by Aja James
The warrior had four more minutes to get the job done before questions would be raised. One, someone might notice the glitch in the security feed. Two, someone might flag his access of this chamber as unusual, given he was supposedly MIA. And even if he had returned to the bosom of the Shield with a perfectly reasonable explanation for his recent disappearance, the Dozen would want to debrief him as soon as possible.
After all, he hadn’t set foot in the home base for a very long time.
All of these scenarios the warrior processed with perfect logic, rather like a machine. It was the subtler things like emotions that the warrior could no longer grasp, making him incapable of having natural interactions, especially with those who knew him well, who expected him to behave a certain way based on that knowledge.
For he was no longer the Paladin they knew.
Sophia was preparing for bed, as the warrior knew she would be, having memorized her nightly rituals to every last detail, down to the sequence and timing of each individual activity. She was guarded at all times by one of the Elite, more closely watched when they were outside the Shield than within, which was why the warrior had chosen to infiltrate his old base rather than wait until Sophia ventured out in public.
The guard on rotation tonight would be Aella, the Pure Ones’ Strategist and Sophia’s personal confidante. Aella always gave her young charge extra time and space to feel more like a normal college girl. In other words, she didn’t guard Sophia as closely as others might, especially within the assumed safety of the Shield. The tech confirmed that she was currently finishing up a shower in her own quarters, having worked up a sweat in training with two of the other Elite earlier.
The warrior silently took a short-sleeved shirt and capris pants from Sophia’s closet, a pair of sneakers and socks and shoved them into her large backpack for school. He then edged around the chamber to the half-closed bathroom door, magnifying his hearing to focus exclusively on his target, tuning out other background noise.
She was rubbing moisturizer on her face while humming a new tune the warrior hadn’t heard before.
So strange, that he remembered everything the Paladin had experienced in the entirety of his existence, but felt none of the feelings attached to this history.
He knew, for example, that Sophia liked to dab just a couple drops of Lady-of-the-night orchid oil on her wrists and behind her ears. The subtle scent, combined with her natural fragrance, made the warrior’s body respond despite his emotional blankness.
Whenever it was his turn to guard her, since she’d first blossomed into womanhood, his body would harden to the point of pain just on her scent alone. Every night he’d guarded her had been a kind of acute physical torture, but the emotional pain had been even more unbearable—to be so close to everything he’d ever wanted yet so impossibly far away.
Good thing the warrior didn’t feel any of those emotions now, though a part of him recoiled from even the memory of those feelings. All he had to deal with now was an inconvenient hard-on that refused to desist even when he viciously squeezed it until the sharp pain made his eyes water.
Sophia finished up her routine, patted her hands on a towel and opened the bathroom door in her long Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, T-shirt.
“Dalair.”
It was all she whispered before he closed his palm over her nose and mouth, and she sank against him and into oblivion.
*** *** *** ***
Ryu Takamura finished rigging the last of the explosives around the weapons facility Grace’s coordinates had led him to.
There was only one entry and exit to the abandoned hangar, secluded in the middle of the woods in upstate New York, barred by an airtight, steel-reinforced bifold door.
When Ryu arrived stealthily on foot, having left his ride a mile south of the location, there were two vehicles parked outside the hangar. He caught what appeared to be the last of the enemy contingent, a shadow assassin, entering the hangar before the door came down and sealed shut.
Nothing could be seen of the interior from the outside. There were no windows and no other outlets.
Grace had identified seven distinct bodies from hacked satellite images. Over a two day observation period, the count hadn’t changed. Based on heat signatures that Grace was able to triangulate from thermal telescopic feeds, four were Pure Ones and three were likely shadows given that their shapes sometimes changed or blended into the walls and corners.
Twice over a twenty-four hour period, an eighth individual joined the contingent at the secluded location, one who had a body temperature that oscillated among Dark, Pure and human, with no definable pattern that determined the variation. The individual always came and went in a large, armored SUV.
All of them moved about freely, most of the time checking, assembling and dismantling firearms. As such, it was assumed that they were all working together, all part of the enemy.
With the charges set on a ten minute countdown timer, Ryu could easily push the remote he held and blow the entire hangar to smithereens right now, destroying the facility and everyone in it. But he hesitated with his thumb a centimeter above the manual detonator.
Something wasn’t right.
There were two vehicles parked outside the hangar. One was a veritable tank large enough to seat all eight of the identified foes. Why have a second vehicle? The treads of the smaller vehicle was more recent, probably having arrived mere minutes before Ryu did.
What if there were newcomers? And what if they weren’t all enemies?
Ryu cursed beneath his breath.
A year and a half ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to set off the charges, collateral damage be damned. But since he’d met Ava, and now having Kane in his life too, he could no longer stomach the sacrifice of innocents, even if the possibility was remote.
Shit.
What he wouldn’t give for Inanna’s Gift right now.
The Angel had the ability to see through any material as if it wasn’t there. It would be a piece of cake for her to check out the occupants of the hangar. But alas, she was no longer part of the Chosen, and they couldn’t afford to wait for her aid, not when the vampire killers could be operationalized at any moment.
Abruptly, Ryu tensed.
A split second later, he spun from his crouch into a spin kick, followed by an extended back kick, then jabs and punches so fast his fists were a blur.
But his opponent anticipated his moves and countered effortlessly, using only his forearms and shins to block.
I’m not here to fight you, the Master’s voice sounded in Ryu’s head, just like old times.
On pure instinct, in a burst of vengeance, Ryu launched an aggressive series of kicks and strikes, moving so fast he was a furious black cloud pushing his opponent back toward the woods.
Ryu! I don’t want to hurt you, the Master communicated in his mind as the male continued to defend himself without countering.
Clara and Annie are in there. You’re wasting time!
The last was sent subliminally in a growl of frustration as the Master finally regained ground with deadly moves of his own, forcing Ryu to step out of range.
The two males regarded each other intensely and unblinkingly, Ryu, with unabated fury and mistrust; the Master, with wariness and focused determination.
How do I know you’re not one of them? I won’t repeat my mistake in Japan. I’m at full strength this time. I can defeat you. Ryu reached out with his mind, for the first time attempting to use this unique bond between them to communicate without speaking.
You can try, the Master responded tersely. But not here and now. I need to get my females to safety first.
Ryu narrowed his eyes, regarding the male before him, for the first time without the blinders borne of centuries’ worth of bitterness and vengeance, but really looked.
The woman in the restaurant had called the Master, Eli.
It was just a name, but one that somehow humanized him—if Dark Ones could be “humanized.” It mad
e him vulnerable because there were people in this world who cared about this Eli, and whom he cared about in return. He was no longer the greatest shadow shinobi that ever existed; nor was he the Master, a figure of awe and fear.
He was Eli. A male who was desperate to protect the ones he loved.
Ryu pulled back from his fighting stance and gave one brief nod.
But before Eli could exhale in relief, the hangar door opened, and a thousand bullets assailed them like a hail of fiery arrows from hell.
*** *** *** ***
“The Master is here,” one of the shadow warriors alerted the Creature just as Annie finally spoke the words to unlock the microchip embedded within the vampire killers.
“Time for me to depart then,” the Creature said with jaunty good cheer, now that it had successfully activated the heat-seeking bullets.
It gave rapid-fire instructions to the mind-controlled soldiers, including the three remaining shadows in the Mistress’s army. They efficiently began running all of the arsenal through the sensor activator, loading and strapping guns to their persons, in addition to deadly knives and swords, fully armed with at least one automatic machine gun in hand.
The Creature walked over to a still paralyzed Clara Scott and Annie, who stood beside her, clutching her cold, limp fingers.
“It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance, Ms. Scott,” it said with a smile. “I’m afraid I must now flee the scene. Fighting to the death is not my thing, so I’ll leave it to the professionals. If I were you, I’d stay inside the hangar. Once the door opens, it’s going to get messy.”
Clara shot daggers at it with her eyes, making the Creature appreciate her fire and spirit if nothing else. Humans were such emotional beings. Perhaps because they only had a short time to live, they felt everything more strongly.
“There’s no need to look at me like that,” the Creature chided with a tsk. “If you play your cards right and do as I tell you, you and your charge might even get out of this alive. Here. I’ll take out the needles before I go as a parting gift. You’ll be able to move again in a couple of minutes. But be forewarned, the de-numbing process isn’t all that comfortable.”
It went behind her chair and delicately plucked the needles out of her shoulder and back.
“Best of luck, my dear. Toodaloo!”
And with that irreverent farewell, the Creature opened a secret hatch in the floor of the hangar, secured it from the other side and disappeared.
Two minutes later, Clara felt an electric tingle shoot unpleasantly up and down her limbs, like Charlie horses erupting all over her body. She clamped her teeth down to avoid crying out at the pain, not wanting to worry Annie even more than she was. On the bright side, the reawakening of her limbs drowned out the fiery pain in her shoulder wound from earlier.
The little girl was just starting to catch her breath from a long bout of messy crying, still sniffing and hiccupping, her face sticky with barely dried tears. She was scared out of her wits but trying to be brave.
As soon as she was able, Clara squeezed Annie’s hand, pulled her into her arms and hugged her tightly.
“Shh, sweetheart,” she cooed softly, not wanting to draw attention to the two of them as the enemy soldiers prepared for battle. “Everything will be fine. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
At least, she hoped she could back up her promise.
As soon as she could move, Clara surreptitiously went to the trap door the fake therapist had disappeared through and tried to open it.
No luck. It was locked and sealed.
There was no give at all. It looked like the steel trap was veritably welded into the concrete floor. If Clara had a propane torch and a lot of time on her hands, maybe she could melt the metal, but otherwise, she was stuck in the hangar with deadly-looking assassins.
Having been conscious and aware for the past thirty minutes or so, she’d caught snippets of Dr. Marion’s conversation with the others. Something about “vampire killers,” bullets designed specifically to home in on vampires and explode their hearts or heads.
Good God! How did Annie get embroiled in this mess? Clara could barely process what was going on around her, and she didn’t even have the luxury to try. She needed to focus on the present and figure out how to get Annie to safety.
She darted a glance toward the tables piled with weapons. Could she get a gun, load it with those vampire killers and shoot her way out of here?
She immediately dismissed that thought.
A, she’d never used a gun before and didn’t even know how to load it. B, some of the snippets of conversation she’d caught made her surmise that the bullets wouldn’t work on at least four of the seven soldiers, for they were something called “Pure Ones.” She’d have to know how to activate and deactivate the bullets, if one could do such a thing while the bullets were inside the guns, to make sure her shots hit their intended target.
And C, all of this was assuming she could just pick the fearsome warriors off one by one while they stood there like sitting ducks waiting for her to aim and hit her target.
No, she was definitely better off not pulling any heroic but idiotic Rambo maneuvers.
Oh Eli, where are you? She thought desperately. He must be close, for one of the shadows had reported just minutes ago that “the Master” was here. She recalled hearing the shadows who’d attacked them in the orphanage call Eli the same thing.
But just as she wished for his presence, she also wished for the opposite.
These soldiers were heavily armed with weapons filled with vampire-killing bullets, and there were seven of them! She couldn’t bear to think of Eli wounded or worse.
She grabbed Annie by the hand and took them to a corner of the hangar behind a stack of heavy duty steel cabinets that were anchored to the ceiling and floor. If bullets were going to be flying around, maybe the bulky metal would provide some protection.
One of the shadows noted her move, but didn’t do anything about it. Apparently, now that Annie had served her usefulness, the two of them were no longer relevant.
The shadow joined his comrades and all seven lined up in front of the large folding door, weapons drawn, as if they expected an army to be waiting for them outside.
A few seconds later, the deafening staccato of machine guns firing echoed through the cavernous hangar as the massacre began.
*** *** *** ***
Ryu and Eli released their corporeal forms a moment before the first spray of bullets reached them.
It was one of the reasons Ryu had been chosen for this mission instead of any other Chosen, because if the vampire killers were operational, at least he had a shot at avoiding the bullets in his shadow form.
But it wasn’t enough, Eli saw, as blood splattered from the space where his son stood just a second ago.
Whereas Eli could dissolve completely into air, Ryu could only take shadow form. Much harder to pin down, but still with enough substance for the bullets to track, especially if hundreds of bullets were bombarding them all at once. What’s worse, now that he was wounded, he wouldn’t be able to maintain shadow form for long.
Eli had to take out some of the shooters and draw their fire before Ryu sustained more damage.
I’ll deal with the fire power, he communicated mentally to his son. You get Clara and Annie out when there’s an opening.
My mission is to blow the whole place up and take out the enemy contingent. There can be no evidence—
Fuck your mission, Eli all but shouted in his mind. Innocent lives are at stake. Promise me you’ll take them to safety!
There was a disembodied grunt followed by a squirt of blood as another bullet pierced into Ryu.
Eli didn’t wait for further response as he swarmed the three shadows first.
The complexity of the firearms combined with the way the bullets shot through, heated and disturbed the air made it extremely difficult to disarm them using only the power of the wind. When Eli was close enough, he flashed into corpo
real form, made the fingers of one hand into the shape of a drill and struck it clean through the throat of one shadow, crouched, and took another off his feet with a vicious leg swipe.
Ryu was beside him a second later, dealing a lethal blow to the fallen shadow, while Eli disarmed the third, grabbed the sword from its holder on the ninja’s back and cleanly beheaded him with it.
I have explosives set up on an automatic timer. There’s no stopping the clock, only speeding it up. We have less than five minutes left to get out of range, Ryu said through their connection.
Take care of Clara and Annie, Eli snapped back. I’ll draw the others away from the entrance.
Eli rounded on the remaining four warriors in his physical form to draw their fire, then evaporated at the last second to avoid a new barrage of bullets. He maintained some substance in tendrils of black smoke to keep their foes’ attention focused on him, however.
It worked. They followed his nebulous cloud away from the hangar, just enough to let Ryu slip inside in his shadow form unnoticed.
Dark Goddess above! Eli had never faced such odds before.
Each bullet was like its own assassin, seeking the tiniest bit of heat he gave off to destroy it. Instead of four warriors, he faced thousands at once, traveling at supersonic speeds to spear into him and tear him apart.
He couldn’t afford to disappear into air like he did before and risk having them round on Ryu; he had to continue diverting their fire, but in order to do so, he needed to provide more substance for them to fire at.
A bullet sizzled through the black smoke of his right arm, leaving the burnt smell of blood in its wake.
He’d been hit.
But he could withstand a few more. He could be shot through like Swiss cheese if that’s what it took for Ryu to have enough time to get Clara and Annie out of there.
All four of the warriors were now following the smoky trail he left farther away from the hangar. When one of them stopped to reload, Eli swarmed him quickly, disarmed and took him out.
But those few moments he took physical form to defeat the assassin came at a price, as the other three unleashed all of their fire power at him. He couldn’t disappear again fast enough to avoid two more wounds, though at least he didn’t provide enough material for the bullets to explode on impact.
