Page 2 of Marked Resistance

I kicked through Apartment A’s door, blasting it open, and immediately checked my corners and ceiling. The sound of human infant squawks filled my ears, but I had a mission to fulfill. A human child rose from their makeshift play area in the living room and ran down a hallway to my right. If Dillon was in this house, he’d done a very good job of keeping the humans settled and cozy.

I’d made up my mind to press further into the apartment to clear it and be sure of Dillon’s absence when a human woman’s scream filled the air. I dashed out the door and back to the hallway in time to see Tack’s severed head rolling out of Apartment C, a pool of crimson blood following behind it, and a figure hiss at me and dash into the stairwell Tack cleared moments before.

“What the hell?” Kristopher shouted as he emerged from Apartment B. His gaze fell on our fallen team member’s head. “Oh, Tack.”

“He went up the stairs,” I prompted. Tack was gone, but the mission wasn’t over and I’d become very good at compartmentalizing my feelings and actions.

Kristopher nodded and we both dashed through the open doorway in pursuit. Dillon had forgone running up the stairs, in favor of climbing the sheer wall. My mouth opened at his ability. Vampires were very good climbers, but even we needed holes, crevices, and ledges to scale. Unless you had the Tactile ability, like Dillon.

“Fucker!” Kristopher shouted and sprinted up the stairs in chase.

I trailed behind and focused on the task at hand. Tack was down, but this couldn’t be about revenge. Dillon’s sentence had been delivered to us long before Tack’s fall.

“Kris,” I shouted in a whisper. “Focus!”

Kristopher continued climbing, ignoring my plea as Dillon ascended the wall. Dillon reached the landing first and bolted through the exit door to the roof, sending beams of moonlight back which magnified the easiness growing in the pit of my stomach with each step.

Kristopher plunged through the opening next, and his body dropped. A short, narrow, warped blade flashed across his neck, and his own momentum carried him through.

The hand I held on Assurance flew to my mouth, and I bit back the scream.

“Two down,” came the sinister taunt from the darkness ahead. “One to go. Come meet your fate little fang.”

I knew he was expecting us! This whole thing was a damn ambush.

“Taunting me, so I rush forward in a blind rage?” I shot back and pressed my back to the wall of the stairwell. “No thanks. You forgot my second option.”

“You’re a woman?! I thought the Fangs were only men. Duradel mustreallybe getting as desperate as we think. Oh well, your fate will be the same as the others…though maybe not as quick. Killing always gets my cock up.”

“And your fate is like your cock. Too short to cause me any worry.”

“Ha! Come on then, bitch, let’s see what this second option is.”

“My second option is simple.”

I sped up the last flight of stairs, lifted my right hand, pressed the ignition button on the lighter, and focused. The instant the tiny flame burst to life, I captured it in my mind and guided it with a flick of my left wrist, feeding it with the energy within me till it grew to a mighty roar and burst through the doorway in a potent stream of blazing reds and oranges.

The deadly burst supercharged the air surrounding the exit point, charring anything in the immediate area. I dove through the entrance and rolled, landing on the other side of the exit, and came up on my knees. Two swift flicks of my wrist, one to my left and the other to my right, uncoiled death by fire to both sides of the door.

Dillon was to the left of the door, so he caught the first stream and shrieked in agony as he burned. He thought to fall to the ground and roll in an effort to put out the flames devouring his body, but I poured it on, sending surge after surge of flaming torture his way until his body no longer twitched and convulsed.

I screamed so hard, my throat stung. “That’smy second option,bitch!”

The flames sang of my victory as they crackled and snapped, while I collapsed and fell to my ass. I cried so hard my chest ached, as the anger and resentment poured out of me. I lost two loyal friends to dispense damnation to one rogue.

Nothing is secure in this world, but therehasto be a point of solace. Is there no room for joy? No room for love and the living?

There has to be.

Chapter Two

Tripwire. I knelt down and traced the line with my eyes to its end. Spring-loaded spikes tipped with animal blood. A foolish, unsecured step would have ended me.

Okay.

I breathed and stepped over the near invisible wire, careful to eye the source of impending doom at the end of the line while monitoring for a second trap.

I’d circled back and collected the remains of Kristopher and Tack and buried them in one of the cemeteries in the city before I struck out on my own. Regulations required me to communicate with Command within forty-eight hours of the mission’s end or face my own hunting party of Fang Rangers. The paranoid cunt in charge of our entire clan had everyone wound so tight, we were beginning to distrust our own. Someone had to do something about him, or he would be the cause of our extinction, not one of our enemies.

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