Darby was on Jake in a flash, taking several M4 rounds in the chest in an effort to get close enough to knock his weapon aside. The creature was all jagged claws and sharp fangs.
Shit, the thing was fast—even faster than Damien. Within moments, Jake’s forearms were a bloody mess, and he was so focused on defending himself that he never even saw the boot coming his way until it connected with his chest and sent him flying across the room to smash into the wall right under the TV screens. That’s how he saw the countdown clock and the fact that it had somehow run down to less than a minute.
That knowledge scared the hell out of him, but not nearly as much as the image of Jes fighting Damien, the natum towering over her by almost two feet. Like him, Jes had lost her weapon and was trying to fend the massive creature off by hand, punching and kicking so fast it was almost a blur. But her blows seemed to do little damage.
He had to help her.
But Darby cut him off, claws shredding through his vest and shirt underneath, slicing his chest and shoulders, seemingly unfazed by the big chunks of flesh Jake ripped off him with his own claws. The natum was actually laughing, as if the wounds didn’t bother him at all.
Jake was trying to come up with another plan, until he saw Jes go down, scrambling backward across the floor to get away from Damien. The idea that she was about to be killed drove every rational thought out of his head, and suddenly the only thing that mattered was killing Darby, then reaching Jes in time to save her.
Baring his teeth, Jake charged Darby. The natum ripped into him, but Jake ignored the pain. Catching the creature by the throat, Jake lifted him off his feet like a toy and shoved his clawed hand into the thing’s abdomen with a growl that shook the room.
Dropping Darby with a snarl, Jake spun around to see Damien kneeling in front of Jes, his hands clasped over his stomach as oily blood poured out by the gallon. His features had barely started to change when the creature flopped forward on his face.
That’s when Jake realized the shooting had stopped and the rumbling he’d thought were his growls still echoing in the room was something completely different. He glanced at the countdown clock to see that it had reached zero. On the TV screens, flames were already coming from the base of the rocket.
He hurried over to the computers. Maybe if he shot them up, they could still stop the launch. But the one scientist still left alive, his face covered in his own blood, shook his head even as he struggled for breath.
“Too late. Too late,” he muttered in heavily accented English before he died.
Jake didn’t stop to think. M4 in hand, he reloaded as he raced for the door. It was insane, but he had some crazy thought in his head that maybe he could shoot the rocket motor from this distance and make something good happen.
Flames billowed out from under the rocket now, and the ground around them shook like a frigging earthquake had hit. There was no way he’d hit even the rocket from here with a 5.56mm round. The range was too far.
“Get to the helicopter!” Jes shouted, running toward the door.
Of course! He could use the .50 caliber mounted in the door. He’d have to rip the thing out of the mounting supports to do it, but it would definitely give him more range. Probably still not enough, but better than what he had now.
When they got to the helicopter, the pilot was nowhere in sight. That sucked, since they needed him to fly the damn thing. But then Jes ran to the front left side and climbed in, and Jake found himself hoping just a little as he jumped into the bird and took the gunner position.
“Can you fly the thing?” he shouted, even as the rotors roared faster above them and the chopper began to pitch forward on the front of its skids.
She flashed him a beautiful smile over her shoulder. “We’re going to find out.”
Taking that as a yes, Jake checked the .50 caliber gun, loading a fresh round off the belt and holding on for dear life as Jes tipped the helicopter almost on its nose and took off like a frigging combat pilot.
Looking out the door, Jake saw that the rocket was already a couple hundred feet off the ground and building speed. “Take us higher. We have to get closer before the rocket gains too much velocity.”
Jes complied and while the helicopter wasn’t exactly stable, it was at least under control. “I can climb and fly pretty straight and level, but any kind of maneuvers are out. I’m not so sure about the landing part either.”
Good to know.
“That’s okay,” he shouted back as they climbed and moved closer at the same time. They were probably at almost five hundred feet already and getting higher, but not nearly as fast as the rocket. “Just get us up there in time.”
“Isn’t it going to be bad to release all that gas when the rocket hits the ground?” she asked, slipping the helicopter sideways and giving him a good shooting angle.
“I’m hoping the fireball will consume everything.” He squeezed the double trigger on the big gun. “Hold on. This isn’t going to end well.”
Jake had half a second to see Jes’s panic-stricken expression before the enormous Ariane 5 motor came apart in a flash of light and smoke.
The reaction was a hell of a lot more violent than he’d expected, and he almost fell out the open door as the entire helicopter got shoved sideways like a giant hand had smacked them. For a moment, he hung out over the skids in open air, his grip on the handles of the machine gun the only thing keeping him in contact with the bird. With a grunt, he swung himself back inside—barely—only to find Jes fighting with the controls and doing everything she could to keep them from flipping completely over in a barrel roll.
Jake thought for a minute they might have a chance…until there was a second explosion as the entire front of the rocket disappeared in a fireball brighter than the one the engine produced. The flames swatted the chopper like a bug, and Jake knew there was no chance they were going to stay in the air. No way in hell was he going down on another helicopter. Once was frigging enough for him.
Leaning forward, he got a hand on the shoulder of Jes’s tactical harness, yanking her out of her seat and dragging her back against his chest. Holding on to her tightly, he leaped out the door of the helicopter as it spiraled downward. It was difficult to know exactly how high they were, but it had to be at least fifty feet. He knew impact with the ground was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, but he wrapped himself around Jes as best as he could, bracing for impact and praying she’d survive even if he didn’t.
Because while he was a werewolf, living through this wasn’t a given.
