A breath. A moment. A silence.
I close my eyes. Give in.
And set the monster loose.
Kill them all.
The man’s shouted threats abruptly cease when my hand punches forward, crushing his windpipe. His finger reflexively squeezes the trigger, and I grab the muzzle, forcing it upward. I’m oblivious to the heat that scalds my palm raw as bullets discharge in rapid succession, dotting a line of perfect circles across the vaulted ceiling. With a snarl, I kick out his legs, take his weapon, and unload the magazine’s contents into his head until the floor resembles a gruesome Jackson Pollock painting.
“Syn!” Hendrix’s sharp bellow is quickly followed by a brisk breeze that kisses my cheek as a knife slices the air, inches from my head, and embeds itself in the left eye of the second man. He drops to the floor in a contorted heap, his good eye wide with disbelief and death behind the black mask covering his face.
I run into the living room, my sights set on the third man Tristan is fighting under the archway that leads from the back hallway to the kitchen. Where’s Fénix and Constantine?
Tristan’s heel kick knocks the man in my direction. I leap onto his back and grab either side of his head, twisting sharply and severing his spinal cord. He collapses onto the rug in front of the Christmas tree, taking me with him.
I blindly rip the Santa from its tether, tipping the tree over in the process, and shove the pointed candle into the man’s carotid artery. Blood gushes from the wound like a firehose, painting the beige patterned rug a bright crimson. I stab him again, and again, and again, not able to stop.
“Red.” Tristan lowers in front of me and gently, but firmly, stops my hand. “Baby, focus on my voice. Come back to us.”
Like a light switch being flicked, reality comes crashing in, but my first concern is my child. “Where’s Fénix?”
“Con got him to the basement. They’re safe. Let me take a look at your hand.”
“I’m fine,” I reply as I repeat Tristan’s promise like a mantra.Fénix is safe. They’re safe.
One of the panic rooms is in the basement. We have a smaller one upstairs in the walk-in closet of our bedroom. We had them built after what happened with Evan.
Hendrix runs in, breathless. “I did a sweep of the house and checked the cameras. Just those three.” He lifts me off the man’s prone body and wraps me tightly to his warm chest.
The adrenaline dump comes quickly, and my muscles vibrate uncontrollably as he holds me up on shaky legs.
My fingernails score into his back. “He can’t see me like this.”
Hendrix presses his lips to my temple, smearing droplets of blood across my cheek. “He won’t.”
Sirens wail in the far distance. We don’t have neighbors jutting up next to us, but maybe someone heard the gunshots. Luckily, the Society owns the Darlington police, so we’ll be able to sweep what happened here under the figurative rug if anyone does show up.
Tristan bends over the dead man and searches his pockets but doesn’t find anything. He pulls off the man’s face covering. Brown eyes, brown hair, clean-shaven. Late twenties, maybe. Nothing remarkable or familiar.
“Do you recognize him?” Hendrix asks.
“No.” Tristan examines his neck, then pulls up his sleeves. “No affiliate tattoos.”
Hendrix holds me back when I try to look for myself. “There’s been no chatter. No threats made since last year,” he says.
Running a frustrated hand through his hair, Tristan exhales. “Whoever sent them just started a war.”
I stare at the carnage. At the blood and bodies and the broken window. Anger rises swiftly. This shit touched my child. What he saw today will burrow itself in his subconscious and change him forever. With one cruel act of violence, his innocence was stolen from him.
“Until we know what we’re dealing with, I want Fénix to stay with Alana and Cillian.” Cillian’s house outside of Boston is like a fortress. No one will be able to get to him there. I’d send him to stay with Andie and her guys, but they’re spending the next couple of weeks on their private island.
Getting no argument from them, Tristan sweeps his shoe at some broken glass on the floor. “I’ll get someone here to board up the windows and door. I’ll call Aleks. He’s going to be pissed.”
That niggle of dread comes back full force. “I couldn’t find him today, and he won’t answer his phone.”
“Syn!” Pyotr’s voice shouts from outside, his footfalls pounding up the porch steps. “Syn! Tristan!Jesus,” we hear from the foyer. He comes around the corner and lowers his weapon as soon as he sees us. “You okay?”
Hendrix’s temper flashes hot. “Of course we’re not fucking okay! Three men just shot up our fucking house!”
