Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [902]
“End it,” Kade muttered in a tight whisper as he watched Chase’s expression contort with some kind of wild fury. From beside him, Kade heard Brock growl, a low rumble deep in his throat as he, too, caught sight of the other warrior toying with his prey.
Just then, Chase drew his knife and brought it up, poised to deliver a killing strike.
That’s when Kade saw a flash of dark movement across the way—another Minion, stepping out onto an exterior staircase of one of the surrounding buildings. The Minion guard had his rifle aimed at Chase, about to squeeze the trigger.
“Goddamn it,” Kade snarled, bringing up his own weapon and training it on the sudden threat to Sterling Chase’s life. Tegan’s warning to hold all fire unless absolutely necessary rang through his head.
Fuck it.
He had to do it. If he didn’t, in another fraction of a second, the Order was going to lose one of its own.
Kade fired.
The shot cracked like a sudden clap of thunder. Up on the stairwell, an explosion of blood and gore blasted out of the side of the Minion’s head as Kade’s bullet met its target dead-on. The Minion’s corpse toppled over the edge, landing with a hard thump on the ground below.
At the same time, an alarm went off inside the buildings. The ringing peal of the sirens echoed all around the exterior of the site, plunging the area into instant chaos.
Before Kade had a chance to regret the move that had spared his brethren’s life but possibly put their mission in jeopardy, an army of Minions came pouring out of the place from all directions. Gunfire erupted everywhere. Kade and Brock dived for cover behind the nearest outbuilding, returning fire on the group of Minion guards who moved in on them from across the way.
Through the curtain of thickening snowfall, Kade noticed an additional company of Minions over near the squat brick building that protected the mine’s entrance. A dozen of them swept out to fortify the front of the building, while behind them, still more appeared in the narrow windows, which were thrown open and bristling with the long black barrels of high-gauge semiautos.
Bullets volleyed from all directions as Kade and the others tried to mow down the line and clear a path toward the mine’s entrance, the obvious nerve center of Dragos’s operation there. The warriors took out several targets, but not without a few hits on their side. Although their Breed genetics gave them the speed to anticipate and dodge an incoming shot, in the heat of battle it was easy to lose track—and potentially lose one’s head.
Kade took a nasty graze to his shoulder as he fired on the Minions. Beside him, Brock flinched away from one bullet and barely evaded another. The rest of the warriors were under similar attack and, like Kade and Brock, giving back as good as they were getting. Minions dropped from various positions, until all that was left were a few tenacious guards holding the line at the front of the mine’s entrance.
Then, as if to give the challenge an even finer point, the building’s steel door opened and an immense, black-clad shape emerged.
“Assassin,” Kade hissed to Brock as the huge Gen One male he’d seen a few days ago with Dragos’s lieutenant strode outside to join the fray.
No sooner had he said it than one of the warriors broke out of formation and stalked forward, gun blazing.
Holy hell.
Hunter.
“Cover him!” Tegan shouted, but Kade and the others were already on it, vaulting up from their positions and falling in behind the former assassin to blast at their enemies and storm the mine’s entrance in force.
Several yards in front now, Hunter’s long, determined strides chewed up the snow-covered ground as he dodged to evade a hail of bullets coming at him from ahead on the right. Another volley answered, and the Gen One took a solid hit to his left thigh. Then another to his right shoulder.
Hunter barely flinched as his flesh tore away with the impacts. Head lowered, he threw down his weapon and bulldozed forward in a streak of speed that only Breed eyes could follow. All of his fury—all of his lethal intent—was focused