None of us would leave those woods unscathed. I just hoped that we’d survive it.
As we slowly and quietly made our way toward where Reese and Lucy were hidden, I sent every desperate plea I could think of into the universe. We just had to get outside the perimeterthat the humans had made. If we did that, we could find a defensive position and hole up until someone found us.
Pop had made calls to old teammates. Daniel and Uncle Dalton had to be finished soon, and they’d get the message Pop had sent. Someone was coming.
I had to believe someone was coming.
Holding back a scream, I watched as Ambrose fell.
I raised my rifle and fired.
Ambrose rose again. The human didn’t.
Daniel’s oldest brother nodded at me to keep going.
Setting my hand on top of Seamus’s at my waist, I walked forward.
The humans were like fleas, popping up when I least expected them. It wasn’t a coordinated attack. Instead, they seemed to be lying in wait until we were nearly on top of them.
My nerves were fried.
Seamus’s hot breath shuddered against the back of my neck. He was crying.
The boys had been trained the same way that Ian and I had been. They were proficient in every type of weapon imaginable, and we’d armed them.
But we still forced them to use me and their mother as cover.
Aunt Halle had taken a bullet in her chest near her collarbone while shoving Grant to the forest floor.
I’d been hit in the face while backing Seamus around the trunk of a tree.
And the boys, my poor baby cousins, had to watch.
It was the most heinous thing I’d ever done—making them use us as human shields—and in the few quiet moments, when I had the ability to think, I wondered if Daniel had felt this way when he left me behind. We were protecting them, but I wasn’t sure that they’d ever recover from it.
At first, when the humans swarmed us, I didn’t realize what was happening. We’d been facing one or two of them at a time for the last ten minutes, and it took me a few moments to realize that the game had changed.
They rose like specters from the bushes around us, and there were so many of them I was struck dumb that the Vampires with me hadn’t heard them breathing. These humans were highly trained. They moved like liquid, rising and attacking in one smooth movement.
“Descendre,” I hissed to Seamus as I turned to meet a human who hadn’t even unholstered his weapon.
I felt Seamus drop to his knees and the kick of his rifle as he shot the human.
My guts clenched in fear. By shooting his rifle, he’d become a target to eliminate instead of collateral damage.
“Don’t—”
“You won’t make it without us,” he replied grimly, cutting me off.
There was so much movement around us that I struggled to aim and fire. There were too many of us in the melee, and I was terrified that I’d hit one of the Bouchers or Aunt Halle or Grant. Pulling my knife from my belt, I met the next human that came at us.
I felt feral as I stabbed at his neck and shoulders, struggling to stay on my feet as we grappled.
It took longer than it should have. I was losing too much blood, and between that and the mating heat, my body was slowing down. My arms and legs didn’t move the way they should have. My instincts weren’t as sharp as normal.
Seamus cried out behind me as the man finally slumped to the ground, and I spun to find him scrambling backward, his pistol in the dirt. A large man was taunting him, the rifle in his hands pointed straight at my baby cousin.
Then out of nowhere, fur that was as familiar to me as my face—even covered in blood like it was—sailed through the air. Thunder’s paws hit the man’s chest.
