Chapter Nine
“No fucking way,” Dorian says, his words a furious mutter. “ This close to campus? They’d have to be insane.”
“This gang’s not exactly renowned for their sanity,” Connor comments drily. “This is pretty daring of them, though. Maybe it’s not—”
A crack in the window of the room precedes a bullet whizzing past me, missing my hair by an inch and burying into the stone wall behind me.
I gasp, sweat breaking out over my skin as my heart begins to race.
Dorian yanks me out of my seat and pushes me to the floor, behind one of the legs of the table.
Seamus and Connor also crouch behind the table, exchanging glances and rushed words.
“They’ve breached the perimeter,” Dorian says to Seamus and Connor. My mind reels, going at a hundred miles per minute. “Let’s arm up and go give them a greeting.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I whisper.
Seamus glances at me. “Just some business, love. Unusual, but part of the life. Be a good girl and stay under the table—don’t move, don’t breathe too loud. They shouldn’t be able to get in, but—”
“But I left the back patio unlocked after bringing in the steaks,” Dorian says grimly, his words punctuated by several more cracks at the windows and accompanying bullets flying through.
Horrible memories prickle at my mind. This is not the first shootout I’ve been stuck in the middle of, thanks to the occupation of my stepfather.
Consequently, the wave of anxiety that sweeps over me is almost debilitating.
Almost. I push down the nerves in favor of grounding myself in the present, keeping my mind here.
If I dissociate now, that could mean death for me.
Seamus army-crawls across the floor to a wooden cupboard lying against the wall and swiftly opens it.
He draws out three black briefcases, sliding two of them along the floor to Connor and Dorian.
Each man promptly enters a code on the combination lock of their briefcase, lifting the lids to reveal three guns of different sizes.
A door slams somewhere in the house; my breath catches as I realize the attackers are now inside.
“Give me a gun,” I tell Dorian.
He glances at me while loading his weapons, shoving a .45 in the back of his pants and holding a pistol in his right hand.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mira,” he murmurs. “Just breathe. This’ll all be over soon.”
Connor chances a look up and over the table, squinting. “I count three in the yard. If they’re adhering to standard formation for their ranks, that means there are about six to nine of them here.”
“That leaves two or three for each,” Seamus responds, cocking his gun. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?”
“Dorian,” I emphasize. “Give me a fucking gun, I’m serious.”
“Mira, you’re in shock—”
“I’m not in shock—” Several sets of footsteps sound throughout the house, ratcheting my anxiety up to level 1000.
I try to control my panting breaths, forcing away memories of home invaders and people who’d break into my childhood house in the middle of the night, wanting to kill my stepdad as revenge for his many heinous crimes.
The people who accidentally killed my mother instead…
Past and present blur as my finely-honed survival instincts overtake me. There was a time when I’d freeze in these sorts of situations; lots of practice at a shooting range and figuring out how to take control of my fate rather than sit in a corner and pray for my life helped me overcome that.
“In the hall,” Seamus calls out, training his gun on the doorway.
Two shadowed figures dressed in all black run through the hall, one of them holding a semi-automatic rifle, the other a handgun.
Seamus lifts his firearm and takes aim. When he tries to shoot, the gun jams, which marks the end of my obedience and restraint.
I grab the third gun out of Dorian’s briefcase as Seamus curses and Dorian takes cover behind a table leg. A hail of bullets rain over us. They hit the table, the walls behind us, even the windows, but by some miracle, none make contact with us.
Crouching low to the ground, I load the gun, click off the safety, cock it, and take aim. Two shots go off at once; one from Dorian, the other from me. Dorian’s bullet hits the chest of the guy with the semiautomatic rifle, mine hits the forehead of the one with a handgun.
“What—the—fuck?” Seamus hisses at me.
“You can question me and be suspicious later,” I snap at him. “I told you that I’ve been in life-or-death situations before.”
More shots fire at the window of the room, shattering the glass entirely.
It rains to the floor in a hail of shards, and I know whoever’s on the other side must be close.
They’re probably planning to get in through the window, so there’ll be people coming at us from all sides.
Connor runs into the hallway, preparing to take down whoever he meets there.
Seamus is glancing at the other hall at the opposite end of the room—he takes off a moment later.
I peek over the table, ducking just before another shot whizzes by my head.
I inhale two deep breaths as I wait for the enemies to fire off the next round of bullets, trying to calm my racing heart. I need to be clearheaded if I’m going to make it out of here alive.
“There are three people out there,” I murmur to Dorian. “I can get one of them.”
He looks like he has questions, but instead he says, “They’re too far out and they’re obscured by darkness. There’s no clean shot.”
I don’t need to see them to sense where they are—I can always feel the presence of people, especially those who radiate the sort of oppressive dark energy coming from the invaders.
Frustrated, I growl and chance another glance over the table, straining to focus on the faintly visible dark silhouettes outside.
The most menacing of the three, a man who practically reeks of death and blood, offers the clearest shot; I aim and take it.
A strangled cry cuts through the air, followed by the heavy thud of his body hitting the ground.
“Mira, what the—”
“They’re getting closer,” I tell him. “I have not lived this long only to die now because you decided to keep me as a captive in your House of Horrors. Fucking shoot, Dorian!”
I fire off another bullet just as Dorian takes three consecutive shots, finally getting over his shock and focusing on the action.
One of our bullets take down a second man, but the last one standing fires a shot that hits Dorian’s arm.
My chest pangs with alarm as he jerks and reels back with a low groan.
Shit. Blood pours from his arm and the bullets just keep coming.
Dorian falls to the floor with a thud, breathing heavily, face draining of all color.
A single glance at his wound tells me that the bullet didn’t hit his brachial, which means tending to him can wait.
Looks like the hunk of metal skimmed the outside of his shoulder before burying into the wall.
I can feel the remaining gunman’s anger at the loss of his comrades, and that makes him reckless.
Reckless men waste ammunition, and they eventually have to pause to reload or grab their second gun.
I wait for the empty clicking sound to signal that he’s out of ammo; as soon as it comes, I abandon cover and squeeze the trigger of my weapon, hitting the last gunman square between the eyebrows.
Gunfire sounds from both ends of the house, making me flinch and swallow harshly.
If Seamus and Connor are on whoever’s gotten in, I have to trust that they’ll take care of the issue; they’re the trained professionals.
I’m a rookie who learned how to shoot so she wouldn’t feel so fucking helpless all the time—though I was technically trained by a professional, as well.
I close my eyes and try to feel if there are any more presences lurking nearby.
The only ones I sense come from the house itself—Seamus and Connor are hopefully taking care of them.
My lips thin as I look at Dorian, who’s clutching his arm with a grimace.
I follow his gaze down to the blood that’s seeping out of his skin.
“Let me see,” I tell him. He gives me a jaded look, like he might refuse, but then he nods.
I empty the chamber of my gun, flick on the safety, and pull out the magazine, quickly pushing the extra bullet back into the magazine before shoving the weapon in the waistband of my jeans.
The last thing I need is to accidentally shoot myself after narrowly avoiding getting shot by whoever the fuck came for Dorian.
“Sit up,” I tell him. “Prop your back against the table leg.”
“Is it clear outside?” he asks me.
I nod. “It is.”
His eyes narrow even as he sits up with a groan, following my instructions. “How do you know?”
“I can feel them. They reek of menace and a deep-seated desire to kill you. There’s only one left alive in the house,” I say quickly, lifting the sleeve of his shirt to get a better look at his wound.
“It didn’t graze any arteries. I'm gonna feel around it to see if it tore muscle,” I tell him. “It’ll hurt.”
He nods, lips twisting with anticipation. I run my fingers along the edges of the gaping wound, then the sides and back of his arm, closing my eyes so I can focus purely on the feeling of it. “No muscle tears,” I tell him, opening my eyes. “It didn't go too deep. It’s just a flesh wound—"
“It’s time for you to explain how the fuck you know how to shoot a gun,” Connor says from the doorway, his voice little more than a growl.
I wince as I hear and feel the anger radiating from him.
He wants to kill me. I’m sure of it. The purpose of tonight was to not be viewed as a loose end or threat, and now, I’ve turned into a greater threat than I was before.
“Do you want me to stitch up Dorian first?”