Caleb glanced over his shoulder as they waited for Forrest to let them in, and Brielle saw that his eyes were starting to glow a little as he darted his head back and forth to keep a visual on both ends of the corridor in front of the server room.
“How long has Misty been inside?” he asked the moment Forrest opened the door and they stepped inside.
“She went in the second we got here.” Forrest’s face was clouded with concern as he glanced at Misty, where she stood beside one of the server stacks, her hand buried inside the cabinet. “We’re getting close to fifteen minutes. She was supposed to come out after ten.”
Caleb cursed.
“Does this happen every time she does this?” Brielle asked Forrest. On the other side of the room, Genevieve was sitting at a desk clicking away at a keyboard. “You know I can’t go in and get Misty this time, right? I’ve already told you that using her abilities was a one-time thing.”
“I know,” Forrest said with a single sharp nod of his head. “We’ll have to wait for her to come out, no matter how long that takes.”
If we have the time to wait, Brielle thought.
“Guys,” Jes said over the radio, her voice full of anxiety. “Half the security cameras in the building just went blank. I think it goes without saying that trouble is on the way.”
Before Brielle could even begin to digest that information, she heard a distinctive dinging sound coming from the end of the hall to the right of the server room. She didn’t need a werewolf’s hearing to know it was the elevator doors opening.
“Jake, they’re here,” Caleb growled into the radio even as the STAT team leader promised that help was on the way. “I can hear them getting off the elevator now. Sounds like they’re all heavily armed.”
Brielle closed her eyes, opening herself up and using her gift to figure out how many people were coming their way and whether they were supernaturals or not.
“Six people got off the elevator,” she said, immediately sensing how dangerous they were. “There are two more coming up the stairwell at the other end of the hallway. They’re all supernaturals.”
“What kind?” Caleb and Forrest asked at the same time, the latter looking back over his shoulder at Misty, who still appeared to be stuck in the servers with no indication of coming out any time soon.
She closed her eyes again, trying to get a read on the people they were about to face. “They’re all strong, fast, and comfortable using a lot of different weapons, like they’ve been training and fighting most of their lives. They also seem to be able to heal quickly from anything short of a fatal wound.”
“They aren’t frigging werewolves, are they?” Hudson asked over the radio.
“No, but they’re still dangerous.” She opened her eyes. “Oh yeah, and one of them appears to possess some kind of telekinetic abilities.” When Caleb stared at her with a baffled expression on his face, she added, “He can move things with his mind.”
He frowned. “I knew what it meant. I just didn’t think that kind of stuff was real.”
Was he serious?
“You’re a werewolf,” she pointed out. “And you still question the world you live in? If you’ve ever wondered if something exists, it probably does—the good and the bad.”
Caleb opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, bullets ripped into the Sheetrock inches from his head, clouds of white dust exploding into the air.
Merde.
Brielle had foolishly hoped that the new arrivals might be building security or even Moscow city police responding to some kind of silent alarm she and the rest of the team had accidentally tripped. But that hope was dashed the moment the bullets began flying. Those people were here specifically to kill them, which meant they likely knew who they were. Of course, how they knew, Brielle didn’t have a clue.
“Stay in here,” Caleb growled over his shoulder as he opened the door and slipped into the alcove outside the server room to fire several shots down the corridor.
The booms from the big handgun made her ears ring, but Brielle ignored it, pulling her own weapon and slipping around him to deliver a few shots of her own. She didn’t hit anything—and almost dropped the weapon from the unfamiliar recoil—but at least she got a clear look at the people shooting at them.
Five men and one woman, they were dressed in black tactical gear with no discernible markings on it. Regardless of their supernatural origins, they looked like any other humans, except for the fact that every one of them had pitch-black hair and skin that was way too pale. She could practically see the dark lines where their veins pulsed under the bare skin of their arms and neck. They advanced toward her and Caleb, moving so fast from corner to corner that it was impossible to get a clear shot at them.
“The tall one in the front is the leader,” she shouted at Caleb, shooting a couple times in that guy’s general direction for added emphasis. “He’s the one with telekinetic abilities.”
As if to prove her right, the tall guy—Uriel, according to the shouts of his friends—suddenly flicked out a hand and moved aside one of the bullets Caleb sent at him, making it hit the wall instead.
“That’s just wrong,” Caleb muttered as gunfire filled the hallway behind them. Brielle turned to see that the other two supernaturals she’d sensed coming up the stairs had arrived. They had her and Caleb in their cross fire.
She knew their only choice was to fall back into the server room so they could keep Misty safe until Jake and the other members of their team arrived like the cavalry. So of course, she shouldn’t have been surprised when Caleb let loose a wall-shaking roar and turned to attack the two latecomers instead.
Brielle emptied the remainder of her magazine at Uriel and the other five killers coming at them from the elevators, hoping to keep them ducking long enough to give Caleb a chance to finish whatever he was planning. Forrest joined her, doing a better job of at least hitting the bad guys. But while the bullets definitely drew blood, the wounds didn’t seem to slow the attackers down very much.
Brielle didn’t have a chance to see what Caleb was doing, but she could definitely hear it. A lot of growling and snarls, the sound of claws rending flesh, and loud thuds of something heavy slamming into the walls.
When the shooting from behind them slowed, Brielle took that as a hopeful sign, until a body fell on her, slamming her to the floor so hard the air was knocked out of her lungs. She was just beginning to scramble to get out from under the heavy weight on top of her so she could breathe again when her hand came into contact with skin that was distinctly cold and clammy. She had a second to wonder what the hell was happening, then her body was absorbing abilities out of pure instinct and she was suddenly shoving the man’s body aside like he was a toy at the same time her hands snatched the short assault weapon right out of his hands.