69. Annabella
Chapter sixty-nine
Annabella
The world became noise. The crack of rifles split the clearing apart.
Muzzle flashes strobed across faces, lighting the trees in bright white bursts, and the bullets tore through the air where we’d been standing a half-second before.
I was already being pulled sideways by Sam.
He threw us both behind one of the stone pillars as rounds punched into the ancient rock and sent chips spraying across my face.
I guess Kane had given up on his dream of dissecting me.
Sam risked a quick glance around the pillar, then grinned. “This is a fun date.”
“I can think of funner things to do.”
He raised his eyebrows, a glint in his eyes. “Can’t wait to hear them, Moonbeam.”
He eyed the pillar opposite us as I heard approaching soldiers. “Five incoming. You ready?”
Ready? I was fucking exhausted, could barely stand. Everything, and I mean every muscle and joint I had, ached. “Always.”
“Good. Try to keep up.”
“Keep up? Don’t embarrass yourself, Shaw.”
He laughed—actually laughed—as Ryan’s howl shook the ground beneath us, and I felt the Pack charge.
I stepped out from behind the pillar as a soldier jabbed his rifle butt toward my chest. Sam hit him from the side, driving him into the dirt, and I spun to face the next one.
We moved together without speaking. He went high.
I went low. He spun right. I covered his left.
The mate bond sang between us, and around us the temple grounds became a killing field.
Ryan crashed into their right flank. Two soldiers fired point-blank but Ryan blurred past the shots, closed the distance, and tore through their formation with jaws and claws that turned body armor into paper.
A soldier to my left raised his rifle. I grabbed the barrel, shoved it skyward—the shot cracked past my ear, deafening—and drove my knee into his groin. He folded. I ripped the rifle from his grip and slammed the stock into his forehead. He dropped.
Another came from my right. I didn’t have time to turn; a flash of red hair and bloodied steel, and Sofia was there. Two knives, fast and vicious, finding the gaps in tactical armor that only someone small and quick and furious could exploit. The soldier went down in three seconds.
I grinned at her. “Show off.”
“You’ll learn it runs in the family.” Sofia grinned back at me as she pulled her knife free. Blood on her face, her red hair wild, and her green eyes burning with a fierceness I’d never seen in my cousin before. “Two more. Left side.”
I pivoted. Two soldiers closing from the east side of the steps.
The first one raised his rifle. I closed the distance before he could sight and drove the heel of my palm up under his chin.
His head snapped back, and Sam was there, hooking an arm around the soldier’s throat and wrenching him sideways into the stone steps.
He tore off the man’s helmet, then drove his head against the edge of the steps with enough force to leave a crater in the man’s skull.
The second soldier got a silver blade into my forearm before I could block it.
The burn was instant—white-hot, like someone had shoved a lit cigarette under my skin—and I heard Sam snarl.
He came at me again and I threw myself backward, hit the temple pillar with my shoulders, and used it.
Kicked off the stone with both feet, launching over his head as the blade buried itself in the pillar where my neck had been a second ago.
I landed behind him, grabbed a fistful of his tactical vest, and swung him face-first into the same pillar he’d just stabbed.
Stone cracked. So did his cheekbone. He bounced off, and I caught him on the rebound, drove him down onto the broken steps, and stamped on the back of his knee until the joint gave with a wet crunch that I felt through my boot. He wouldn’t be walking any time soon.
He screamed. I kicked the silver blade away from his reaching fingers and left him where he fell.
“Fuck.” I pressed my bleeding arm against my side and kept moving.
I caught glimpses through the chaos. Quick flashes between enemies, stolen moments of seeing the people who’d come here for me and Sam.
Derek fought like a machine. He didn’t waste energy on anything unnecessary; every strike targeted a joint, a gap in armor, the soft places between plates.
A soldier charged him and Derek sidestepped, caught the man’s arm, broke it at the elbow, then grabbed the guy’s Adam’s apple and ripped it out.
Derek was already turning to the next threat before the first one hit the ground.
Sofia skidded under a soldier’s right hook, cutting his hamstring on her way past and stopping three feet from Derek.
“You were supposed to stay behind me!” Derek’s blade found a soldier’s throat as he yelled at Sofia. “For once in your life, would you fucking listen to me!”
“I listen fine. I just don’t obey.”
Ryan had drawn six soldiers away from the main group, their formation crumbling as they tried to track someone who moved faster than their training could compensate for.
Two soldiers fired at where he’d been. A third tried to bayonet him, and Ryan caught the blade between his claws, snapped the steel, lifted the man up, and broke his back over his knee before the broken pieces stopped spinning.
Mai was in the thick of it. She fought with speed and precision, using her small frame to slip inside the reach of soldiers.
She had partially Shifted and as she ducked a rifle swing, she came up inside the soldier’s guard, and swiped her claws deep into his throat.
Wally fought at her flank with—by the dark moon—a pink tennis racket, swinging it into the side of a soldier’s helmet with a crack that sent the man reeling, then jabbing the handle into the next one’s throat hard enough to collapse his windpipe. He caught me staring.
“What? It’s titanium.”
Jase and Amara covered Mai’s other side.
A soldier raised his rifle at Mai’s back, and Jase hit him low, jaws locking around the man’s calf and ripping sideways.
The soldier went down hard, rifle clattering across stone, and before he could reach for his sidearm, Amara was on his chest, her weight pinning him flat while her teeth closed on his exposed throat before he could draw breath to shout.
Near the tree-line, Zeke had his hands buried in the dirt, and the undergrowth was doing his fighting for him.
Roots erupted from the soil, snaking around soldiers’ ankles, dragging them off-balance.
Vines whipped across faces, tangled in rifle straps, turned solid ground into a writhing trap that swallowed boots and held them fast. A soldier hacked at the growth with his combat knife, and two more vines replaced what he’d cut, coiling up his arms until he couldn’t swing.
Bethany Rose fought three feet from Gideon, which—based on the look on her face—was three feet closer than she wanted him.
She grabbed a soldier, hooking her fingers into the seams of his body armor and using the rigid plates as leverage to wrench him off his feet.
He hit the ground on his back, and she went down with him, one knee on his chest, and slammed her palm into his windpipe with enough force to shatter the cartilage.
Gideon killed the one coming up behind her, and she spun on him.
“I had that.”
“He was behind you.”
“I knew he was behind me!”
“That’s two you owe me, sweetheart.”
She looked like she wanted to stab him more than the soldiers. Gideon was already turning to the next threat, grinning right at her as he went.
And then Kane stepped forward.
He came through the thinning line of his remaining soldiers, pistol in one hand, combat knife in the other, his movements unhurried despite the carnage around him.
His eyes locked on me, and I knew he had realized that if he took me down, the dome would fall.
His army outside could pour in, and he could still win this.
Sam saw it too; he angled himself in front of me as he started sprinting.
Kane lifted his arm, aimed his pistol at my chest and pulled the trigger.
Sam knocked the barrel sideways. The shot went wide. Kane pivoted, brought the knife up in a strike toward Sam’s throat. Sam deflected. Barely. The blade opened a line across his jaw instead of his neck.
I hit Kane from the side.
Kane was fast for a human. His blade found my side. A deep cut, silver-edged. Fuck! It hurt; the burn rippled through me. Sam flipped over Kane’s next strike, landing in front of me, crowding Kane’s knife hand, forcing him to defend in one direction.
Kane adjusted. Tried to back toward the pillar.
Sam drove a kick into Kane’s hip that staggered him sideways, back into my reach.
I caught his knife arm and twisted it, locking it in place, and while Kane fought to free the blade, Sam hit him from the other side.
Open palm to the ear. Kane’s head snapped sideways, his eyes unfocused for a fraction of a second, and that fraction was enough.
I stripped the knife from his stunned fingers and swept his legs from under him.
He hit the temple stone hard enough to bounce.
Sam dropped onto him, knee in his spine, hands pinning his wrists.
Kane bucked, got one arm free, drove his elbow into Sam’s silver wound.
Sam’s grip broke, and Kane rolled, came up with the backup blade from his ankle, and slashed in a wild arc that opened Sam’s forearm to the bone.
Sam fell back. Kane was already on his feet, blood on his face now. He went for Sam. I hit Kane from behind. Got my arm around his head, my other hand braced against his jaw, and wrenched.
The crack was enormous. It went through my hands, up my arms, into my teeth.
Kane dropped. Instant. Complete. Like someone had cut his strings.
I watched Kane’s body collapse against the temple stone and waited to feel something. Triumph. Relief. Vindication.
All I felt was tired.
My legs gave out.
Sam caught me before I hit the ground. His arms came around me, pulling me against his chest, and I could hear his heart hammering through what was left of his shirt.
“I’ve got you.” His voice was rough. “I’ve got you, Moonbeam.”
“Don’t—” I tried to say don’t call me that, but the words got lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth.
The sounds of battle faded to something distant. Voices calling out; some in pain, some in relief, some just checking that the people they loved were still breathing. The mate bond thrummed warm and steady between us, an anchor when everything else felt like it was slipping.
I could feel the territory. I could feel home and its warmth rose up, wrapped around me and pulled me under.