In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens. Given the amount of noise surrounding him, he suspected those sirens were far closer than they sounded. No one lived near them, but it would have been impossible for the smoke to go unnoticed.
“Shit!” he hissed as the gates started opening again.
Killean and Simone sprinted through the gates with Lucien and Callie on their heels. The gates slid closed behind them, keeping any Savages who might see the humans as an easy, tasty treat locked within.
When more Savages closed in on Declan and Willow, Logan jerked his head toward them. They couldn’t let the two of them go down. Elena glanced at them and nodded. He almost shouted to Elyse to join them, but she would never leave her father and daughter behind.
When more Savages went toward Elyse, Saber, and Duncan, Logan almost changed his mind about helping Willow and Declan, but Saxon burst through the growing crowd and slaughtered those Savages. The four of them would be okay, or at least he hoped they would, but for now, they were holding their own while Declan and Willow were losing the battle.
“We have to help them!” he shouted to Elena.
Together they sprinted toward Declan and Willow. As they ran, he saw the gates opening again and the others returning. He didn’t know what transpired outside the wall, but Logan took the fact they returned without the company of a whole lot of police and firefighters as a good sign when the gates closed again.
“Stay near me!” he called over to Elena.
“I will!” she yelled back a second before they plunged into the fray surrounding Willow and Declan.
Elena drew on all her years of training as she swung her stake at the Savages. When she could, she delivered kicks and punches that knocked them back and gave her a better opportunity to plunge the weapon through their hearts.
She staked four of them and managed to get a couple of blows in on another one before someone kicked the back of her knee out and she hit the ground. As she struggled to rise, a blow to the side of her head sent her rolling. Stars burst before her eyes as a ringing started in her ears.
Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Logan shouting her name, but she kept rolling to avoid the Savage trying to stomp on her. She hit a dead end when she came up against the trunk of a tree.
The Savage lifted its foot to hammer it down on her arm, but she twisted and caught its boot before it could break her arm. When she cranked its appendage to the right, bones snapped. The Savage howled as she turned his broken foot further around before shoving it back and throwing the creature off balance.
It was falling when Logan plunged his sword through its back, and the blade erupted out of the Savage’s chest. She ignored the stench of its rancid blood splattering her face as Logan tore the sword free, grasped it in both hands, and brought the blade down across the Savage’s neck.
As the body of the decapitated Savage fell away, Elena panted for air while she gazed up at Logan. The color encompassing his flesh was barely visible through the blood coating him. His eyes burned with white-blue fire.
He was an unnerving sight to behold, but he was hers, and she loved him more than words could ever say. They had to end this fight because she couldn’t bear to lose him.
When he held his hand out to her, she grasped it and leapt to her feet. She wanted to shrink away as she surveyed the destruction and death surrounding her, but she wouldnotback away from this. Even though she was exhausted, she drew on her hunter and vampire strength as they plunged back into the battle.
The sound of death and pain echoed throughout the night. It mingled with the clash of metal against metal, screams of the injured, snapping of bones, and the pop of the fire. Elena’s muscles felt like someone had tied them all into knots. Blood dripped from her hair, slid down her face, and cleaved her clothes to her, but she stayed close to Logan as they sought to keep the Savages back.
Elena never could have seen what happened here tonight coming. She’d been near the wall when a commotion started above and the alarm blared. The sudden arrival of the vehicles at the front gate and the Savages pouring from them was completely unexpected.
Gunshots had reverberated throughout the compound as the Savages leapt onto the top of the wall. The monsters ignored the barbed wire and the guards who opened fire on them.
The first wave onto the wall were the sacrificial lambs as more used their bodies to help them get over without being killed. While that was happening, more Savages also came from the back and sides of the compound.
The sheer number of them had simply overwhelmed the security and were continuing to do so now. As they battled relentlessly onward, the bodies piled up on both sides. She hadn’t met everyone here since arriving, but there were far too many familiar faces amongst the dead.
And worse, some of the ones who went down had black blood pulsing through their veins. If the Savages were successful, half of those who survived this battle would become a monstrosity like Diego or Leonardo. That possibility unnerved her more than the Savages swarming them.
Logan kept his back to Willow and Declan and Elena at his side as they worked to keep the Savages from attaining Willow’s sword. Ronan and Kadence had joined them, but he’d lost sight of Nathan, Killean, Lucien, and their mates a while ago. He didn’t know if they were still alive.
At one time, he glimpsed Asher through the smoke and bodies. He didn’t know what to make of his friend’s return. They needed all the help they could get, but he wished Asher wasn’t here. Despite being desperate for help, someone had to survive this and report what happened to the other compounds, but he wasn’t sure any of them were going to make it through this endless night.
He didn’t know how many hours passed before the crowd parted enough to give him a glimpse of Duncan’s body sprawled out near the mission door as Elyse, Saxon, and Saber continued to fight. There was no doubt the extremely large man was dead. And then, he lost Duncan as the crowd enclosed around them once more.
Despite the infusion of power the red and black color gave him, his strength was waning. And though many of the others had that color seeping through them, he sensed they were slowing too as exhaustion started to get the better of them. All the training in the world couldn’t have prepared them for the sheer numbers of this attack.
The demons and Savages had been extremely busy gathering an army of killing soldiers. How large was their army if they were willing to sacrifice so many here tonight?
Logan couldn’t dwell on that. They needed to survive tonight before he could worry about what all of this meant and how many enemies they had.
The fire had consumed almost all the hunter homes by the time the sky brightened toward gray. Some Savages were already turning tail and running from the oncoming dawn, but others continued to fight.
