Chapter 29
Pyre
As soon as we stepped out of the vehicles the sound of gunfire greeted us.
“What the hell?” Jury asked, tilting his head as he tried to figure out what was happening. “Someone beat us here?”
“No one knows they’re here as far as we know,” Warrant replied.
“Tell that to the gunfire,” Jury quipped.
“They better leave us some shitbags to kill, or I’m going to be pissed,” Demo muttered.
I wasn’t listening. My feet were already carrying me to the door. My old lady was in there, and there were too many bullets flying around for my comfort.
“Quit talking and start moving,” Cypher barked at the others. “Split up once we get inside. Kill everyone besides Rae, any women or children, or Dolan. He’s mine.”
“That’s a long list, can you write it down for me?” Jury shouted over his shoulder.
“And dogs, don’t shoot a dog,” Demo told him.
“The fuck I’d ever do that. That’s a dickhead move!” Jury sounded offended. I didn’t hear the rest of their talk, I was moving too far ahead of them.
These Iron Circle fuckers didn’t seem to have a problem with kidnapping women and kids, so Cypher’s orders made sense. Who knew who else was inside this building?
The door was locked, but gave way easily enough beneath my boot as I kicked it open.
Scythe, Jury, and Rotor were on my ass as I took a right and headed up the stairs.
Second story just seemed to be where fuckers like this liked to keep hostages, well, that and basements.
But this place didn’t have a basement so I headed up.
The rest of our brothers fanned out to cover the remainder of the building.
I slowed only slightly because the top of the stairs was going to be a choke point. Frowning, I stepped over a dead body. There were three littering the stairs.
“Looks like I was right,” Jury said in a low voice, though he still managed to sound smug. “Someone else got here first.”
But who? Who would be going after the Iron Circle Crew besides us?
We’d figure that out later. Right now my only objective was to find Rae.
It crossed my mind that maybe she’d created all this carnage, but I wasn’t sure she had the capabilities.
I needed to remember to ask her later if she had ninja skills she’d never mentioned in the getting to know you phase we’d gone through.
Of course, we were still getting to know each other.
And I’d be very interested to find out if she was some kind of killing machine.
Didn’t seem to fit her personality, but people did whatever they had to in situations like this.
One of my brothers began whistling a familiar tune. Glancing over my shoulder, I arched a brow at Rotor.
Jury chuckled. “You borrowing the dead goon song from Toxic now?”
“Seemed fitting,” Rotor replied with a shrug. “Besides, it’s catchy.” He went on whistling.
Jury softly sang along, “One little, two little, three little dead goons.”
I met Scythe’s gaze and he had a look on his face as though he were asking why he had to put up with these two.
Focusing back in front of me, I moved to the very top of the stairs.
A bullet splintered the wood above my head as I looked around the corner.
Jury jerked me backward and I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Safe to say they’re waiting for us.”
“Here. Use this.”
I took the flash bang Rotor handed over.
“Yeah, that’ll do it. Thanks.” I hoped like hell Rae wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity as I moved to where I could throw it.
That meant stepping out from the cover that the stairwell provided, but it was the only way.
Gunfire cracked and I knew rounds were flying all around me as I chucked the flash bang as hard as I could so it would roll into the adjoining hallway.
Turning my back, I waited until the boom indicated it’d gone off, then I was moving. I didn’t wait to see who was affected. It didn’t matter. If they saw me hurl that fucking thing and hid, I still had to get across this walkway and to the other side so I could find Rae.
“Rotor,” Scythe called out. “Check the two rooms on this side then meet us over there.
I didn’t need to look to know that Rotor was peeling off our flanks to follow Scythe’s orders. Though his cry of happiness when he opened the first door made me wonder what he’d just found. He’d let us know if it was Rae, so I knew it wasn’t her and nothing else mattered to me right now.
Scythe and I moved quickly across the walkway and into the next hall.
There was one guy on the ground, rolling around holding his head in agony, so I put a bullet in him.
We were going to have to clear out each room, one by one.
I stopped next to the first door, glanced back at Scythe and gave him a nod as I moved slightly to the side.
His boot all but splintered the door and I entered the room, rifle raised.
Empty. There was some random furniture scattered around but that was it.
I backed out and pointed my weapon down the hallway.
There was no one around. They were going to wait for us to come to them.
That was fine by me. I’d find them. No matter where they hid, they were dying tonight.
The second door burst open under Scythe’s foot and I moved in.
A grunt popped out of my mouth when someone hit me from the side.
I dropped my weapon in favor of getting my hands on the fucker.
We were exchanging blows when a couple of gunshots went off.
I hissed in pain as a round hit my thigh.
I’d been shot before. I knew what it felt like, so I didn’t need to look down to know what’d happened.
There wasn’t time anyway because the fucker I was fighting with had pulled his knife.
Fuck this shit.
I let go of him and pulled my pistol from my holster and put two rounds in his chest. He stared in shock down at the blood pumping out of his body. “Don’t bring a knife to a fucking gun fight,” I told him.
Scythe pulled a couple of magazines off the dead body in the corner, the asshole who’d shot me. “You’re going to need to take care of that.”
“Later. It just grazed me,” I lied. It was in my muscle, but thankfully hadn’t hit bone.
After I’d found Rae I’d deal with it properly.
For now, a quick wrapping of cloth around it and I was on my way.
I wasn’t stopping now. “You could’ve killed him before he shot me.
” I looped the sling of my rifle over my shoulder and let it lay against my back.
There were more rooms in the next hallway and I wanted something smaller when going through doorways. Something a shitbag couldn’t knock out of my hands while I was going through a door. My pistol would work well enough for me. Especially since Jury would be coming in behind me with the rifle.
“You and that piece of shit were in the way,” Scythe replied. “Flailing all over the fucking place. You’re lucky I got him before he shot you again. Next time take your target down faster and I’ll get to mine quicker.”
I chuckled despite the seriousness of the situation. “I’ll remember that for the future.”
“See that you do. Let’s go find your girl.”
Ignoring the pain, I moved forward with him and Jury, continuing to clear out rooms. There were only two doors left and I was starting to worry that we weren’t going to find her.
My jaw clenched when we smashed in the door to the second to last room.
A man was there, holding onto Rae, and had a gun to her head.
There wasn’t time to be worried about her because I needed to make the fucker threatening her bleed.
I met her eyes briefly and saw the fear there, but she was holding it together. She wasn’t panicking.
“Let her go,” I warned the guy.
He barked out a laugh. “Why the fuck should I do that?”
“It’ll ensure a swift death for you.”
He looked at me in disbelief. “So, I let her go, and I die?”
“Of course. You touched my old lady.”
“You really don’t know how this negotiating thing goes, do you?” he asked.
“I don’t negotiate,” I growled. The barrel of my gun was leveled at his head. Problem was that he kept shifting and Rae was ending up in my sights just as often as he was. I couldn’t take the chance of shooting him. Not while he was holding her.
Motion caught my eye and I watched with interest as Rae pulled a knife out of the waistband of her jeans. I looked back up at the Iron Circle fuck. “Negotiating implies you have something to trade.”
His incredulous expression might have made me laugh if he wasn’t holding a gun to my woman’s head. “Her?” he said, jiggling Rae a little as he said it, in order to emphasize the word.
“I don’t need you to trade her. I’m getting her back on my own.”
He shook his head, his mouth hanging open. He didn’t know how to react to my refusal to follow the normal rules. I’d never been great at rule following. Had done it for the time I was in the military, but that was about it.
Jury was somewhere behind me, waiting quietly as we danced around the inevitability of this guy’s death. I was pretty sure Scythe was still in the hall. These rooms weren’t big enough to hold us all.
This guy was under the mistaken impression that he could get out of here. That he could use my Reaper as a shield and somehow make it out alive. First off, I wasn’t going to allow that. Secondly, he didn’t know my girl. A smile spread over my face, confusing him even more.
Then he was too busy bellowing in pain to try to figure me out anymore.
Rae had gotten her knife and had lodged it in his side.
She’d dropped her weight suddenly—and though she didn’t weigh enough to force him to let her go completely, she dropped a few inches—which is when she’d stabbed the fucker.
That was when he made the fatal mistake of letting her drop to the ground.
Rae crouched and ran to the side of the room, out of the way so that I could fill this fucker full of more holes than Swiss Cheese.
He tried to get one last shot in, turning his gun toward me, but I stepped in close, knocked the gun to the side and pressed my pistol to the underside of his chin.
It was too quick of a death. He didn’t deserve it. He deserved pain and agony.
My round traveled through the soft tissue of his throat and mouth and into his cranial cavity so quickly he didn’t even know he was dead before it all happened.
There was no realization that his life was over.
He just fell in a limp pile to the floor.
Sighing, I holstered my pistol, pulled my knife and cut off one of his fingers.
I was shoving it into the pocket of my cut when Rae hit me full force and wrapped herself around me.
“Pyre!” She squeezed me tight. “I knew you’d come.”
I wrapped my arms around her, holding her body against mine as she wrapped her legs around my waist. Looking around the room, I grinned. There were a couple of dead men in here. “You do all this, Baby Girl?”
She let out a humorless chuckle. “No. I killed one of them,” she admitted. “And another back in the armory. And one at the old bridge. But most of this was Forge.”
I stiffened as I heard his name and looked over my shoulder at Jury. “Forge?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“Met him once or twice. Don’t really know him though.”
“He’s one of their own… At least I think he is, but he killed a bunch of them to help me.”
Fuck. Now it seemed like I owed that asshole a debt. None of us knew what his fucking deal was, but he’d helped save a couple of kids and now my old lady. He kept surfacing wherever we were.
“Did you see him?” she asked, pulling back from the hug to stare into my eyes. “He went to check if we could get out and he hasn’t come back.”
I moved my hands down, cupping her ass—solely to help keep her secured in my embrace of course—as I kissed her.
When our mouths finally broke apart she sighed. “I don’t know how you found me, but I’m so grateful you did.”
“I’ll always find you, Rae. Now let’s get out of here.”
Scythe was out in the hall, sweeping his rifle back and forth, but he’d heard everything. “It’s clear. I checked the last room. Let’s get back down to the-” He paused as Rotor came trotting up to us.
Rotor was clinking with every step he took. “There’s a fucking gold mine back in that first room.” He grinned as he looked at us. “Fucking weapons galore.”
“And you took two of each?” Scythe asked, raising a brow.
Rotor shrugged. “I’m not leaving that shit behind. He opened his cut and showed us his waistline. There were multiple pistols shoved in his jeans.
“Shit, did you save any for me?” Jury complained.
Scythe rolled his eyes. “Let’s get down and help the others.”
“Sounds like they have it under control,” I said, resting my hand protectively on Rae’s lower back.
The gunshots had died down.
“Give me a minute,” Scythe said and he went to the end of the hall and looked over the walkway down into the pit. He came back and nodded. “Cypher’s down there with Dolan. Let’s head down.”
We moved through the hall, but Rae kept stopping at each body. “They don’t need to be sent off by you, Reaper,” I told her. Her work made her sensitive to the needs of the dead. Or maybe she was checking to see if any were alive.
She looked up at me from where she was squatting next to a man. “I wouldn’t give these men a funeral even if they begged,” she said with a grim look. “I’m just… I’m looking for Forge.” She gave me an apologetic look. “He saved my life… More than once.”
I nodded. “We’ll look for him in a few minutes.
First let’s get downstairs and meet up with my brothers.
” I’d tell her later, but I knew we weren’t going to find him here.
He’d probably seen, or heard, us roll in and had gotten the fuck out of this place.
He was too fucking smart to get wrapped up by Dolan, or it would have happened before, and he’d seen first-hand what happened when we got on scene.
He knew we were here for Rae and that we’d take care of her.
She rose and took my outstretched hand. It didn’t bother me that she was so worried about Forge.
Like she said, he’d saved her life. I owed him for that.
I didn’t know why he’d helped her but I was fucking grateful he had.
All of this shit had happened before we could put our plan to go after the Iron Circle into motion.
It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Rae and Owen hadn’t been caught in the middle of it.
Dolan would pay for his part in that.
Scythe grabbed Jury by the neck of the cut when he tried to take a detour into the room that we now knew was an armory. “Later.”
Jury gave the door a mournful look, but kept moving and went down the stairs.