My claws jolt from my fingers, my nerves buzzing with combat alertness. But there isn’t much I can do to fend off the pricks without charging out there on a suicide mission… or letting lose the stirring power inside me that has a mind of its own. A vile, vicious mind I don’t want anything to do with.
Near me, Jacob’s face has gone tight with concentration, his hands jerking as he throws his telekinetic force through the room around us. Bones crack and pained groans reverberate through the air.
Andreas grimaces. “I can’t project memories to distract them from down here where I can’t see them. But if I—”
He cuts himself off and vanishes into thin air in the next moment.
All at once, several of the sets of footsteps around us start stumbling. Shouts of confusion echo them.
Andreas has slipped out there among the enemy combatants unseen, muddling their minds.
There are too many of them, though. Bodies thump closer to our makeshift shelter, and Dominic bobs higher, his tan face turned greenish. Having shed his parka, he lets his tentacles whip free to smack away the gunmen attempting to get at us.
Another figure charges up to the overturned table. I spring at him before he can get in his shot and slice my claws right through his forearm.
Blood spurts and tendons sever, but the man still slams his other fist toward me.
Zian roars. The massive guy pummels my attacker in the face hard enough to bash in his skull and wrenches the rifle from his grasp in the same moment.
I spin toward my protector, my pulse stuttering at the thought of the wound he’s already taken. More blood is leaking out through his shirt, but he shoves me out of the way while scanning the room beyond the table warily.
In his protective rage, his wolfish fur has sprouted from his skin all across his neck and arms. His jaw has extended with the beastly folds of flesh, widened nose, and protruding fangs.
But his dark brown eyes are still Zian’s even as they flash with fury. Only a brief shudder through his massive frame reveals the pain he’s in.
Even shot, he’s right here with me, looking out for me like we always promised to do.
All of the guys are. We fend off the attackers in a weird sort of dance, Zian and I hurtling up to tackle anyone who gets too close, the other guys keeping most at a distance.
As I slash through the calf of a gunman who’s jumped onto the island, Dominic heaves out his tentacles to bat away a second foe I hadn’t seen launching herself at us. There’s a clatter and a splash as the woman must stagger into the pot of hot chocolate.
When another enemy shoves the muzzle of his rifle through a gap between the table and the sofa, I shatter his jaw with a kick moments before Jacob hurls him away.
And all the while the yells and mutters of confusion tell me that Andreas is working his powers, keeping our attackers unsteady. One of the fighters manages to snatch my arm in mid-swipe, and Drey appears for just an instant behind him, jabbing a knife between his ribs.
Even if the bonds of friendship—and whatever more we could have had—have fractured between us, we’re still a team. Right now, in the midst of the fray, not one particle in my body doubts that I could trust each of these men with my life.
And I’ll be here for them too, whatever it takes. We are not letting these assholes take any of us down.
If the battle weren’t so fraught, maybe I’d take comfort in the thought. But just as I start to think we might be able to withstand the onslaught, they throw a new tactic in to the mix.
One of our attackers hurls an object over our barricade. I yelp out a warning.
Jacob whirls in time to heave it away before it hits the floor—but as it soars away, it explodes in mid-air.
We all fling ourselves to the floor instinctively under the hail of shrapnel. Jacob’s body spasms where he’s fallen next to me.
I jerk myself onto my hands and knees to see him clapping his hand to his temple. Blood streams out from under his fingers. His eyes twitch as if he can’t quite focus them.
“Dominic!” I cry out. I don’t give a shit about what a jerk this guy has been to me when he’s fading before my eyes.
Dominic stretches a tentacle to encircle Jacob’s head, but his gaze darts around us with a panicked expression. There’s nothing here for him to grab onto to suck in the life energy he must need to heal a serious wound.
If he took it out of himself, wouldhebe the one crumpling?
Andreas must have seen and recognized the problem, because the next second he’s flitting into view near the table and flipping one of our attackers right over it, headfirst. Dominic’s other tentacle lashes around the intruder’s neck, tight enough to strangle, but another of our enemies shoots at Andreas in his momentary visibility.
Andreas flickers translucent and throws himself to the side, not quite quickly enough. His torso lurches with the impact as the bullet catches him in the back.