Josh navigated the drone to a nearby building, then another, and finally a fourth before bringing it back. “You have to send out the next drone while this one comes back.”
After trotting to the mass of plugs that charged the two remaining aircraft and the array of spare batteries, she pointed. “This one?”
“No, the other one.”
Kneeling, she unplugged the hovercraft and carried it to her brother.
“This time hold it while I test it.”
Again without warning, he energized the rotors, but this time she held it down.
“Now take it to the window.”
Watching her step to avoid tripping, she brought the aircraft to its launch point and waited for it to fly away.
“Stay there. The first one’s coming back.”
Seconds later, the first drone arrived and hovered within reach outside the window. Dianne braced herself against the sill and grabbed the aircraft, which became deadweight in her hand as she brought it into the room. “What do I do with this?”
“Swap out its battery for a fresh one and charge its battery.”
“Um, what?”
He sounded irritated. “Never mind. I’ll do it.” Trotting, he moved to Dianne, took the hovercraft, and crossed the distance to the charging stations. He swapped out the batteries, setting up the drained one to be replenished in a spare charger. He then returned to his seat. “Come here.”
Dianne walked to him and leaned beside him. “That’s not the building.”
“Okay, I’ll try the next one.”
A minute later, Dianne stared at a long line of second story windows. “Move in closer.” She held her breath as the barren inventory floor appeared. “Can you get closer?”
“No, but I can try another angle from a different wall.”
“Please!”
She knew the answer before the camera steadied, but seeing the van parked on the concrete floor solidified it. “That’s it!”
Josh surprised her by being the calm one. “Now we do what Liam said. First thing, I bring it back immediately.” He tapped an icon to withdraw the hovercraft. “Now we wake him.”
“Okay.” She stood like a statue.
“I’ll do it. Liam! Liam! We found it! It was number thirty-seven.”
Everyone who had been resting rolled awake.
Within a minute, Liam retook control of the laptop and the hovercraft. “We’ve got about an hour until sunrise. I want a full infrared sweep of that place for human heat signatures. We’ll find out where he’s keeping his prisoners and where he sleeps. I’ll handle that. Josh, can you handle a drone and take a video looking straight down while flying it in a box around the building?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m also going to send the third drone in reserve. I may need it for some closeups. Let’s get them launched everyone.”
The elder hunter was awake, and, despite any lingering fatigue, his mind was sharp. “I’ll work on getting blueprints. I should have them soon after businesses open, if not sooner.”
Dianne assumed he meant he’d call his order, but she was more interested in the visual data from the drones, which Josh was launching from the window.
With the aircraft in flight, her brother sat beside Liam and took control of a drone from his tablet.
Ten minutes of transit brought the first drone to the building, and the young hunter switched its camera to infrared mode. “Nothing yet. Let me fly around the back. Josh, you’ve got your drone capturing video from overhead, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it picking up the locations of the security cameras?”
“I think so. So far, I see them.”
The young hunter’s computer screen showed bright forms inside the building. “There. That looks like three bodies and then three more in a tighter space.”
Dianne’s heart pumped. “That’s how Dunya described the jail cells. That’s them.”
“Let me find him now.” Liam elevated the drone to the second floor, and a solitary bright form appeared. “That’s him. He’s got the second floor to himself.”
Connor spoke with his usual calmness. “That’s logical. He would select a location that gives him an elevated position to defend. Try a look through all the windows to get a better sense of the layout.”
Liam switched to the visual camera and drove the drone by each window with slow caution. “The warehouse is rather boring, but you can see how he’s already barricaded the doors.”
Connor pointed. “And look there. He’s got concertina wire behind the door to each loading dock. He’s certainly expecting our arrival.”
“I don’t see any traps, though. No explosives. That’s a nice change from our last wraith.”
“We’ll want to review these video recordings in finer detail to be sure of that, but I hope you’re right.”
“I think we’ve captured all we need, Father. Unless you can think of anything else we should capture, I’ll bring them back, before he wakes up and sees our hovercraft.”
“Sure. Bring them back. That’s good reconnaissance. Now, for the important part–the planning of our raid.”
Dianne hoped the hunters would allow time to rest. “We’ve got a day and half until the full moon.”
Connor affirmed her hopes. “And we’ll make proper use of the time. Let’s clean up everything from here and load up the vehicles. I suggest we all take naps at the hotel, plan in the afternoon, prepare in the evening, and then conduct our raid tonight at dark.”
The tired team nodded silent approvals.
“So be it, then. Let’s get some rest and target lunch time for our planning session.”
CHAPTER 40
That evening, Edric replayed his security camera feed again. With his Master’s prodding, he knew the hunters had spied on him in the last hour of the morning’s darkness.
He’d counted three drones working in the service of his enemies, but the knowledge added little to his defensive strategy. His preparations were complete. They had him penned in like a wild animal, and if they challenged him within his lair, a wild animal’s wrath they would suffer.
He triple-checked his preparations–his weapons and his body armor, verifying his readiness for battle. To complicate any rescue effort, he had set up additional concertina wire in front of the jail cells. His enemies faced a monumental task against him.
With shotgun shells and exploding glass, they began their assault.
“Bastards!”
The wraith stooped and trotted to his panoramic window in time to see the twin rappelling lines dangling through the broken glass of two second-story windows, proving that the assailants had come from the roof. He scanned the floor and saw two human forms sprinting behind his empty metal shelves.
To slow their advance, he grabbed his AK-47 assault rifle and shot away a pane of glass, which required a final kick of his boot to clear. Staying hidden below the sill, he aimed rounds in the general direction of his assailants. As they returned fire, he crawled to his spare body armor components and donned his helmet, limb guards, and gloves.
He crawled to his weapons and clipped a holster with a pistol at each hip around his waist. Then he stuffed spare ammunition magazines in his vest with spare shells, and he grabbed a shotgun. With a rifle in one hand and the shotgun in the other, he worked himself back to his superior vantage point above his enemy.
Below him, they aimed shotguns at the concertina wire he’d spread in front of the jail cells. He found their solution to his razor wire clever as they shot out its mountings and made it unravel, but it cost them precious ammunition. Expecting his cartons of bullets and shells would outlast whatever the assailants had brought with them, he smattered several AK-47 bullets at their feet and waited for them to shoot back.
As they forced him back below his window sill, he realized they lacked the azure glow he expected of his enemies. But he knew they were the supernatural pair who hunted him. During a nonverbal flash, his Master
had made that fact clear, erasing any lingering doubts.
Though they outnumbered him two-to-one, he liked his position. They were trapped behind his empty shelves and faced a long way under his elevated position to reach his prisoners. He lifted his rifle barrel and squeezed off a few more rounds to remind them of their disadvantage.
He whispered to himself. “Is this the best you cretins can muster?”
One of them tossed a grenade towards a loading dock door. Edric ducked before the detonation, which blew away its razor wire barrier and created an exit into the night. As he examined the damage, he considered it desperate. The assailants still faced a long distance under his bullets to release the prisoners, and then they’d have to double back further to get out. It seemed folly.
Most importantly, he was safe in his position. There was no threat to them storming his elevated defenses. Even if they did escape with some or all of his captives, they showed no intent of taking him down.
Though carrying grenades, his assailants lacked the strength and accuracy to throw the heavy weapons into his personal space. They also lacked any riot weapons like teargas cannisters, given the light load they could carry based upon their swift entrance.
But his domineering spirit prodded him to take the precaution of holding his dagger within reach. Though a night away from the full moon, Edric obeyed. He crawled to its case, lowered his rifle, and took up the bronze knife in his hand.
“This is illogical tactically, but if you insist, Master, I shall hold it.”
As an experiment, he slid the blade into a pocket in his vest, freeing his hand.
“Is that good enough, Master, just to have it on my person?”
The unspoken answer was affirmative. Edric exhaled, picked up his AK-47 assault rifle, sent rounds at the hunters, who had remained in their safe positions. To improve his shots at them, he repositioned at the leftmost window in his panorama, shot it out, and gave himself a superior field of fire. Although their return fire was easier, his shots were now direct, removing the shelves as their cover.
As long as he showed the courage to take shots at them, they were thwarted. His mind raced to rationalize how his enemy had gifted him such an advantage. He’d understood the basics of warfare his entire long life, and everything about their attack seemed foolhardy.
Then, as he sent rounds towards the assailants, he saw a female form appear in the blown-away gap in the loading dock door.
Edric felt a rush of energy flooding his body, and he saw a red aura rise from her, filling the warehouse. The sanguine light blossomed in his vision, and the woman and her life force became his complete world.
His Master was painting her as the next sacrifice.
The red illumination receded, returning the normal view of the visual spectrum. In the dim light of his warehouse floor, the bulletproof riot shield, with a viewport and a lightweight design that would stop any caliber he possessed, revealed itself. With her small body, the shield protected every angle against her.
Thoughts raced through his mind, and he panicked.
This was the one woman his lording spirit had selected for him as the source of his next fifty years of life. Why did his enemy have her? How could she be used against him?
He feared that killing her now, more than a month before her time, would destroy him.
As he hid below the window to think, he heard clamoring from the direction of his intended sacrifice, and he guessed from the clinking of material and the sliding sounds that she’d grabbed additional riot shields from the darkness behind her and had slid them towards the nearest hunter.
One of the hunters, with the weathered voice of an aged man, cried out to him. “Do you speak English?”
Terrified, the wraith remained silent.
“I know you speak English. I know you recognize this woman. She’s very important to you, and we have her. I don’t imagine you can risk shooting her, can you?”
Edric risked a retort. “I’ll kill you all.”
“I think not. You won’t risk hurting her. If you’d care to look, she’s already next to me, and I’ve put a protective amulet around her neck. Whatever means you had of identifying her as anything special to you is now gone.”
“I said I’ll kill you all!”
“That’s unlikely. But if you kill any of the women, you’ll have no way of telling them apart.”
“Damn you! I will simplify this and kill you all.” His ire rose, clouding his thoughts.
The hunter remained silent.
Edric risked a look over the sill, and he saw three riot shields racing down the aisles towards his jail cells. The hunter had been correct, and the wraith was afraid to kill his sacrifice. So, he took aim at the lone shield in the passageway, since the form it hid seemed too large to be the woman. He unleashed a burst from his assault rifle, but the rounds bounced off the plastic. Without return fire from his enemy, he studied the shield for weakness but found none. Even the handles were protected.
Below him, a small explosive detonated, opening the way to the first prison.
“Damn them!” The wraith shifted to his shotgun, extended it outside his window, and risked a good shot at a shield. The defense held, but the buckshot knocked the hunter to his backside.
The other hunter risked exposure and aimed a pistol at Edric’s head.
His instincts forced him to pull back into his room, and the bullets sailed by his window.
Expecting a second detonation to free the next prisoner, Edric waited, but the next loud sound was a deep thud. Sticking his head into the warehouse, he saw nobody. The three intruders were hidden from his view, below him, inside the nearest jail cell.
The deep thud echoed again, and this time he heard crumbling and realized one of the hunters had brought a sledgehammer on his back and was breaking down the drywall between the jails.
Edric gave his assailants credit for the foresight to have brought bolt cutters they’d need to free his prisoners while he remained helpless to stop them–unless he risked a trip to the warehouse floor, exposed, outgunned, and in the weaker position.
What he hoped they failed to consider was his resolve to risk that trip. Strapping his assault rifle over his shoulder, he grabbed his shotgun and stood. Whether he ended up hurting or even killing his sacrifice, he trusted his Master to sort out the fallout.
Action would be rewarded, and he turned to descend the stairs and face his enemy.
CHAPTER 41
While his father took over the hammering duties to break down the wall of the final prison cell, Liam led the first three captives, the Syrian women, towards safety. He backed out of the first jail cell and aimed his Heckler and Koch 416 rifle at the window above him. Seeing nothing, he sprinted half the aisle’s distance, turned, and aimed again.
The first Syrian woman gazed at him with hopeful eyes.
He gestured for her to raise her riot shield and to walk backwards towards him.
She obeyed, as did the other two.
Stealing a glimpse from the corner of his eye, the young hunter saw what he’d hoped to see.
In the darkness of the blown-open loading dock door which represented the prisoners’ exit, Dianne stood with her dagger cocked by her ear. With its enchanted azure glue, the weapon was poised to end the battle.
“Come on, show yourself one more time, you bastard.”
Through the radio earpiece, his father responded. “Say that again.”
“He’s not showing himself. I don’t have a shot. Dianne can’t see him yet, either.”
“Take advantage of this to get the women out.”
“Of course. Yulla! Imshi!”
Sidestepping behind their riot shields, the women followed Liam towards Dianne, who marked the exit.
The young hunter kept his rifle barrel aimed high but saw nothing. But as each Syrian woman handed him her shield and disappeared through the dock’s door into the safety of darkness, a little pressure came off his chest. He slung two of the riot shiel
ds over his shoulder and carried the third in front of him as protection, remarking at their bulletproof lightness. As he reached the midway point of his return to the cells, he broke away from the back wall and headed down the empty aisle.
Screaming, Dianne announced her dagger throw.
Expecting to see the azure arc towards the wraith’s second-story nest, Liam was shocked when the knife cut a light blue swath straight towards the bottom of the stairs. Though he watched in a timeframe that seemed like slow motion, he knew the divine force behind the empath’s toss was deadly. He held his breath as the blade’s tip careened towards the flesh of the wraith’s neck, exposed above his vest and below his helmet.
A fraction of a second before the kill, the wraith’s dagger glowed sanguine, appeared in his hand, and whipped a red arc of defiance. It caught the empath’s dagger inches from its target and sent the flying knife against the wall.
The plan’s climactic assassination had failed.
Dumbfounded, Liam stared through the shelving at the wraith, who stared in a similar trance at his own dagger, wondering how he’d cheated death.
Though she wore body armor, Dianne was unarmed and standing in helpless exposure to the wraith’s weapons.
To distract the savage, who appeared like the horrific demonic beast he’d expected, Liam yelled while sprinting towards the jail cells. He dropped the two extra shields by the wall and kept the third in front of him.
The ruse worked, drawing the enemy’s shotgun attack, but the impact of the shells sent the young hunter sideways to the floor. “Father, I’m down. The wraith’s on the ground floor. Dianne’s exposed. He parried her dagger.”
“Dear God, lad. Can Dianne get to her dagger?”
“Only if he keeps coming for me. He’s coming now.”
“Keep your head down. I’m shooting my way out.” The fourth jail cell’s door erupted in splinters as the elder hunter’s shotgun burst it open.
“Negative, Father. The concertina wire’s still in the way. You can’t get out.”
“I know that, but I distracted him, didn’t I?”
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