Page 169 of Lock Up the Darkness

When his gaze was fixed on the maniacs drawing ever closer and surrounding us on three sides, with just one remaining for us to escape—for now, if we didn’t wait any longer—I unzipped his jacket and pulled the explosives out of his inside pockets myself, gathering six.

“Go,” I told them. “The west path is clear for now. We wait another moment and they’ll have moved into position to block that too.”

Jonah nodded and tugged Aurora with him when she hesitated on my behalf.

I turned away and back to the incoming assault.

I pulled the pin of the first grenade, then tossed it into the fray.

As it exploded and lit up the night, I assaulted them with the other five in rapid succession.

Screams tore through area and they fell back, blood, flesh, body parts, and charred flesh filling my vision, before I was satisfied that they’d been shocked to a halt—at least for now.

And then I turned and bolted through the forest to catch up to Jonah and Aurora.

* * *

“Who the fuck were those motherfuckers?” Jonah asked, as he kept turning around in the backseat and looking out the back window for a tail. As if I wasn’t already taking care of that for us with my constant looks through my mirrors, while I drove us at breakneck speed through the slick winding country roads toward our safehouse.

“They called themselves The Heretics,” I told him.

“The… who? Never heard of them.”

“All the more concerning, because they’d clearly heard of us.”

Aurora took another harsh drag from my cigarette, then blew the smoke out the window and asked, “How did they know we’d be there?”

“All good questions I’m determined to find the answers to,” I responded with an edge.

I hated when my well thought out plans and strategies went south.

Especially when it had been a result of a completely unforeseen element.

She passed my smoke and I took a much-needed drag, ignoring the irritating pain as it rubbed against my split lip. “The mission was still a success. Better than intended, even. We got the intel and Olivia’s help.”

I nodded and told Jonah over my shoulder. “Check in with Killian. Tell him we’re alright. I need to concentrate on the roads.”

“I know, right? This rain is the fucking worst.” He pulled out his cell phone, thankfully having been protected in his pocket.

I turned back to the road as he dialed and tried to focus on the immediate task of getting us home in one piece, and not these Heretics or the disturbing information that had been revealed about Carson and Aurora’s late mother earlier.

“All good,” Jonah suddenly announced, cutting through my thoughts. “Killian is with Olivia and they’re almost at the safehouse.”

“Very good. Tell him to check in every fifteen minutes.”

“Will do.”

I felt Aurora’s eyes on me, frowning. I explained, “We’re still not clear. We don’t know Olivia’s true motivations yet, we just have her word. The situation is fluid. Right now, it could change on a dime, even faster than every fifteen minutes, in fact.”

She was nodding then. “Got it.”

Blood dripped into my eye, but I couldn’t wipe it away without risking the car until I made this fucking winding turn, needing both my hands on the wheel.

In my mind’s eye I recognized that I was getting agitated, anger on the verge of sparking actually.

The next thing I knew, Aurora was dabbing at the bleeding cut by my eye with some rolled gauze she’d pulled out of her pocket. “It’s okay,” she said, in a soothing tone that went along with the feel of her fingers on my skin. Even the burn of them brushing across the deep cut… that pain just added to the delectable sensation. “These Heretics coming out of nowhere and attacking us… it doesn’t change the fact that the actual mission was a success. We got the intel, we have Olivia with us.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “You’re right.”

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