Lover Reborn

The dining, living, and family rooms turned out to be one massive expanse, kind of like a football field that had been outfitted at a home show. The good news was that there were ornate columns at regular intervals that supported the ceiling over the expanse, and he and Qhuinn used them for cover as they darted out, checked sliding glass doors, and ducked back again.

Everything was locked: As they worked the circle of the giant room, shit was tight as a tick on all sides. But God, all that glass…

Stopping short, he leveled his gun muzzle at a stretch of it, whistled twice to signal to V… and popped off a test shot.

No shattering. Not even a cracking. The ten-by-six-foot pane simply caught the bullet and held it, like the thing was nothing more than ABC gum.

Assail hadn’t lied. At least not about that.

From the back of the house, their host’s voice was distant but clear. “Close and lock the door at the base of the stairs to the second floor. Fast.”

Roger. That.

John let Qhuinn sweep the bathrooms and the office as he beat feet over to a black-and-white marble staircase. Sure enough, tucked into the wall was a stainless-steel, fireproof panel that, when you pulled it out, smelled like fresh paint, as if it had been recently installed.

There were two locks on it, one so you could isolated yourself upstairs, one for doing the same downstairs.

As he got the thing into place and secured, he had to have some respect for how Assail handled security measures.

“This place is a fortress,” Qhuinn said as he came out of another bathroom.

Cellar? John mouthed so he didn’t have to reholster his gun.

Like he read minds, Assail called out, “The basement door is locked. It’s in the kitchen by the second fridge.”

They darted back in the direction they’d started out in, locating another one of those steel jobbies that happened to already be slid into place and bolted.

John checked his phone, and saw the group text that Rhage had sent out: Hvy fghtn dwntwn—b thr ASAP.

Fuck, he breathed as he flashed the screen to Qhuinn.

“I’m going out there,” the guy announced as he jogged for one of the sliders. “Lock the door after me —”

John lunged for the fighter, snagging a hold. The hell you are, he mouthed.

Qhuinn shook off the iron grip. “This is a cluster-fuck waiting to happen, and Wrath has to be taken to the clinic.” As John cursed in silence, Qhuinn shook his head. “Be reasonable, buddy. You’re the backup for V with Assail, and the pair of you have to keep the interior secured. Likewise, that van has to get moving because the king’s bleeding. You need to let me go out there and do what I can to secure the area—we can’t spare anybody else.”

John cursed again, his mind churning for other options.

In the end, he clapped his best friend on the side of the neck and brought their foreheads together for a brief moment. Then he let go and backed the fuck off—even though it nearly killed him.

Bottom line, his first duty was to save the king, not his best friend. Wrath was the mission critical here, not Qhuinn.

Besides, Qhuinn was a deadly son of a bitch, fast on his feet, good with a gun, great with a knife.

You had to trust those skills. And the bastard was right: They were sorely needed in this situation.

With a final nod, Qhuinn slipped out of a glass door, and John closed and locked it behind him… leaving the male on his own.

At least the Band of Bastards would likely assume everyone was in the house and staying there—they had to know that backup would be coming, and in most situations, people waited for their reinforcements to arrive before they marshaled a counterattack.

“John! Qhuinn!” V called out. “What the hell is going on out there!”

John jogged back to the mudroom. Unfortunately, there was no effective way to communicate without losing his weapon—

“Shit, Qhuinn went out there alone, didn’t he.”

Assail laughed softly. “And I thought I was the only one with a death wish.”

FORTY-ONE

Directly after Syphon pulled the trigger on his long-range rifle, Xcor’s first thought was that the male may well have killed the king.

Standing in the shelter of the forest, he was amazed at his soldier’s accuracy: The bullet had sailed across the lawn, blown out the glass pane of the door… and dropped the king like a bag of sand.

Either that or the king had chosen to take cover.

There was no way of knowing whether the disappearance was a defensive reaction or the collapse of a male gravely injured.

Mayhap both were true.

“Open fire,” he commanded into the newfangled transistor at his shoulder. “And assume second positions.”

With practiced precision, his soldiers went into action, the ringing sound of gunfire providing cover as everyone but him and Throe shifted in various directions.

The Brotherhood would be arriving at any moment, so there was little time to batten down the hatches and prepare for conflict. Good thing his soldiers were well trained—

All at once, the house went dark—smart. It made them more difficult to isolate as targets, although given the way all the glass except for that back door’s had withstood bullets, it appeared as though Assail was far more tactical than your average glymera waffle-about.

Car bombs notwithstanding.

In the lull that followed, Xcor had to assume that if the king were alive and completely unhit, Wrath would dematerialize through the opening in the back door, get out of the area, and the others would attack. If the king was injured, they would hunker down and wait for the other members of the Brotherhood to arrive and provide cover for a drive-out. And if the Blind King were dead? They would stay with the body to protect it until the others got here—

A gun went off in the interior. One shot, the flash of which appeared to the left.

They were testing the glass, he thought. So Assail was either dead or they didn’t trust him.

“Someone is coming out,” Throe said by his side.

“Shoot to kill,” Xcor ordered into his shoulder.

There was no reason to take a chance at a capture: Anybody fighting alongside the Brotherhood would be trained to withstand torture, and therefore not a good candidate for information gathering. More to the point, this situation was a powder keg about to explode, and reducing the number of the enemy was the most important goal; taking prisoners was not.

Gunfire rang out as his bastards tried to pick off whoever had departed, but naturally the fighter dematerialized so it was unlikely they were hit—

The Brotherhood arrived all at once, the massive fighters taking positions all over the exterior of house, as if it had been scoped out previously.

Gunfire was traded, with Xcor aiming for the pair on the roof whilst his others focused on the dark shapes moving around the porches as well as any who might be coming up from behind in the woods.

He needed to get in the path of any vehicle that attempted to get away from the house.

“I shall cover the garage,” he spoke into his transistor. “Hold positions.”