Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Lucy
I’d always thought violence was loud.
In the movies, in the news reports, in the version of it I’d built inside my own head during all those months with Andrew, violence was chaos, noise, the crash and shatter of things breaking apart.
But Warrick crossed the cabin in absolute silence.
One second, he was at the window, the next, he had Scott by the throat, and Scott’s back hit the wall hard enough to knock a photograph off its nail. The frame hit the floor. Glass broke.
That was the only sound. The glass.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Scott. What the fuck did you do?”
Scott’s face went white. He shook his head, not saying anything.
Warrick hit him. Closed fist, across the jaw, and the crack of it filled the cabin like a gunshot. Scott’s head snapped sideways. His knees buckled. He hit the floor, shoulder first.
Davan was on his feet. He’d been in the armchair, and now he was standing next to me, and the transition had happened so fast I hadn’t seen it. Kess was already at the window, her body angled.
“Seven vehicles,” she said. “Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three men. All armed.”
Warrick glanced at Kess, then at me, and the switch was instant. The man with me in the bed this morning was gone. What replaced him was the Shifter from the parking lot; his eyes were already going amber at the edges.
“Who are they here for, Scott? Me or Lucy?”
Scott glared up at Warrick. “Don’t you get it? They’re here for you both. Lucy gets to go back to her human mate. You get dead.”
“And Davan and Kess?” Warrick’s voice was cold.
Scott shrugged, wiping blood from his nose. “Collateral damage.”
“I bet. And with us all out of the way, you’re clear to take leadership. Does it really mean that much to you, Scott? That you’d trade away four lives for it?”
Scott didn’t answer.
“We can’t have him loose at our backs. We’ll need to tie him up,” Kess said.
“I have a better idea.” Warrick hit him again, once, twice, and Scott slumped unconscious.
Then he spun to Davan.
“Can you fight?”
“I’m old, boy. Not dead.” Davan glanced outside. “There are too many humans here, too much risk we will be exposed. We Shift as a last resort, understand?”
Warrick hesitated for a second, then gave a sharp nod.
Kess was already moving. “I’ll take the tree line and come around behind the cars.”
Warrick shook his head. “No. You stay with Lucy.”
“I’m not a babysitter.”
“You’re the fastest fighter in this cabin, and she can’t Shift. Stay with Lucy.”
Kess looked at me. From the look on her face, whatever she saw didn’t impress her. But she nodded once.
Davan caught Warrick’s arm, his face calm.
“Boy. Whatever happens out there …”
“Davan—”
“You were never a consolation prize, you hear me? Not for Earth, not for our people here, not for your father. You were the whole point.”
Warrick stared at Davan, and through the bond, I felt how important those words were to him.
Davan released his arm and straightened up to his full height, and for a moment I could see the man he must have been thirty years ago, the one who’d walked through a gate into a world that wasn’t his and built something from scratch.
Then Warrick crossed to me. His hands found my face, his thumbs on my jaw, and for one second, the amber faded, and he was just Warrick, looking at me like he was memorizing something.
“Bedroom. End of the hallway. Rifle in the closet, top shelf. Box of ammunition beside it.” He kissed me. Hard, fast, his mouth warm and tasting of honey. Then he let go, and the amber was back.
“Go.”
I ran. I found the rifle and the ammunition and loaded it the way Dad had taught me behind the house on Sunday afternoons when I was fourteen, and the most dangerous thing in my world was that I might miss the can and hit the bird feeder.
It felt like another lifetime. Another Lucy, with dirt under her fingernails, and her father’s hand adjusting her grip on the stock. Breathe, Luce. Squeeze, don’t pull.
I sprinted back, my heart thumping just as Warrick and Davan went out the front door.
I took a position at the front window. Kess was beside me, knife in hand. Through the glass, I could see the gravel, the tree line, and the seven vehicles that had fanned out across the clearing like a blockade. Men stood arranged in front of the cars, all of them in tactical gear.
My phone was in my back pocket. I pulled it out before I could think about it.
Me: Hey. I love you. You know that, right?
Three dots. Dani typing.
Dani: Ok, what did u break?
Dani: Or who did u kill?
Dani: Luce, ur freaking me out. Love u too, weirdo. Call me later??
Through the glass, a man in tactical gear racked a shotgun.
I put the phone away without answering.
Warrick and Davan walked off the porch side by side.
Neither of them rushed. Even from here, I could see how they moved, shoulders low, weight forward, covering ground the way I’d seen big cats cover open savannah on nature documentaries.
I saw the man nearest the cabin assess them and narrow his eyes.
Andrew stepped out from behind the lead SUV. Twenty armed men, and he’d put himself in the middle of them like a board member arriving at a shareholder meeting. Sleeves pushed to his elbows. Hair still perfect. I nearly laughed. Of course his hair was perfect.
“Warrick Kassar.” Andrew said it like he was reading from a business card. “I appreciate you coming out. I know this looks dramatic, but it doesn’t have to be. I just want to talk to Lucy.”
“Not gonna happen. You need to leave.” Warrick’s stance was loose, relaxed, but something moved through the bond between us, a heat I hadn’t felt from him before.
It took me a moment to place it. Rage, yes.
But more than that. He was eager. He wanted this fight.
He wanted to kill Andrew Coleman with every molecule in his body, and the only reason he hadn’t already was that twenty guns were pointed at the cabin.
“I leave, I come back. Different day, different approach.” Andrew spread his hands.
The gesture of a man being reasonable. I’d seen that gesture across dinner tables, in arguments, in the moments before his fist connected.
“This doesn’t end because you tell me to go.
It ends when Lucy and I have a conversation. ”
“She doesn’t want a conversation with you.”
“That’s for her to decide, isn’t it?”
Davan shook his head once. “The woman’s made her decision. You’re on private property. Take your men and go.”
Andrew looked at Davan. I knew what he saw. An older man, not a threat. Someone to be managed.
“I respect that you’re protecting her. I do.
” His tone was still warm, still playing the reasonable man.
“But I’ve got twenty men. I’ve been patient, more patient than most people in my position would be.
Walk away. Take the old man. Let Lucy and me talk, and this ends.
She’s one woman. She’s not worth dying over. ”
My hands tightened on the rifle stock.
Beside me, Kess made a sound. Low, barely audible. I glanced at her. Her face hadn’t changed, but she was rotating the knife in her hand as if warming up her wrist.
Through the glass, I watched Warrick say something I couldn’t hear. Andrew tilted his head. Smiled. Then he lifted one hand.
Two of his men rushed Warrick from the left. Warrick put the first one on the ground with a single hit. The second slammed into him low, drove him sideways. A third came in. A fourth. Bodies piling on, fists, knees, feet swinging, and Warrick was buried in them.
Davan lunged toward them. One of Andrew's men intercepted him — young, built like a linebacker, confident enough to think an old man was an easy target.
Davan grabbed the man's arm, redirected the momentum, and slammed him face-first into the gravel.
A second man came in from the right. Davan hit him once in the throat and the man folded.
Through the glass, I saw Andrew's expression flicker, the first crack in that boardroom composure.
Whatever he'd expected from an old man, it wasn't this.
Another man came at Davan from behind. He got an arm around Davan’s neck. Davan broke the hold, drove his elbow back hard enough to send the man stumbling. To the left, two more were closing in. Davan was holding them off, but he wasn’t going to be able to help Warrick.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Kess glanced at me and then back outside. “Stay here!” she shouted, and then she was through the front door, sprinting toward the pile of men on Warrick.
Andrew pulled his gun, aiming for Kess, and my stomach dropped.
“KESS!” I yelled, trying to warn her.
Davan spun toward her, saw Andrew’s gun, and moved. Before I could blink, he hit her from the side. Kess flew forward, tumbling to the ground.
The shot cracked across the clearing.
Davan's head snapped back. His body kept moving for half a step, momentum carrying him forward, and then he dropped. There was no stagger, no hands reaching for the wound, no slow folding to his knees. Davan was alive and then he was motionless on the ground.
Kess screamed.
It was the worst sound I'd ever heard. It came from somewhere so deep inside her that it didn't sound like a voice at all. She was on her knees beside Davan, her hands on his face, and the scream kept going.
I felt a thrum of shock through the bond. Warrick knew Davan was dead and for a moment he was paralyzed with grief.
Andrew raised his voice toward the cabin. “Lucy. The old man is dead. The next one will be your boyfriend. Come out, and I’ll let them live.”
Stay inside, Warrick had said. So had Kess.
I went out the front door.
“That’s my girl.” Andrew smirked as he gestured toward me. “Secure her.”
Fuck!
A man to my left grinned at me. Black flak jacket, narrow nose, jutting chin. He had fifty pounds on me easily, and the grin said he thought this was going to be simple. Girl with a rifle. Cute.
He jogged toward me, angling to come at me from the side, ready to grab the barrel.
I raised the rifle. Sighted. Squeezed.