Wolf Under Fire, page 19
When one of the men aimed the insanely short submachine gun at him, Jake instinctively grabbed it and shoved it aside as it rattled out a short burst of rounds. The trigger puller had intended to put the bullets through Jake’s chest, but instead ended up shooting one of his buddies in the face. Jake was glad it was dark and that his enhanced vision lacked the same color clarity at night as it did in the daylight. The vision of the man’s head coming apart and the resulting splatter against the back wall wasn’t something he needed to see.
One down…three to go.
Jerking the small submachine gun out of the man’s hands, Jake swung it around to smash it into the face of the closest guy on the left before he could get a shot off. A quick slash with his right hand took out the first shooter’s throat while a vicious kick sent the guy stumbling back into the other attackers.
Two down…two to go.
Jake spun the MP7 around in his hand and slipped his index finger into the trigger guard. That was a little tricky with his claws fully extended, but he managed it just as the man he’d smacked in the face with the weapon’s butt recovered enough to come at him.
The MP7 burped in Jake’s hand, the rate of fire insane but recoil hardly noticeable. The bolt locked back on an empty magazine and the man he’d been aiming at went down with half a dozen holes in his chest even though he’d been wearing some kind of body armor. But that’s what the MP7’s armor-piercing ammo was meant to do—kill people wearing Kevlar.
Three down…one to go.
The last one almost got Jake because he was willing to do anything after seeing three of his buddies go down within the span of a couple seconds. He lunged forward still holding on to the body of the first shooter, using the man’s corpse as a shield and blazing through an entire 40 round magazine of ammo in an attempt to make Jake dead.
One of the bullets punched through Jake’s shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to slow him down. Slipping to the side out of the man’s shot line, he closed the distance between them and threw himself on the a-hole with an ear-splitting growl that froze the man solid for a moment.
Jake used the distraction to drop his empty weapon, then drive his target to the floor, the corpse with its throat torn out still wedged between them. Once he’d batted the other man’s weapon aside, all it took was a second or two to reach out and get his clawed hands on the guy’s head, snapping his neck with an audible crack.
He scooped up one of the MP7s lying on the floor but didn’t bother wasting the time searching the bodies looking for spare magazines. The entire time he’d been fighting the four men in the hallway, the sounds of the melee in the conference rooms had gotten louder. The scariest part was that he hadn’t heard a peep out of Harley the whole time. He needed to get in there.
Now.
There was another one of Darby’s armed men standing outside the doorway to the conference room, the bodies of several other men lying scattered around him. Based on the quality of their suits and the expensive handguns still held loosely in their dead hands, no doubt they were the security guys the Bilderberg Society people had brought with them.
Jake shot the man guarding the door without slowing down, leaping over the body even as it fell to get into the room beyond. He had to stop then just to make sense of the complete and utter chaos taking place within the large conference space.
The room was pitch-dark, lit only by the sporadic muzzle flashes of the various weapons being fired around him. Tables had been arranged in a loose V shape, but most had now been overturned or crushed flat. Plates, utensils, food, and bodies lay everywhere, hotel waitstaff, security guards, and Bilderberg members among the fallen.
The stench of smokeless powder, blood, and those muddle-scented creatures was everywhere. There were small clusters of fighting going on all around the room, people hunkered down behind overturned tables trying to defend themselves against the creatures who seemed nearly invincible in the face of the weapons being used against them.
Nearly invincible, but not completely.
Several of the creatures lay facedown on the floor, unmoving. It was impossible to know exactly where they’d been hit, but from the way the bodies were curled into a fetal position, he was willing to bet they’d been shot in the gut.
Jes’s idea had worked.
Jake followed his nose to Harley. She’d herded a group of people to one corner of the room, tables, chairs, and a speaker’s podium piled up to give them some level of protection. There were maybe a dozen of the Bilderberg members crouched down behind the makeshift barricade, along with four or five of their security guards, and a bunch of the hotel’s waitstaff.
Since Jake had first met her, Harley had always struck him as the most reserved and unassuming alpha he’d ever met. To the degree that sometimes he wondered if she really was an alpha. But that moment, seeing her standing tall, 9mm in her hand, keeping the band of survivors together and directing their attention to one threat after the next, made him forget any doubt he’d ever had.
Jake looked around the room, trying to find Damien, but the big man was nowhere to be seen. Oddly enough, Darby’s crew and the humans with them weren’t making any attempt to kidnap anyone. They were flat-out aiming to kill anyone they could reach, Bilderberg Society member or not.
Obviously, trying to grab these people for money wasn’t the plan.
Harley caught sight of him and pointed toward the large group of men attacking her position. Jake nodded and waded into the fight, the MP7 chattering in his hands. A few of Darby’s human goons and another one of the creatures went down before they even realized Jake was there. But when they finally figured it out, the counterattack was immediate and vicious.
Without any cover to hide behind, Jake had no choice but to fall back. He was thinking he might have to retreat all the way out the door when Misty’s voice in his ear caught his attention.
“Jake, Damien and a handful of his men are slipping away through the service corridors with three hostages. Their hands are tied behind their backs and they have bags over their heads, so I can’t tell exactly who they are, but the clothing tells me they’re members of the Bilderberg Society. They’re moving toward the front of the hotel. What do you want me to do?”
As if the remaining member of Darby’s assault team had been listening in on the radio traffic, the shooting suddenly dropped off sharply as the heavily armed men began to back out of the conference room. They fired enough to keep people ducking, but mostly they focused on getting away. A few of the creatures even paused long enough to reach down and scoop up their dead. Just the creatures, though. Apparently, human goons didn’t rate.
“Jake, Damien is almost at the front lobby of the hotel,” Misty announced urgently. “What do you want me to do?”
Jake growled in frustration, torn between letting the bad guys get away out the back or Damien and his hostages out the front. In the end, the answer was obvious.
“Harley and I will go after Damien,” he shouted, gesturing for her to follow him even as he ran for the door. “Find Forrest, then get to the conference room. Try and help the wounded, then deal with the police when they arrive.”
Then he was off and running, hitting the hallway outside the conference room at a full sprint. As he ran through the hotel toward the bedlam he could already hear from the direction of the lobby, he prayed Jes’s part of the mission was going better than his.
Because so far, this was a frigging clusterfuck.
* * *
Jes and Caleb were on the move before Jake even finished telling them Damien was starting his raid on the hotel. But the angst in his voice when he’d hesitated, then told them to be careful, had been enough to almost make her heart freeze in her chest. It took everything in her to not flip on her mic and tell him to watch himself and not do anything that might harm a single hair on his head. But she had a job to do, and an open channel was no place to tell Jake she was worried about his safety.
Low growls rumbled from Caleb’s throat as he disappeared around one side of the farmhouse, heading for the door to the kitchen and the overwhelming number of bad guys waiting for him inside. Based on the visible spring in his step, Jes got the feeling he was looking forward to the murder and mayhem.
It was entirely possible the omega werewolf was slightly deranged. Then again, maybe omega werewolf and deranged were synonymous.
Jes ducked under the window on the front porch, slipping up quietly to stand beside the door. Caleb had told her earlier he planned to kick in the door leading into the kitchen, but that approach wouldn’t work for her. She simply didn’t have enough body weight to do it. Fortunately, there was another way.
Pulling the small explosive breeching charge out of her messenger bag, she attached it to the door in between the knob and the frame. Then she applied the electric initiator and flipped the arming key on the handheld trigger unit.
“Ready when you are, Caleb,” she whispered, moving to the side of the door a little so she could peek in the window.
“Ready,” he replied. “On three. One…two…”
“Three!” Jes shouted, pushing the red button on the trigger unit as she saw the men who’d been sitting on the far side of the living room stand up and advance on the kids, their guns down at their sides, fingers on the triggers. The guy on the right had his cell phone to his ear and while she couldn’t hear what he was saying, she got the gist of the conversation. And he wasn’t calling for takeout.
Darby was giving them the go-ahead to kill the hostages.
The kids must have realized the same thing. They started screaming, knowing they were as good as dead.
The blast of the front door blowing in sent the kids scrambling for the floor. While one of the men turned toward Jes, the guy who’d been talking on the phone kept his attention locked on the kids, aiming his weapon at Olivia as she threw herself over two of the smaller kids.
Jes momentarily ignored the guy bringing up his weapon and pointing it in her direction, focusing on the guy going after Olivia. Praying these guys weren’t like Darby, she stepped inside and put a bullet through his head. Without waiting to see if it took him down, Jes half spun and did the same to the other man. She held her breath for half a second before both men dropped to the floor with solid thuds…and didn’t get up. She was still holding her weapon on them when the sound of growling and automatic weapon fire came from the kitchen, shattering the momentary silence.
The kids scrambled backward across the mattresses, screaming bloody murder when they saw Jes coming their way. Keeping her gun low, she motioned for them to sit down.
“Stay on the floor,” Jes told them firmly as she edged toward the kitchen.
Caleb expected her to get the children out of there, but she couldn’t leave him on his own, regardless if he was a werewolf or not. Besides, if any of the bad guys who were left were supernatural creatures and came after them, this would turn into the shortest rescue in history. It was better to face the creatures head-on, not with her back turned, trying to herd a bunch of kids across the front yard.
Jes had only taken a few steps toward the mayhem going on in the kitchen when she heard the sound of boots on the stairs.
She and the men caught sight of each other at the same time, all three of their weapons coming up. Jes swore she could feel the bullets zipping past her so closely they heated her skin and plucked at her clothes. Ignoring how close she was to dying at that moment, she focused on returning fire.
When she successfully put three rounds through the center of the first guy’s chest, she thought dropping him would expose his buddy behind him. Instead, the guy in back latched an arm around the dead man, hiding behind the body like it was a freaking shield.
Jes kept shooting, trying to nail the guy in the legs or the arm he had around the body, but she ran out of time—and ammo—when the man stumbled down the last few steps with his dead buddy and crashed right into her, knocking her weapon from her hand.
The combined weight of both men landing on top of her sent the air exploding out of her lungs. Her vision went a little dark and she would have probably passed out if it wasn’t for the gun coming toward her face.
Jes reached around the dead man on her chest, trying to shove the other guy’s weapon away. She’d barely managed to nudge the pistol a few inches to the side before it went off, burying a bullet into the floor so close to her face she felt wood chips nick her skin, never mind what it did to her ears. They were going to be ringing for days.
She struggled at the dead weight on her chest, knowing if she didn’t get the corpse off soon, the living goon would put a bullet through her within seconds—if he didn’t suffocate her first. So she took a chance and shoved one hand between her and the body, getting it on the corpse’s chest and trying to push it to the side.
Unfortunately, that move didn’t achieve a damn thing. But on the upside, it did put her in contact with the extra magazine for the dead guy’s weapon. Fully loaded, it was big and heavy.
The man above her was already moving his weapon back into position to turn her head into a bloody mess, and she didn’t stop to think. She simply grabbed hold of the magazine filled with bullets and swung as hard as she could.
She’d been aiming for the man’s temple. While she missed his head, she did get him in the throat.
The guy tumbled to the side, rolling onto the floor, coughing and choking. He wrapped his free hand around his crushed throat while swinging his pistol around wildly with the other, pulling the trigger over and over again in a mad attempt to kill her.
The dead body that was still on top of Jes saved her life, absorbing every bullet that came her way.
As soon as the guy ran out of bullets, Jes shoved the corpse off her and went on the offensive. He was still choking and half-blind from tears and lack of oxygen, so Jes threw herself on him and started beating the crap out of him with the base of the magazine in her hand, finally ending it with that temple shot she’d been going for earlier.
Jes climbed to her feet, gasping for air and OD’ing on adrenaline. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the kids over by the wall, staring at her in shock. Ignoring them, she looked around wildly for her weapon, finding it a few feet away, at the bottom of the stairs. Quickly reloading the Sig, she spun around, heading for the kitchen, abruptly realizing it was now deathly silent in there.
Oh crap.
She cautiously entered the room, ready for anything, only to conclude she needed to get a new definition of the word anything.
The kitchen was completely demolished, the trestle table smashed to smithereens, the brick around the wood-fired oven broken and lying on the floor in pieces, blood covering the walls. Caleb was in the middle of it all, the jacket he’d been wearing when she’d last seen him nowhere to be found. His T-shirt was shredded from the multiple bullets he’d been hit with, blood staining the fabric an even darker hue. If she hadn’t seen how much damage a werewolf could sustain and keep going, she would have assumed he was a dead man standing.
Four bodies—some no longer possessing all their limbs—were scattered around the kitchen, one hanging from the opening of the oven, throat torn out. Caleb’s long claws were extended, covered in blood and bits of stuff Jes didn’t want to think about. Even more disconcerting was the fact that his fangs had blood on them, too. Glistening red droplets ran onto his shirt as he stood there holding the body of a man he’d killed mere moments earlier.
At the sound her footsteps on the kitchen’s tile floor, Caleb let loose a savage snarl, his eyes glowing vivid blue. Jes was pretty sure the man she’d come to know over the past few days wasn’t home at the moment. Jake had said something about omegas having control issues. This must be what losing control looked like for a werewolf.
She took a deep breath, wondering how to handle this situation. She didn’t think Caleb would actually attack her, but she wasn’t sure.
Jes took a cautious step toward him when she heard Misty’s urgent voice in her earpiece.
“I hope everything is okay on your end, guys, because we could seriously use your help back in London. Damien has three members of the Bilderberg Society and is trying to get them out of the hotel now. I have no idea where he’s taking them.”
Jes cursed, earning her another snarl from Caleb. He hunched down over the last man he’d killed, dragging the body closer to him like it was his favorite blanket she was going to try to steal from him. He seemed ready to kill anyone who got close to it. Either that or jump out the window with it.
“We’re on the way, Misty,” Jes said softly.
Moving carefully, so she wouldn’t spook Caleb, she took out her cell and called the support team, telling them they could come get the kids. Jes would have preferred to stay, to make sure all the children were indeed as okay as they appeared, but that wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, neither was waiting around for Caleb to snap out of omega mode.
Holstering her gun and hoping for the best, Jes marched straight up to him and smacked him across the face. When he growled at her, she did it again—harder.
“Snap out of it,” she said. “Our teammates are in trouble and we need to help. Let’s go!”
Caleb growled again, softer this time, the blue slowly fading from his eyes. Frowning, he looked down at the body he was still holding before letting it fall to the floor.
“I’m not even going to ask what I was doing with that,” he murmured. “But I’m gonna need a new shirt before we go unless you want people staring at us all the way back to London.”
Chapter 14
The people in the lobby screamed and scrambled out of the way as Jake and Harley raced through the crowd that had formed there after Damien and his men stormed through only seconds earlier. Several men lay on the floor bleeding heavily from the wounds they’d sustained from either getting in the way or trying to stop them. Jake wanted to help the wounded, but he couldn’t—not if it meant letting Damien and his crew get away. So he shoved his way to the automatic glass doors and headed outside, careful to make sure his claws and fangs were safely stowed, Harley on his heels.
