Chapter 16
Lyra
That monster was coming for me.
I’d seen him before. The I.C. had been hunting him for years.
I’d watched him on vid after vid moving with controlled precision.
No emotion. Nothing left of the Atlan Warlord he’d once been.
His fate was the heartbreak and horror every Atlan Warlord faced.
Their beasts were powerful, fearsome creatures.
When caught and turned against their own people, they became the thing of nightmares.
Something shifted in the air as the cyborg came outside.
My beast took a deep breath, analyzed the air with a sensitivity and precision I’d never had before.
I could smell him coming, a mix of Atlan and machine.
His bloodstream laced with chemicals. Poison.
Things to cloud his mind and control his system.
I tried to track him. Take him down before he could reach me. Somehow, he evaded my sensors. There one moment, gone the next. I had no visual, nothing in my scope. My scans coming up empty.
My motion tracker flickered. Then died.
Fuck this. Bahre and the others could have their fun later. They were outnumbered. I could clearly see them, and the cyborgs they faced, through my scope.
I took careful aim. Fired.
I took three more shots. Final count of two direct hits. Kill shots. Two more shots good enough to slow the Silver Scions down so Kovo and the others could finish them off. All told, it had taken me a minute. Maybe two.
Time to move.
I spoke calmly into the comms, though my pulse had already kicked into combat rhythm. “Moving to position one.” I didn’t add ‘if the scariest creature alive doesn’t kill me first.’ Didn’t feel the need to state the obvious.
The comms were silent, which meant the Prillon team was moving. I knew where the Atlans were, still fighting, still trapped inside.
I grabbed my rifle, sliding silently to the lower roofline, positioning myself as far from the coming threat as possible.
I scanned the rooftops, my helmet display painting flashes of a ghostly silhouette, a monster I could not see.
The creature moving toward me had gone dark.
Invisible, even to the I.C.’s most advanced scanners.
The Scions must have updated their tech. Again. Didn’t seem to matter how hard the team at the I.C. worked, the Scions managed to stay one step ahead. Every damn time.
Staying low, I ran along the rooftop toward a corner I’d chosen while looking at the maps. The top level, the highest point where I would have the best chance to make the jump onto the neighboring building’s roof. I was almost there.
Right in front of me, the shadows shifted. No footsteps. Only a faint static buzz.
One moment I was alone. The next, I was scrambling to stop my momentum as the monster who’d come to kill me appeared out of thin air.
My beast saved me. Her reaction time. Enhanced strength and speed. He fired a rotating blade. I danced around it like time stood still, waiting for me to move.
The cyborg roared and dropped into a crouch.
This creature was designed for destruction. A merciless and brutal hunter. Single minded. Focused. Without remorse. There was nothing left behind those eyes, the thinking, feeling Warlord he’d once been, was gone.
I took aim and fired my rifle.
It moved faster than anything I had ever seen. Fast enough to dodge my attack.
It didn’t run.
It studied me.
Behind me, I heard the sound of boots on metal as Ethan scaled the fire escape on the side of the building.
“Ethan, stay back!” My beast yelled the command as loudly as possible.
The cyborg vanished again. A shimmer, like heat bending light into a mirage. Directionless. No thermal at all. One moment empty air. The next, death.
The perfect assassin.
Then it attacked.
It didn't jump, didn’t charge—it simply appeared, towering over me as its hand clamped around my rifle, crushing the barrel like an eggshell. His free hand slammed into my chest.
My armor absorbed most of the blow as I jerked back, sliced my claws across its forearm.
Metal sparked. Shredded. I cut deep but the cyborg didn’t bleed.
It hissed—not a sound, but a frequency. High pitched. Alarms flashed inside my helmet. This wasn’t just noise, it was an attack, some kind of sonic weapon. Inside my skull, my beast roared in defiance as pain bounced around inside my skull.
I sliced its chest and leaped away like a dancer.
We will kill him. Wow, I did admire my beast’s confidence.
I wasn’t about to argue. We were in trouble. I was in trouble. Do it. You’re in charge now. Protect Ethan. I retreated inside, gave her full control.
Her roar made my teeth rattle as she charged the cyborg.
It swung—faster than my normal, Atlan eyes would have been able to track. Faster, perhaps, than an Elite Hunter.
My beast wasn’t phased. She blocked with my forearm guard and plunged our claws into the cyborg’s thigh.
The cyborg swung his free arm down, slammed a blade into the top of my shoulder.
My armor—or my beast’s new skin—deflected enough of the blow that the blade slid down my back, barely slicing into flesh.
The sheer force of the blow, however, knocked me to one knee.
It was like a loaded shuttle had just landed on my shoulders.
Holy gods, this thing was strong.
It pinned me down, a blade extended from its wrist, humming with surgical precision, angled directly for my heart.
I didn’t pray. I yanked my claws from its thigh and plunged them up, between his legs. Straight into his fucking groin.
His bellow made my bones rattle.
Its head snapped up as Ethan appeared on the edge of the roofline. “Get away from her, you fucking asshole.”
I saw the weapon my mate held in his hands. Knew what it could do.
I hit the ground and rolled as Ethan fired. A shockwave of electric blue plasma leaped across the space and wrapped around the cyborg. His body jerked in reaction. Sizzled. Smoke rose from the exoskeleton armor it wore. The monster was wounded, but not down. Not yet.
Ethan fired again. The cyborg absorbed the hit. Took two steps back. I rolled forward and swept its legs.
The cyborg floated above the sweep and landed on his feet.
I moved without thinking.
Rolled onto my feet and raced toward it. Two strides. I leapt onto its back and jammed my claws into the back of its neck.
This time, it didn’t make a sound. Didn’t bellow or rage or scream. The wounds I’d cut into its lower body were sealed. It still wasn’t bleeding. But it was hurting. He was slower than he had been.
Not slow enough. Gods help us.
“Move! Move! Move!” Ethan’s command broke through and I realized he couldn’t shoot the Scion’s weapon with me on the cyborg’s back. If he fired, he’d hit both of us.
The moment I withdrew my claws, it threw me off its back—hard.
I flew through the air, my body slamming into the vent tower, ribs flaring in agony despite my armor.
I fell onto my hands and knees, tried to regain my bearing as Ethan advanced on the cyborg, firing nonstop.
He forced the creature away from me, placed his body between me and certain death.
The monster absorbed blast after blast. Didn’t go down. Couldn’t advance.
I had one weapon left. As the humans would say, my Hail Mary.
“Ethan.” How was I going to tell him that we could both die on this rooftop? That the energy blast we needed to destroy this monster would probably kill us as well?
“You got a trick up your sleeve?”
Gods I was in love with this male. No fear in his voice, just acceptance. More raw courage than any Coalition fighter I’d ever met. “Might kill us, too.”
Ethan stepped backward, toward me. Almost close enough to touch as he kept firing.
“Do it. He’s the one, the one who killed Eddie.
” With one quick movement, Ethan looked back at me over his shoulder, determination in the lines around his eyes.
“We have to end this. How many more people will he kill?”
Too many.
“We’ll have fifteen seconds to run.” I held his gaze.
He nodded then turned and fired another round at the cyborg who was still on his feet taking blast after blast. His metallic implants were so hot they’d begun melting, dripping down his face and chest like raindrops sliding down glass.
“On three.” I slipped the plasma charge from its specialized pocket and activated the targeting array in my helmet.
I held it up, knew Ethan would recognize the type of device.
It didn’t look much different than a human grenade.
The effect, however, was closer to something the human’s bombers dropped from their airplanes.
Warning lights flashed as my weapons system analyzed the blast radius, confirmed what I already knew.
Ethan and I were in the kill zone.