11. Chance
Chance
“Behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death,” Cap drawled under his breath as we moved silently toward the first warehouse. “And Hell followed with him.”
We moved as one, the feeling that we’d been training for this very moment settling deep in my bones.
Every mission we’d completed, every rowdy night we’d shared, every inside joke and argument had prepared us to move as if we shared the same mind.
Cap and I ran point with Sully, Beau, and Franco following closely behind, our footsteps in sync.
We’d barely reached the perimeter when the sound of heavy footsteps alerted us to two human guards on their rounds.
Moving swiftly, I stepped out from behind a car that had seen better days and broke the first human’s neck.
Cap took care of the other one, though I didn’t see or hear it.
The lack of sound was the only indication that he’d been successful.
Dragging the human over to the car, Beau and I silently rolled him under it.
Then we kept moving.
It was almost ridiculous how easily we made our way through the dark lot.
Humans were so fucking loud, especially when they weren’t expecting resistance, that we always knew where they were long before they saw us.
To our annoyance, it became apparent pretty quickly that the humans closer to the buildings were better trained and therefore took more stealth and speed to neutralize.
None of us spoke. We didn’t need to.
The first warehouse we cleared was mostly empty beyond a few SUVs and pallets of a liquid that we were unable to identify in the dark.
We’d assumed that the warehouses near the perimeter were used for storage.
If you were trying to hide what you were doing, you wouldn’t do it in the buildings closest to a roadway.
As soon as we were finished in that warehouse, I pulled a couple of padlocks out of my pockets and locked them shut.
Then we moved inward.
Every few minutes, I saw a silent shadow move in my peripheral with a sense of satisfaction.
Other Vampires were hitting their marks.
Danny, Rosemary, and a team of Strike operators moved in from the northwest. A second team of Strike operators moved in from the northeast. They’d converge at the warehouse that held the lab.
Ambrose and his team of Command operators moved in from the west. Two teams of former operators, headed by my father and Uncle Mordecai, moved in from the southwest and southeast. Our team moved in from the east along the main road.
We would all make it to the center of the industrial park, taking out every human we encountered as swiftly and quietly as possible, but each of the teams had different objectives once there.
Our team was headed for the warehouse Danny had found filled with cages. If my father’s team reached us beforehand, great, but we would enter the building alone if needed.
I began to question whether or not we’d even needed to call so many Vampires in to help, and that was when I rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a human.
I had no fucking clue what he’d been doing, but I knew instantly that he wasn’t like the jokers we’d dealt with to that point. I hadn’t even heard him breathing.
Reacting instinctively, I punched him hard in the throat to cut off any chance of him calling out. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to slow the man down. His neck and then face turned beet red as he struggled for air, but he still swung his rifle up, his finger on the trigger.
If he managed to get a shot off, all hell would break loose.
I blinked, and suddenly the man was falling, a bone-handled knife sticking out grotesquely from between his wide eyes.
“You’re welcome, cher,” Cap whispered with a nearly soundless chuckle.
Three more humans seemed to pop out of nowhere, soundless, scentless. Franco nearly beheaded one with the machete he carried. Beau efficiently brought down two—one who’d spotted Sully first and the other who’d raised his hand to whistle for help.
It grew harder to move more than a few feet at a time because we couldn’t see where the humans were coming from. The warehouses were at least three stories tall and were grouped closer together. Finally, we stopped, kneeling down at the back of the warehouse that was our main objective.
There was a slight bend in the metal sheets that covered the walls, and it let out a sliver of dim light shining along the pavement.
Raising my hand, I leaned close to the hole.
A shuffle of movement.
It was quiet for a long moment.
Then a short, sharp inhale.
I raised my hand to catch my teammates’ attention.
“Do not move,” I said, my voice pitched so low that only a Vampire would hear me. “If you can hear me, clear your throat.”
I held my breath as I waited.
Inside, someone quietly cleared their throat.
Beau’s hand gripped my shoulder.
“Don’t react,” I ordered. “Do nothing to call attention to yourself.”
The Vampire inside cleared his throat again.
I paused as Franco rose to his feet, took two steps forward, and stabbed a human through the throat as he rounded the corner. He caught the human under his armpits and pulled him fully around the corner, leaving him against the shadowed wall.
“We’re here to get you,” I said.
The Vampire inside let out a shaky breath.
“How many Vampires are inside?” I asked, wiping my brow.
The knowledge of how close we were to finishing what we’d come to do made the heat flare inside me. I just hoped the brain fog that normally accompanied it held off.
I tried to count the series of taps on the floor, but they were so quiet that I almost couldn’t hear them. The Vampire repeated the taps once. Then again. Then again.
That’s when I realized he was using Morse code.
Chance?
Chance?
Chance?
“Yes,” I replied, my heart pounding.
Who was it? Who had we found?
“Fuck me,” Cap breathed, his eyes wide.
Another series of taps that I wasn’t sure I was hearing correctly. I waited for him to begin again.
“Gordy?” I asked, shock making my eyes widen. “Lewis Gordon?”
The throat cleared again.
Holy Gods.
Gordy had been missing for months. When we’d realized that Zeke’s capture hadn’t been an anomaly, we’d also realized that there were multiple Vampires who had disappeared. It was then that we’d started to assume they were all connected. Knowing we were correct was less than comforting.
Gordy started tapping again.
Sully and Franco rose, moving into defensive positions as two more humans rounded the corner. I forced myself to pay attention to Gordy and not what was happening behind me.
There were thirty-four Vampires inside. Twenty-seven mates.
Ten human guards.
I repeated the numbers back to him and waited.
He cleared his throat again and began to tap.
Four human guards to his left. Four to the right. Two in the center.
“Got it. Hang tight, Gord,” I said. “Be ready.”
I met Beau’s eyes as we got to our feet.
The night was still quiet, but we had no idea how long that would last. There were ten humans between the Vampires we were there to liberate and us. Easy odds.
But we’d seen the way the humans this close to the center of the maze moved. They were highly trained, almost unbelievably so. We’d been able to neutralize them quietly so far, but what would happen when we entered the warehouse?
If the humans began to shoot, our cover would be blown, and we’d put every other Vampire and mate in the warehouses in danger, not to mention those we’d brought with us who were making their way silently through the dark.
Beau lifted his hand and pressed a button on the laryngophone around his neck. “You close?”
“Ten yards,” Danny replied.
“We have to wait,” I said, meeting Cap’s eyes over Beau’s shoulder.
“How long?” he asked, looking pointedly at the bodies accumulating along the wall. “They’re going to notice their missing compatriots soon enough.”
“We need to give them more time,” Beau agreed.
“This is your party,” Cap yielded with a small shrug.
I didn’t have time to acknowledge the weirdness of Cap deferring to me, because almost as soon as he’d finished speaking, gunshots broke the silence of the night.
“Fix bayonets,” Beau said grimly. It was a callback to the first operation we’d been on, deep in the forest, when we’d still carried bayonets for our rifles. He’d been repeating the phrase for over fifty years.
Beau, Franco, and I moved to the west side doors while Sully and Cap moved to the east side. In front of the entry point we were about to breach stood two humans, their heads swinging wildly from side to side as the radios on their belts screamed.
I threw my knife at the same time Franco pulled the trigger on his pistol. I wished I knew whether those two men had been part of the ten who’d been inside, but in the end, it didn’t matter.
I pulled my weapon around to the front and blew out a breath as Franco swung open the door.
Then we were in. Dropping low, I swung left, taking down two humans immediately. Beau swung right, taking out another. Suddenly, the meat of my shoulder flared with pain, and I swayed a little at the impact of the bullet, but kept moving. There was no time to check it.
Franco moved down the center aisle, holding two pistols that he fired like a godsdamned gunslinger in an old western. Unlike in an old western, he hit every human he aimed for. Beau and I were on his heels.
Someone cried out in pain, but the warehouse was massive, and I couldn’t see who it was.
We continued swiftly down the aisle, and it took everything in me not to pause at each cage we passed. Only a few more minutes and we could help them.
At the center of the warehouse, where two perpendicular aisles met, a couple of humans had ducked behind a set of old metal desks and were firing at us. Franco stumbled and almost went down. A bullet had torn through his thigh and then pinged off one of the cage bars behind him.
It only seemed to piss him off.