Theirs.
Mine.
Bone crunched bone and one went down. The other was faster. Lighter on his feet. We danced around each other at breakneck speed until I caught him at the base of his skull.
The rain stopped.He’s dead. I knew it before he hit the ground, but I boxed that shit away, leaving it behind as I fought my way past the next Crow.
Alexei.I didn’t give a fuck about anything else. In this moment, therewasnothing else.
Another Crow went down. I jumped over him, stomping on his face a happy accident, but I felt no satisfaction as my boot flattened his nose.
I felt nothing but raw fear. Alexei was the best fighter I’d ever seen. A stone-cold killer. But he wasn’t immortal.
A bad crash.
An uneven fight.
They could kill him.
Maybe they already had.
Another shard of ice lanced my heart. I fought harder, barely seeing my opponents. Two more. Three. What the fuck did it matter?
But I wasn’t superhuman either. There were four men left standing and only one of them was me.
Crows converged on me, none that I recognised.The new breed.I could tell. Despite the trail of them I’d left in my wake, they held themselves different. Moved with more purpose.This wasn’t an accident.Which meant either Rocco St John had lied or he was so out of the loop he was no fucking use to us.
I tried to recall any chatter about him on the wire. Any time he’d shown up. But I hadn’t read the meticulous notes Rubi had grown obsessed with and it became a moot point. The world was moving too fast.
The hammer was heavy in my hand. Blood dripped down my arm and I had no fucking clue if it was mine. I felt no fucking pain.
A machete hung from the grasp of the fastest moving Crow. I braced myself for the swing, but his mate somehow got to me first.
I killed him. On purpose. Smashing him with the claw end of my hammer. His brother’s machete slashed air, whipping past my face. Anger and adrenaline collided in a vicious mix and I roared to the fucking night sky.
The Crows started to shout too. Panic hitting the two that remained. The one with the machete came for me again, the blade slicing my jacket, glancing along my ribcage.
I snarled again.Fuck off.
But he was getting closer, every wild swing making a deeper impact to my ability to stay alive long enough to help Alexei, and a frantic need to survive clawed at me. I kept moving, faster and faster. Dizzy. I lost track of the blade and the man wielding it. His counterpart leapt at me. We crashed to the ground, rolled over, and I lost my hammer.
The weight of the Crow brother bore down on me and nausea smacked me in the face as hard as his meaty fist. Ihatedthe sensation of other people touching me. It was how I’d known Alexei was different. That his hands on my bare skin was something I needed in my life as much as I needed Cam.
But this—a stranger in my space, his thighs on my ribs, the wiry mess of his beard brushing my neck?
Fuck. That.
I bucked, using all the strength I had left to get this grimy fucker off me. But he didn’t budge. He hit me again. My head bounced off the ground, ears ringing, but it was nothing to his hands gripping my throat, trying to throttle me without knowing he didn’t have to squeeze to stop me breathing.
Sharp panic hit me. I needed his skin off mine before I burst into flames. I wrenched my spine from the dirt again, harder this time, and drove the heel of my hand into the man’s chin.
He grunted, jerking back. I took my chance and punched him again, but as he fell, his mate with the machete appeared in my periphery, bearing down too fast for me to slide out from beneath his dazed brother.
I was stuck. The blade whistled through the air, glinting with death. I braced myself, but the sharp, bullwhip crack of a silenced gun got there first.
The Crow with the machete fell, dead before he hit the ground, a hole in his skull smack bang between the eyes. But I didn’t have time to ponder how thefuckit had happened. One Crow remained, and he still had the upper hand.
I scrambled to escape his weight, kicking like a trapped deer, arms flailing, but this dude washeavy, and I was tired. The crazed energy that had carried me this far began to fade, and I knew why. That shot.Alexei. It could only have been him. And that meant he was okay,alive, and perhaps that was how it was meant to be.