“I know.” I ran my thumb over her cheek. “I know and I’m sorry I made you lie for so long, but I’ll talk to her. The second we get home. And I’ll make sure she knows it’s not your fault.”
“I’m—” she cut off, pulling away. Her eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “Where did they go?”
“What?”
“Your shadows? Did you give them a job?”
“No, what?—”
I looked down at myself. They were gone, all of them. Not even a speck of shadow was coiling me.
“Something’s wrong.” I sat up.
“What—” she stopped short at the sound of gravel crunching.
We’d left the balcony door open because she’d been overheating a lot lately. I was hoping that meant her powers were manifesting and those sparks meant fire was coming.
I grabbed her hand and snuck over to the door. Staying out of sight, we looked at the scene in front of us. There were a dozen black SUVs pulling onto her driveway. The first few had five people in each vehicle, fully loaded with tactical gear, semiautomatic weapons, and ski masks.
Violet stared at me. “Do you think they know you’re alive and it’s The Culling coming for you? Or the unknown group coming for me?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. But if I can’t access my shadows…” I trailed off, surveying the scene. This was not fucking good. “If I tell you to hide here so I can lead them away, will you fight me on it?”
“No. I’ll just slow you down. But I don’t love the idea of separating. Can you access your ice?”
I reached into myself, the core of where my powers usually sat. Nothing. “No. But I don’t need them to run, or fight. Even before my powers, I was pretty deadly.”
She gave me a half-hearted smile. “I have no doubt.”
Her attention went back to the cars. They were still pulling in to fill the driveway and completely blocking the road leading up to it.
“Why are there so many of them?” she asked, maybe reading the same question on my face.
“I don’t know. But I’m going to get them as far from here as possible and take them out one by one. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can then… Let’s run. Anywhere you want, we’ll start over.”
She grabbed my shirt and kissed me. Deep and desperate. If I thought about it too much, I might have realized she was kissing me like it was the last time she ever would. Instead, I let myself get lost in her for a minute; tangled my fingers into her hair and tugged her as close as I could.
“I love you,” she said pulling away.
“I love you.”
The cottage hada walk out basement that was about a quarter of the way down the hill. Usually I wouldn’t want to give my enemies the high ground, but they were currently closing in around the main floor exits and I didn’t exactly want to jump out a window. So we were working with what we were dealt.
Violet was safely tucked away in a hiding spot she wouldn’t even tell me about. My only job was to get as many of these people as far from her as I possibly could. Luckily, we had spent so much time running around these woods, I knew exactly where to go.
I waited until most of the team was preparing to breach the cottage before sprinting for the tree line. I managed to make it most of the way before someone noticed and was fully in the forest before bullets started flying. When the yelling started, Irisked a glance back. Good. More than half were making their way to the woods after me.
The second I was out of view, I went up the closest tree. It only took thirty seconds for them to pass under me. Shit, they meant business. They were fanned out in a standard clearing formation, which probably meant they were some kind of special forces, whether it was ex-military or one of those highly trained private security forces, I couldn’t be sure.
It didn’t matter. I did special training, too, and they were on my turf. I could pick these guys off before they even knew what hit them. So that was exactly what I did.
I got to them one by one, stealing weapons as I went along. I went through ten guys before I managed to get my hands on a hunting knife. Breaking a few necks was fine but I wanted these people to suffer. Whether they were after me or Violet, they stormed ontoherland and were making a mess ofherfavourite place. I wanted them to choke on their fucking blood and struggle through their final moments of life.
“Charlie Team, status report.” The radio on the guy I’d just killed chirped.
I picked it up and stared at it for a few moments while I debated my next move. It was about five minutes since I left Violet at the cottage. There were a dozen SUVs with five people in each. That made sixty pseudo soldiers. I had about fifty looking for me… I needed to get the attention of the rest, but I should really take out some more of the current ones before I called for the backup…
I was running out of time. The longer I was away, the higher chance V had of getting found. I held onto the radio, securing the ear piece in my ear before I pushed forward. I took out another fifteen before I was spotted.
