The door exploded open, and a man—bare-chested, wide-eyed, foam flecking his lips—barreled into the nearest soldier. He lifted the man like a rag doll and bent him backward until his body snapped. The crunch of spine shattering was audible even over the scream.
Gunfire erupted from other doors. Armed figures in helmets flooded the hall. It was a trap. A fucking trap.
“Engage!” Thane barked, already moving.
The berserker swung a piece of splintered door like a club, smashing another soldier’s skull against the wall. Blood sprayed in an arc. Riven drew his blades in the same breath he ducked a bullet, rolling across the carpet and burying steel into the thigh of one of the masked assailants. The man cried out—good, nottweaked out on Soulglass—and Riven yanked the blade free with a twist.
Behind him, Thane collided with the berserker.
The man was amped—too fast, too strong. His skin glowed faintly with the wrong kind of shimmer, the glitter of corrupted magic seeping through his pores. The motel corridor became a warzone—tile shattering, bodies colliding, bursts of gunfire lighting up the flickering overhead fluorescents.
Riven caught a glimpse of Thane, being driven back by the berserker’s brute strength. The man was relentless, snarling and inhuman. But Thane was fast, matching the man’s attacks blow for blow, though he bled from a gash above his temple, a bruise already blooming on his jaw.
Riven had no time to help.
Another masked assailant lunged at him. He parried a blow, twisted under an elbow, and stabbed up into the soft space beneath the attacker’s chin. Blood sprayed, and Riven let the body collapse.
He scanned the hallway. Two of the Virellien strike team still fought—one with a rifle, the other with knives—and they had almost dealt with the ambushing force.
A crash at the end of the hallway drew Riven’s attention. Thane had pinned the berserker against the wall, one forearm under his chin, the other driving a dagger repeatedly into the man’s ribs. Blood poured, but the fucker didn’t stop. He laughed maniacally, wetly.
Thane dropped the dagger and pulled his sidearm. One shot to the knee. The man staggered but didn’t fall.
Another punch to the throat. Riven winced at the sound.
Then Thane swept low, taking the berserker’s legs out. He crashed down with a snarl, and Thane straddled him, pummeling him. The gun pressed to the man’s temple, Thane’s voice like steel.
“He’s not coming back,” Thane said. His words were low, tight, for Riven’s ears. “Soulglass burned him hollow. This isn’t a man anymore. It’s a shell.”
Riven didn’t argue. He could see it too. The berserker’s eyes had no light, no recognition, just fury.
Thane pulled the trigger.
The body jerked once, and then went still.
In the aftermath, the silence was deafening.
The hallway was littered with corpses, enemy and Virellien both. Smoke hung thick in the air, tinged with copper and magic.
“Strip the bodies,” Thane ordered, voice sharp and cold. “I want anything—tattoos, IDs, jewelry. Anything we can run through Leron.”
One of the surviving soldiers knelt by the nearest corpse, already digging into pouches. “Nothing on this one. No tags, no sigils.”
“Keep going.”
Riven approached, wiping his blades clean on a discarded jacket. He looked at the two men they’d lost. One of them was barely recognizable.
“What about our own?” he asked quietly.
Thane didn’t look at him at first. When he did, his eyes were blazing. “I’ll take care of it.”
The finality of his voice was chilling.
Riven nodded. He didn’t push.
Thane turned, holstered his weapon, and looked back once at the berserker’s corpse. His jaw was clenched so tight it looked painful. “This was coordinated. Soulglass. Hollow Hand remnants, maybe. Someone sent these men.”
“And baited us with Kieran,” Riven added.
