Kai (A Dark Assassins Novel Book One) (21 page)

Kai turned back to Seth.
 
“Go upstairs and lock down the house after we leave.
 
Lock yourself in a room.
 
Take food.
 
I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but we’ll get her back.
 
Okay?”

Seth nodded, and Kai dashed up the stairs after the others.
 
He had already dressed in black, so he added his vest, holsters, and loaded up with guns, grenades, door busters, and his MK20 strapped to his side.
 
They didn’t know whether they were going to deal with an entire team of immortals, so they armed themselves in case they ran into a more dangerous situation than one vampire.

Something akin to insanity filtered through his mind with each minute that ticked by, and although he wanted to scream in a rage and destroy everyone and everything that took her away from him, he knew he had to get Liv back.
 
The one way to do that was to keep his head in the game.
 

But he’d hurt her, made her cry.
 
He should have understood their desperation to get her back and get the information only she knew.
 
He’d underestimated their enemy, and he wouldn’t do so again.

When he had her safe in his arms, he would tell her everything and nothing would keep them apart again.
 
He only hoped he got to her in time.

A hand clamped onto his shoulder and squeezed.
 
When he met Reaper’s eyes and conveyed the images and feelings he couldn’t hold back, the other man squeezed harder.

“We’ll get her back.
 
Jade has already left on recon, and we’ll know more once we track the scent.
 
But you need to keep your shit together, for Liv, okay?” Reaper demanded.

With a short nod of his head, Kai and the others sprinted out the door.
 
Gunnar took lead, as they tracked her scent back to town.
 
Ghost threw worried looks at him, but if he took a moment to stop and think, or explain to his boss and friend what he was thinking, his sanity would slip a little more and he wouldn’t be able to keep going.

Jade’s booming voice echoed through his head.
 

Abandoned building, three miles east.
 
One vampire who seems to be down, and one human enemy combatant.
 
It looks as though they are waiting for something, maybe us, so be aware.
 
It’s…bad
.
 

Jade’s voice wobbled on the last statement.
 
As he tried to get images from her mind, she blocked him and the others from her head.
 
He snarled.
 
It was standard operating procedure for images of the area and target to be shown, and all thoughts of Liv being unharmed disappeared with the wind.
 
He didn’t need to see.
 
He could imagine exactly what the man did to Liv.

They picked up their pace, and before long, he spotted Jade outside the crumbling warehouse.
 
As he neared Jade and the door to where they would find his Liv, he almost cut himself on a piece of jagged tin that jutted from the building due to his inattention, but Reaper pushed him out of the way in time.
 
A few steps from Jade, he could hear painful moaning from inside the building, but he couldn’t hear any other voices or sounds.

He sprinted to the window and Jade paused for a long moment.
 
He could see the tears in Jade’s eyes for Liv, and he swallowed a lump of emotion when she reached out and gave his arm a squeeze of support.
 
She nodded her head toward the window and moved over to one side so he had room.

Positions.
 
This came from Ghost.

That meant the team would breach within half a minute, but as he glanced into the window, rage and fear built to a crescendo as he watched the human ball his hand into a fist and punch an already bruised and bloody Liv in the face.
 
The man had put everything he had into the punch.
 
By the sweat dripping from his head and moisture that covered most of his gray shirt, Kai knew he’d been at it for a while.
 
He could have sworn that he saw the man’s hand slow dramatically before he struck her face, as if he were pushing though a viscous substance to make the punch.
 
Because the punch hadn’t been full force, the impact was lessened.
 
It didn’t matter.
 
From several hundred yards, he could see that Liv had already been beaten to within an inch of her life.

The man turned around and punched the wall with full force.
 
There was no slowing motion this time.
 
Kai heard the bones in his hand break the moment his fist struck the solid concrete.
 
The man howled it pain.
 
Kai was satisfied that he wouldn’t be able to strike Liv again, but it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t tear the man apart for the damage he’d already done.

Within a second of Ghost’s command, he breached the window and darted toward the man with a sneer on his face.
 
Kai watched as the man’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak, but Kai had tackled him and broke his ribs with one punch to his chest.
 
Another howl of pain sounded throughout the room, but the only sound he heard was the rest of the team breaching the building.

He turned toward the woman he loved, and hated himself for keeping Liv human and vulnerable.
 
He couldn’t believe he didn’t think about it sooner, but he should have turned her, told her he loved her, and kept her safe because she would be strong enough to handle this lifestyle.
 
He’d been so stupid, so worried about his feelings being returned, it never even crossed his mind.
 

She reached for him and he gently wrapped his arms around her.
 
“Kai,” she whispered in his ear.
 
“I’m sorry…didn’t…tell him…anything.”

“No, no, love.”
 
His voice choked with emotion, and he cleared it before he continued.
 
“Not your fault, but mine.
 
I should have told you about my dream, my premonition, and should have kept you safe.
 
This is my fault.”

As he scanned her for injuries, he noted that her heartbeat was weak, and when his hand moved over her side, a hoarse groan sounded from deep in her throat as he touched the wound.
 
When he withdrew his hand, he watched as her blood dripped steadily from the piercing wound on her right side.
 
He ripped through the ropes on her feet and legs and for the first time since he’d met her, he feared that he would hurt her with his strength.
 
He pressed his hand against the wound that continued to bleed, and her hoarse cry speared him with a pain that he’d never felt before.
 
Keeping his head, he searched her for other injuries and snarled in rage as he noted her broken right arm, several broken fingers on both hands, a broken cheekbone, and several slashing cuts along her neck and chest.

“Hold on, love.
 
Help is coming,” he said.

“Fucking bitch ruined everything,” the man grunted.

Loud growls and snarls ripped through the air, reminding Kai that his team was there for Liv and him.
 
He sneered at the man a moment before Xander and Hunter punched the man in the stomach, rendering him silent.

“An ambulance is on its way.
 
We have to question this fuck before we take care of him,” Ghost stated.
 

“His name is…Dr. Richard Ames.”
 
Xander retrieved his wallet from his back pocket.

“We need answers,” Hunter demanded.

“Fuck you,” Ames spit.

“You hurt our Liv, and that is something you’ll come to regret.”
 
Hunter, with very little effort, reached down for the man’s forearm and snapped it in two, and waited until the he stopped screaming before he continued.
 
“If you don’t tell me, I will break every bone in your body and keep you awake and alive the entire time.
 
Understand?”

Ames nodded, but he paused a few seconds before he started his story.
 
Kai smiled a pained smile.
 
The panther was vicious when protecting his own.

“I needed a vampire or a shifter to change my dying wife.”
 
He chuckled.
 
“Well, it started as that, but as I noted the power that I could have for my own, I wanted the change for myself.
 
I learned about your contract with the government, and I posed as a recruiter, and that’s how I captured those you broke out a few hours ago.
 
I figured if I could change, and strengthen the power you already have, then I could have more power and money than I could have ever dreamed about.
 
But when her research stalled, everything I wanted, everything that I deserved, was destroyed by her.
 
She deleted my research, destroyed the samples, and I couldn’t recreate it because the fucking shifter killed the scientists who worked on the formula.
 
I needed her, but as you can see, she was uncooperative.”
 
He laughed.

They heard the sirens in the distance, but his eyes were on Liv.
 
Another grunt of pain sounded, and Kai knew that Hunter had landed another punch for the demeaning way he spoke about Liv.

“Are there others, besides the vampire and the shifters we released?” Hunter asked.

Dr. Ames moved his head an inch, barely enough to tell what his answer was, and when Hunter bent down and grabbed his uninjured arm, he finally answered the question.

“No.
 
There are no others, I swear.”

“How did you get the vampire to help you?” Xander asked.

“I kidnapped his mate.
 
I told him that he would get her back when he did this job for me, but it didn’t work out as I planned.
 
I had to kill her.
 
She fought me and almost got me caught, so I put a bullet in her head.
 
I told him that he would get her back as soon as he kidnapped Dr. Sabin here.
 
He has no idea.”
 
Ames laughed again.

Kai heard Liv’s shocked breath, and he reached out to catch her as she leaned forward.
 
“Bring him closer to me,” she croaked in his ear.

Xander and Hunter heard Liv, and while keeping him on his knees, his feet and wrists tied together, they brought him to kneel in front of Liv.
 
They watched as Liv struggled to pull something out of her pocket with broken fingers, but she waved him off when he tried to help her.
 
When she slid it out of her pocket, his eyes landed on a tiny syringe filled with less than a millimeter of milky liquid.

“Please move away from him and whatever happens, don’t touch him,” she demanded.

Making sure Ames was secured and wouldn’t be able to move, the assassins took a few steps back.
 
Kai stood behind Liv, making sure that he would be there if anything were to happen.

Ames laughed.
 
“What are you going to do, kill me?”

Liv leaned forward.
 
“I don’t really know what will happen because it’s your drug, but whatever it does, I hope it’s painful.
 
You shouldn’t have killed his mate.”

With more strength than he thought she possessed, Liv leaned forward and stuck Ames with the needle, and while she looked him in the eye, she plunged the liquid into him.

Kai stood there stunned at what had transpired, but at that moment, Ames fell backward and twitched on the ground.
 
His mouth was open but no sound escaped.
 
In the next instant, the skin around his neck, where the injection had been given, disintegrated before their eyes.
 
Kai expected it to stop or slow, leaving some trace of his body, but the drug dissolved every inch of the man who had tried to destroy his love, who killed the vampire’s mate, who had killed the lion-shifter, and became hell-bent on destroying their kind or becoming one of them, until there was nothing.

“What the fuck?” Ax stuttered.

At that moment, Liv slumped forward as she lost consciousness, and he scooped her up into his arms.
 
The medics, who worked for the assassins, burst inside and immediately set to work stabilizing Liv.
 
Kai refused to let go of her hand, so the two worked around him.
 
The others had forgotten about the doctor and circled around Liv, watching with horror as the paramedics worked on her.
 
For the first time, they noticed all the injuries she sustained.
 
One of the paramedics made a sound in his throat, and when Kai looked at him, he had a grimace on his face as he searched for a pulse.
 
Kai could feel her heart beating, but it was weak.

“We need to get her stabilized, and she needs blood.”

Ghost nodded to them, and the two medics and Kai lifted her and transported her to the ambulance.
 
They drove to a heliport, loaded her on the helicopter, and soon they were in the air.

Kai was told that they were going to the Dark Company facility in Denver, where some of the best doctors were ready to save her life.
 
He tried to be appreciative, but fear crowded out common sense, and he kept silent as he watched Liv.
 
Kai listened to her weak heartbeat and threaded their fingers together, willing his strength and love into her broken and weakened body.
 
He glanced up at the medics as he heard one of them clear their throat, and he noticed that they stared at him, frowns on their faces.
 
The next moment, he realized why.
 
They were human.