Page 108 of Fanged Embrace
River
“Are you sure this is going to work?” I glanced over at the woman on my left, skepticism in my tone. The sky hung gray and heavy over our heads; the angry clouds had been threatening rain all morning and there was a chilly bite to the breeze that blew through the city.
Valerie blinked back at me, hybrid fangs on full display in a ghoulish grin that was, at first, a little bit unsettling, until I realized this was her version of excited. Her gaze gravitated back to the building in front of us—an abandoned grain terminal-turned undercover lab. One of the facilities we planned to target.
“Trust me.” Her pale eyes narrowed, skimming over the stained concrete construction. “It’s going to work.”
I followed her gaze across the canal, where Leo, her debonair second-in-command, was scaling the chain-link fence with a bulky, metal contraption strapped to his back. He wasn’t the only one trespassing. I spotted two more hybrids roundingthe building from the other side, creeping quietly and carrying identical contraptions on their shoulders.
When I’d called Valerie this morning and filled her in on the plan, she had rounded up her troops: All manner of hybrids, all of them scorned escapees. All of them had a bone to pick with the organization. I told Valerie we’d be hitting as many facilities as we could, and she told me her team was ready to rain hellfire.
It was a relief, to say the least. With the hybrids on our side, we actually had a chance, despite the Leyore coven’s sudden lack of allies.
To be fair, some of the supernatural factions had pulled through. When Jordan sounded the call to action, throngs of shifters had turned up at Leyore headquarters, ready to fight despite their leader’s stance on the subject. The same went for the elves, and even some of the witches had offered to help out. I’d spotted Ursula in the crowd back at HQ, thin-lipped determination on her young face. We were by no means the massive army we could have been, but even so, we would push on anyway.
The plan was simple: We’d split our army into various teams, all of which would spread out and target one known facility each. Considering our lack of numbers, the plan was to distract rather than engage directly. We’d cause enough trouble to catch the organization’s attention, and get their leaders worried. Then, when they sent out their troops in retaliation, we’d strike their headquarters directly.And bring Laurie home.
My expression flattened, thoughts of her weighing heavy on my chest. I couldn’t stand to picture her going in alone, terrified, back to the people who had hurt her so drastically. And for what?Why?Why did she do it? The question plagued me, pulling my attention from the mission at hand.
Valerie must have noticed the sudden tension in myposture, because she angled her head to face me again. “She’ll be all right.”
I stared back at her. When I’d explained the situation to her—everything from Laurie’s sudden disappearance to my hair-brained plan to get her back, Valerie hadn’t seemed all that surprised. From her perspective, Laurie had always been a loose cannon, and it was only a matter of time before she tried to attack her enemies directly—and alone.
Valerie cracked a small, sympathetic smile and shrugged. “Laurie may be an abrasive, reckless lunatic, but I can’t deny that she’s tough as nails. She’ll give the organization hell until you can swoop in to save her.”
I dropped my gaze with a sigh and ran my hands over my face. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
A moment later Leo vaulted back over the fence, landing with a theatrical flourish. The other two hybrids followed suit, and all three of them hightailed it over the lift bridge back to where the rest of us were crouched across the canal.
Leo offered me a wide, maniacal grin and an enthusiastic salute. “Everything’s ready, Captain.” Then he wiggled his brows, sidling up beside me. “And hey, maybe when this is over, me and you can go grab that drink?—”
“Not happening,” I cut him off with rolling eyes and a wrinkled nose. I had no interest in entertaining his flirtations today, not when Laurie’s life was on the line.
“Figures.” Leo’s shoulders sagged, but he didn’t seem too put out by my rebuttal considering the sly smirk tugging at his lips. “Knew you only had eyes for a certain snarky human. But listen, if things don’t end well between you and Laurie, I’ll be happy to take you back?—”
“Leo, shut up,” Valerie butted in abruptly, then she lifted a small, blinking detonator in one hand. “We have havoc to wreck.”
She thumbed the trigger before either of us could get another word in.
Across the canal, three explosions went off in unison and rolled into one roaringboom. The windows of the facility blew out in showers of shattered glass, belching smoke and licks of fire. Alarms shrieked to life a moment later, and black-clad guards poured out from the ruptured entrance.
Valerie turned to me as smoke billowed and the entire left side of the building crumpled in on itself. “Is that enough of a distraction for you?”
I blinked at the growing inferno and the disoriented scientists, clad in lab coats, stumbling away from the blaze. Luckily for us, this site was supposed to be one of the “cold” locations: no captors, no hybrid specimens to experiment on—only a few lab-techs and their beefed-up bodyguards. Easy pickings.
“Yeah,” I admitted, a little stunned at the dramatics. “Yeah, that’ll do.”
Leo fiddled with the radio at his belt and garbled static carried over, followed by confirmation from the other squadrons; all bombs had gone off as planned, disrupting minor facilities across the city.
“It worked.” He flicked a triumphant smile at Valerie. “This’ll keep them busy for a while.”
Busy was an understatement. Entire truckloads of reinforcements would reroute to handle the damage—exactly what we’d banked on to thin the organization’s defenses. In the meantime, the Leyore coven forces were handling the bigger locations, the ones where widescale destruction wouldn’t fly. The witches would work on getting captives out, while the vampires, elves and shifters would deal as much combat damage as they could.
Everything was going according to plan.
“All right, I’m heading out.” I shot to my feet, and the cutlasses clanged in their scabbards at my back. I caught Valerie’s eye. “Keep your people alive, and make sure you’re all long gone by the time reinforcements show up.”
Valerie waved a dismissive hand, snorting out a laugh at my warning. “We’ll be fine—don’t you worry. Go get your girlfriend, River.” She wagged a bony finger my way. “And don’t let her pull a stunt like this ever again.”
