Chapter 27 – Lance
Twenty-Seven
The Devil Collects
Lance
The eastern corridor was a maze of smoke and emergency lighting, each shadow a potential threat.
Morgan's face flashed through my mind, terrified, determined, chasing after Amber into god knows what kind of danger.
Not now. Pack it away.
I shoved the thought into the box where I kept everything that could get me killed. The worry. The fear. The desperate need to turn around and make sure she was safe.
She has Atticus. She'll be fine. Focus.
My ribs screamed with every breath, each inhale a reminder of Amber's careful work. The cuts across my chest pulled and burned, fresh blood seeping through my torn shirt.
Pain is just information. File it. Move on.
The monster grandfather had spent years creating stirred in my chest, cold and familiar. I'd spent a decade trying to bury it, trying to be someone else. Someone better.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I let it loose.
Hector moved beside me like we'd been doing this our whole lives, which, fuck, we had. Just not together. Not like this.
"Two on the left," he said quietly, his voice barely audible over the alarms.
I nodded, tracking the movement through the haze. Grandfather's men were scrambling, trying to establish a defensive perimeter around the secondary helipad. Professional security, well-trained, well-armed.
But not family. Not like us.
They weren't ready for what we'd become.
Should have been.
The first guard rounded the corner, assault rifle raised.
I put two rounds center mass before he could acquire a target. Clean. Efficient. Muscle memory taking over, the training so deeply ingrained it didn't require thought.
The second one got smart, ducking back behind cover and laying down suppressing fire.
Hector was already moving, flanking left while I kept the guard pinned. Three seconds later, I heard the wet thud of a knife finding home. Hector reappeared, wiping blood off his blade with clinical detachment.
"Clear," he called out, his tone flat but focused.
We moved forward, weapons up, scanning for more threats. My ribs screamed with every breath. Amber's careful torture session had done more damage than I'd let Morgan see. But pain was just information. Data to be processed and filed away.
Later. Deal with it later.
"How many rounds you got left?" Hector asked as we approached the next junction.
"Six. Maybe seven." I ejected the magazine, checked it in the dim red glow. "Six."
"Four here.” His smile was sharp, predatory. “We're going to have to get creative." We could unpack our fucked-up family dynamics after we stopped the old man from escaping.
Movement ahead. Three guards, tactical formation, communicating with hand signals. Professional. Grandfather's personal security, not the regular muscle.
"On three?" Hector's voice was calm, steady.
"On three."
We moved as one, years of similar training syncing our muscle memory even though we'd never worked together like this.
I took the left flank, Hector the right.
Two shots, both headshots because we couldn't afford to waste ammunition.
The third guard managed to get his weapon up, but Hector was already inside his guard, breaking his elbow with a vicious strike and following up with a throat punch that dropped him gasping.
I finished it with the butt of my weapon to his temple. He went down and stayed down.
"That's two more," I said, breathing harder than I wanted to admit.
Hector checked the fallen guards' weapons, but they'd been firing on full auto. Empty.
Of course.
We kept moving, our formation tight, each covering the other's blind spots. It was instinctive now, this lethal choreography. Like we'd been doing it forever instead of for the first time.
Should have been doing this all along.
The thought came unbidden, unwelcome. All those years we could have been brothers instead of strangers. All that wasted time.
"Contact!" Hector's shout snapped me back to the present.
Four guards this time, coming from both directions in a coordinated pincer movement. Smart. Grandfather had trained them well.
I dropped into a crouch, using the corner for cover, and fired twice. One guard went down.
My ribs protested violently, white-hot pain lancing through my chest.
Not now. Later.
Hector was already moving, using the chaos to close the distance. He fought like water, fluid, relentless, finding the path of least resistance and exploiting every opening.
One guard swung a rifle like a club. Hector ducked under it, drove his elbow into the man's solar plexus, and followed up with a knee strike that shattered the guard's nose. Blood sprayed across the white walls like abstract art.
Another guard tackled me from the side, and we went down hard.
My already-damaged ribs screamed in protest as his weight drove the air from my lungs. Fresh cuts across my chest tore open, warm blood soaking into my tactical gear.
The guard was big, well-trained, and pissed off. His fist connected with my jaw, stars exploding across my vision.
Fuck.
The pain clarified everything. Sharpened my focus to a razor's edge.
I twisted, using his momentum against him, and managed to get an arm free. Found his eye socket with my thumb and pressed hard, feeling the give of soft tissue. He howled, jerking back, and I drove my forehead into his nose. Cartilage crunched. Blood sprayed hot across my face.
Before he could recover, I wrapped my legs around his torso and rolled, reversing our positions. My knee found his throat. I pressed down, watching his eyes bulge, feeling his desperate attempts to buck me off getting weaker.
The guard's struggles stopped. I held the pressure for three more seconds to be sure, then stood, breathing hard.
Hector was standing over two bodies, breathing hard, blood on his knuckles. "Efficient," he said, his tone approving despite the casual delivery.
"Peachy," I wheezed, accepting his hand up.
"Liar." But he grinned, and for a second I saw the brother I should have known. The one who'd been under grandfather's control, suffering through the same hell I'd escaped.
We were almost out of ammunition now. One round left for me, maybe two for Hector. The rest would have to be done the old-fashioned way. Close, brutal, personal.
The secondary helipad was through the next set of doors. I could hear the helicopter's rotors starting to spool up, that distinctive whine-to-roar that meant someone was about to bug out.
"He's running," Hector said, his voice tight with anger.
Not if I can help it.
We burst through the doors together, weapons raised. The helipad was exposed to the elements, wind whipping through from the ocean. Grandfather stood beside the helicopter, three more guards forming a protective cordon around him.
He saw us and smiled. Actually fucking smiled.
"Boys," he called out over the rotor wash, his voice carrying that familiar mixture of pride and disappointment. "I was hoping you'd make it. One last chance to do this the right way."
"The right way ended when you sent Amber to kidnap me," I shouted back, keeping my weapon trained on him.
"Details." He waved a hand dismissively. "You've always been too emotional, Lancelot. Let your feelings cloud your judgment. That's your mother's influence, soft and sentimental."
Don't take the bait.
But my finger tightened on the trigger anyway, years of rage threatening to boil over.
"And you, Hector." Grandfather's attention shifted to my brother. "My faithful shadow. Fifteen years of loyal service, and this is how you repay me? By betraying your family for this weakling?"
"He's my brother," Hector said simply, his voice steady with conviction. "That makes him my family. You're just a monster wearing a grandfather's face."
Something flickered across the old man's features. Hurt, maybe, or just anger at being defied.
The guards moved first.
It was close-quarters chaos after that. Hector took the first guard with my last bullet, center mass, dropping him instantly. The second guard got smart and charged, using his superior size to try to overwhelm me.
We grappled, his hands going for my throat while I tried to break his hold. He was strong, trained, and fresh. I was injured, exhausted, and running on pure spite.
Not enough.
He slammed me against the helipad deck, my head bouncing off metal with a sickening crack.
Vision swam. Darkness crept in at the edges.
Pain tried to drag me under, screaming ribs, bleeding cuts, the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
Morgan's laugh. Her smile. The way she looked at me this morning.
No. Box it. All of it.
The monster didn't feel pain. Didn't feel fear. Didn't think about anything except the target and the most efficient way to eliminate it.
Become the weapon.
My hand found the tactical knife on my belt. I drove it up under his ribs, angling for the heart. Felt it punch through muscle and tissue. The guard's eyes went wide, his grip on my throat loosening as his body registered what his brain hadn't processed yet.
I twisted the blade and pulled it free. Shoved his dead weight off me.
Hector was finishing the last guard with a rear-naked choke, holding pressure until the man went limp.
The third guard was smarter. He stayed back, using his rifle to keep us at a distance while grandfather climbed into the helicopter. The pilot was already running through pre-flight, the rotors picking up speed.
He’s going to make it.
The thought filled me with cold rage. After everything. After mom’s death, after years of running, after Morgan, after all of it. He was just going to fly away.
No.
I moved without thinking, charging the guard despite the rifle trained on my chest. Suicidal. Stupid. Exactly the kind of emotional response grandfather had just mocked me for.
The rifle fired.
But I wasn’t the one who took the bullet.
Hector crashed into me from the side, driving us both to the ground as the round that should have punched through my spine caught him in the shoulder instead.