Bang! Bang! Bang!
Lore shot through the door, more cursing and gunfire coming from the other side as the man’s body fell to the ground on the inside. Bullets punched through the thin metal and nearly clipped her arm when she hurried to another metal door about three yards away. I watched in horror as she kicked the whole fucking door in and barged through with her gun drawn just as we came up to her back. It all happened in a span of seconds. Lore was on a goddamn rampage at this point. All we could do was back her up and drag her body out of the fight if she went down.
More shots rang out from inside the building, as three stray bullets punched through the wall between Taylor and me, just to the right of my hip. “Shit!” I cursed violently, edging closer to the door to look around quickly before ducking back.
More angry yells echoed in the open space, cut off by the rapport of several rounds of semi-automatics going off. From the brief glance I caught, Lore was camped out behind some boxes piled next to the roll-up she had ducked behind. I hoped she hadn’t moved.
“Go, go!” Taylor whisper-yelled at my shoulder. With another quick glance, I ducked low and crept over to the boxes.
Lore was already gone.
“Motherfucker!” He snarled, head whipping around to try to find his wayward sister. It didn’t take long.
“Fuckin’ crazy bitch!” A raspy voice rang out over the general chaos, and another barrage of shots bounced around. I lifted myself just enough to look over the tallest box toward where the most noise was coming from.
Lore had a body held up between her and the rest of the group, the man’s head lolling forward and bloody. There was definitely a bullet hole at his temple. He had been wearing a bulletproof vest, one that was currently catching several rounds as Lore used his corpse like a shield. In the next lull, she swung her own semi out and threw a spread of bullets, sending the rest of the men ducking behind whatever shipping containers and boxes they could find. Another two fell screaming to the floor, one clutching his stomach and another his upper right thigh. I moved around to the right of the box we hid behind, putting them in my sights down the barrel of my own Glock.
Bang! Bang!A bullet for each head.
“There’s more coming in the back!” Someone hollered from where the gang hid. A couple of men stood, like their instinct told them to run, and that was the last thing they did.
Lore shoved her meat shield to the side and raised her Glock to aim at the two who’d popped up from their cover. In that moment, watching her take aim with her legs braced apart like an experienced shooter, the pink neon glow backlighting the stitches and Xs on her mask, I had never felt such conflicting feelings of being terrified and awe-struck. My stomach dropped straight to my feet as I watched her take a shot to the shoulder, absorbing impact on the vest like it meant nothing, and began stalking forward, shooting anyone who cleared cover long enough for a headshot.
A wave of men in black tactical gear flooded in through one of the bay doors in the back, the deafening rattle of the door being thrown open just enough of a distraction for me to leave my hiding spot and take out another rival gang member. At this point there were only a handful of them, mostly taken out by Lore. The rest were mowed down pretty quickly from the team coming in on their right with their own AK-47s.
This ragtag group didn’t stand a chance. The obvious pattern of inexperienced thugs coming for Lore bothered me, but I couldn't place why.
When the bullets stopped flying, the only ones left standing were the Red Riot mob. Lore stormed right for a stack of boxes about twenty-five feet ahead from my five o’clock direction, reloading her gun as she went.
“Wait, Lore! God damn it!” Taylor rose from where he hunched at my side, running across the open space to catch up with his sister. The rest of their men fanned out to cover the remaining doors, and a few broke from the group to check over the bodies littering the filthy concrete floor.
I rushed to join him. It was then that I happened to look down and see the trail of blood dripping to the ground as she walked.
“Lore, you’re hurt.” How she didn’t even react to the wound disturbed me on a level I couldn’t describe. I’d seen my fair share of injuries, but it was rare to see even the most stoic of shifters so unbothered by a fuckinggunshot. Even for an alpha like Lore, a wound like that would take at least a half-day to heal.
Taylor whipped his head around to me, then looked down and around where he was, only a few feet behind her, and cursed again when he saw the spatters. “Lore, stop for just a damn second!”
She was crouched behind the steel shipping container, one hand twisted in the shirt of a man sprawled out on the floor. From how his head rolled side to side and his fingers flexed as they gripped the bullet hole gushing blood in his side, he was barely clinging to life.
“Who the fuck hired you?” Lore’s voice modulator made her sound like she was possessed by a demon. The blend of high and low tones that masked her words were made even more harsh by anger. It was hard to tell where her injury was, hidden by theblack of her tactical clothes. Wherever it was, she didn’t seem bothered by it.
The man’s head lolled toward her, and even as he lay dying, there was hatred burning in his muddy brown eyes. “Go… to hell, bitch.”
“Wrong answer.”
She was so quick, I barely had time to raise my gun and aim at his head before she gripped it in both of her gloved hands and wrenched it to the side. The way it popped with a sickeningcrunchwas enough to confirm his death. Then she was moving again, slipping just out of Taylor’s reach as he tried to catch her arm. Lore made a beeline to the one chair sat right in the center of the warehouse. A folding chair that held a woman’s naked body on it… or at least, the parts that had been strapped to it. The rest of her was scattered around it, as if the torturers cut her extremities off and tossed them aside like trash. Fingers, toes, hands, ears… even her breasts, hacked off to leave ragged holes on her chest. Someone had sliced her neck from ear to ear and left her head dangling back to barely hanging off her spine. Bile rose up in a wave, and I immediately bent over just in time to wretch it all out and watch it splatter on my shoes.
“Jesus…” Taylor came up beside where I stood, horror shaking his voice as he stared at the savagery taken out on Patty's body. Him, a hardened mobster, was stricken pale at the sight. The amount of blood pooled around the chair told enough of the story; whoever tortured her to death really took their time. Lore stood as still as if she were a statue, gloved hands clenched tightly at her sides as her head bent down to take it all in. “Hey… Lore. Patty wouldn’t want you to see her… you know. Like this. You two!” He waved over the closest Red Riot members who slung their guns over their shoulders and jogged over. Both had black bandanas tied across their faces with the stitched grins, but their eyes told enough. Pain and sadness radiated fromthem. “Pull one of the cars in and get Patty… loaded up. And give me your jackets, so we can cover her up.”
All three of them started unzipping and pulling off the black riding jackets, laying them over as much of Patty’s limp body as they could before setting about cutting the ropes to release her from the chair. She was short—that was part of what made her such a good decoy for Lore, with a similar stature and build—so it wasn’t hard for them to wrap a couple of jackets around to carry her body. When her head lolled to the side, the mask that covered it had my blood chilling to subarctic temperatures.
Someone had made a cheap plastic replica of Lore’s black mask andstapled it to her fucking face.Trickles of blood framed it in stark red rivulets where the staples punched through, some of the holes torn and ragged as if she were alive and thrashing when they did that. Through it all, Lore hadn’t moved an inch. It was hard to even tell if she was breathing. I had been completely ignored until Taylor turned and eyed my hunched-over body. Instead of disgust or scorn, he looked… sympathetic.
“Jerel can give you a ride home. Or, wherever you need to go. Maybe lie low for a while until we find out who did this? I’ll be in touch when I can.”
I wanted to stay. I wanted to be there for Lore. Showing this kind of squeamishness made me feel sick all over again for different reasons. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen my fair share of horrible things and tortured bodies. I hadn’t known much about her beyond her protectiveness of Lore that night in front of Davina, but it was clear to anyone who had eyes that Patty meant something to her and the Riot. Men were openly crying around me, their tears soaking into the bandanas covering half their faces. And she played an integral role in protecting Lore as her body double. Patty sacrificed her life and ended up like… this.
I wanted to be here for her now. Despite all the risks of opening myself up to a woman like Lore, I wanted to be that onesafe harbor she could rest in. Someone she felt like she could lean on during traumatic things like this.
