She was bloody damn well going to kill both of them, she thought to herself as she watched Ansell fighting with a massive … hell, she didn't know what race the being was but he was freaking huge, and Zhubin sneaking into the danger zone. Yep, she was killing her mates when they went home. Dammit.
Ansell got in a couple of good shots and then, then he went down, hard. That, that thing hit him so hard that his head snapped back and he just dropped like a sack of bricks. Boneless, he lay on the ground while the other being circled in closer to him. Reaching down with a large hand he grabbed Ansell by the hair and pulled him up into a headlock. No, not a headlock …
She had enough of just sitting and watching. Sting be fucking damned, she wasn't going to allow her mates to be killed because of her inaction. She had slipped from the truck and before Ansell's neck could be broken, put the large beast down with a single shot to the middle of his forehead, the sound of her weapon only a small whisper. The small hole in the front of the beast's head dribbled a bit of blood and he looked confused for a moment, but when he dropped, the entire back of his head was missing. Sliding up to Ansell, she helped catch his weight. "Do you need a medic?" If not she was going to go in and damn well end this all. Now.
His lids fluttered slightly. "Told you to stay in the car," he said. His words were heavily slurred though, so it was a guess. When he finally pried his eyes open he squinted and blinked and groaned. "Lace," he whispered her name and passed out. Pressing a hand to his neck she felt a sticky warmth on her fingers from his shoulder. Blood.
"Fuck." This was a shitstorm of epic proportions and she knew it. She grabbed her comms unit and whispered, "Abort. All black. Need medics." Fuck, did she ever need them! She was holding Ansell's shoulder tightly where the wound was and grumbled. "I need fucking medics rolling, now!"
A gunshot rang out and then another. A brief moment of silence and then all hell truly broke loose as a hail of gunfire sounded. All from inside the warehouse. "Man down, man down." Zhubin's voice. "Target injured, pursuing," he said.
"Two down," Artaxias's voice came in over the comms. "Both unconscious and breathing. Tagged for later retrieval," he added just as a loud screech of metal came through the comms. "Inside the warehouse, Z, where are you?"
"East side heading north." Zhubin's voice was low. "Got a blood trail here but it looks to be tapering off, he must be staunching the blood flow."
"Coming to you," Ax and a couple others said almost all on top of one another.
"Medics are inbound," Jonas's voice came to her. "Two minutes. Sorry, but we had to keep them out of the area so hang in there, Lacey."
"Says you," she grumbled and rocked with Ansell's head in her lap. "Don't you dare die on me. I mean it. You die on me and I will follow you. I refuse to lose either of you and you damn well know that." She was grumbling, muttering darkly and dangerously. "Thanks Jonas."
"Not dying," Ansell slurred out, his jaw starting to puff up and darken. "But may ask you to shoot me soon," he said on a groan. "Z?" he hissed out, opening one eye to squint up at her. "Where's Z?" His eyes closed and his features pinched in pain.
"I don't know. Jonas, where is Zhubin?" She didn't ask Zhubin because at the moment she was far too pissed off at both of her men to ask him, at least that was the story she was going with because the honest truth was she was scared shitless that Z was doing something that he shouldn't, and her voice would only hurt his cause instead of help it.
"Uh." He sounded out of breath. "Heading right for me and, in theory, so should be our target. Best I can figure they'll pop out somewhere on the south side. Downside, there are three doors and two of us back here." He muttered something she didn't quite catch and then there was silence.
"Heat signatures heading your way, counting three," Mark said quietly. "Two are close together and the third is out front and stumbling. Our target definitely took a hit."
"Shoot the fuckers. I don't care, just end this shit." Lacey growled. "I mean it too. End it." All she could think of in that moment was just getting Ansell medical treatment and getting Zhubin out of the fucking building and into safety.
"Can't fire, too much distortion. Z and Ax have to flush him out of there into the open," Mark said.
"Movement," Jonas hissed out.
And everyone held their breath. A few shouts could be heard, not through the comms but bouncing off the buildings. More gunfire and then silence. A long, tension-filled silence.
"Target is down. I repeat, target is down," Zhubin said through the comms. "Sorry, Lace, but I had to put him down hard. You can still kick him if you want but he won't be feeling it, babe."
"Ansell's down," Mark said. "Ambulance is coming in dark, two seconds out." As he said that she could hear the crunch of gravel at her back. "Coming up on you now, Lacey. Two medics," he warned her.
"What happened?" Zhubin's voice was frantic and he sounded like he was running. Just as the medics reached her and made her move back she spotted him clearing the far end of the warehouse at a dead run for her.
Lacey had her bloody hands wrapped around her middle. When Zhubin stopped and wrapped her up close she began to cry. "You both just had to go and do something stupid. I could beat you both. Instead of blowing that fucking thing's head off, he gets into a fist fight with it. Really? A fucking fist fight when an exploding round did the trick." She grumbled darkly and watched as they hooked Ansell up to more machines. "You are both totally on my shit list."
Zhubin stroked her hair, over and over. "He'll be fine," he said, his voice tight and too soft. "He'll be fine, Lace, you'll see." Holding her tight as Ansell was lifted onto a gurney he grabbed a medic and found out where they were taking him. "Come on, we're going to get them there as fucking fast as we can."
"We had better," she grumbled and walked with him back to the truck that she and Ansell had been in. "But you got him, right? The fucker that did all of this to us, you put him down and he will never get back up, right?" She had to know that the threat to their family was gone. Period. "And we will be able to figure out if he was working with anyone else, right?"
Nodding, he loaded her in and then joined her, turning the engine over and roaring out of the lot, the ambulance on their ass. "Yeah, he's dead. Artaxias confirmed but will remain with the body until Briar does her first cut just to be absolutely, one hundred percent positive."
"Good." She shivered and shook her head. "Will Briar be okay with doing this autopsy?" she asked quietly. "Because if not then we will need to ensure that someone else that we can trust will be the one to do it. We have to ensure that this bastard's turned inside out on the table so that we can figure out everything about him. We also will need to go to his place and turn it over and again because this is fucking ridiculous. We have to ensure that this never happens to us again." She didn't want to live in fear.
"She's more than ready for him," Zhubin said, shooting her a look. "I spoke to her before we left and let her know the odds were good we'd be bringing him in dead. She wants him under her knife, wants to ensure you get peace from your demons and if she can help, she is willing. Personally I think it will let her face some of her own too."
"I could kiss that woman. Are you sure that Ansell will be okay?" She was jumping from one topic to the next, but she couldn't help it. "Positive. I mean, without a shadow of a doubt? He had lost a lot of blood, Zhu, and God." She couldn't lose him. Couldn't lose either of them and Zhubin knew that.
"He will be fine. He has grand plans for teaching our kid all sorts of things that will pay me back for most of the shit I pulled as a kid. No fucking way is he going to miss out on that. I am in such deep shit when he starts that."
"That's a very good thing." Lacey laughed and shook her head. "I doubt that. Something tells me that you are going to be right there with him helping to teach our son things. This child might genetically be yours, but it's his too in the heart and he knows that. So he will be good. Somewhat."