Leopard's Run (Leopard People 10)

She knew Jeremiah would call for help so she didn’t waste time there. Instead, she looked around the kitchen for weapons. There were plenty. She had been trained in guerilla warfare and hand-to-hand combat. She knew how to call up her leopard to use her skills in fighting, and she knew how to run like hell when the situation demanded it. This time, there would be no running. She had to protect the two wounded men. Ashe raced around the kitchen, preparing her battleground.

When she was done, she hit the light switches, not that it would do that much good if she was facing leopards, but she liked the cover of darkness. She knew where everything was, but she stayed very still, crouching low just in front of the two islands, with her chosen arsenal. The scent of burnt sugar permeated the air. Running, she added another cup of water and more sugar, just dumping it in the pan. She left the burner on.

She didn’t have time to make a survival gas mask; in the fifteen minutes it would take to make it, this fight would probably be over. She glanced down at her watch to note the time. She had no idea how many were in the alley, but there was more than one shooter.

Gorya had been shot at an angle, the distance close. The shooter had definitely been hiding behind the Dumpster.

Jeremiah had been shot from a completely different angle. He’d protected himself from the shooter behind the Dumpster, but that had exposed him to someone on the roof of one of the buildings across the alley. Even as she was figuring out how the two men were shot, she sprayed water on the windows from the hoses at each of the three sinks. It was long range for the one on the other side of the room, but the sprayer was fairly powerful and it hit dead center. She didn’t want a river, just enough.

The flour was next. She threw it at the windows, coating them, one after another, sending a prayer to the universe that it would stick. At least it would cut down on the attackers’ vision. She hurried back to the front of the two islands and waited, counting her heartbeats. She didn’t have to wait for long.

A volley of bullets came through the window, shattering the glass. She waited, counting her heartbeats. The breath moving in and out of her lungs. Her hands were steady as something hit the back door hard jarring the tall, rolling trays.

“They’re coming through in another minute, Jeremiah,” she called out. “I’ll hold them off as long as possible. Keep Gorya alive no matter what.”

Timur loved Gorya. She knew the two cousins had been raised as siblings, and Gorya might as well have been Timur’s blood brother for how close they were. He wasn’t dying. Not today and not by cowards ambushing him.

“He’s bad, Ashe,” Jeremiah called. “I should be out there and you in here.”

She ignored the macho male bullshit that demanded a wounded man protect her when she was perfectly capable. “I was trained for this, by my parents.” She tried to reassure him, hoping his ego wouldn’t have him abandoning Gorya to cover her unnecessarily. “I’ll call you if I need you. Just keep him alive.”

The door shook, and the blow sounded even louder. She was tempted to go unlock it so it wouldn’t be destroyed. She looked around the kitchen. She’d pretty much already single-handedly managed to destroy Evangeline’s beautiful little kitchen—without the intruders. The door shuddered again and burst inward, narrowly missing the two islands that formed a hallway.

A hail of bullets laid down cover and the first assailant burst through the door, his gun in his arms, finger on the trigger. He was already looking left to right as he stepped forward right into the corridor she’d set up. Behind him, a second man followed in tight, standard formation. She had counted out the seconds of the blasts of the guns. When the first man stopped firing, she stood and threw the knife she’d pulled from the block, all in one motion.

The knives weren’t balanced, but she was used to that. Not a single knife her father had made her practice throwing for hours on end, every day throughout her childhood, had been balanced. She hit the first man right in the throat, and as he started to go down, she threw the second knife and dove for cover.

The first man gurgled horribly in the dark. The second man yelled, his voice trembling with shock and pain. She’d hit him, but he was spraying the room with bullets. A few came close, but he had no real idea where she was. She could tell by the way he was yelling that he was hurt, but she didn’t know how badly.