Chapter 24
Declan
The shot from inside the chapel cuts through me. I’m on my feet in under a second, but I don’t get two paces before we are swarmed.
“Fuck,” I growl as at least six men surround us.
They are too close quarters to shoot, so I holster both weapons and swing for the nearest man, while Aidan and Cormac, presumably, do the same.
The first one takes my fist to the throat and staggers back, choking.
I wrench his knife hand sideways and drive my elbow into his face. Bone cracks. He drops.
A body slams into my side before I can turn properly.
We hit the wet ground hard. Mud splashes up my arm.
He gets one hand near my jaw, trying to pin my head, but I jam my forearm into his windpipe and buck him off enough to get my knee up between us.
Then I punch. Once. Twice. Third time, his head snaps back, and he goes limp.
Movement to my left. Aidan has a man by the collar and smashes his face into the chapel wall with admirable savagery. Cormac is worse. One of them comes at him with a baton, and Cormac rips it free and buries it into the man’s ribs until he folds.
Another fucker grabs for my gun. Wrong choice.
I catch his wrist, twist until he screams, and headbutt him square in the nose. He stumbles, but another replaces him.
“Get to Dervla!” I shout at Aidan, but it’s impossible.
We are outnumbered as more bodies enter the fight. I don’t have time to stop and think if she is dead, or if she killed someone. At this point, all we know is someone was in the chapel when she entered.
A fist lands in my face, and I grunt, staggering backwards. Pain bursts across my cheekbone. My vision flashes white for half a second.
I answer with murder.
I drive forward instead of back, slam my shoulder into the bastard’s chest, and take him down into the mud. He loses his footing. I lose my temper. My fist crashes into his mouth once, then again, then I get my hand around the grip of the handgun at my back and fire point-blank into his stomach.
The shot blows my hearing out on one side.
He jerks and drops.
No time.
I shove up to my feet, boots sliding on wet stone and churned grass, and finally get a clear look at the mess around us.
It was never going to be neat.
Cormac has one of them on his knees and is smashing his face into the side wall of the chapel with calm, repeated force. Aidan has drawn his gun now and put two down in fast succession, turning to sight on a third.
It’s shot out of his hand from a distance.
“Fuck,” he grunts, gripping his shoulder where it wrenched.
“Marksman,” I growl and then lunge at the guy going for Aidan.
We collide and end up in a bush near the side of the chapel.
Branches claw at my face as the bastard under me goes for my wrist. I jam my forearm across his throat and smash his hand against the chapel wall until the knife drops into the wet leaves.
He grins at me through blood.
I ram the barrel of my gun into his eye.
He grunts, and I shove off him, turning fast.
The shooter is up by the hedge line beyond the path, half-hidden behind a stone plinth, rifle braced. Smart position. Cunt.
Aidan is already moving, low and fast. He’s shaken off his injury. Good.
Cormac rips a handgun from the waistband of the man he’s just turned into mince and fires twice towards the hedge. Chips of stone kick up. Not enough.
A man comes at me from the right, and I don’t even see his face before I shoot him through the chest. He folds backwards into the mud.
Another one lunges in behind him with a blade.
I catch his arm, wrench it down, and stamp his knee sideways until it goes wrong with a wet pop.
I shoot him in the throat before he could finish whatever stupid plan he had.
Blood sprays hot across my knuckles. He drops, clutching at himself, and I’m already moving.
Every part of me goes feral.
I sprint for the doors, but two more bastards hit me from the side and drive me into the stone step. My spine cracks against it hard enough to make my teeth slam together. One of them gets a forearm across my chest. The other goes for my gun.
“No, the fuck you don’t.”
I jam my thumb into his eye and buck my hips, throwing him off just enough to tear free.
The second man swings for my head with something metal.
I duck. It glances off my temple instead of caving my skull in.
Pain flashes. I answer by slamming the butt of my gun straight into his mouth until his teeth break loose.
He screams. I shoot him through the jaw.
The one with the ruined eye comes back at me, mad enough to forget pain. I catch him low, drive him into the chapel wall. I let him slide down the stone and turn.
Aidan reaches the steps first, but the marksman fires again and forces him back behind the low wall by the path. Cormac moves like a fucking tank through two men, and I use the second he creates.
I put my head down and charge the chapel doors.
One of the bastards catches me around the middle from behind.
I slam my elbow back into his ribs, feel something give, then throw my weight sideways and take us both down the steps.
My shoulder hits stone. His skull hits harder.
I roll on top and put a bullet through his neck before he can get his bearings.
The chapel door is right there.
Another shot cracks from the hedge line.
Stone spits beside my face.
“Get that fucking shooter!” I roar.
“Trying!” Cormac growls. “I’m going to need you to create a path.”
“Great,” I mutter, wiping blood from my split lip and busted nose.
A man barrels into me before I can move two feet. I pivot and take him in the side with all the force I’ve got left. We crash into the low stone edging by the path. My gun skids from my hand into the grass.
“Fuck.”
He is heavier than he looks. Trained too. He drives a forearm into my throat and goes for a knife at his belt with the other hand. I get my hand in first, clamp his wrist, and slam it into the stone once, twice, until his fingers open. The knife drops. He headbutts me. Stars burst behind my eyes.
I snarl and smash my fist into his ear. He jerks. I roll, get on top, and hammer his face into the path until he stops fighting.
The shooter cracks another round off.
I hear it pass. Too close.
“Cormac…” I grunt.
I shove off the dead weight under me and dive for my gun in the grass. My fingers close round it just as another man reaches the steps from the far side. I fire once. He drops hard on the stone.
I risk a glance and catch Cormac charging the hedge line like a fucking nightmare, body low, gun up and murder in his stride.
He doesn’t zigzag. He doesn’t hesitate. He just goes straight through the open patch like the bullets have to ask permission first.
The marksman fires.
Cormac hits a stone plinth shoulder-first, uses it for cover for half a second, then launches again. The marksman adjusts too slowly. Cormac is on him before he can get a clean second sight picture.
They go down hard in the wet grass behind the hedge.
I stagger up the chapel steps, chest burning, ears ringing from too many close shots. The door is still shut. Fucking useless. I grab the handle and shove it open.
Dervla turns to me, gun levelled at a man on the ground, hand to his shoulder.
“Having fun?” she asks.
“Fuck, no, are you?” Relief crashes through me that she appears to be unharmed.
“Kind of. After I’ve got over the grossness of his proposal.”
I don’t question it.
Blood spatters the stone near, presumably, Brendan Murphy’s polished shoes. The bastard has one hand clamped over his shoulder where Dervla hit him. Not centre mass. Not throat. Shoulder. He looks more offended than hurt.
That changes when he sees me.
His eyes flick past my face to the open door, to the noise outside, to the fact that his neat little ambush is getting fed back to him in pieces.
“Your timing is shit,” I tell him, stepping fully inside and kicking the door half shut behind me. “But then again, so is your judgement.”
He straightens despite the blood soaking his coat. “Mr Finnegan.”
Dervla doesn’t look away from him. Her gun stays trained on his chest now, hand steady as fuck. “He was just proposing we breed for the good of his little organisation.”
I blink once. Then I stare at him. “Is that so?”
His mouth curves in a way that makes my skin crawl. “You mistake the nature of power if you think disgust has ever prevented dynasties.”
“So, this was never about killing her, it was about raping her until she gave you an heir,” I say, completely calm and conversational, before I go utterly homicidal on him.
His expression doesn’t change enough.
That alone makes me want to skin him.
“Yes,” he says, like he is discussing endowments and governance structures. “If you insist on vulgarity, though I would call it continuity.”
I cross the distance before he finishes the last word.
My fist lands in his wounded shoulder first because I want pain, not efficiency. He cries out then, finally human, stumbling sideways. I hit him again across the jaw, and he crashes into the wall.
I haul him up by the front of his coat. “Continuity?” I slam his head into the stone behind him. “You sick old cunt.”
Blood runs from the corner of his mouth. He smiles anyway.
That smile is a mistake.
I jam the barrel of my gun under his chin. “You say one more word about her body, her blood, her future, any of it, and I redecorate the altar.”
“Not yet,” Dervla says, her voice clipped and echoing in the chapel. “I want him to hear what I have to say.”
It goes against everything in me not to shoot him in the face, but I nod, keeping hold of the entitled cunt who thinks he can take the woman I love away from me just because he said so.
“Speak,” I say to her, eyes never leaving his. “Then we end this.”