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“Last chance,” Bartram snarled. “Lay those weapons down, or I put a bullet through Miss Duffy’s pretty little head.”
“You know we’ll kill you if you do that,” Tanner said.
Bartram grinned a dirty grin. “I ain’t scared of dyin’, and I know you ain’t neither… but youarescared of losing this here omega.”
I’ve got him, Logan thought.
All yours, Tanner seemed to answer through channels Logan couldn’t even begin to explain.
Behind Bartram, the wolf waited.
In unison, the two brothers removed their fingers from the triggers of their weapons and slowly lowered them toward the ground. Tanner set his carbine down first and drew his hand away. Logan was about to do the same thing, but at the last moment he jerked the muzzle of his rifle up and fired.
The bullet went through Bartram’s wrist, severing the tendon that made his trigger finger work, and rendering the digit useless. A flicker of shock crossed the alpha’s ugly face as he realized what had just happened.
Before Logan could put a second shot through Bartram’s head, the coward lifted Shannon’s body up in front of his face and chest like a shield.
What the omega did next made Logan’s heart swell with pride.
She was still holding the two chunks of firestone Tanner had handed her a minute ago. Without a moment’s hesitation, she swung her right arm down and back, slamming one of the sharp chunks of ore directly into Bartram’s eye. The alpha howled in pain, and his grip loosened just enough for Shannon to slip away.
In the next moment, the wolf was on him, fangs flashing white, then red.
Logan would have liked to have watched the way Bartram died, but there were other more pressing matters to attend to. The remainder of Flarity’s men were now rushing forward attempting a badly organized flanking maneuver.
Beside him, Tanner had already dropped into a crouch, picked up his carbine and fired, dropping one of the men. There were still seven of them left, however, and they were just about to start shooting.
Yet again, the omega’s actions made Logan proud.
As soon as the men had come into view around the edge of the big metal dome, she had chucked her last piece of firestone in their direction. It was a perfect throw, and Logan complemented it with a perfect shot from his rifle. The ore ignited with bang, sending up a fountain of broken sandstone and dust. The men nearest the explosion were vaporized completely. Those who were a little farther away were flung high into the air, their bones and internal organs pulverized by the shockwave. The echoes of the blast faded away, and then everything was silent.
Logan rushed toward the omega, his heart bursting with joy that she was okay. Tanner was right there beside him. Rufus too. The wolf had shifted into his human form, but his face was still smeared with Bartram’s blood.
“Are you alright?” Tanner asked the omega.
She nodded. “Just a little rattled, that’s all.”
The three males closed in around her protectively, just in case any of their enemies were still alive. Logan looked around, taking stock. Bartram was beyond dead. Rufus had reduced him to little more than a collection of body parts. To the right of the dome were several dead bodies, and to the left were a few more. They didn’t quite add up to sixteen, but several of the men had been pretty much disintegrated by the exploding firestone.
“Looks like we got ’em,” Logan said.
“I reckon so,” Tanner agreed. “Let’s round up the horses and get the hell out of here.”
“Wait!” Shannon said, turning toward the metal dome at the center of the crater. “I want to see what’s inside that thing.”
Logan had to admit, he was pretty curious about that too, and now that their enemies had all been dispatched, there was no need to leave in a hurry.
“Alright,” he said, “but let me go first. I want you to stay behind me, hear?”
The omega nodded.
Logan walked around the dome to the other side, where a hole had been ripped in the metal by some catastrophic event. It was just big enough for him to fit through. He went halfway in, tested the floor with his foot and, finding that it would support his weight, stepped all the way inside. Shannon was right behind him, followed by Tanner and Rufus.
Everything inside was canted at an angle. The walls were leaning, and the floor was sloping slightly downward into the earth. It suddenly occurred to him that the structure probably wasn’t a dome at all. It looked that way from the outside because only half of it was visible, but in actuality it was a big metal sphere that had somehow become embedded in the surrounding sandstone.
“I think this was some kind of ship,” Shannon whispered behind him.
For the life of him, Logan couldn’t figure out what a ship would be doing way up on top of a mountain like this. Maybe it was an airship, but it looked more advanced than those great chugging monstrosities the Coppelius Corporation manufactured back east.
