The crack of the rifle shot rebounded from the cliffs cuffing the edges of Spirit Lake. Time stopped. For one blissful second I enjoyed the fact that Lenny Ace was dead. Then that second ended and all fucking hell broke loose.
“Damnit,” I growled through my teeth, dropping my cell phone to the wooden floorboards in exchange for my second weapon, lifting both guns to fire two shots at once, sending two Aces to their graves as the wave of them resurfaced, stampeding down the docks towards us now, the vibrations of their pounding footfalls ricocheting up my legs.
“Get ready,” I yelled to the others, rolling out of the path of a bullet to put myself deeper into the warehouse, waiting for them to come rushing through so I could pick them off one by one. The opening was wide, but not wide enough for more than five to get through at once.
If we did this just right, none would make it further than a few feet inside.
A female grunt came from outside and someone shrieked on the docks.
“Ghost,” Rook roared, rushing out into the opening, out into the night onto the docks to meet our enemies, foiling my plan completely.
“Fucking hell,” I ran after him, my stomach vaulting into my throat at the deafening staccato of gunfire swelling in the atmosphere.
My Sparrow had jumped down, and I watched her swipe her blade over a throat, her other hand tossing a blade in the air to catch it with the business end pointed the opposite direction as she stabbed another attacker in the thigh, swinging her body low to avoid his flying fist before she danced around his back and stabbed him in the side of his neck.
A barrel raised in my direction, and I ducked low, sweeping feet out from under a body, pumping a well-placed piece of lead between his eyes.
They were still coming, and I saw the shine of a longer weapon, sharp angled and whistled hard and sharp, letting the others know we were about to be playing an entirely different sort of game.
“Get inside,” I bellowed. “Keep them back!”
I took out two more before I needed to change a mag and a Dead Man got the jump on me, butting the hard metal handle of his weapon into the side of my temple, making flares of light pop into my vision as I careened to one side.
I shook my head, trying to clear my eyes, alert and ready for another attack, but when I opened my eyes again, it was to look down the barrel of a gun.
My lips parted.
He fired.
Click.
He was out of bullets, the idiot. I disarmed him, throwing my entire body into the hit as I pistol whipped his ass unconscious.
Grey, Rook, and Ava Jade were almost all the way into the warehouse, and I grimaced, looking down the dock to the storm blowing our way. All the Aces and Dead Men who’d been hanging out by the vehicles, waiting, were coming this way now, too. A guy I recognized to be the leader of the Dead Men was at their helm. He roared, lifting an AK high over his head.
Shit.
I took a second to turn my attention beyond them, to the road curving up and away into the trees. There was still no sign of Diesel. Not even the faintest glow of headlights or even the rumble of engines approaching.
This wasn’t good.
“Corvus!” Ava Jade shouted, and I turned, heat rushing through me as I raced back into the warehouse, quick, jerking movement making something in my belly pinch uncomfortably.
A warm wetness was seeping into my jeans, sticking against my thigh.
I pressed the side of my weapon and my knuckles to my stomach, my hand coming away vivid red in the flashing lights inside the pier.
I grimaced, baring my teeth as I growled through the pain, searching for Ava Jade in the fray as our people fought to keep any more of the enemy from entering the building.
I caught a flash of dark hair and went for it, keeping a wary eye trained on the door, picking off Aces and Dead Men at will as I made my way over to her.
She ducked to avoid a blow and came up like a fucking springboard, her eyes going wide at something over my head. The zip of her blade arcing just next to my head filled my right ear before someone behind me fell with a watery croak.
My Sparrow drew her Glock and fired toward the bay door, backing up over the pile of dead strewn over the wooden planks at our feet.
We were fending them off as well as we could.
Then Crowley went down, his brains exploding out the back of his head as he fell.
Derrik was next.
What had she done?
My chest squeezed painfully at the sound of Rook screaming through his own pain as he was hit, not for the first time.
I ran out of bullets. Out of magazines.
AJ’s gun kicked back in her hand. Her too.
Fear flashed over her eyes as she searched the ground for something, anything to use.
This was it.
Lenny Ace was dead.
But my Sparrow had condemned us to die with him.
“Look!” Grey cried, pointing down the docks, to the headlights bouncing against the shoreline. The sound of squealing tires reached my ears, and I dropped to the ground, pinching a shotgun from a Dead Man’s dead fingers, cocking it back and firing.
He was here.
We could survive this.
I rushed to stand closer to my brothers, closer to my Sparrow.
Grey whooped, firing the last few shots in this clip. “Fuck yeah, motherfuck—”
His head whipped back, his body crumpling to the wooden floor.
“Grey!”
He didn’t move. I fired again. “Grey, get up!”
The shotgun kicked back into my shoulder, sending a violent wave of pain all the way down to the bullet wound still steadily seeping my life’s blood down the front of my jeans.
“Brother!” Rook roared.
Guns fired further afield and our enemies turned their attention to the Saints and Kings now boxing them in from the other end of the dock, trapping them in the middle.
I dropped the shotgun, reaching for a discarded pistol, raising it as I backward walked my way toward where Grey had fallen.
Please, no.
Ava Jade screamed, and I chanced taking my eyes off the Aces and Dead Men now engaged in a firefight with the entirety of my father’s force.
Rook’s face was bent over Grey’s, blowing into his mouth before he started compressions.
…compressions…?
My brain struggled to make sense of what it was seeing.
Couldn’t unseen the garish wound where his right eye used to be.
…used to be…?
My body sagged, knees making impact with the wood, my heart beating out of rhythm.
“Please,” Sparrow was saying, her entire body shaking like a leaf in a hurricane as she hovered over Rook and Grey amid the carnage. “No, please! No. No.”
Numbly, I lifted my head, trying to see through the burning saltwater coating my eyes.
I let this happen.
My fault.
My fault.
Something inside of me snapped.
“Why?”
Sparrow turned her horrified gaze to me, her lower lip quivering as tears streaked twin paths through the blood and dirt on her face.
“Why couldn’t you fucking listen to me?”
She crumpled. Something in her eyes cracking. Breaking. Shattering.
Ava Jade was shaking her head, muttering something I couldn’t hear to herself over and over again as Rook continued his assault of Grey’s chest.
His still body lurched from the movements and bile rose up the back of my throat at the snap of his rib bones.
“Fuck you!” Rook was screaming at Grey’s lifeless face. “Wake. The. Fuck. Up.”
He stopped pumping Grey’s chest and slapped him instead, first with one palm and then the other, leaving red on both his cheeks. “You don’t get to fucking die. Not tonight.”
He slapped him again and I couldn’t watch anymore. “Rook, stop,” I said, my voice laced with warning.
But then a choking cough spluttered from Grey’s lips and Rook hefted him onto his side as Grey choked up blood, spattering the floor with it as he racked his lungs, his one eye opening wide, bloodshot, and strained from the pain.
I didn’t know how I got there, but there I was, rolling him back to his back, prying his one eye open, checking his pupil dilation. Jabbing two fingers below his chin to take his pulse, the feel of it hard and strong against the pads of my fingers better than anything I’d ever felt in my whole miserable fucking existence.
I fell back onto my ass, a broken breath falling from my lips, my head spinning.
He was okay. He was going to live.
Ava Jade crawled to his side, reaching for him, and I saw red.
I checked her advance, cutting her off from getting any closer as he came slowly back to full consciousness. “Don’t fucking touch him.”
She recoiled from my words, falling backward onto her elbows, her eyes filled with hurt.
Rook was asking Grey if he could count the number of fingers he was holding up. Behind Ava Jade, I saw the stern face of my father leaving a trail of corpses in his wake as he burrowed a path through flesh and bone to get to us.
Ava Jade got shakily to her feet, dropping the useless gun still in her hand to the ground. “I’m s-sorry,” she said, her watery stare fixed on Grey, who had lifted a hand as though he might be trying to touch her.
“He’ll be okay, right?” Rook asked me, still crouched beside Grey’s head, his bloody fingers brushing debris from the garish wound to his brother’s eye. “He’s going to live?”
Diesel brushed past Ava Jade, assessing the situation, rushing to Grey.
“Hey, where the fuck does she think she’s going?” Rook said, and when I looked back up, Ava Jade was already halfway down the dock, jumping over corpses, ignoring the Saints calling out to her as she passed them. Running away.
“Ghost!” Rook called out to her, his voice hoarse. He tried to stand, but his leg was fucked, and he fell back to one knee, baring his teeth before trying again. “Ghost!”
I bowed my head. Fuck.
“What the fuck did you say to her?” Rook demanded, taking a shaky step forward, his left boot glinting crimson.
What had I said to her?
I could barely remember.
My heart faltered a beat, vision darkening. Beneath my knees, the docks were slick with a puddle of my blood.
I needed to go after her.
She couldn’t be out there alone.
“I didn’t mean…” I trailed off, my tongue heavy in my mouth, muscles unlocking from bone until I could hardly hold myself up.
“Shit,” I heard someone curse and then hands were holding me up. “Diesel!”
I let my head fall back and looked up into mismatched eyes. Something about that seemed weird, but I couldn’t seem to hold onto the thought as Drake called for Diesel a second time. “He’s been shot,” Drake said. “I think he’s hemorrhaging.”
Diesel pushed something against my lower stomach, and I shuddered, grimacing at the pain.
“We need to get him to the vet,” Diesel announced, and he and Axel shuffled Drake out of the way as they lifted me from the floor despite my grousing.
“Wait,” I said through gritted teeth, reaching out to grab Drake, haul him close.
He looked down at me, confused, edgy.
“Find her.”
His gaze narrowed on me. “Who?”
“She took off,” Rook supplied for me as Diesel set me on a plank of wood, my makeshift stretcher.
“Find her,” I implored Drake. “Bring her… bring her…”
I could feel myself fading and fought it with everything I had.
“Don’t worry,” Drake said, peeling my rigid fingers from his forearm. “I’ll find her.”
