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"What The Fuck" Reichen and the others followed hied silence fell over each of the Breed roup to the centuries-old Gen One whom Reichen had never once seen rattled beyond words For within the space on the other side of that door was a broad platforhtly off the floor And on that platfored with heavy restraints built for an inpidual of ith Ankle braces as thick as a woh Shackles for powerful wrists that e human’s skull like a walnut
"This is where he’s been keeping the Ancient," Tegan said, the first of them able to form words "Holy shit He’s had the Ancient under his control all this tilanced down near their feet and exhaled a sober curse "Ultraviolet light bars Check the floor The ceiling, too The entire periht fixtures When they’re activated, the UV bars would contain the Ancient inside better than the strongest, thickest kind of metal" The words were barely out of Niko’s mouth before a sudden, odd huht exploded froht and hot, Reichen and the others had no choice but to cover their eyes with updrawn ared skin At first, he worried that his pyro had awakened fro even worse Reichen squinted beyond the piercing blast of light, upward, toward a glassed-in viewing area he hadn’t noticed above the Ancient’s holding cell until that very rinning with san, and the rest of the warriors who’d coht by the lethal vertical beaht that surrounded thewith automatic weapons Both males bore thick black polymer collars around their necks, their shaved heads and bare throats covered in Gen One glyphs, everydeadly purpose The two assassins exited both sides of the viewing area to twin landings at the top of a double flight of stairs They took aie, then opened fire
Chapter Thirty
Claire’s heart slaunfire that erupted over the comm device on the Rover’s dashboard She’d been tensely os’s lair along with Dylan and Rio, fear twisting like a serpent in her stomach with each step Andreas and the others took deeper into the horrible place Now her fear shot up her throat, exploding out of her in a screa bullets, shouts, and chaos filled the vehicle
"Oh,in her veins "Oh, e for the door handle beside her in the backseat, but Rio pivoted around from in front of her and cla her in place "Stay, Claire You can’t do anything to help therave He hissed a curse as unfire cracked over the receiver Then, another disaster, this tiround level post near the barn’s entrance, where Renata and the male called Hunter were stationed Renata’s voice came into the vehicle in a breathless rush
"Ah, shit We’ve got coht now outside the old barn Fuck, I think they’re Gen Ones--" Bla Renata off and echoing from out of the forest like thunderclaps "Oh, Jesus," Dylan whispered from her seat beside her mate in the front of the SUV as the Order caround level "Rio what should we do?" "Stay here, both of you," he ordered the pistol out of its holster on his belt and loading the chamber He threw open the driver-side door and leapt out
"Stay in the Rover and keep it running in case things go any further south and you need to haul ass out of here I’ in"
The Gen One assassins rained down a hail of bullets on Reichen and the warriors caught within the UV prison below Returning their fire wasn’t easy The light bars were blinding and searingly hot, offering little roo rounds while the warriors volleyed back shots with their oeapons
Froan take a bullet to the shoulder Another grazed Nikolai in the thigh, knocking him on his ass for a second before he locked and loaded a second pistol and squeezed off several semiautomatic rounds And up above, secure behind the bulletproof Plexiglas that shielded hiloating Sh it were all merely entertainment and he’d already won this war Reichen’s fury churned on a swift, hard boil Already the pyro was rising up inside hi heat ripple over his skin, watched with nonchalant acceptance as the bullets that should have punctured his body instead fell away the instant they y that enveloped hian and the others, spreading his arms wide to create an even wider field of protection "Not too close," he warned "The heat will deflect the bullets, but it also kills" The warriorsReichen’s body like a shield as they continued to strike back at their attackers, who had the advantage of unrestricted ly endless firepower
Reichen’s vision began to warp before his eyes His pyro was building faster now, burning hotter than ever as he glared up at Roth He let his rage expand, coaxed the flaer from within hi it tuthen as he held it doell past the point of pain Past even the point of sanity So disaster, but he shoved reason aside and stoked the flaeance--for a final, bloody justice--like potent liquor on his tongue "Wilhel all of his hatred, all of his white-hot energy, on the male who had taken so hter of Reichen’s Darkhaven kin "Tonight you die, Roth!" Focusing his talent, Reichen fisted his hand and punched it through the ultraviolet light bars of the cell He felt no burn, other than the heat coursing through hireat satisfaction in the sudden, slack-jawed astonish hihted purpose, Reichen stepped out of the Ancient’s cage with a roar of e The two Gen One assassins blasted at hilanced up at the outward from his body with nuclear intensity He summoned power to his raised and fisted hands, then turned it loose on the pair Twin fireballs rocketed out of his palets in an instant, incinerating the vampires on i ash anddown from the top of the double staircases "Holy shit!" one of the warriors crowed from behind him, but Reichen had no ti wide-eyed in panic, backing away fro to bolt Reichen crouched low, then sprang into the air
In one fluidhim, he leapt off the floor and sailed up to the broad sheet of Plexiglas that separated hi his lip off his teeth and fangs as he smashed into theand watched the barrier shatter inward in apillar of hellish fire that had transfor too incredible for words He’d understood the male’s unique Breed-born talent was pyrokinesis, but thisthis was beyond reckoning It eso, struck dumb onder and fear, as Reichen stalked toward him The concrete floor scorched black beneath Reichen’s boots The fluorescent lights overhead popped and s inch by inch across the viewing rooe fro off Reichen "You think you can acco form that stalked him with obvious deadly intent "You’ve seen this place, Reichen You can figure out what it’s been used for all these years Dragos has bred his own army down here He’s done much more than that, and he cannot be stopped now Do you actually think s?" "It will make a difference to Claire," came the deep, heat-warped reply "It willbackward, until the gauges and switches of the UV cage’s control panel behind hio, and maybe your friends down there in that cell will live"
"You can’t harlance bounced from point to point on the control panel Circuits crackled, shooting off sparks and bitter, electronic smoke Roth had to duck out of the way of the saze driving him deep into the corner of the room in a cower Roth snarled, infuriated to have been sent to his knees, particularly by thisAs Reichen stepped closer,froe for one of the gauges on the control panel He understood the fact that he wasn’t going to walk away froht now, but darunt of determination, Roth smashed his fist onto the panic switch that would activate the lab’s ean to wail overhead The alar the start of an irreversible countdown Roth chuckled "My God It’s alside you and the bulk of the Order Seeing that look on your face right now your defeat is palpable, Reichen So is the horror and outrage--the raw, ehed, knowingly dra with us when this whole goddadom come in the next five--ah, make that four minutes and forty-nine seconds"
Chapter Thirty-One
Claire wanted it to all be a dreahto back to noro, when she and Andreas had been alone at the house in Newport,under the ht But the sound of Wilhelm Roth’s cruelly animated voice--the realization of what he had just done to Andreas, to the warriors inside the abandoned lair with hi their mates in mere minutes--sank into Claire’s soul like a poison "I can’t stay in here another second," sheDylan’s ashen look "We can’t leave, Claire Can’t you hear the gunfire out there by the entrance?" Claire heard it Rio had been gone for only a few ed with the Gen One assassins who’d coerous outside the vehicle; Claire knew that But as she stared anxiously out the tinted windshield at the forest that surrounded her, she knew a deeper sense of dread
"Oh, my God no This cannot be Mira’s vision" She opened the door and slid out of the Rover, realizing just now that the preirl’s eyes was about to coht here, within the next five awful rab her by the aret back inside You can’t--" "This is the same woods I saw in Mira’s eyes," she cried, sick with certainty The sa Andreas in that pile of s rubble and ash "The explosion, Dylan This is exactly what Mira showedto happen Oh,loose of the other Breedmate’s hold, Claire raced into the darkened woods, her heart breaking, about to burst from her chest, and Andreas’s name a desperate prayer on her lips
Every cell in Reichen’s body screamed for him to unleash the full power of his fury on Wilhelm Roth It would be thebut ashes to be trale blast of rage was far too merciful Evil like him deserved to suffer, especially after the cowardice he’d just shown in activating explosives that none of the warriors trapped in the UV cage below had any hope of escaping His friends should not have to die as part of this bad blood between Roth and hiave Reichen the ability to ignore his hatred of Roth and loose his rage on the control panel that enco rooes anddevices, until finally there was a loud pop and the entire space went dark He didn’t see Roth h a side door Reichen pivoted to the blown- outand glanced down at the warriors leaping off the cell’s deactivated platfor up to hih Reichen’s vision a ever hotter inside him
"Reichen, come on! Leave the son of a bitch He’s dead if he stays in here" True enough, Reichen thought But the way his body felt now, the way his veins were seething lava and his --destruction--he realized that thehad finally arrived He was too far gone The fires were intensifying within hian shouted, hesitating when the rest of the warriors isely rushing to evacuate "Forget Roth and let’s haul ass out of this place before it fucking blows!" "Take care of her foras dry as kindling, scraping with each syllable "Get her soan" He didn’t wait to hear the dark curse that shot up from the roo the warrior--his friend--to carry out his request