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.
She was in love with Aric Chase. The thought of losing him--the mere idea that he could meet with harm at the hands of their enemies tonight--put a hollow ache in the center of her breast.
“Around to the back,” Mira said. “The house is nothing but glass looking out over the water. All the easier to blast our way in from that side.”
Kaya nodded, reloading with a fresh magazine. “Let’s do it.”
She and Mira shot out the wall of soaring glass, standing back as the sharp, heavy shards rained down on the bricked terrace where they stood. The breach brought three men running into the large great room inside. Before they could open fire, Kaya and Mira mowed them down then stepped around the corpses to enter the residence.
Just as they did, bullets sprayed at them from the open loft area above. Mira squeezed off a volley of shots as she took cover behind an imposing carved wood bar that dominated one whole side of the room. Meanwhile Kaya dove out to the adjacent hall just as another armed man thundered her way. Rolling into a crouch, she squeezed the trigger of her semiautomatic pistol and the big human went down like a rock.
“Aric,” she whispered urgently into her comm’s mic. “I’m in. Where are you?”
His sharp, angry curse was a relief all by itself. “Kaya? Damn it, stay put.”
A deafening cacophony of gun blasts ripped over the open link before it went dead silent. “Aric!”
Ultraviolet light couldn’t hurt him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be shot to death with enough rounds to the head or vital organs. There were other ways he could be killed too. Possibilities she dared not even imagine.
She started moving even before she realized her boots were chewing up the floor beneath her. From the schematics of the house the team reviewed before leaving base, Kaya recalled the location of a back staircase that led to the second floor. The gunfire she heard over her comm had come from above. If Aric was up there too, she had to find him.
She found the stairs and started bounding up them on silent feet. Halfway to the top, a gunman rounded the corner and spotted her. He swung his weapon up and took aim at her. Kaya fired first, but had no choice other than to leap over the railing to avoid the returned shots.
She dropped to the floor below, bullets spraying her from behind. More than one struck home. The searing pain made her let out a scream.
Blood streaked the floor where she’d fallen and in a path behind her as she staggered on a wounded leg into a sheltered position against the wall of the stairwell. As soon as her assailant peered down to look for her, she raised her gun and filled his chest full of lead, ignoring the fiery protest of her bleeding biceps. The man fell over the banister in a heavy heap at her feet.
To her horror, as she sagged back against the wall, panting from blood loss and agony, three more guards closed in from all sides.
She struggled to lift her bloodied arm to defend herself. But in that next instant all she saw in front her was a blur of shadow and quicksilver movement. When it stopped, Aric was there, standing between her and the broken bodies of three dead gunmen whose necks had all been savagely twisted.
As for Aric, he had never looked more lethal. Eyes blazing like burning coals, his narrowed pupils were all but devoured by the fire of battle rage that lit his gaze. His fangs filled his mouth, bright white, sharp as daggers. The dermaglyphs that tracked up his arms and disappeared under the short sleeves of his black fatigues were seething with dark, vicious colors. His clothing
