewhere halfway down to the cellar, Duke had shoved a gag in her mouth, but he only tied her up when they got to a big boiler room at the bottom of the building.
She had been roped to a chair with alarming efficiency, Duke and the other man she’d seen on the train not even bothering to cover their faces. They simply tied her up, smirking to one another.
“What luck,” the other one said. “Didn’t even have to hunt for her anymore or anything. It’s like she wanted to surprise us. You’re so sweet,” he said, blowing her an air kiss.
Madeline hissed out something that could have been an insult if she’d managed to form a damn sentence, but it sounded like little more than a garbled mewl.
“Go on, make sure her little friends don’t show up before we’re done here,” Duke commanded, his pale blond hair and blue eyes making him both striking and scary as hell at the same time.
The other man complied, stalking out while guys who could have been carbon copies of Duke carried heavy boxes into the room and then cracked the tops. When they took out the armaments hidden inside, Madeline sucked in a breath. She knew those things. They were the same bombs that Duke and his merry band of terrorist nut jobs had been stealing before.
“What are you going to do?!” she shrieked, watching in horror as they simply piled the things one on top of the other, like they were building some sort of demented sandcastle.
“Oh, aren’t we curious!” Duke exclaimed, walking across the room to another, smaller black case and opening it up.
Madeline didn’t have to work in explosives to realize that she was staring at a bomb and remote detonation devices, as well as wiring to hook it up to explosives carrying a big enough charge to set them off. Duke picked up the detonator and brought it over to Madeline, showing it off to her as if it were some prized possession.
“Well, you see, I intend to kill you,” he said mildly, smirking flatly.
“I’m flattered you went through all this effort,” Madeline snorted, finding herself far more defiant this time, knowing that she had two little ones at home to fight for. “But I don’t think you like me quite this much. Could we maybe go on a date first? See if we want to kill each other then?”
Her mouth kept saying words even though her mind was skipping beats left and right. She simply knew that she had to keep him talking to have any kind of a chance of getting out of there. Time was what she needed and she didn’t have a whole lot of options on how to get any without going out of her way to be obnoxious.
Duke quirked a brow at her, standing a mere foot or two from her. He seemed to ponder this for a moment, and then he leaned closer and whacked her over the cheek so hard that her ears rung.
“Shut up, princess. I don’t need your smart fucking mouth here.”
“Yeah? I thought you liked an audience! Devs sure liked it when I was there to see him die. I bet I’ll be here to witness your death too,” Madeline spat out, the words coming with a spatter of blood as he’d managed to split her lip-
It was the adrenaline that kept her talking, even if in any other situation she would be keeling over and sobbing by now.
“I think you’re underestimating my level of preparation here, Madeline. You see, I’m in no hurry. I want you to have fun with me here. See all the nice things I’m doing, like building a fucking pile of explosives that will blow this place off the map? You see these bombs? You know what they can do?” he asked, picking one of the heavy things up delicately and spinning it around in his hands for Madeline.
“I know they make a psycho like you think he has some power,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“True. But they can also make this building disappear. And when people come to gather around, lament the loss of such a great research center that did so much good for both humans and shifters, they’ll find traces of explosives only used by the US government. And you know how well the government gets along with shifters these days,” he mused idly, putting the bomb back down again.
His cold blue eyes flashed for a second as he looked at Madeline, and she swallowed heavily. There hadn’t been another person in the room for a few minutes now and being so close to him—this monster—all alone was unnerving her. But she had to keep talking.
“You’re a psycho. No one’s going to believe any of that stuff,” Madeline said, letting whatever came to her head first slip over her lips.
“Well, I bet they will, though,” Duke commented, crouching down by the armaments and starting the process of fastening the timer and some adhesive explosive putty in place, his back turned to Madeline. “We have a great PR department, after all.”
His chuckle was cold, menacing, and made Madeline wanted to sock him one. She struggled against her bindings, trying to see if she could make them budge, but the throbbing pain in her head and the tightness of the ropes combined together to assure her that she wasn’t going anywhere unless they allowed her to. It was exactly when Duke was done
setting the timer—seven minutes, as Madeline could spy when he took a step away—that she heard the sound of shouting and then an explosion that sent plumes of smoke and debris billowing into the room.
“What the hell?” Duke growled, crossing through the room and looking out the door.
He pulled back when there was gunfire coming from the opposite end of the corridor, and Madeline could see what certainly looked like a dead body lying face-down somewhere in the hallway. Her heart rose into her throat and she gasped for air. This was all way, way too familiar to her and the panic was starting to crawl up her back like icy water.
Duke unslung his rifle, snarling, but there was still a smirk on his lips that was pure malevolence.
“Guess our playmates are early. Oh well. I wouldn’t mind taking out your boyfriends too while we’re at it. More blood for the grinder and all that,” he said, checking his ammo.
Madeline hated the sound of him slipping in another clip. He threw open the door, leaving Madeline in a situation where she could have gotten hit by a stray bullet if luck was not on her side, and Duke ducked out for a moment. She could hear muddled conversation and sporadic gunfire and she tried twice as hard to get out of her bindings, wriggling so desperately that she could feel skin chafing off.
When Duke returned, looking much more grim, the timer had ticked down to five already.
“Hate to say it, princess, but I don’t think they can save you. I hope you said your goodbyes to your kids. They’re really cute. I’m sure we’ll recruit them when the time is right and make good little Arctic soldiers out of them. Mommy would be proud, right? Your little boys killing and conquering? Yeah, that sounds good,” he said, his voice tense as he checked the timer one more time and ran his fingers along the length of the wires sprouting out of it.
He seemed pleased with his handiwork. Suddenly, the door into the boiler room was thrown shut from the outside, causing him to take notice. Duke jumped up and Madeline had to suppress a gasp as she felt her hand coming free. He pushed open the door just in time to see two huge, white and black wolves barrel down the hallway through a thick fog of smoke, like they were more myth than beast, fangs bared and pings of gunfire shadowing them both front and back.
Madeline sucked in a breath, wrestling down her scream as she got her other hand free. She could see both of the wolves taking damage, one getting a deep gash in his side and the other’s step faltering but only for a minute when he got a bullet to the thigh. With the next leap, they were on the closest two men, strong paws bounding off their chests, fearsome maws ripping out their throats and sending blood and bullets flying everywhere as the men tried to claw them off of themselves.
But the wolves were too fast. Menacing growls marked their path, and as soon as they’d taken out the closest two, they piled on the last man outside the room, who was shooting at them wildly. Madeline ducked down in time to watch deep, arterial red gushing out of the guy’s neck, and then a bullet whiz through the air exactly where she had been sitting. Suddenly the wolves snapping and growling at Duke.
He held them both at bay, his rifle drawn, while the minutes and seconds ticked past mercilessly on the timer.
“No, no, you fuckers. If I go down, you do too,” he hissed, an almost deathly grin on his face.
I can’t die like this!
Madeline was still tied to the chair by her legs, but her arms were free now. She patted around herself, looking for something, anything to use to distract him. She almost squealed when she felt the reassuring weight of metal within reach. Grabbing a short length of pipe, she threw it blindly at Duke, the pipe colliding with the wall. But it was all the distraction the wolves needed.
Both bleeding and wounded, they pounced on Duke at the same time, and he only got out half a scream before he went down under their weight and the wolves ripped his face off with a few well-aimed chomps. Madeline’s eyes were wide with terror and she was raising her hands to shield herself when thudding footsteps came down the corridor and she heard one moan and then a shot behind the door before Connor stepped in.
She was vaguely aware that there were tears streaming down her cheeks freely. Only when the twins were shifting back and Thatch was pulling her into his arms, clearly favoring one side but very much there and present, did she understand what was really going on.
“Madeline, baby, are you okay?!” Thatch asked, placing a kiss on her forehead.
Madeline could feel that her cheeks were damp with tears, but she didn’t remember crying. Thatch undid the ropes holding her legs and Madeline scooted into a sitting position, wiping her face. Her hand came back bloody. It wasn’t hard to figure out why—Thatch and Tex were both basically drenched in it, not only their own but the blood of the men they’d killed in their frenzied attack as well. For the first time, she’d seen their shifter side and it was as terrifying as it was awe-inspiring. Something told her that she was going to be looking at these two men a lot differently from now on, but that was a problem for future her, the one that hopefully still had problems to consider at all.
“I’m fine,” she rasped, looking Thatch over and then Tex, who was limping heavily and had several deep gashes bubbling blood as he went to the makeshift, horrific bomb. “But you two are both injured!”
“Well, we have a minute before that will be a complete non-issue,” Tex growled, crouching down and taking one of his tool belts off and laying it down on the ground next to him.
Madeline’s heart skipped a beat as she felt the tension rising in the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tex
Tex’s leg was fucking killing him. He knew it would only get worse as soon as he got out of there and the adrenaline wore off. Fortunately, the bomb he was staring down at the moment made sure that there was plenty of that life-giving liquid pounding through his veins at the moment.
He inspected it thoroughly, or as thoroughly as a man could given that he had maybe a minute and thirty seconds until the timer would run out. All he really wanted to do was run over to Madeline, like Thatch had done, grab her in his arms and get the fuck out of there. But he knew none of them would make it far if he did that. There were enough explosives gathered in the room that the blast would take out the hospital and half a block, if not more.
“You got to get out of here,” he hissed, not turning around and checking who was there to hear him. “This thing is not going to wait for you.”
“We wouldn’t even make it out of the building,” came Connor’s calm, stern voice, strolling into the room like nothing had happened at all. “Madeline, you all right?” he asked, and when she didn’t answer, Tex assumed she’d nodded.
He was running his fingers down the lengths of the wires, trying to figure out which one had the power supply. It was a basic little device, effective in its simplicity. It only took a small charge to set the explosive putty off and the timer and power unit had plenty of juice to give it that kick. And when the first detonation happened, it would start a chain-reaction moving through the rest of the armaments, combining their forces together to leave a nice big smoking crater where Tex and his compatriots were currently standing.
Tex bit the inside of his cheek as he looked it over one more time to be sure he wasn’t missing anything. The Arctics were crazy motherfuckers. They’d set it so that it wasn’t even positive that they would have made it out of there in time without Squad Six paying them a visit. The price of manic belief, Tex figured.
There were more heavy footsteps coming down the corridor and Tex whipped around momentarily when he heard someone barging through the door. It was Grant and Grim, and Connor and Thatch already had their rifles trained on their heads before lowering the muzzles.
“We got about six of them, and Dutch took out three. They were going for a lab upstairs, genetic enhancement facilities. No idea what exactly they wanted from there, but I think we stopped them before they could grab it,” Grim said, beaming with satisfaction.
There were streaks of blood
dappling his clothes and Tex could tell from a cursory glance that the fight had been an extended one, considering how much ammo he was missing. Grant was already kneeling next to Madeline and Thatch, arguing with Thatch about how his wound needed to be debrided or he’d die of every infection known to man and shifter alike.
“Quiet!” Connor growled, and the field fell silent. Tex didn’t even flinch when the command sounded.
He had work to do and as the seconds ticked down, it was becoming more and more imperative that he did it right.
“Tex, do we have a chance?” Connor asked, keeping his voice steady.
“Always a chance,” Tex mumbled, giving a curt nod in the direction of the bomb.
“Good. Dutch, get as far away as you can. We may have a big boom on our hands,” Connor spoke, broadcasting over their communication line.
“Noted. Good luck,” came Dutch’s fast response, and Tex could imagine how the man was throwing his rifle over his back and getting the hell out of Dodge.
Blast warnings were taken seriously in Squad Six, especially after that one time on New Year’s that no one believed Tex when he said he had more than a little bit of fun planned for everyone. He grinned wryly at the memory, the seconds now ticking down to twenty. He cleaned out the pins from the putty a bit to see where they were attached and then looked at the connection between timer and the power source, but there were too many options there to go by anything more than an educated guess.
In his mind’s eye, he could see Blake doing the exact same thing years ago, hoping for the best while he was dressed in a bomb disposal suit, praying that his hands were steady enough and the guy who’d set up the bomb was dumber than he was. No way in hell did Tex believe that whatever had happened had been his fault, but it didn’t mean that his heart didn’t go out to a man in a very similar line of work as his, doing the same thing day in and day out and always praying for a good outcome.
Tex loved setting up blasts, controlling them, directing them. But stopping one from going off? That part sucked, man. Especially if it wasn’t one of his own. Finally, with ten seconds left on the clock and the whole room in stunned, tight silence, the air so thrumming with nerves that it vibrated around him, Tex turned around.
