“If they get through us, Jess will need it. Besides, those guys out there seem to have enough guns; I’ll just borrow one of theirs.”
“I’m not sure that’s how a gunfight works,” Brooke said as we reached the front door.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked, crouching down low just in case someone decided to take a shot at the door.
“Yes, a plan would be helpful,” Jess said as she joined us. “Don’t argue; I have a shotgun.”
I moved the curtain aside and looked out at the front lawn. I counted eight men, all but two with handguns, with those final two opting for shotguns, but I was certain there would be more. Orestes was standing behind Sheriff King, who was kneeling on the driveway.
“I want both of you to go upstairs and keep anyone from getting in,” I whispered to Jess and Brooke.
“And where are you going to be?” Brooke asked.
“Down here, keeping this entry covered,” I said.
We looked back out as Orestes shouted to get our attention. “So much for loyalty. I guess you don’t care,” he said, reaching around the sheriff’s neck with a blade of ice formed around his hand. He slit Sheriff King’s throat and pushed him onto the driveway to die.
“What the hell was that?” Jess whimpered.
I guided her out of the way of the window. “Orestes is a sorcerer. A really old one, but thankfully, he’s not a very powerful one.”
“Damn them,” Brooke said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry, but if we’d opened this door, we’d all be dead,” I said. “Stay alive long enough to avenge him.”
Brooke and Jess headed upstairs, and I got ready for all hell to break loose. Part of me was aching to get my fists bloody and release the rage I’d felt since encountering these Nazi scum.
The front door burst open, and footsteps came down the wooden hallway toward me. Opening a drawer, I grabbed a serrated silver steak knife. It was one of half a dozen, so I took a few of them, stowing some under my belt, before moving over to the entrance of the kitchen and pressing myself up against the wall, hoping the shadows around me would keep me concealed from whoever was about to cross my path.
The pistol came through the doorway first. The man holding it paused on the other side of the door before taking a step in, and I moved, pushing the man’s arm away and holding it there while I drove one of the knives up under his chin and into his skull. The gun fired twice, shattering the window behind me, but he was dead a moment later. I let his body drop to the ground, picked up the gun, and checked for more ammo, but I found none. I sighed and stepped over him out into the hallway beyond. I checked the ammo in the gun, which turned out to be a Heckler & Koch P30L, a weapon I’d used before. Ten rounds left, and no extra magazines on him. I took a deep breath. Time to show Orestes and his people why they’d picked the wrong family to mess with.
Chapter Nine
NATE GARRETT
I moved to the end of the hallway just as the sound of breaking glass reached my ears, followed by the grunts of someone climbing into the house. Looking quickly through the slightly ajar door to the room beyond, I saw two men, both clad in black and wearing balaclavas, standing in the middle of the living room. They both carried pistols and were moving slowly through the room toward the archway that would take them out of my line of sight.
When they were in line with me, I pushed the door open and put two bullets in the head of the farthest Nazi before putting two more into the face of the closer man as he turned toward me. Both were clean kills, and I removed three magazines from them before moving toward the broken window.
The lights were still off inside the living room, and my night vision wasn’t as good as it used to be, but even so, I could see the man creeping along the side of the house toward the conservatory. Raising my pistol, I fired twice. The first round hit him in the chest and the second in his head as he crumpled to the ground.
I ejected the magazine and replaced it with a fresh one. It wasn’t empty, but I didn’t want to run out at the wrong moment. The sound of the shotgun blasting above me made me pause. I hoped Jess and Brooke were okay. While I was certain they could handle themselves, I also knew the kind of man Orestes was, and he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them both if the opportunity arose.
Suddenly gunfire exploded through the large bay window at the front of the house. I threw myself to the floor, rolling behind a large wooden sideboard just as the door beside it opened and an armed man stepped through.
He wasn’t expecting me to be on the floor, and by the time he’d moved his shotgun toward me, I’d grabbed the barrel and kicked out his knee, hearing it pop from the force of the blow. He fell toward me, trying to grab me around the throat. I stabbed the serrated silver knife into his chest and kicked him away, shooting him in the head as I got to my feet.
Turning back toward the man climbing through the window, I shot him. He fell back out of the window, and I darted through the door beside me, changing the magazine as I went.
Two more shotgun blasts above me, followed by several pistol shots, took the concentration of the only occupant in the room I’d just entered. It was only for a split second, but he still died with a bullet to the forehead before he could raise his own weapon.
Holding him upright, I pushed him out the door, using him as a shield as two more attackers opened fire. As the bullets hit him, I let the dead man drop and shot the first attacker, but the second dived through into the library, the bullet slamming into the wall where his head had been.
I crept toward the open door, but just as I got there, the front door burst open, and I threw myself into the library to avoid the shotgun blast from the new attacker. I hit the floor hard, knocking my gun from my grip as pain coursed up my arm, and rolled to my feet. Two more blasts tore into a nearby bookcase, knocking several of the tomes to the floor. I couldn’t spot the gun I’d lost, so I picked up the heaviest-looking book and waited in the darkness for the two seconds it took for the shotgun-carrying man to step into the doorway. I threw the book at him, and it hit his hand, knocking the gun aside, as I launched myself up toward him.
The attacker went to hit me with the butt of the shotgun, but I grabbed the stock with one hand and used my free hand to smash the side of his head into the wooden shelves beside him. The shotgun went off again, destroying the remains of the shelves and showering the room with pieces of paper. I grabbed a handgun from his hip holster and smashed his head once against the bookshelves as a second attacker came into view in the hallway.
I threw myself to the floor, shooting my stolen weapon three times through the damaged wooden door. The bullets passed through it with ease, and the sound of someone in pain on the other side told me I’d hit something.
I got to my feet as the attacker I’d hit with the book charged into me, slamming me against the shelves to my side and forcing his gun from my hand. He tried to aim, but I pushed his arm aside, stepped around him, and stamped on the back of his calf muscle. I continued around him and drove my knee into his stomach as he dropped. He released the gun, which fell harmlessly to the floor.
He pushed me away, but I used the momentum to spin around and land a kick to the side of his head, snapping it around with incredible force and putting him on the ground.
I picked up the gun and aimed it at him. “How many more are there?” I asked.