“On it, captain.” Silence fell for a handful of seconds that felt like days to Kaya. Then the warrior with the ability to psychically detect shifts in the energy forces of a place came back on the line. “I’m sensing a lot of fear and panic radiating from within the residence. There’s more death inside there too.”
Kaya’s stomach clenched. “Something’s not right.”
“No, it’s not,” Chase replied. “We’re too late. Opus’s assassins have already been here.”
The sudden staccato report of gunfire ripped through the quiet of the surrounding night. Mira’s face went grim. “Holy hell. They’re still here.”
As she said it, a bolt of lightning lit up the inky black sky near the lake. Then another.
Kaya looked toward the large body of water, where Aric, Webb, and Bal were currently swimming in as an amphibious team to breach the estate’s weakest perimeter. More light exploded in that vicinity. The bright illuminations reflected on the lake’s surface like fireworks.
Cold dread swept through Kaya’s veins. “It’s UV. Oh, my God. They’re shooting at them with ultraviolet!”
“Abort,” Mira called over the comm link. “All units abort right now!”
A reply came back at nearly the same time. “Bal’s down.” Webb’s usually calm voice had a catch to it now, and an edge of fear that Kaya had never heard in the arrogant male before. “Ah, Christ. They just ashed Bal. Fuck!”
Kaya’s hand flew to her mouth. A jagged moan leaked past anyway, anguish she couldn’t hold in. No. Not him. Not Balthazar.
Mira’s face held the same bleak disbelief, but the captain kept her composure. “Where are you, Webb?”
“Near the dock. Motherfuckers have me pinned down with UV fire.”
In the few seconds it took to receive that awful news, Tavia, Torin, and Darion arrived from their lookout points to rejoin Mira, Kaya, and Chase.
“We’re pulling out,” Mira told them. “If Opus has already been here, I doubt Scrully will be any use to us now. And I’m not going to lose anyone else over that asshole.”
“Aric’s already inside,” Webb reported. “As soon as we came out of the water and ditched our gear, we started taking heavy gunfire and UV. Before I knew it, Bal was down. Then Aric turned into shadow and I lost sight of him.”
“Oh, God,” Kaya murmured, every instinct she had twitching with the need to go after him. Even though Aric was more than capable of taking on a small army of human assailants purely by virtue of his Breed genetics, the thought of him charging into danger alone was too much to bear. Both the warrior in Kaya and the woman wanted nothing else but to be alongside her partner. “I’m going in too.”
“So am I,” Tavia and Carys announced at the same time. The pair of daywalking Breed females were united in their fury and their determination.
“You’re not going in there without me,” Chase demanded, his stance as unyielding as his hard gaze. “Neither one of you leaves my sight.”
Tavia’s eyes crackled with amber fire. “We’re going. And you’re staying.” The tips of her fangs glinted in the low light of the fading UV rays. “Don’t you dare try to override me on this. There’s no room for argument here, my love.”
The commander’s jaw went taut, but the only protest he uttered was a low growl as Tavia briefly touched his rigid cheek.
“All right, that’s settled,” Mira said. Then she spoke to the other Breed warriors who’d gone silent on the comm link. “The rest of you, stand down too. We’re going in.”
Carys’s Breed gaze glittered with the same fierce determination as her mother’s. “I’ll go provide cover for Webb.”
“Be careful,” Tavia said. Then she glanced at Mira and Kaya. “I’ll head for the house. Aric knows what he’s doing, but he may need some help. I’ll look for Scrully while I’m inside.”
At the captain’s nod, both daywalkers vanished into the woods.
“Let’s go,” Mira said.
Heart racing, Kaya fell in beside her friend and comrade. They made much slower progress than Tavia, who was likely already at the mansion and finding her way inside. Kaya and Mira raced through the thick forest that hemmed in the expansive limestone brick house and its sprawling footprint.
Up ahead, the rapid chatter of automatic gunfire. More explosions of UV light flashed in and around the house from attackers unaware that those Breed-killing weapons were no good against the daywalkers who had infiltrated the place. Men’s voices shouted orders near the stronghold; here and there, a human scream cut short as either Aric or his mother took them out.
With their own weapons in hand, Kaya and Mira reached the edge of the woods and hunkered down, peering out at the frenzy of activity near the mansion. They unleashed a hail of bullets on four guards jogging around from the back of the house, dropping them one by one. Kaya’s training kept her focus laser-sharp, her remorse for killing on a back burner.
She only wished she could say her soldier’s training was enough to stanch her concern for Aric. But as she and Mira rushed out of the trees and down to the lakefront mansion, all she could think about was the man she loved.
No sense in denying that fact, especially to herself.
