13. ~Aurora~

13

~Aurora~

At least this time it wasn’t raining like a bitch of a thing.

The night was still.

Eerily so.

Or, maybe the eerie part was just something I was seeing it as with what lay ahead, and what awaited me and Asher inside the active dollhouse of Site T.

It was another middle-of-nowhere location, just like my father’s intel had cited. Four days ago, we’d spent that entire day strategizing down to every little detail, Asher refusing to leave anything to chance.

While he was extremely accomplished at burying emotion—nervousness in this case—the fact that he’d pushed it and been so determined to account for every little thing was an insight into just how concerned he was about what we were embarking on tonight.

He knew the stakes and he definitely wasn’t taking that lightly.

Beyond the black tactical gear that blended seamlessly into our immediate environment and the dark of night, we were donning balaclavas, and Asher had even gone the extra step of wearing brown contacts to hide his unique silver eyes. Unique, except when it came to his father who shared the same, something that risked giving Asher away, and his involvement in tearing down his own father’s empire.

As I finished up sending the necessary commands on my tablet, and stowed it away inside my backpack, I tapped my earpiece and communicated to Asher, “Security cameras are on a loop. And I have eyes on.”

“Hostiles and hostages locations?”

“Four guards on the main floor—two in the living room, one in the entranceway, one in the kitchen. Two more guards outside each of the two bedrooms. One of the guys we identified as a trainer is inside Bedroom 1 with eight hostages. The other trainer is in the kitchen with another hostage. Ten more hostages in Bedroom 2.”

“Roger that,” he responded. “Move into position.”

I gave my confirmation and approached the two-story brick house, breaking my cover of the trees surrounding the property line.

I pulled the explosive devices out from the pockets of my tactical vest as I went.

I caught sight of Asher doing the same, approaching from the north west side, while I was taking the south east.

As soon as I reached the building, I planted the devices, securing them to the wall, which Jonah’s alterations to the tech had made possible without having to drill through brick, which would’ve surely drawn attention to us and given us away before we’d even begun.

I set the charges as we’d discussed, connecting them to the frequency of the remote detonator that Asher had on his person.

“Explosives set,” I reported, moving to the rear porch by the kitchen door.

Before I could make it all the way there, a skirmish over by Asher pulled me up short, and l looked to see him lunging forward just as the guard who’d been inside the entryway came out with a smoke in hand. He’d already fired it up before he’d stepped outside and Asher snatched it from him, then drove the lit thing into the guy’s mouth. He clamped his hand over his mouth as he struggled, muffling his squeals of pain and panic. A glint of metal caught my eye a moment before Asher sliced a tactical knife across the guy’s throat, ripping his flesh open. Blood sprayed as he drove deep, severing his carotid artery. He couldn’t even scream with Asher’s iron grip around his mouth with his free hand, holding him at his mercy as the life drained out of him and he choked to death on the cigarette and his own blood.

Asher released him as the guy’s body started to collapse in death, and then he hauled him away from the front door.

As he spun his blade in his hand and then holstered it, drawing his gun and cocking it instead, he swung his head and caught my eye.

His eyes were black.

He was in that dangerous headspace.

As we connected through the dark, I saw it subside a little, and he gave me a chin lift, before my earpiece buzzed and he communicated, “Don’t veer off mission. I’m going to create a distraction. Screams will be your signal to move in via the kitchen. Take out the hostiles, secure the hostage, then head to Bedroom 2.”

“I’m on mission,” I assured him.

That was all he needed to hear, and I watched him disappear into the house the way that hostile had come.

As I hovered outside the kitchen, I peered around through the small window, checking out the situation within.

My stomach lurched at what I saw.

When I’d tapped into the feeds earlier and taken in the kitchen, the hostage within had been sitting on a chair in the corner of the kitchen while the guard and the trainer had been up at the kitchen table deep in conversation.

Now, however, the hostage had been stripped of the oversized, worn and stained shirt she’d been wearing and she was naked on all fours in front of one of the chairs. The trainer had his leather pants down at his ankles as he sat on the chair, tugging on a leash that was connected to a spider gag, and he was forcing his cock down the hostage’s throat, choking her with it.

The guard stood behind her laughing as he twisted the barrel of a 9mm in her ass.

I shuddered as her muffled and choked whimpers cut at me.

As she tried to twist away from the gun, the trainer lodged his cock down her throat right to his balls and held it there, her throat convulsing wildly, tears streaming down her face.

“Keep your ass open to him, pain slut,” the trainer hissed. “It’s a hole to be used as we see fit. It doesn’t belong to you anymore. Move again and you’ll be punished with that wine glass again. All the way in this time too.”

He pulled his cock out and she spluttered and retched, fighting hard not to vomit all over.

Grabbing her throat, he squeezed and spat on her cheek, then snarled, “You have a long way to go until you’re ready to make a suitable doll. We need to step up your training regimen, you’re falling behind the rest.” He grinned nastily at the guard. “Fuck it, get the glass.”

The guard’s eyes lit up and he roughly pulled the gun from her ass, making her squeal, her legs and arms shake and struggle to hold her position on all fours.

I watched, my stomach roiling, as the guard grabbed a wine glass from one of the cabinets.

And then Asher’s signal sounded.

Thank goodness.

I’d never been so happy to hear pained wailing and screaming.

Shots fired, roars followed, more screams.

He had their attention.

I didn’t waste another second, smashing my boot into the kitchen door and almost ripping it off its hinges in the process, as I barreled inside.

I tossed a throwing knife at the guard. It tore into his hand, driving all the way through and pinning it to the worktop.

As he screamed and was distracted by that, I spun on the sadistic trainer, ripping him away from the girl with a brutal roundhouse kick that sent him sprawling across the other side of the room into a heap in the corner.

“Motherfucker!” the guard cried as he fought to wrench out the blade.

As the trainer made it back to his feet, he threw his fist.

I deflected it, sweeping my arm down, then following through with my own blow that smashed into the side of his face like a bitch of a thing and had him wavering on his feet.

Enraged at the insult of it, and no doubt the interruption I’d posed to his sick game with that poor girl, he roared and lunged at me.

There was no precision to it, just rage.

And, unfortunately, also power.

He had a good hundred pounds on me, the asshole built and towering all at once.

Well, the bigger they are, and all that.

Size wasn’t the be all and end all.

Especially what they didn’t know how to use it.

This fucker definitely didn’t.

It took barely anything for me to use it against him.

The moment he hit, I used his own power and momentum to haul him over my shoulder and into the cabinet right beside the guard.

I was there in the next second, fisting my hand in the back of his hair and slamming his face into it. One. Twice.

It knocked him out cold.

The guard made a move at me with his free hand and I reacted with an elbow to the face that had him screaming as blood spewed from his obviously broken nose.

I ripped the knife from his hand, his shrieks and screams intensifying and rolling through me in a strangely welcome way.

I heard the girl crying behind me, still on the floor. She hadn’t moved from her position. She was so scared that even with this going on, she hadn’t dared to shift at all. God, it was sickening.

And this shithead here had taken full advantage of it and used it and her pain and forced helplessness for his own satisfaction.

Blackness engulfed me as it all slammed into me.

The demented and depraved nature of it.

The freedom that had been stripped from these people.

The physical damage and then the mental reprogramming they’d been forced into.

And the fact that this was big money to those sick bastards at the seat of power of the Infidels.

It all crashed into those recordings of what Carson Monroe had done to my dad.

It blended together in one disturbing symphony of violence and sadism.

And as the guard used the mental assault I was enduring to smash his fist into my face, and I tasted blood on my lips, I gave into the blackness.

He came at me and I spat blood into his eyes, taking advantage of his shock and momentary disorientation to dodge to the side, pulling another knife at the same time. I ducked another blow from him, then came up and plunged my blade into his tank top, angling it and driving deep until I heard that telltale wheeze, confirming I’d punctured a lung.

I wrenched his shoulders down and drove my elbow into his back, forcing him to his knees.

A boot to the face had him sprawled out on his back, gasping to draw in a full breath that wouldn’t come.

I stalked over to the kitchen table where he’d left his gun earlier to grab that fucking glass.

I snatched the 9mm up, cocked it, then straddled the guy, pinning him with my thighs, then wrenching his head forward by his hair.

I shoved the barrel down his throat.

“Look away,” I called behind me to the girl.

She actually finally shifted, and then she was scrambling into the corner.

“These fuckers won’t lay a hand on you again. I swear it to you,” I told her.

The guard’s eyes were wide, his throat was convulsing around the gun as he fought to breathe. He tried to talk, likely pleas for me to spare his despicable life.

My finger was hot on the trigger.

I was seconds away from pulling it and delivering the world of evil.

And then a hand grasped my arm.

I swung my head to see a very bloodied Asher there, shaking his head at me.

“You didn’t see, you didn’t see what him and that piece of shit over there were doing to her. He deserves this.”

“I don’t doubt it, sweetheart. But you don’t.”

I scoffed. “I can handle it.”

His grip around my arm tightened. “You can’t. You can’t imagine the price for exacting this kind of brutal punishment.”

I turned back to the guard.

“What if your father could see you now? What would he say? What would he think?”

Damn him.

I snarled at the guard, then pushed back to my feet.

Asher took the gun from my hand and gestured at the girl with his free one.

“The living room is clear. Take her out of here.”

He snatched up a t-shirt that was hanging off the back of a kitchen chair, then handed it to me. “Give her some of her dignity back.”

I stared at him for a moment, incredulous that in the midst of all of this, he was showing care for this girl.

And then I snapped into action and helped the girl into the t-shirt, then led her out of the kitchen and into the living room.

I was surprised to find twenty-odd others gathered on the couches, some on the rugs, wrapped up in blankets and oversized t-shirts too.

Asher had cleared the entire house already and brought the hostages down from upstairs?

I mean, I knew he was capable, and he talked a big game, but this was another level.

We were halfway through the living room and I’d just settled the girl with the others when two harsh shots rang out from the kitchen.

Asher emerged a moment later.

The girls reacted, shifting nervously, some whimpering at his presence, others eyeing him warily.

It wasn’t just his bloodied state—other people’s blood drenching him all fucking over.

He held up his hands as he walked to me and wrapped an arm around me very gently, clearly trying to show them that they were safe in his presence.

He tucked me into his side and planted a soft kiss on the top of my head.

It actually worked, at least for the most part.

“It’s over,” he assured them. “You’re free from this living nightmare.”

His watch beeped and a moment later, three women in lab coats strode into the living room, with a half a dozen men following cautiously and at a noticeable distance, some in lab coats, some in casual dress, and one in a suit.

As the women started tending to the girls, the guys in lab coats joining after a few moments, the suited guy approached me and Asher.

Caleb Rowland.

His sandy-blond hair was styled in an Ivy League haircut that complimented his designer suit getup. He was a big guy, but more muscle than bulk, it appeared, and he walked with a definitive swagger.

He and Asher shook as he reached us.

“Impeccable timing, Cal,” Asher told him.

Caleb glanced around at the bloodied scene, splatters on the walls and furniture, a bunch of furniture decimated, bodies dropped, then at Asher himself. “Impeccable cleansing.”

According to Asher, the guy had opened a series of facilities to care for people who’d been stolen away and had suffered just like the hostages in this house.

“This is just the start,” Asher told him.

“Not just a single auction now, the whole network,” he mused to himself. “It’s been a long time coming.”

“Too long.”

“Well, things had to fall in place. When we took down that auction together, we thought we had a window to take the rest as well. Alas, things got in the way. Dangerous obstacles that would’ve ruined you if we hadn’t waited.”

I frowned. Asher had taken down a dollhouse auction? He hadn’t spoken to that.

Caleb looked at me, then eyed Asher quizzically.

“Yes,” Asher confirmed, without Caleb needing to say another word or spell it out.

“Hmm, times are definitely changing then.”

One of the staff members called to him, so he gave Asher’s shoulder a squeeze, and told me, “Nice meeting you,” before then taking off to tend to the situation.

I looked up at Asher.

“What?” he asked at the curious look on my face.

“You took down one of those auctions?”

“Shortly after your father disappeared on me and didn’t make good on his promise, there was a window of opportunity, so I took it.”

“On your own?”

“Jonah and Killian don’t know about it if that’s what you’re asking.” He looked over at Caleb, then told me, “I happened to walk into a church around that time and that’s where I met Rowland. He was on a whole guardian angel vigilante kick at night dealing with abusers, and I brought up the dollhouse situation. He was familiar with the rumors through a member of his congregation. We took one of the auctions together and that was the beginning of his new line of work with his care facilities for victims of this sort of thing.”

“So, he just quit being a missionary?”

“Not exactly.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Let’s just say he had a crisis of faith.”

Before anything more could be said, his watch beeped again.

He left my side for a moment to let Caleb know that it was time to move out, reeling off instructions in his normal commanding way.

I sank against the wall and stared down at my hands, blood staining them as they shook with the adrenaline of the fight.

Hell, it was clearly more than that.

I’d come so close.

So fucking close to succumbing to that blackness again.

And the strange part was that it had been Asher who’d stopped it.

“Good work,”Asher told Jonah as he held his phone between us, Jonah’s voice sounding out into the still night.

Caleb and his team had left fifteen minutes ago with their new patients to care for.

And Asher was checking in with the guys now who’d taken care of Site S, Caleb having sent a secondary team of his staff along with transportation to that site as well.

It had been a very busy night for him.

And it would continue to be for some time.

“How’s Killian?” Asher asked.

“He’s good. Held up well. He kept his shit together like he promised.”

“Very good,” Asher responded.

“Any injuries?” I piped up.

Jonah chuckled down the line. “Aren’t you the cutest, Princess? All worried about us? Nah, we’re both good. Kill took a couple of punches, but they barely fazed him. He’s gonna have a baby bruise, but that’s all. He might milk it around you, though.”

I chuckled. “And you?”

“Mild stab wound to the bicep, but that’s all.”

“Stab wound?” I cried.

“Didn’t even go in deep. Seriously. We’re both good. We’ll be even better once you and Asher get your sexy asses back home for a post-battle fuck fest.”

Asher rolled his eyes and tossed me a wink. “Keep your dick under control until you’re clear of the area and back on home territory.”

“Aww, spoil my fun. I was gonna see if Kill wanted to play a little.”

“Jonah.”

“Aww, come on, Sire, he lapped it up that night by the pool. You saw it for yourself.”

Asher told me, “He’s always ramped up after combat.”

“Hey, I heard that. Yeah, Princess, fucking up some motherfuckers gets me hard and horny. I’m not ashamed of it.”

“All right,” Asher said. “Let us finish up here. Head straight back to home territory.”

“Fine. See you in a couple of hours.”

We said our goodbyes, then Asher stowed his phone away.

He looked me over.

For one of the very few times ever, it wasn’t sexual.

It seemed to be a whole lot of concern.

“I’m fine,” I told him before he could voice it.

“Hmm.”

“What the hell does that mean,” I snapped, before I could stop myself.

“A bullet down the throat is a pretty gruesome way to die.”

“I told you what they were doing to that girl.”

“You did.”

“It was horrific. Disgusting. Fucking sick.”

“Aurora,” he said, reaching out and sliding his hands down to my hips.

I sucked in a breath and confessed, “Those few moments that I had to wait before I made my move were excruciating. Not being able to stop it sooner.”

“I understand.”

I grasped his arm, pulling him tighter to me, needing his warmth, and that natural surety of his.

“Is that what they all go through? Or was that… extreme?”

He tensed.

I looked up at him, the tightening of his jaw.

“It wasn’t extreme at all by dollhouse standards, was it?”

“No, sweetheart. It was tame for them.”

I sank into him for a few moments and he tightened his hold around me, just holding me.

“Do you want to sit the next takedowns out? I can bring in Bryce and—”

“No. I’m useful to you in combat, aren’t I?”

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t, but—”

“I’ll handle it. This was just the first time I’ve seen it up close, the dollhouse side of things. Plus, it triggered what I’d heard of my dad’s torture on those recordings. I’ll be prepared for the emotional and mental side of things next time.” I eased back, urgency bleeding from me as I said, “I want this entire network dismantled.”

“Well, that’s the goal.”

“I know, but even if when we’re halfway through it draws my dad out, I won’t stop. I won’t sit it out, even if he tries to push for it. This is about much more than it was when I first started out on this road. I want this sadistic and depraved thing burning in the fires of hell.”

His eyes flamed and he grasped my jaw. “There’s my little beast.”

He leaned down, clearly intending to kiss me.

But then he pulled back and released me, blinking hard to get a hold of himself, before he told me, “Let’s finish off with this site.”

He pulled the remote detonator out of a secure pocket in his tactical jacket.

And then he set off the explosives.

Thunder rolled, flames erupting and licking higher and higher as the building exploded, glass spraying out several feet, structural elements tearing away as each consecutive explosion added to the damage over and over.

“Burning in the fires of hell indeed,” Asher commented as he wrapped his arm around me.

And then we both just watched it burn.