Page 64 of Lockout

I was down on the ground. Practically the easiest target these men might ever have, and the motherfucker decided thatthisis the moment to go for the little girl?The little girl!In myhome?

Fuck no.

The piece of shit who put his hand on my brother’s child didn’t even know that he’d just signed his own death warrant.

The noise that echoed off the walls could only be described as primal. I wasn’t just seeing red now, it overwhelmed me. Men went flying in each direction as I shook them off like I was Billie’s pissed off bull shaking off flies. I was on my feet as they hit the ground with thuds. The man dragging Caitlyn along with him was my target. He didn’t even know it yet.

Piece of shit.

I don’t remember moving, but suddenly he was right in front of me. My hands shot out and grabbed the fucker’s face, I drove my thumbs into his eyes until my knuckles were lost in his skull. His scream of pain was like music, driving me on to keep creating the sounds. I shoved him back, leaving him screaming in agony clutching at his eye sockets.

Isla appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Caitlyn around the waist. The door to Seek’s apartment opened and Isla passed the little girl off to Seek. She’d keep Caitlyn safe, though I wasn’t sure where Jenny was. “Stay in there,” I barked at Seek. “Keep everyone inside.”

She nodded, but Isla didn’t listen. She blocked a punch from one of the men, then crouched down in a swift move and with a sweep of her leg took him off his feet. She fell on him likea ravenous wolf, as pissed off as I was that they’d come here. As long as the others stayed safe inside the apartments, I didn’t mind Isla helping. She needed it as much as we did. Needed to feel useful to the club. And she was.

I didn’t need a mirror to know my grin was feral as I focused back on the fight. This fucker on the ground at my feet had beaten down Jenny’s door and taken Caitlyn before the women had gotten a chance to do anything.

I wasn’t sure why she and the girls weren’t in Seek’s apartment. The women must have taken a break from the movies and Jenny had gone back into her apartment to get snacks or something. Didn’t matter. They were in there and now another guy was trying to get to them.

My rage flared again as he managed to shove the door open and gave me a brief glimpse of Jenny before she slammed it closed

She was braced against the door, trying to hold it shut as the guy lowered his shoulder and slammed into it again and again, and I could see the other girls huddle behind her, terrified. But pride welled up inside me because Gabby, Taylor, and Cassie were all holding onto knives. The man whose eyes I’d fucked up beyond all repair had blood all over his forearms. The girls hadn’t stood by and let him take Caitlyn. They’d fought back, just like Butcher, Toxic, and Isla had been teaching them to do.

A scream of pain came from behind me. It was followed by an inhuman yowl of rage. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Auron, Jecht, and Isla’s bobcat, Murder, had converged on one of the men who’d come up behind Isla. She was still fighting with the man she’d taken to the ground, but the animals had her back. More precisely, Murder had her claws in the man’s back and her teeth in the man’s neck while the dogs each had an arm in their mouths.

Focusing back on the shithead trying to get into Jenny’s apartment, I let out a yell and charged the man. He turned in time to realize that it was too late. Catching him by the neck, I lifted him off the ground and kept running toward the end of the hallway, slamming him into the wall. The sheetrock broke into a distinct man shape.

I pulled him back by his neck and slammed him again and again until the two by four studs in the wall were starting to crack. Then I pulled my own knife from where I kept it and jabbed it into his gut a couple of times. On the last thrust, I jerked my blade as hard as I could before I removed it. Then I left him there, stunned and trying to hold his fucking intestines inside his own damn body, and turned to the other men.

Three were left in the fight. Even the blind motherfucker was waving his arms around and coming at me, but he didn’t count, so I focused on the others. I knelt and caught the closest one with an uppercut to the balls, grabbing and twisting, until he sank to the ground with a shrill shriek.

Letting go of his balls, I slammed him into the wall nearby. The snarls and screams filling the air were just adding to the orchestra of death that was pounding in my head.

I went back to the man shuffling along the wall, the one who had made Caitlyn scream. One man was still trying to fend off the dogs, who were darting in to bite him. It was like a fucking dance, dart, bite, avoid the flailing hands. The bobcat was watching, waiting to see if she needed to help. She would occasionally swat at his face the way a tomcat swatted at a dying mouse.

Isla had her legs wrapped around another man’s shoulders, raining elbows down onto his head. I wasn’t sure if it was the one I’d tossed or the other, they were all over the place. Too many to keep track of while I was in such an amped up state. As soon as one came into my view, I took care of him. That was all theplanning I was doing. But I wasn’t killing them. Except maybe intestines. He might be dead by now. But I hoped not, and Isla seemed to get that I didn’t want them dead. It wasn’t our right to take these fuckers’ lives. That was for my brothers to do. In retaliation for coming for their families.

I grabbed the blind guy’s right arm and brought it out into an arm bar, put my hand on his elbow, and ‘snap’. He let out a scream. Then I grabbed his left arm. The beaten man at the end of the hall kept glancing between what we were doing and the stairs. He wanted to run. I wasn’t going to fucking let that happen.

I released the blind man’s arm and pulled my gun out of the holster tucked into the back of my jeans.

“Wait, wait,” he wailed. “I’ll talk! I’ll tell you things.”

“You have nothing to say that I want to hear,” I growled.

He bellowed at the gunshot, but then patted himself when he realized he hadn’t been shot. One of his friends was now down on the first story, having fallen backward when I shot him in the knee. The other was on the floor, trying to fend off the animals while fumbling with his own weapon. They came in here with their guns holstered. Fucking idiots. They probably thought they’d only be dealing with the families, not one of us. And they certainly weren’t ready for Isla, who, using the goon she was just beating on, rammed the guy going for his gun so hard she sent them both through the railing, landing below with heavy thumps. She glanced over at me and I nodded at her.

“Thanks for the backup. Tie them up in the gym.”

“You got it,” she said with a grin.

“I’ll get the two up here.”

She trotted happily down the stairs, the dogs and cat following behind her. She started whistling a tune as she took care of the men. I recognized it as Toxic’s ‘One little, two little, three little dead goons’ song.

Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but grin. The bloodlust was starting to die down. Especially since I wasn’t planning to kill them. I grabbed the blind guy by the non-broken arm and dragged him downstairs.

Isla passed by to get another one of the guys groaning on the floor of my clubhouse.

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