Crimson Highlander (Onyx Assassins 2)

Shadows flew up the soldiers’ limbs, wrapping around their throats and dragging them to the ground around me as I stormed through the squad.

Gunfire erupted in the buildings next to us and at the end of the hall.

“Damn it!” Kyle screamed, his face turning a mottled red.

“Get her out!” Valor shouted, then cried out as her arm was yanked behind her back. The distinct sound of the joint separating hit my ears and sickened my stomach. He’d dislocated it so he could use her as a shield.

Hawke braced himself against the wall, his arms spread wide, and his body jolting as a bullet hit him in the back.

Olivia pulled Daphne into the shelter of her arms and—

“Hawke!” Ransom yelled as he fired round after round at the guards behind Valor.

“Vest,” he grunted, holding his position against the wall like he was under arrest, taking another shot.

I squeezed off three shots, hitting the humans closest to Valor in their exposed, weak throats. Blood sprayed as they went down, and I kept moving. A battering ram hit me in the chest, just left of my heart, but I breathed through the pain and dismissed it.

“Stay where you are!” Kyle yelled, putting a gun to Valor’s head in a scene that felt eerily familiar.

“You don’t want to do that.” I froze, the feet separating us feeling like miles.

“Lachlan,” Valor whispered, pain overwhelming her usual bergamot and lime scent and twisting it sour. Her eyes met mine. Worry, apology, pain, fear…love. It was all there in those gorgeous green eyes.

“Seems like I have the power to do whatever the fuck I want.” Kyle walked backward slowly.

“Seems like it,” I agreed as Ransom fired off two more shots, taking the guards out as they rounded the corner from another hallway.

“Stop it!” Kyle shrieked. “I’ll kill her!”

“No, you won’t,” I countered. “You need her.”

“You’re supposed to be at the school!” He slammed his shoulder back against something in the wall, and a small, metal door whooshed open behind him. Escape hatch.

I shook my head slowly. “No. I’m supposed to be wherever she is. You underestimate the importance of a mating bond. There’s no law we won’t break, no oath we won’t betray to keep our mates safe.”

“Maybe I underestimated you.” He shuffled sideways, fitting himself—and Valor—into the small space the door had created. A few more steps and I wouldn’t be able to reach her.

I chanced another look at Valor and locked eyes with her, sending the urge to fight down the bond. She wasn’t some helpless human who had stumbled into our world. She was trained in hand-to-hand combat by humans, then vampires. She was a fighter, through and through.

“Maybe. But you definitely underestimated her,” I snapped.

Valor slammed her head back against Kyle’s throat, then punched upward with her good hand, knocking Kyle’s grip loose on the weapon.

By the time he cursed, I was already there, yanking the gun out of his reach as Valor spun, pain blasting through the bond as she wrenched her dislocated arm free. Her knee came up, and she kicked at her brother, sending him sprawling into the cavernous space behind them.

He scrambled for the wall, pressing another button, and I dove, barely grazing the edge of the door as it slammed shut, repelling my touch.

That shit was made with traces of iron. No doubt.

“Shit!” I slammed my hand against the door, then jumped to my feet, my weapon already raised at the hallway. “Stay back!” I ordered Valor.

“Lachlan!” she called after me, but Ransom and I were already moving through the compound, taking out any guards foolish enough to raise their weapons. Xavier walked at our side, casually flicking shadows and deflecting bullets with the smallest moves of his wrists.

“How the fuck do you do that?” I asked as we cleared another room—the cafeteria.

“Just be thankful I can,” he answered, choking out the guards that raced in from another hallway. Heavy footsteps followed them, and Ransom and I braced ourselves.

The demon army flooded the space, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

The plan had been to meet in the middle of the compound, which meant they’d already cleared the rest. Kyle may have escaped, but the facility was in our hands.

“Learn what you can,” Xavier ordered his troops. “Don’t eat the humans.”

Ransom looked sideways at Xavier.

Xavier shrugged.

“Take every piece of technology you find,” I ordered our squad commanders, smiling slightly when I saw Corbin and Thorne alive and well in the ranks, both flush with the exhilaration of having won their first real battle. “Leave any guards alive for questioning.”

Valor’s pain beat down the bond, overcoming every other sense of obligation and duty. With the soldiers dispersed to their tasks, I quickly holstered my Glocks and headed back down the hallways to the prison ward—at least that’s what it had looked like—where I’d left Valor, Olivia, Daphne, and Hawke…who I found still leaned up against the wall, muttering something.