“Yeah. Felipe?”
I turned and saw my friend slumped on the ground, a pool of blood slowly spreading under his body. My voice caught in my throat. “I… I don’t?—”
My words were cut off by another round of silenced gunfire. We were caught in some kind of crossfire. A man from upstairs was firing down at us, and someone else in the basement was shooting up the stairs toward us. My brother and I leaped toward the kitchen to safety.
The house wasn’t complete, the walls were naked drywall, and the cabinets hadn’t even been installed yet. There weren’t a ton of places to hide. Panic started to swirl in my head and chest. I tried to steady myself, but the gunfire and screams of my enemies made that difficult.
“What do we do?” Diego shouted over the cacophony.
“Upstairs. We have to take him out first. He’s got the high ground.”
Diego looked around, and a patch of drywall exploded beside his head, bullets ripping into the plywood of the floor. “Any fucking ideas on how to do that, big brother?”
I took two deep breaths and nodded. “I’ll run through the living room. The ceiling is vaulted, so there should be a banister or something he’ll be shooting from. How high can you jump?”
“As a wolf? I don’t know. Eight, maybe nine feet.”
“When he’s focused on me, you jump up and go for him.”
“But—”
I was running before he could protest further. I had to move before the two men came together. Once that happened, we’d be done for. I sprinted across the kitchen in the same circuit I’d taken a few seconds earlier. I shifted, pushing myself to run faster. When I came out into the living room, I could almost feel the man’s eyes and barrel lock on to me. I could hear the burst of gunfire erupting behind me. I ran and cut hard, sliding around a corner as a trail of holes opened in the floor beside my feet, inches from me. I heard the click of an empty chamber. The man was already dropping his clip and grabbing another.
A shadow emerged from the kitchen. Diego. I howled at the man, making sure his attention stayed on me as he reloaded. Diego galloped from the dining room and jumped. In an act of pure canine acrobatics, he leaped and placed his back paws on the lower newel post, then sprang upward nearly ten feet toward my assailant. The barrel of the gun, freshly loaded, turned toward me. I saw the inky black tube of the rifle staring at me like the eye of death. An instant before he pulled the trigger, Diego’s jaw clamped on the man’s trigger hand. His teeth sank deep, and the gun twisted as it fired. I felt the wind of three bullets as they whizzed by my head.
Diego used the full weight of his body to jerk the man’s hand. His teeth were fully embedded in the man’s flesh. It pulled the shooter off balance, and he tumbled over the edge of the banister. Diego let go once the man flipped over and fell straight down. I watched him turn his head and look at the floor before he landed on his face, the weight of his body crashing down above him. The sound of his neck snapping was like a wet stick breaking.
He lay in a heap of broken flesh on the floor. Before I could catch my breath, a voice shouted out behind us.
“Freeze, you fuckers!”
Diego and I shifted and turned to see the sixth guard standing at the top of the stairs. He had Maddy’s mother’s neck locked in one arm and a pistol pressed against her head with the other. She was sobbing and looked to be on the verge of going into shock. Her face was pale and gaunt.
“You move, and I blow this bitch’s brains all over the wall. Got it?”
I raised my hands in supplication. My brain was spinning to find a way out of this. We were still two against one. There had to be a way.
The man spat on the ground in front of us. “The royals are gonna skin you fucking shifters alive. You understand that? No one stands against them. Pieces of shit.” He pushed toward the door, and we had to back up. He looked like he’d pull the trigger any instant.
Forcing my voice to be calm, I said, “Listen, you can still get out of this. Leave the woman, and we’ll let you go. No harm, no foul. Okay?”
The man gave a humorless chuckle. “Do you think I’m stupid? Why would I ever trust a shifter?” He sneered in disgust and turned the gun barrel toward me. “Maybe I’ll go ahead and?—”
His words were cut off by a scream. My whole body jerked, thinking I’d been shot. I looked down and saw Felipe’s wolf jaw clamped around the man’s Achilles heel. Blood spurted from the man’s leg. Diego bolted forward and swatted the gun from the man’s hand. I ran straight toward the guard, who was still screaming in pain. Maddy’s mother finally slipped out of his grip, and I kicked him dead in the chest, his ribcage cracking from the blow. He flew backward through the door to the basement and tumbled down the stairs.
Diego took Maddy’s mom into his arms, and she started to sob. She was having trouble standing, which made me think she’d been drugged. I knelt down to check on Felipe. He shifted back to human form, the knife still sticking out of his stomach.
Felipe grimaced in pain. “Fucker got me, Nico.”
“Nah, bro, looks like you got him.”
“We need to go, Nico,” Diego said, hustling Maddy’s mother toward the door. “They might have had time to call the guys who just left. No way we can take another six guys.”
I scooped Felipe in my arms and stood, doing my best to keep the knife in his gut from moving. “Jesus Christ, man. You need to lose some weight. You’re one heavy son of a bitch,” I grunted as I walked toward the door.
“Well, I didn’t ask you to sweep me off my feet like a princess. I hope you don’t think you’re getting lucky with this whole chivalry thing. You’re cute and all, but I prefer the ladies.” Felipe hissed in pain as we went down the steps.
The walk back to the car seemed to take forever. I kept waiting for headlights to come sweeping around the corner, for the reinforcements to come and finish us off. That would be the end of us. Felipe groaned in pain as I got him into the back seat.
