Jerking the small submachine gun out of the man’s hands, Jake swung it around to smash it into the face of the closest guy on the left before he could get a shot off. A quick slash with his right hand took out the first shooter’s throat while a vicious kick sent the guy stumbling back into the other attackers.
Two down…two to go.
Jake spun the MP7 around in his hand and slipped his index finger into the trigger guard. That was a little tricky with his claws fully extended, but he managed it just as the man he’d smacked in the face with the weapon’s butt recovered enough to come at him.
The MP7 burped in Jake’s hand, the rate of fire insane but recoil hardly noticeable. The bolt locked back on an empty magazine and the man he’d been aiming at went down with half a dozen holes in his chest even though he’d been wearing some kind of body armor. But that’s what the MP7’s armor-piercing ammo was meant to do—kill people wearing Kevlar.
Three down…one to go.
The last one almost got Jake because he was willing to do anything after seeing three of his buddies go down within the span of a couple seconds. He lunged forward still holding on to the body of the first shooter, using the man’s corpse as a shield and blazing through an entire 40 round magazine of ammo in an attempt to make Jake dead.
One of the bullets punched through Jake’s shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to slow him down. Slipping to the side out of the man’s shot line, he closed the distance between them and threw himself on the a-hole with an ear-splitting growl that froze the man solid for a moment.
Jake used the distraction to drop his empty weapon, then drive his target to the floor, the corpse with its throat torn out still wedged between them. Once he’d batted the other man’s weapon aside, all it took was a second or two to reach out and get his clawed hands on the guy’s head, snapping his neck with an audible crack.
He scooped up one of the MP7s lying on the floor but didn’t bother wasting the time searching the bodies looking for spare magazines. The entire time he’d been fighting the four men in the hallway, the sounds of the melee in the conference rooms had gotten louder. The scariest part was that he hadn’t heard a peep out of Harley the whole time. He needed to get in there.
Now.
There was another one of Darby’s armed men standing outside the doorway to the conference room, the bodies of several other men lying scattered around him. Based on the quality of their suits and the expensive handguns still held loosely in their dead hands, no doubt they were the security guys the Bilderberg Society people had brought with them.
Jake shot the man guarding the door without slowing down, leaping over the body even as it fell to get into the room beyond. He had to stop then just to make sense of the complete and utter chaos taking place within the large conference space.
The room was pitch-dark, lit only by the sporadic muzzle flashes of the various weapons being fired around him. Tables had been arranged in a loose V shape, but most had now been overturned or crushed flat. Plates, utensils, food, and bodies lay everywhere, hotel waitstaff, security guards, and Bilderberg members among the fallen.
The stench of smokeless powder, blood, and those muddle-scented creatures was everywhere. There were small clusters of fighting going on all around the room, people hunkered down behind overturned tables trying to defend themselves against the creatures who seemed nearly invincible in the face of the weapons being used against them.
Nearly invincible, but not completely.
Several of the creatures lay facedown on the floor, unmoving. It was impossible to know exactly where they’d been hit, but from the way the bodies were curled into a fetal position, he was willing to bet they’d been shot in the gut.
Jes’s idea had worked.
Jake followed his nose to Harley. She’d herded a group of people to one corner of the room, tables, chairs, and a speaker’s podium piled up to give them some level of protection. There were maybe a dozen of the Bilderberg members crouched down behind the makeshift barricade, along with four or five of their security guards, and a bunch of the hotel’s waitstaff.
Since Jake had first met her, Harley had always struck him as the most reserved and unassuming alpha he’d ever met. To the degree that sometimes he wondered if she really was an alpha. But that moment, seeing her standing tall, 9mm in her hand, keeping the band of survivors together and directing their attention to one threat after the next, made him forget any doubt he’d ever had.
Jake looked around the room, trying to find Damien, but the big man was nowhere to be seen. Oddly enough, Darby’s crew and the humans with them weren’t making any attempt to kidnap anyone. They were flat-out aiming to kill anyone they could reach, Bilderberg Society member or not.
Obviously, trying to grab these people for money wasn’t the plan.
Harley caught sight of him and pointed toward the large group of men attacking her position. Jake nodded and waded into the fight, the MP7 chattering in his hands. A few of Darby’s human goons and another one of the creatures went down before they even realized Jake was there. But when they finally figured it out, the counterattack was immediate and vicious.
Without any cover to hide behind, Jake had no choice but to fall back. He was thinking he might have to retreat all the way out the door when Misty’s voice in his ear caught his attention.
“Jake, Damien and a handful of his men are slipping away through the service corridors with three hostages. Their hands are tied behind their backs and they have bags over their heads, so I can’t tell exactly who they are, but the clothing tells me they’re members of the Bilderberg Society. They’re moving toward the front of the hotel. What do you want me to do?”
As if the remaining member of Darby’s assault team had been listening in on the radio traffic, the shooting suddenly dropped off sharply as the heavily armed men began to back out of the conference room. They fired enough to keep people ducking, but mostly they focused on getting away. A few of the creatures even paused long enough to reach down and scoop up their dead. Just the creatures, though. Apparently, human goons didn’t rate.
“Jake, Damien is almost at the front lobby of the hotel,” Misty announced urgently. “What do you want me to do?”
Jake growled in frustration, torn between letting the bad guys get away out the back or Damien and his hostages out the front. In the end, the answer was obvious.
“Harley and I will go after Damien,” he shouted, gesturing for her to follow him even as he ran for the door. “Find Forrest, then get to the conference room. Try and help the wounded, then deal with the police when they arrive.”
Then he was off and running, hitting the hallway outside the conference room at a full sprint. As he ran through the hotel toward the bedlam he could already hear from the direction of the lobby, he prayed Jes’s part of the mission was going better than his.
Because so far, this was a frigging clusterfuck.
