by Zoey Parker
Slowly, my heartbeat eased into a steely staccato. I opened my eyes, locked in. I was a warrior, and I had a mission. There could be no failure.
I rolled onto my stomach and pulled the sniper rifle off my shoulder. Its open mouth was tight and pursed, eager to do its job. I propped open the stand and set it up along the gentle rise of the hill. Scrunching one eye closed, I pressed the other against the laser sights and looked through.
The rooftops were crystal clear, magnified a thousand times over in the eyepiece. I scanned slowly from the left side to the right. There—a head sticking up. I wrapped my index finger around the trigger, let out a long sigh to steady my lungs, and squeezed.
As I watched, the head erupted in a puff of liquid spray. One down.
I panned the gun a few yards farther. Another head emerged. Same thing—exhale, aim, fire. Just like the last, the guard went down instantly.
Four more times, I repeated the motion. I didn’t miss. I never missed.
I waited one minute to see if anyone else revealed themselves. When I didn’t see anything, I rearranged my equipment on my back and stood into a low crouch. Only two hundred yards separated me from the low wall that wrapped around the compound. I needed to reach it, climb over, and then hunt down the bastard who’d stolen my girl.
The tendons in my knuckles tightened. Drawing in a deep inhale, I took off towards the wall. My guns and blades clanked while I ran, vaulted, and threw myself over the barrier. I dropped to the other side and immediately rolled to put my back against a wall, pulling a gun from its holster as I somersaulted into position.
I found a silencer in my pocket and screwed it onto the barrel. I had to do as much as I could to avoid drawing attention. My job was simple: get in, get the girl, get out.
Again, I steadied myself.
Mismatched eyes looking back into mine while the waves crash around us. Her mouth open in an involuntary O as our bodies rock together.
A noise around the corner. I lunged out, keeping low to the ground, and fired off two rounds. Two bodies hit the floor, oozing.
I stayed close to the wall as I hurried down the slim avenue. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a hunch that Lobo would’ve kept her close to him. The king always stayed in the heart of the castle, and Lobo was no different. I was sure that he was cooped up somewhere near the center of the plot, as far away from danger as possible.
As I passed a silent doorway, I saw a hand flash out. I tried to react, but he was too quick. Knuckles cracked across my jaw, sending me sprawling into the dirt. The bastard knocked the breath out of me as he pounced onto my chest, delivering another two punches across my face.
I struggled under his weight, rolling side to side before I managed to swing my momentum enough that I spun on top of him. The man’s eyes were slitted and violent. Our hands locked as we each fought to gain control over the other.
He used his size advantage to roll me onto my back again. Ripping his wrist free from my grasp, he snatched a knife from his belt. He raised it high in the air, then brought it down brutally. I broke the descent with a forearm, the blade tip just inches from piercing through my eye.
The man grunted with the effort, trying to force the knife into my face. I could see veins standing out in his neck. I wouldn’t be able to hold him off much longer.
Tearing my left hand away, I plucked the dagger hidden in my boot. With the same motion, I shoved it up and under his ribs. Blood spat onto my wrist as I pushed it deeper in his gut and twisted. I watched as the life faded from his eyes and the downward pressure of his arm eased. He fell into a dead slump on top of me.
I threw him off, panting heavily. The bastard had gotten a jump on me. I had to be more careful. Olivia’s life depended on it.
Nothing else moved. Everyone must have gone to fight off my brothers on the other side. Rising to my feet, I kept running towards the center.
Hurry, I said to myself. Hurry.
Chapter 13: Revelations
Olivia
“Do you know why I like you so much?” Lobo asked as he paced towards me one slow step at a time.
He had a feline grace to his motions, slinky and purposeful. Every movement he made was unsettlingly smooth. I could tell that he liked this—biding his time, playing with me. He liked watching the terror take hold in my stomach. With each step he ate up another yard of the dozen or so that lay between us, and the sickening tingle I was feeling grew worse.
“Why?” I asked. For now, I would play along. I needed to let him enjoy the game, let it linger, and give Blaze enough time to find me. I hoped he would be able to discover the trapdoor that led to the drug factory we were standing in.
But for the time being, I was alone.
“It is because we have so much history together,” he hissed. “I have known your family for so long.” He was drawing out every syllable like the words tasted good to him, holding on to each one as long as possible before releasing them to drift through the stale, chemical-tainted air.
History? What was he talking about?
“What are you saying?” I asked him. I was backing slowly away, one step retreating to match each one of his advancing towards me. “My brother made the deal with you not too long ago. There’s no history there.”
Lobo smiled. “No, we go much farther back than that,” he said. The tingling had spread over my hands and feet. I was shaking in spite of my efforts to control myself.
Breathe, I thought. Just breathe.
He could see the confusion on my face. It only stoked the excitement written on his. He loved this game, knowing he had me trapped. He was a true predator.
“Don’t you know?” he asked. “Pero, no, how could you? You were so young.”
A whole new emotion swept through me. As desperate as I was to get away, I felt a morbid curiosity to know what he was about to reveal. Upstairs, the thunking noise of men fighting continued.
Lobo stepped forward. I stepped back, and felt the cool wall against my back. I had nowhere else to go.
I cleared my throat. “Know what?” I asked him. My voice fluttered with a nervous tremor.
He ignored my question. “Do you remember your parents?” he said.
What did my parents have to do with any of this? I had no idea what was going on, but I had to keep him entertained. I couldn’t move anywhere else. I was at his mercy.
“They left when I was five.” I answered. I scanned around the room, looking for something I could use to fight him off. But there was nothing within reach. The tile against my back was so shockingly cold. He was only a couple of steps away from me.
“Ah, is that what they told you?” Lobo said. He shook his head, as if I’d told him I still believed in Santa Claus. “Such a shame. You should have learned the truth.”
I took the bait. “What truth?”
The room was cold and silent.
Lobo smiled again. Wider, toothier, hungrier. When he spoke, it was like a dagger had plunged into my stomach.
“That I killed your father and took your mother from her home. For many years, I used her as a whore. I had my fill of her. When I was done, I threw her away.”
There was sweat pouring down my arms and sides—a cold sweat, a nasty, creeping sweat, like a fever seizing control of my body.
Lobo stepped forward. He was inches from me. He leaned in and took my ear between his teeth, nibbling, savoring, tasting. I felt his tongue flick against my flesh.
“And I am going to do the same thing to you.”
Chapter 14: (Blaze)
I willed myself forward. Get there, goddammit, I said in my head. I didn’t know how much time I had, but it couldn’t be much. Lobo was insane, but he was no idiot. He had to have some kind of hidden escape route—a motorcycle in the woods or a helicopter tucked away nearby. If I didn’t stop him before he left the compound, I’d never find him again.
Every building I checked was empty. “Where are you, motherfucker?” I growled to nobody. I ripped aside curtains, k
icked down doors, overturned every piece of furniture in search of something that would point me to him, but I found nothing.
The fire from the first explosion had taken hold amongst the buildings. I saw pillars of smoke rising up into the sky, thick and noxious. Gunfire still rang out, but by now it would have been reduced to a few Diablos cooped up in a corner somewhere, trading shots with the Angels, who were wreaking havoc on their territory.
I burst out of another frustratingly barren building and then I saw it. This was the one. The structure was long and low, one story, but it had an air of importance to it. The second I turned the corner and it came into sight, I knew this was where I would find him.
Right as I came out of the doorway, a bullet buried itself just an inch wide of my head. I flung myself to one side as another three shots slammed into the space I had just been occupying.
“Come back, you cocksucker!” called a Diablo from the other end of the alley. I crouched behind a wall and paused. When I heard nothing for a moment, I tried to venture my head out to see if I could spot the bastard.
The second I looked out I immediately recoiled. A spray of automatic fire shrieked past, barely missing me.
I was pinned down.
“Think, motherfucker, think,” I said to myself. The clock in my head was ticking down faster and faster. I had five minutes, maybe less, before Lobo would slip through my grasp yet again.
I heard the rasp of a gun being dragged across adobe. “Dónde estas, hijo de puta?” called the Diablo. He was coming closer to where I hid, narrowing my escape options with every approaching step. “Come and play,” he called out again.
I looked to my right. The walls were closed on three sides, and too high to climb over easily. The only way out was directly into the line of fire. I had to hope my trigger finger was faster than his—otherwise I was about to get gutted.
I steadied my shooting arm, pointing at the corner where the man was about to come around. I saw the head of his shadow, then the shoulders. He would be visible in three, two, one.
I saw the outer edge of his torso. I aimed. I pulled the trigger.
Click.
The clip was empty.
The Diablo came around the corner, his weapon aimed directly at where I was kneeling in the dirt. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten this far in, only to be trapped and killed in a back alley like a wild dog. If it ended like this, well, then God must be a real cruel son of a bitch.
He saw how I stared at the useless hunk of metal in my hand and knew right away that I had fired my last shot. A broad grin split his face.
“You stupid shit,” he spat at me. “Idiot Angel, about to die on your knees like a—”
He never finished his sentence, thanks to the spring-loaded blade that went scything through his throat at breakneck speed. Steezy yanked his arm away from the corpse and came around the corner, wiping Diablo blood from his sleeves.
He strode over to me and offered his hand. I grabbed it. He yanked me to my feet and smacked his hand on my chest.
“Close one, brother,” he said to me.
“I owe you,” I said back to him, still shaken by how close I had been to losing Olivia.
Then a gunshot rang out. Time froze.
I looked at the Diablo that Steezy had stabbed. With the last of the life left in him, he’d raised the gun in his hand, pointed it unsteadily at where I stood next to my brother, and managed to pull the trigger before collapsing in a bubble of blood.
I looked down at my own torso. Smooth, unblemished. I hadn’t been hit.
I looked at Steezy. He tried to smile, but grimaced instead. Then he crumpled under his own weight and fell to the ground. I dropped to my knees immediately.
“Steezy, don’t you dare fucking die on me,” I told him.
He winced. “I’ll be okay,” he told me. The left torso area of his shirt was quickly being stained crimson. He pressed a hand against the wound. “I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse. Now get the fuck out of here. If I take a bullet for you and we don’t even get the girl you came for, my ghost is gonna haunt your ass forever.”
He tried to laugh, but the pain cut him off midway. I squeezed his shoulder in my hand, then took off for the main building.
Lobo had a lot to answer for.
The first room I ran into was floored in geometric tile. I saw a man on the ground in front of an open cage. He was unconscious, though alive, I saw, as he continued to breath slowly. His balls had fallen out of his jeans, but they were smashed all to hell. Looked like someone had taken a real dislike to this poor son of a bitch.
Something colorful caught my eye. I reached down and picked up a loose piece of fabric next to the Diablo’s head.
At first I wondered why it looked so familiar, and then I remembered.
Kissing my way down her body, between her breasts and down the gentle rise and fall of her stomach. My fingers working the buttons of her jeans, slowly freeing the clasp. Each tooth of the zipper catching softly. Lower, lower, lower. Peeling the jeans down from around her hips…the flash of green lace…
These were Olivia’s panties.
I saw a ragged edge where someone had sliced them with a sharp edge. Anger, hot and rich, surged in every part of my body. I looked down again at the man on the floor with the kicked-in dick. Now I understood.
Burning, white-hot anger. Nova hot. Explosion.
Reaching into my boot, I pulled out a new handgun with a full clip. I roared as I emptied shot after shot into the man’s body. Every bullet sent blood arcing to the ceiling. His body twitched, but I kept shooting long after he had ceased moving.
I squeezed the trigger, again and again, until I realized I had run out of bullets a dozen pulls ago.
My ears were ringing, my anger slaked—for now at least. The man on the floor was far past dead. His body was riddled with holes and a tide of blood flowed away from his still corpse.
Motherfucker. He got everything he deserved.
Hurry, came a voice in my head. The seconds were sluicing away too quickly. I needed to find her. She had been here recently. Where did she go?
I swiveled my head around the room. Cage, empty. Chair, empty. Nothing in here but the body of the motherfucker who’d dared to touch my girl. There was only one other man in the world who’d done that, and what I was planning to do to him would make this fucker’s punishment look like a slap on the wrist.
The only way to go was further inside. I moved across the room and down the hallway. Halfway down, I saw a rug that had been pulled off to the side. I fell to one knee to examine the tile floor beneath it.
There, a cord. Taking hold, I pulled hard, and a rectangle-shaped piece of floor rose up.
I heard voices from within. Without thinking twice, I climbed down.
My brain registered a thousand details at once: big room, bright lights, vats of liquid, tables, bins, and in the corner, two shapes—Lobo and Olivia.
Lobo was speaking. “And I am going to do the same thing to you.”
Olivia saw me, recognized me. Her eyes were open wide.
Her mouth. Saying my name. “Blaze!”
Lobo turned around, reaching for something. There was a flash of metal—he had a gun in his hand.
I leaptdown fast. Fast enough? I didn’t know.
I swung up with the knife in my hand at the same time
Lobo’s gun went off.
Olivia screamed.
My knife hit flesh. Blood spurted—hot, wet.
We fell to the floor, Lobo and I, my hand slick with his blood as it shot in jets up my arm. The knife was jammed deep into his rib cage, buried all the way up to where my fingers were wrapped around the grip.
I felt a searing agony in my shoulder. The motherfucker got me.
I looked down at the man I’d stabbed.
Gotcha, bitch.
Chapter 15: Banishing Demons (Olivia)
Everything happened at once. I saw a man drop from the top of the ladder to the tile floor.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Blaze. His eyes were burning bright green, drinking in everything at once.
I screamed his name. “Blaze!”
Lobo jumped back, moving faster than I thought possible, pulling a gun from his hip and swinging it to point at Blaze. I wanted to do something to stop him, but everything was happening too fast. Blaze jumped forward right as the gun erupted.
It was like slow motion: I saw the bullet shoot from the mouth of the pistol and crash into Blaze’s shoulder. With his other arm, Blaze swung his knife up into Lobo’s gut. I heard the crunch of bone and the wet slop of flesh being torn as he shoved the blade deeper. They both went tumbling to the floor, Blaze landing on top.
