Chapter 24 – Kalista
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kalista
“What the hell does my being a Petrov have to do with you accosting my classmates and my professor?”
I crept along the cool tunnel wall, stealthily moving as quickly as I dared, when the voice of a woman claiming to be a Petrov brought me to a standstill.
“Your uncle, the mafia Don, fucked up some of our friends above ground,” a deep male voice said harshly. “Fucking you and your friends up will start to even that shit up a bit,” he leered.
“I cannot allow you to threaten my students.” That voice was in a heavy Scottish accent and male.
He was probably the professor.
His words were met with snickers and taunting male laughter. There were definitely more than four other males in the tunnel. As soon as the laughter died down, a single gunshot rang out, followed by another high-pitched female scream, a male grunt of pain, and more male laughter.
My heartrate spiked as I moved faster along the tunnel wall. If I let anything happen to one of the Petrov women, Tristan would never forgive me. I sensed them even though the tunnel was too dark for me to see them. With my knife palmed, I crept up on the first guy, who appeared to be guarding the entrance.
Since the guy was crouched on one knee, I placed a palm over his mouth to muffle his scream as I simultaneously plunged my knife, twice in rapid precision, directly into his heart. He slumped over. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was probably wishing that he was. However, in a few seconds he would be, so it would all work out for him. The next guy was standing, but he wasn’t much taller than me, so I was able to reach up, cover his mouth, and slice his throat.
Although I didn’t have my normal supernatural powers of strength and speed, my practiced fight training skills, drilled into me by Owen, were pretty damn good. Each guard fell under my knife like bowling pins until I came to the heart of the tunnel, where five men stood threateningly around a large bespectacled, dark-headed male and three women, one of which I immediately recognized as Tristan’s niece, Zora.
The other two women were being held by two of the men, who were blatantly groping them. The women were openly weeping and clearly terrified.
I didn’t have a clear shot at the man holding Zora at gunpoint to the head, so I stayed hidden in the shadows.
“Why did you shoot him?” Zora yelled. She stared down at the male who had been shot with a mixture of anger and fear, but her eyes were pooling with tears.
One of the men laughed. He seemed to be their leader, sporting a leather black jacket and blue jeans. He had more tattoos than bare skin and was heavily muscled. In addition to the gun he held in his hand, he had another gun at his waist and a knife strapped to his chest. The other four men with him were dressed and armed similarly.
“We will do more than shoot him if your uncle doesn’t pay us for your return,” the leader sneered.
Zora scoffed. “If you know my uncle, then you also know the rest of my family. Why are you so anxious to die?”
“Listen, bitch, I have you under my gun. If there is anyone trying to get killed right now, it’s you with your smart mouth,” the leader said tersely. “I suggest you shut the fuck up and wait for us to ask you to speak.”
“My professor will die if you don’t get him medical attention, dumbass,” Zora said defiantly.
The leader shot the professor again. This time in a kneecap.
The professor roared in pain and then glared at his shooter. His glasses had fallen from his face, and I was stunned at how incredibly handsome the professor was. His sapphire eyes were brilliant with rage and promised retribution, but otherwise, he remained silently seething.
Zora immediately dropped to her knees beside the professor, completely ignoring the gun at her head as she tried to soothe him. “I had no idea that down here was so dangerous, Dr. McKenna,” she said tearfully. “Otherwise, I would have never brought you all here.”
At that moment, the way Zora sounded and acted revealed just how young she was in human years. She might look like a young woman in her early twenties, but Zora was barely a teenager.
“Get up!” The leader grabbed Zora’s arm and tried to lift her back to her feet, but I took his focus on Zora and used it to my advantage.
I moved quickly to the right to give myself a clearer shot and took it. My bullet found a nice spot, dead center on his forehead. His body immediately fell toward the hard tunnel floor. However, even before the body touched the floor, I had already shot my gun twice in rapid succession, taking out the two men who had been holding the two women. But I was too late to stop the third man from firing his gun on me. At least I reacted quickly and did an agile dive and roll, avoiding a fatal shot but not fast enough to avoid being shot at all. Despite the pain in my arm, I still nailed the bastard with a bullet to his neck.
“Aunt Kali?” Zora whisper-yelled in awe as I staggered toward her.
The pain in my arm made me slightly woozy. So, this was what being human and hurt felt like. I was not impressed.
“Hey, kid, what are you doing down here?” I was impressed, however, how completely nonchalant I managed to sound. A good job, Auntie, in not terrifying the teenager. “And how do you know who I am?”
Zora grinned. “Are you kidding? Uncle Tristan never goes on dates. Of course, when he took you out, the entire family wanted to know who you were.”
I gritted my teeth, and pain tunneled through me with every step that I took.
“Listen to me going on.” Zora frowned. “Are you okay?”
I looked at my arm. The dark hoodie hid the extent of my injury. I was about to admit to being shot, but then I heard Tristan’s voice in my mind, and it was the most glorious sound I’ve ever heard.
Tristan: “Amata mia, please tell me that you’re okay.”
Me: “I would, but I would be lying.”
His relief and worry filtered through our link in thick, blanketing waves.
Tristan: “Jesus, baby, who the fuck do I need to kill?”
Me: “They’re already dead. However, I would feel right as rain if you’d come get me.”
I tried to suppress the needy, emotional tremor from my voice, but I doubt I was successful.
Tristan chuckled that sexy, carefree laugh that made my pulse skyrocket every time I heard it. He said something, but I didn’t hear him because, just then, three men strolled in through an opening in the back of the cave.
From their familiar attire, it was clear that they were part of the same gang as the guys I’d just killed. Given their puzzled expressions on seeing us, they were not in on the initial accosting of Zora and her friends. And then they saw their friends on the cold, hard ground of the cave.
In the split second they realized that they should attack, I was already lobbing off three consecutive shots in a rapid fire. They were splayed out on the ground before they got even one shot off.
“Damn, Auntie,” Zora whistled in awe.
The two young women whimpered in distress. They held on to each other and stared at the dead men’s bodies in stunned horror.
The Clark Kent look-alike, although bloodied and bruised, regarded me calmly as if I was under his microscope and he was trying to figure out what made me tick.
“Do you think there’s more of them?” Zora frowned with concern. Her gaze swept over her companions.
“We need to move,” I whisper-yelled, instead of answering Zora because I could hear the oncoming battalion of footsteps from various entry points at the back of the cave. They were moving fast, and I knew that we would be overrun in under a minute.
Me: “Tristan, where the hell are you? We are about to come under heavy fire, and I don’t have enough bullets to hold them off.”
Tristan: “We’re in the Chamber. Where are you?”
Me: “We’re in a cave close to the entrance but before Mick’s place.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” a deep male voice asked mockingly.
I spun around so fast I swayed in a momentary dizzy spell and stared at the unwelcome sight of Dumbass1 and Dumbass2.
“You ran before we could get better acquainted,” Dumbass2 intoned. “Was it something that we said?”
I breathed out tiredly as my kidnappers slinked farther into the cave. God, I miss my enhanced senses.
Me: “Tristan, get your ass here now. The dumbasses who abducted me are here.