A pile of rubble suddenly went flying, and Steel emerged from it. Their team leader was breathing hard, his eyes wild. Covered in a thick layer of dust, he looked like some sort of furious avenging ghost warrior.
“It’s us, Dragon and Blade,” he called out, and Steel’s gaze snapped toward them.
“Rose,” Steel howled, voice ragged.
“We’ll get to her, to them,” Dragon assured his friend, uncomfortable with the role reversal. Given his past and the anger already planted in him from birth, he’d always been the most volatile. Usually, it was Steel working to calm him down before he did something rash, but for once he was the voice of reason.
It was clear Steel was doing everything he could to rein in his terror for the woman he loved, same way he was. After a few tense seconds where Dragon wondered if he could knock down his team leader before the much stronger man could use his enhanced strength to crush him like a bug, Steel dropped his head and dragged in a breath they could all hear.
When Steel looked back up, Dragon could see he’d gotten himself back under control.
“The others?” Steel asked as he staggered toward them.
“Thunder is pinned,” he replied.
“Thunder is fine,” the man in question said on a groan, and they all turned back to find him pushing up and reaching down to shove off the last of the concrete on his legs.
“Voodoo and Lion?” Steel asked.
A loud cough echoed through the space, and movement a little further down the hall from where they were revealed Lion pushing to his feet. “Voodoo is down,” he called out.
Blade helped Thunder up, and all four of them climbed over the debris to get to where Lion was now up and on his knees, leaning over Voodoo. Even with the eerie green of the night vision goggles, Dragon could tell that the color of Voodoo’s skin was off.
“Alive?” he asked as he dropped to his knees beside Lion and Voodoo.
“Barely,” Lion replied.
“Look.” Thunder pointed to a piece of piping that had embedded itself in Voodoo’s side.
On anyone else, it would be enough to kill them, but Voodoo was different. They all had enhanced healing, but Voodoo was something else. He’d seen some crazy things when it came to this man. Both in healing himself and dragging others back from the brink.
“Pull it out,” Steel ordered.
“It might kill him,” Blade protested.
“It won't.” Steel said it so confidently that Lion seemed to automatically move a hand to grasp the pipe.
After a brief hesitation, the man yanked, and Voodoo’s entire body jerked as though in pain, although the man’s eyes didn't open, his lashes didn't so much as flutter on his cheeks.
“You guys go, find the girls, I’ll stay with him,” Lion said as he lifted Voodoo’s clothes to get access to the wound.
As badly as he wanted to get to Cassandra, ease the fiery itch under his skin, Dragon’s gaze locked on the wound. “What the hell? It’s healing already, look.”
Before their very eyes, the gash in Voodoo’s stomach, a huge hole at least two inches in diameter, began to close. It was like watching magic happen.
Seconds later, Voodoo groaned and lifted a hand toward the wound. “Damn, that hurt.”
“You should be dead, man,” Thunder said softly.
“Yet I'm not,” Voodoo replied.
“Think you should stay still for a bit,” Lion said when Voodoo tried to sit.
“Can't. The girls, we have to get to them. I feel … something is wrong.”
Nobody attempted to argue with the man. Voodoo knew things sometimes before the rest of them. At the same time Dragon pulled in a deep breath through his nose, Blade cocked his head to the side.
Beneath the lingering scent of bleach, beneath the heavy smell of the dust and debris, he could smell something else. Another person. More than that, he could smell fear. Cassandra’s fear.
