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The bastard. He knew Mica was already pissed, and he was using it.
“Lunch sounds great, Josiah.” Mica stopped, ignoring Navarro’s hand on her back as she did so, and turned, and in that flashing instant Navarro felt and scented the pure terror that streaked through her, even as emergency alarms began blaring through the steel-lined, heavily secured underground medical labs.
Their senses, his and Josiah’s, had somehow failed them. Almost in slow motion his head lifted; his reflexes, sharp and precise, were still too slow.
There was only a second to throw Mica to the side as the first blast threw Josiah forward into him.
He was aware of Mica’s cry as she fell into the wall, Josiah’s shock at the feel of the blast of energy that exploded into his back.
How had Brandenmore managed to get his hands on a blaster?
That thought came as Josiah was thrown into him like a ton of bricks. He felt himself going backward as they both fought to avoid the collision, to get to Mica.
And they both failed.
They both left Mica to the savage, insane mercilessness of a man that was no longer a man.
Mica swirled around, the agony in her ribs reminiscent of the broken ankle she’d had when she was eighteen and Cassie had all but bullied her into coming into Haven.
That ride from her home to Haven had been so painful she’d cursed Cassie the whole time she was there. Just as she’d cursed her the time she and Cassie had been training in the gym at Haven and she had fallen and cracked the bone in her forearm.
Those earlier misadventures had taught her something though. Years’ worth of accident-prone missteps, and Mica was used to having to move when it hurt. She was used to walking with a broken ankle, helping a concussed Cassie through the forest days after Mica had cracked the bone in her arm because a Coyote Breed had managed to slip into Haven to target her.
Cassie had directed her through her forest, and Mica had helped her friend walk as the world had spun around her. She’d supported her when unconsciousness had nearly taken Cassie, and she had prayed enough that she still whispered her prayers through her dreams when she remembered that time in her nightmares.
This wasn’t a nightmare though. And she wasn’t in the middle of a forest with plenty of room to move around and hide. She was in the middle of a steel-lined hall, floors beneath the earth, with a madman slamming her into the wall as she tried to jerk to the side to escape him.
That didn’t keep a cry from escaping her though, or the agony from radiating through her. Even that was diluted, though, by the sheer terror of the creature growling at her ear, his saliva dribbling to the bare skin where her shirt slipped to the edge of her shoulder.
He was supposed to be dead.
Mica tried to dig her nails into the steel-lined wall the side of her face was pressed against, her breathing shallow, knees weak as from the corner of her eye she watched Navarro and Josiah struggle to their feet.
“I know you.” The creature snarled at her ear, his fingers biting into the side of her neck, ragged nails trying to tear at her flesh. “You’re not supposed to be here, whore.” The fingers of his other hand tangled in her hair, jerking her head back until she could see nothing but the twisted, enraged features of a man that was supposed to be dead.
She stared into the flickering red of his brown eyes, gasping for air as spittle dripped to her cheek. As though he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t contain the poisonous venom in his soul any longer.
“Sorry ’bout that,” she gasped. “Just give me a sec here, and I promise I’ll leave.” She couldn’t help it. The words had just slipped out as the blaring alarms echoing through the halls suddenly stopped.
The silence her words were injected into seemed to shatter with the same discordance as the sirens.
“Whore!”
She couldn’t hold back the agonizing expulsion of breath, the whimper, the pain too intense to allow enough breath to scream.
She heard a low, dangerous growl, the sound of footsteps, a curse echoing around her as the pain threatened to steal her consciousness.
“Stand down, Navarro!” Jonas’s snarl was thick, dangerous, as the feel of the heavy pressure in her ribs had tears spurting from her eyes.
Brandenmore had his arm pressing tight into the tender area, putting a horrible pressure in an area where no pressure could be tolerated.
“Jonas Wyatt.” The demented voice made the greeting sound more a curse. “You did this, didn’t you, freak? You got her here. You found out I had plans for her.”
Plans for her?
“Oh yeah,” she gasped, all but writhing in agony. “Fuckup Coyote was your baby?” The bastard Coyote that had all but broken her ribs had to have been taking someone’s orders.
“He’ll die now,” he hissed at her ear. “You got him killed.”
