Chapter Fifty-Four
White Ravens
Scar
They reset and took up their secondary point positions near the center of the small village.
Scar could see Gage now, and it gave him a rush of steadiness, as he hovered protectively in front of the hostages.
Men leapt from the vehicles before they even came to a full stop.
They had their rifles raised, fingers twitching near the triggers.
They didn’t do a perimeter sweep, and no one was coordinating spacing. Their strategy was just uncertainty and adrenaline.
Fuckin’ amateurs.
Scar stayed on post, ten yards from the hostages’ as their second line of defense. Gage was their last.
He also kept an eye on his brothers, though he knew they wouldn’t need his help.
Valor cleared the tree line, appearing as if the ground itself rose up to fight. Zorion’s arrows hissed through humid air, dropping two men who’d taken aim at his partner.
Another arrow burrowed into the ground and released a flash bang that blinded the remaining shooter long enough for Valor to cross and drop him with one vicious slash across his throat with his three-inch attached claws.
Several guards turned in Valor’s direction and began raining down suppression fire, making his dive for cover.
An arrow shot into the side of the jeep detonated a magnetic surge strong enough to rip the rifles from the guard’s hands and slam them against the metal shell.
Stunned and unarmed, the cowards tried to run, but they didn’t get far.
The Browns, camouflaged by the church’s wooden structure, emerged when the guards tried to use it for cover.
Mirage’s blades flew in pairs and groups of four, while Grace fired his Desert Eagles in the opposite direction.
Men barked ineffective orders, cursed, and scattered, but none would escape.
The church’s doors were pushed open, and Ex and Meridian walked out, the fog bleeding backward as they crossed the unpaved road.
The men saw them, panicked, and stumbled. Two of them drew their handguns and fired wildly.
Meridian dropped to a knee and threw up one side of his coat in a veil of black armor. Ex spun at the same time and crowded into Meridian’s chest, aligning their bodies like interlocking puzzle pieces.
Their faces were inches apart, eye to eye. Without looking away from his partner, Ex drew his .45, raised his arm along the seam of Meridian’s coat, and fired six shots.
The three guards each took two hits center mass.
Meridian began firing and didn’t stop until his clip was empty, then reloaded in a blur of steel.
The men who were still alive dove for cover.
His brothers didn’t stop until no one was left breathing.
Zorion walked out of the tree line, dragging two limp bodies who thought the forest would shield them.
Meridian scanned the battlefield, counting the bodies with the casualness of counting loose change.
Scar stared into the unseeing eyes of dead men and felt nothing, he wouldn’t mourn monsters who targeted the weak.
Meridian went toward the hostages, who all cowered away from him.
“It’s okay,” Gage said in a low tone. “I know he looks scary, but he’s here to defend you.”
Meridian was surveying the huddled group. No sympathy or softness in gaze, just assessment.
He stopped, his dark glare locking on a man cowering behind Gage. He wore dingy green cargo pants, a tattered black T-shirt, and combat boots. He had a sweaty, blood-splattered scarf over his face that left only his red-rimmed eyes visible.
Meridian fisted his collar and flung him backward as if he weighed nothing.
He skidded across the dirt before he scrambled to his knees, sobbing and shaking like a leaf. The guy raised his hand and steepled them together as if he were facing the devil himself and praying that God might save him.
Whisper was yanked from its cover, deadly steel flashing in the dim light, the movement so fast it barely disturbed the air.
The hostages all cried out, “No! Please. Mercy! Spare him!”
Meridian not only didn’t show emotion, but he also couldn’t hear it.
He raised his arm and snapped it forward.
Gage slid in from behind Meridian, threading the narrowest space with surgical exactness, snapped his cane out, and blocked Whisper’s path a second before it drew blood.
Carbon steel clashed with titanium in a hard, resounding crack that rang in Scar’s ear.
He rushed to his partner’s side, ready to defend whatever the fuck he was doing.
Meridian scowled down at Gage from beneath the shadow of his hood.
Meridian’s tone was stoic and frigid. “Move.”
Gage ignored him.
“Spare him.”
“No,” Meridian growled.
Still not lowering his cane, with his other hand, Gage yanked the guy’s covering off in, exposing a boy’s terrified face.
Meridian didn’t soften, but he did pause.
“Look,” he snarled back at Meridian, “he’s just a kid. Leave him be.”
A young, battered, dirt-encrusted face stared up at them. His sunken eyes were wide, not with hatred, with haunted dread.
Meridian’s jaw flexed once before he slowly lowered Whisper and tucked her back in her hiding place. He turned away as if the boy or his decision not to kill him meant nothing.
Gage crouched at the kid’s side. “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
Meridian clicked on the comms. “Ravens check to command.”
“Check received,” Jo answered.
“Site secure. Collapse the line.” Meridian droned.
Spectre’s voice came next. “All teams. Clear and retrieve.”
The field support teams flooded in, forming a protective funnel, followed by medical transports.
“Hostages moving,” Gage said in their ears.
Scar walked with his partner as he guided them out of view of the massacred bodies.
A woman grabbed Gage’s sleeve, weeping and offering blessings, prompting the rest of congregation to do the same.
Scar could only stare as pride bloomed in his chest.
He’d thought Gage’s mercy—and his hard stand against murder—would get him or all of them killed, thought his Christian morals were a liability in a world so cruel.
He’d never been happier to be proven wrong.
Gage’s humanity was a line that kept the rest of them from crossing and becoming the very things they hunted.
Gage insisted they all wait as the medics covered every hostage with a blanket, then checked over each one—including the boy’s—vitals and tended to wounds. A few of them were pretty badly beaten, but no one had been fatally wounded.
“Ravens, you’re clear to exfil,” Corvo said.
Once they were gone, the Post Action Recovery Unit would come in, remove the bodies, and do whatever it is they did with them.
Scar didn’t care enough to know, but he was sure they didn’t receive proper burials.
All he cared about now was how fast that super jet could get him and his new husband home.