Falling for the Beast (A Modern Fairy Tale Duet 2)

Empty. And the hollow feeling in Blake’s stomach couldn’t be surprise, could it? He’d known this would happen. He’d known as soon as the first man had fallen, that something had gone horribly wrong. They wouldn’t make it out of this.

He wasn’t even sorry for himself. He had the strangest thought that his fiancée wouldn’t mind if he never came back. His parents would milk the tragic hero story until they’d made it to the fucking White House. And his work? It was just a bunch of smoke and mirrors—the political stage, the historical backdrop. Intellectual sleight of hand to cover up this, the living and breathing, the fighting and dying of men that amounted to nothing.

No, he wasn’t sorry for himself but he was seriously pissed about Ricardo. Ricardo had a brother. They’d lost so many men today but right now all he could think about was Ricardo’s little brother. He idolized him—and wasn’t Ricardo too young to be an idol? To be a fucking martyr?

He wasn’t much younger than Blake, not in years, but a few tours made all the difference.

Then he heard it—the whoop of a chopper, so faint he might have imagined it.

“What the fuck,” he breathed.

Ricardo looked wary. “You hear something?”

Not insurgents. He hoped not anyway. And there it was, the chopper come to take them away. Only a few minutes late. It was a miracle. A miracle kicking dust into their eyes. They ran to the side, giving the chopper room to land.

That was the only thing that saved them when the first bullet hit the ground.

Under fire. They were under siege.

Had the enemy been waiting for the chopper to land so they could take it?

For a second, the chopper hovered, and Blake was sure it would fly right up again, taking with it any chance of rescue or hope. Ricardo’s little brother.

But then it battered almost gently against the hard-packed earth, landing only seconds before the door slid open. A barrel appeared, taking shots near the tree line, providing the cover he and Ricardo needed to make it inside.

“Let’s go,” Blake shouted over the heavy thrum of the propellers. He pushed Ricardo in front of him so he’d cover behind. They both ran.

They reached the door of the chopper. An arm came out to pull them inside.

Blake was already standing in the heavy vibrating machine when he looked back and saw Ricardo crumple to the ground—outside the chopper. “Get up,” he shouted. He didn’t care if it was cruel to drive him like this. They’d leave without him.

Their cover was gone.

“Move,” the man shouted into his headset—telling the pilot to go.

Blake moved to jump out, but the man blocked him. The other man had fifty pounds on him, as well as more nights of sleep in the past 72 hours and more food and water. But Blake had the fucking determination, the certainty that he couldn’t, wouldn’t leave his teammate behind. His last one. The only man left. If there was anyone left behind on this rock, in this oven, it would be him.

A shot hit the chopper—impossible to know where. It rocked the whole machine, and Blake fell off-balance. The doors were still open, but tilted up, and Blake was sliding back, falling. Every second took him farther from Ricardo, every second took him one more foot in the air.

“No,” he roared, lunging for the doors. It would almost kill him to make the jump now, but he didn’t care. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t fucking be happening.

The guy caught him by the ankle just as he was almost out of the chopper.

He landed hard on the metal grate. The force of his fall swung the chopper far enough that he could see over the edge: the man sprawled on the ground, wounded. And he could see the other men, closing in now that the chopper was leaving range, surrounding him like a pack of wolves.

“No.” This time it was only a quiet sound, stricken. Too soft to hear over the roar of the bird.

Ricardo’s brother. Ricardo.

Something wasn’t right. The bullet must have struck something vital, because the engine was sputtering now. They were still in the air but shifting sideways. At this height they’d crash. They’d burn.

And then they didn’t have to wait that long. A flare of orange out of the corner of his eye was the only clue the chopper would explode in the split seconds before it did, before flames engulfed him, before the force of the blast threw him from the chopper, and then he was falling, falling out of the sky.

Blake

“Get up!”

Blake jerked from sleep, breaths bellowing in and out of his chest, blood racing. His body was covered in sweat and tangled up, constrained, tied down by fabric and hands.