Page 29 of Property of Mako
“Hide,” Calix barked, shoving me toward the old walk-in cooler. He yanked the door open, the hinges groaning. “Stay put.”
Understanding that if I was out there, I was a liability, I did as he said.
There was a tiny window in the cooler door, fogged but still enough for me to see through.
My jaw dropped as Crypt Keeper ripped off his clothes and shifted—bones snapping, fur bursting through skin as his body stretched and contorted. One second, he was a man, the next, a massive gray wolf, tearing into the nearest attacker with a snarl that rattled the door I hid behind.
Spook vanished in a blur, only to reappear behind one of the vampires, his blade already buried in the bastard’s chest before he removed his head with a swift slice. Then he blinked out again, moving like smoke, striking from every angle.
Killswitch was a raging beast, and I soon discovered he too was a vampire. With canines long and vicious, he ripped at the throats of the enemy. His blade moved with insidious precision.
Bugsy wasn’t so lucky. I saw him go down under two vampires, blood blooming on his side. Calix ripped one off him, snapping the vampire’s neck like a twig, but the damage was already done.
“Fuck!” Calix’s voice cut through the chaos.
The loss of one man didn’t seem to slow them down. In fact, it seemed to light a fire within the remaining three. They were relentless and brutal.
The fight ended as suddenly as it began, bodies littering the flour-dusted floor. Calix scooped Bugsy up, his face grim, and we all hauled ass for the alley where we’d stashed the bikes. As we ran, Killswitch was on his phone, breathlessly explaining to someone what happened.
Calix placed Bugsy on the ground on the side of the dumpster by the bikes. The other two watched the entrances to the alley.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, at a loss.
“No,” Calix grimly replied.
It wasn’t long before a black SUV turned into the alley. My heart stopped. Shit, they found us.
“No, that’s for us,” Killswitch said.
“I—” I started but then stopped. Had I said that aloud? But before I could think about it any further, the SUV ground to a halt and the doors flew open. Two men got out, and Calix lifted Bugsy and carried him to the back.
“Get in,” Calix snapped at me. This time, I didn’t argue. Once I was in the backseat, he slammed the door. One of the men that had been in the SUV got on Bugsy’s bike, and they followed us out of the city.
Back at the clubhouse, the air was thick with iron and urgency. Killswitch had gone into an office with a big scary man they called Boomslang as soon as we arrived.
Dexter, the club’s medic—and apparently a healer of some sort, though I still wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that actually meant—had Bugsy on a table, hands moving fast, muttering under his breath in some language I didn’t recognize.
Calix, Crypt Keeper, and Dexter spoke in low, urgent tones. Words like “too clean” and “perfect timing” kept slipping out.
They weren’t saying it outright, but I heard the shape of it anyway.
Someone had sold them out.
And the Kings of Anarchy had a rat.
Chapter 10
Smoke in the Ranks
Mako
I’ve fought in more ambushes than I can count, but that one? That one was too perfect. Too well-timed.
Bugsy was still on the table when I leaned against the wall in the clubhouse infirmary, arms crossed tight over my chest. Dexter’s hands were moving with inhuman precision, blue light flickering across Bugsy’s wounds as he muttered in the ancient tongue his kind used when tapping into their power.
Crypt Keeper paced, the wolf still too close to the surface for comfort. Spook stood silent in the corner, eyes like black glass, watching everything.
I couldn’t shake the fury clawing at my ribs. Someone had tipped the Covenant off. Someone who knew exactly where we’d be and when.
