Chapter 28 #2
Scrubby grass crunched underfoot where I waited, shrouded in shadows, for permission to unleash the darkness that tainted my soul.
Hold on…wasn’t that the title of a Fall Out Boy song?
Rein it in, Emo Kid. No one got to where we were, in our lifestyle, without some flavor of damage.
I was just better at hiding mine behind a charming mask than most. That mask slipped the moment Priest gave us the signal, letting us know it was time to move.
Our motley crew had been split into two, with half of us at the back door and the other half at the front.
Priest and I were at the front entrance with Vale, Echo, and three Russians.
A Russian stood at the door with a compact battering ram while the rest of us waited, weapons in hand, to storm the entrance.
Maxim had led the rest of his men, Bard, Nyx, and the other three Furies I hadn’t met, to the back and were in exactly the same position behind the clubhouse.
I reached behind me and pulled out my bat, twirling it in my hand.
It's been far too long since I’d been able to let the monster out.
At exactly 1:15 a.m., we kicked their motherfucking doors in.
As soon as the door crashed open, Vale tossed a flash-bang grenade into the room.
Bellows of rage and confusion rang into the night, and a sinister smile spread across my lips as I felt the charming glint I worked so hard to keep in my eyes flicker and fade.
I crossed the threshold behind a nameless Russian, one of the silent ones who’d stood stoically in the hangar, and was followed in by Echo.
The flash-bang had done its job, disorienting the five Raiders in this part of the clubhouse.
It was considerably smaller than our own LCMC chapter house, consisting of a central area, a bathroom, and a kitchen on the bottom level and a few bedrooms upstairs.
One Iron Raider made it down the stairs, tripping in his haste.
My bat met his left shoulder blade with a meaty thunk as he passed right in front of my position just over the threshold.
I stepped forward and caught him in the forearm as he raised his hands to his head, hitting him so hard I felt the jarring vibrations of bat meeting bone where I gripped the handle.
A strangled sound behind me drew my focus, and my eyes widened slightly at the sight they found.
Another Raider, who must have come down the stairs late to the game, was behind me.
The gun in his hands dangled, forgotten by the fingers of his right hand, while his left rose to touch the tip of the blade that now protruded through his sternum.
He looked down at the blade in shock for a moment before it was jerked away, slicing his fingers as the blade made its exit.
“Vicious little Hobbit,” I rasped at Echo, who stood behind the Raider.
She gave me a grin, the bloody spray adding to the freckles dusting her cheeks.
I gripped my bat in both hands and drew it in a high backswing before bringing it down in a brutal arc, right into the back of my Raider’s head where he was trying to crawl away.
Blood flew from a deep laceration in his bald scalp.
I brought my bat down in two more vicious hits, the last with such force my boots actually left the floor as I followed through with my swing.
Now it was my turn to send a blood-flecked look to the Frozen Fury, though mine was far less mischievous than the sprite’s.
No, if the look on her face was any indication, she saw a slightly different man before her than the one she chatted up in the hangar.
Eyes roving over the chaos, Echo whooped in a piercing, high-pitched sound, drawing an answering whoop from somewhere deeper in the clubhouse.
She darted off between bodies struggling and fighting against one another, searching for her sisters in the fray.
Gunshots rang out, and I had to pray that if any of ours got hit, it was in the chest. We were all kitted out with bulletproof vests before we left the hangar, but none of us wanted to compromise our lines of sight in a ballistic helmet.
The Iron Raiders might have been surprised by our entrance, but by the time the haze from the flash-bang began to fade, I could see that they were putting up a decent fight.
A wolfish grin spread across my face as I saw Priest put a bullet into the head of a Raider who’d been wailing on one of Petrov’s men.
My moment of distraction cost me, though, and someone took the opportunity to hit me across the shoulders with something bulky.
I stumbled forward into the back of a couch, caught myself, and pushed away from the furniture with a one-handed swing of my bat as I turned to see the dead fucker who hit me.
Some Iron Raider piece of shit had bashed me with a metal chair like we were in a goddamn WWE SmackDown.
He swung the chair at me again, but this time, I blocked it with my bat.
His slow two-handed grip on the chair left one of his sides completely open, so I took the opportunity like the sloppily wrapped gift it was, and smashed my bat into his ribs.
The hit caused the Raider to drop the chair with a pained grunt and collapse to the floor.
My steel-toed boot came down, ready to stomp this fuck knuckle into oblivion, but the Raider’s hands caught my boot and twisted.
The spilled drinks, toppled furniture, and blood on the floor caused me to slip when I tried to force my boot down on his face.
I landed hard on my back on the disgusting floor, my head landing in something damp.
Bloody fucking hell. Now I was pissed. In an instant, I had my handgun drawn.
I sprang up as quickly as I could with the pain across my shoulders and the back of my neck from his blow with the chair like he was fucking Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The back of my head was wet, and I had no way of knowing yet if it was my own blood or the disgusting mess on the floor that was making my hair feel sticky.
Ugh. The Raider was babying his side and bracing his broken ribs as his feet scrambled on the floor in his pitiful attempt to put space between us.
My bullet created a lovely hole right between his eyes.
My shot was the last to ring out, leaving a charged silence in its wake.
I looked up to find Maxim helping one of his men, who’d been shot in the thigh.
Everyone else was checking bodies, making sure the fallen Raiders were dead or sweeping for anyone we may have missed.
“Nice hair, Blue Steel,” Priest muttered as I picked up my bat and slid it into its holder.
I winced and tentatively touched my head.
My hands came away with what looked like blood but smelled suspiciously not like blood, and I tried and failed to smother a gag.
Echo came into the room from the back of the building, where her sisters had been fighting.
She was following Nyx, who had been grazed in the arm.
Nyx had lost some blood, but it looked like it wouldn’t keep her from being able to drive to the clinic Petrov had in a safe house nearby.
One of the Furies I wasn’t acquainted with was giving it a quick patch job so she could ride her bike.
“Oh shit!” I heard my brother exclaim from the back room, followed by a single gunshot and a thump. Bard was scrambling to get up off the floor when I came through the doorway, followed closely by Priest and Nyx.
“Pyro!” Bard bellowed and bolted out the door.
He didn’t move like he was hit, so I assumed he’d been the one to take the shot we’d heard.
Turns out, I was wrong. As soon as Bard and I were through the door, gunshots rang out, causing us to both duck behind whatever we could find on the grungy concrete patio.
Beer cans and cigarette stubs littered the space behind the small walled-off area that housed the trash cans.
I crouched down, hoping that Bard had found cover and could see enough in the darkness to return fire.
Priest returned fire from around the doorway, and with the door wide open, enough light spilled out to illuminate our surroundings for me to make out Pyro’s figure, squatting behind a huge grill in the yard.
Priest definitely wouldn’t be able to see him from his position, but if he could hold Pyro’s attention long enough, I’d be able to sneak over and give him a surprise.
I mapped the distance and briefly checked for obstacles, calculating my odds.
I didn’t know how many rounds Pyro had left or if Priest might hit me with friendly fire, but I did know that I’d given my darling little sis a promise that I’d stick Pyro’s lighter somewhere extremely unpleasant if he fucked with her again. I was a man of my word.
I stayed low and ran as quickly as I could in that position over to where Pyro was hiding.
His magazine was empty, but he kept dry firing, refusing to accept that he was more fucked than a sock in a frat house.
“Hello, you dumb cunt,” I gritted out as I kicked Pyro in the back of the head.
He lurched forward with a pained grunt and dropped his gun so he could try to catch himself before he sprawled into the yard.
My next kick caught him in the abdomen, and I relished the whoosh and subsequent wheezing sound the pathetic excuse of a man made.
He was too busy trying to scramble away from me to realize he was heading toward the house and not away from it.