I turned my focus to the compound itself. My bond with Lyric had grown stronger the closer we’d driven, but it was still…off, even being only a hundred yards away. That meant wherever they were holding her had to be lined with iron and steel, or they’d dosed her with Night Thistle. Either way, her newfound vampire strength wouldn’t mean shit. She’d be as weak as a human in there, and anything could happen to her. The pounding, relentless drive to save my mate was as constant as my heartbeat, and the desperation was almost enough to overcome the common sense that told me we needed a plan. I’d be no good to her dead.
I killed the engine, got out of the Escalade, and opened the back hatch.
“One of the Moorehouse facilities?” Benedict questioned, coming around the back end of the car as I slid the Kevlar over my chest.
“How many fucking facilities do you have?” Lachlan growled, grabbing vests and throwing them at Benedict and Hawke.
“We’re a billion-dollar company, so do you mean for production, distribution, or sales?” Valor spat back, pinning him with a glare.
“That’s my queen in there, human,” Lachlan said, low and slow, the threat obvious as he leaned closer.
“She might be your queen, but she was my best friend first,” she countered, narrowing her eyes. “And if I had any idea this was going to happen, I would have stepped in. I should have stepped in the second she disappeared for a month and showed up married, but I had no clue that her Alek was Alekxander Markov!”
“And if you had known?” I strapped my holster over my shoulders.
“I would have kept her as far from you as possible,” she admitted, meeting my eyes. “Look what’s happened to her.”
Every one of my Assassins went still.
In that moment, I couldn’t blame her for speaking the truth, so I holstered my weapons and put another at my thigh. “How many men are inside?”
“Probably three dozen,” she answered. “Usually only a couple at this hour, but they know she’s your queen.”
I checked my extra clips as the others strapped up. “Hopefully no one you love is on duty because they’ll be dead in the next five minutes.”
Her breath left in a puff of steam, as if she hadn’t thought this through to its logical conclusion. “I’m coming with you.”
“Like hell you are,” Lachlan growled.
“You’ll need my codes to get through the door. That building is lined with steel, iron, ruby dust and silver. It’s not like you can just poof yourself inside.” She folded her arms across her chest.
Benedict muttered a curse.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck. They weren’t just vampire-hating assholes. They were educated assholes who knew far more than they should.
“Prepared for vampires, werewolves, and witches, are you?” Lachlan shoved a vest over her head and tugged the straps across the Velcro to fasten it. “Strong cage you've built over there.”
“My father and brother said it was to protect us—to keep you out.” She looked over her shoulder, down at the well-lit compound.
“More like keep us in,” Hawke accused, cracking his neck like a pregame ritual.
“I can see two armed guards patrolling the perimeter inside the fence.”
“Do they know we’re coming?” Lachlan asked Valor, tipping her chin toward him when she didn’t look away from the building. “Did you warn them?”
She shook her head and swallowed, then shuddered slightly and took a deep breath. “Of course not. I just want Lyric safe.”
Lachlan’s gaze narrowed. “We’ll see about that, lass. You’re right. We’ll need your codes, so you get to tag along, but you’ll be at my side. You run, I kill you. You warn them, I kill you. You betray us—”
“You kill me. Got it.” She lifted her hair free from the Kevlar. “Do I at least get a weapon?”
Lachlan scoffed. “No, and if you so much as take more than three steps away from me, I’ll put a fucking leash around your waist. You understand?”
She nodded.
We walked to the front of the Escalade, and my heart lunged forward like it was willing to break out of my chest to be closer to Lyric. “Benedict, take the guard at the north. Hawke, the south. Where is the easiest entry point?” I aimed that last question at Valor.
“There.” She pointed to the door at the south end. “Hold on.” She turned to the car, Lachlan on her heels every step of the way, and returned with her coat, zipping it up over the vest. “You’ll have to keep out of the camera while I put in the code, or they’ll kill her before we can even get inside.”
I nodded once, the killing rage already taking over, honing my senses and stripping away any ounce of civility I’d cultivated over the last four hundred years and leaving only the lethal predator our kind was designed to be.
“Go now.”
Both Benedict and Hawke disappeared and materialized a hundred yards away, both soundlessly snapping the necks of their prey. A second later, we wended with our weapons drawn, Lachlan releasing his grip on the back of Valor’s neck as we arrived in the shadows to the side of the south door.
Valor stepped into the doorway and punched in the code. A beep later, the door opened.
“See?” she said without looking over her shoulder. “If I’d warned them, the code wouldn’t work.”
With supernatural speed, we raced into the building, nothing but four blurs to any camera that might be watching. Not that we needed to worry about setting off any alarms when there were already four guards in tactical gear leaning against the walls in various locations down the wide hallway.
They were dead before any of them could lift a radio or call out.
“Four,” Benedict whispered, his silencer-equipped nine-mil still raised.
“We’re not keeping score,” Hawk muttered, scanning the rest of the hallway as we moved slowly.
“Because you’re afraid you’ll lose,” Benedict answered, peeking into the first room and clearing it. “Nothing.”
“I can feel her, but it’s not clear,” I said quietly as Hawke cleared the next two rooms. The air felt thick and heavy, dulling not only my senses but my speed. Steel. That was okay. We didn’t need supernatural speed to pick off the humans. Besides, there was only enough metal in these walls to annoy an ancient like me.
But it would cripple an immortal as young as Lyric.
“They might have her in the containment area,” Valor noted quietly. “It’s around the corner.”
Containment. The word alone was enough to turn my vision red. We cleared the four small rooms in the hallway, our footsteps silent on the quickly reddening linoleum, and headed for what looked to be a reception desk.
A man in a lab coat came around the corner and managed to scream before Hawke put a bullet between his eyes.
An alarm sounded through the speakers that lined the ceiling, and four rotating lights flashed red.
“Shit,” Benedict cursed as we picked up the pace.
“It’s about to get sporty,” Hawke said with a sinister grin, gripping a Glock in each hand.
Guns raised, we turned the corner into another fluorescently lit hallway as humans ran from rooms on either side. We took out the ones in tactical gear first.