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"Cover him!" Tegan shouted, but Kade and the others were already on it, vaulting up from their positions and falling in behind the former assassin to blast at their enemies and storm the mine's entrance in force.
Several yards in front now, Hunter's long, determined strides chewed up the snow-covered ground as he dodged to evade a hail of bullets coming at him from ahead on the right. Another volley answered, and the Gen One took a solid hit to his left thigh. Then another to his right shoulder. Hunter barely flinched as his flesh tore away with the impacts. Head lowered, he threw down his weapon and bulldozed forward in a streak of speed that only Breed eyes could follow. All of his fury--all of his lethal intent--was focused on the other Gen One assassin, the Breed male who had been born and bred the same as he, and trained to be expert in just one thing: dealing death.
At the same moment Hunter shot forward, the assassin released his gun and launched himself into the air in a great leap. The pair of Gen Ones collided in a crash of pummeling bone and muscle. As they went down onto the ground, locked in vicious hand-to-hand combat that would not cease until one or the other was killed, the rest of the warriors moved in quickly to mow down the remaining Minions guarding the mine.
The dual battles were furious, bloody, and seemed to take place in a vacuum of time that was both agonizingly slow motion and spinning out at the speed of light.
Kade and the others converged on the mine's entrance. Blood and bone and bullets sprayed the snowfilled darkness. Minions fell in greater numbers now, their sharp, agonized screams splitting the night as the mine's alarms continued to blare and howl.
And on the ground nearby, Hunter and the Gen One assassin rolled and twisted in an indiscernible blur of movement, hammering each other with their fists. As Kade took out another Minion near the entrance, he saw the flash of the assassin's fangs in the darkness as the Gen One opened his maw and brought his bite down hard on Hunter's shoulder.
Kade had an opening to fire on the bastard, but in the midst of all the chaos around them, it was a miserably thin chance. If he missed, he could put a bullet in Hunter's head instead. He blew out a curse and lined up his shot--just as Hunter grabbed the black polymer collar around the assassin's neck and threw him off. Hunter pounced onto the male's chest. Silent, merciless, he grabbed the vampire's huge, hairless head in both hands and cracked it hard onto the snow-packed ground. Kade felt the skull-crushing thump reverberate in the ground beneath his boots. The assassin's fight slowed then, but Hunter wasn't finished. Hands moving with grim efficiency and ruthless strength, he hoisted the heavy bulk of the other male and sent the disabled assassin flying. The body crashed into the side of one of the cargo containers, the assassin's electronic collar shooting off a shower of sparks as it impacted with the corrugated steel.
"Oh, shit!" Kade shouted, having seen firsthand what those collars could do. "UV blast coming-everybody down!" His command sent Hunter and all the rest of the warriors straight to the deck. No sooner had they hit the ground than there was a sudden, blinding flash of pure white light. The ultraviolet ray shot out from beneath the assassin's head, cutting a clean line through skin, flesh, tendons, and bone. When it extinguished a moment later, the immense Gen One assassin lay in the melting snow in a broken heap, his hairless, glyph- covered head severed cleanly from the rest of him.
Without missing a beat, Hunter drew a pistol from his weapons belt and squeezed off more rounds at the handful of Minions who were staggering around, temporarily blinded by the explosion of light a second ago. Kade and the rest of the group joined in, and, within moments, nothing stood in their way of the mine's entrance except a field of fallen bodies.
Tegan kicked in the steel door and led the push inside the building. The front room was vacant, except for more Minion carnage and a couple of security cameras. At the back of the space was another door, this one steel, as well, but fortified with a heavy latch and turnstile lock, like the door of a bank vault.
"Brock," Tegan said. "Give it a bump of that C-4."
Brock moved forward and swung the black ammunitions satchel off his back. He took out one of the pale cakes of explosive material and cut off a small piece. When he'd pressed it into place on the steel door and set the charges, everyone drew back outside and covered their heads as he hit the detonator and blew the door.
"We're in," he said, as the rolling smoke and dust started to clear. They hauled open the blasted interior door and crept into the corridor on the other side. Bunk rooms lined one side of the passageway, presumably for the Minion guards who manned the place. Farther down was a storage room, a modest kitchen, and farther still, a communications room that looked recently vacated of personnel.
The warriors continued their search, past a spartan quarters that was nothing more than a prisonlike room with no light or bunk for sleeping, just a blanket folded neatly on the floor. On a small stool in the corner sat an open box of rounds and a sheath for a large blade.
Hunter looked inside the room with a dispassionate eye. "The assassin slept here." The cold cell was in stark contrast to the plush living quarters the group encountered a few yards down the corridor. Through the partially open door, Kade glimpsed a lot of dark, polished wood and luxurious furnishings. Behind a gleaming cherry desk a leather wing chair was still spinning, in motion from its recent occupant's apparently hasty departure.
No doubt, this fancy suite belonged to Dragos's lieutenant.
Kade gestured down the passageway, toward the last remaining room before the corridor opened into the mine shaft itself. "Only one way he could have run."
"Yeah." Tegan's green gaze slid to him in agreement. "Right into a trap." He motioned for the others to fall in behind him, then led the way into the shadowy maw of the corridor.
Chapter Twenty-four
The snowstorm that had started as a teasing flurry was worsening into heavy, persistent flakes as Alex and Luna were riding back from making the delivery out to the bush. Alex was glad to have been able to help the young mother who'd been counting on her today, but she fretted that she hadn't yet been able to touch base with Jenna. She took out her cell phone and tried calling Jenna's cabin once again. No answer.
The niggle of worry she'd been carrying for her friend had only increased in the time Alex had been out, turning into a full-fledged jab of concern. What if Jenna was taking things harder this year than before?
Alex knew that she struggled, that she despaired still, over the loss of her husband and child. What if that despair had deepened to something worse this time?
What if it had become something dangerous and she'd harmed herself?
"Oh, God ... Jenna. Please let me be wrong."
With Luna running alongside her, Alex gave the sled more speed as she perted from the game trail that would eventually lead into Harmony. She headed away from town instead, toward Jenna's cabin a mile outside.
She was still an easy fifteen minutes away when she saw something moving in the trees up ahead of her. She couldn't quite make out the shape in the dark, but it looked to be ... a person?
Yes, it was. Someone crashing through the snow-laden underbrush of the forest. Incredibly, in spite of the bitter cold, he was utterly naked.
And he wasn't alone.
Several other shapes materialized from the shadows to run alongside him, four-legged, dark forms ... a pack of half a dozen wolves. The sight of the man and wild animals together didn't so much shock her as it confused her.
Kade?
