3. ~Asher~

3

~Asher~

Present Day

“Asher!”

The ferocious roar blasted through my subconscious.

I jolted awake, sucking in a harsh breath.

Blood.

It was the first thing I smelled.

The first thing I tasted.

Then something else… smoke?

Not the comforting kind of tobacco smoke either.

And… was that gas?

Shit. I started at those thoughts and forced my eyes open against the will of my body to slip back into unconsciousness.

To fucking well heal.

To take a beat.

That wasn’t the way it worked in my world, being who I was, who I needed to be.

There was no reprieve.

No rest.

I opened my eyes all too slowly, my head swimming, making my vision blurry as fuck.

It took me a moment to take in the airbag I was currently smashed up against.

I hadn’t hit my head on the steering wheel then.

It had been the airbag.

That smoke… it was coming from the car and the deployment of the airbags.

It wasn’t just smoke either… the car was on fire, flames licking the hood, growing in intensity so much so that it had me wincing.

“Asher!”

It wasn’t the roar from earlier.

It was a scream this time.

Adrenaline thrummed through me as I managed to put names to the voices.

Jonah and Aurora.

“Fuck,” I grunted, wiping blood out of my face with the sleeve of my jacket.

I pushed back from the airbag and turned to my right.

Aurora wasn’t there.

I shot a look in the rearview mirror.

Jonah wasn’t in the car either.

What… what was happening?

How long had I even been out?

I remembered crashing into the guardrail of the bridge. They’d both been in the car then. I’d heard Jonah’s grunt, Aurora’s scream.

I strained harder to get a handle on things, to comprehend my surroundings.

The pouring rain and the darkness of the night really wasn’t helping.

Thuds and grunts, cries of pain… they all hit me like sensory overload.

I disengaged my seatbelt, then turned around, left, right, to the rear.

And that was when I saw them.

The white masks.

At least a dozen of them.

Then Jonah. Aurora.

They were battling them.

The two of them were trying to get to me, but being held back by the battle that was being forced on them.

They must’ve gotten out of the car when they’d descended.

And they’d probably been trying to wake me up ever since, trying to get back to me.

I watched Jonah throw his arms out either side, then launch himself at two masks, slamming them onto the hood of one of their vans. He fisted his hand in one opponent’s hair, then used it as leverage to smash his head into the hard metal over and over until his skull was brutalized beyond saving. He released him and the guy slid down the hood, his corpse hitting the grass and a muddy grave. A glint of a blade caught my eye before Jonah brought it down with a snarl and stabbed his remaining opponent in the chest. Over and over until blood was spurting, dousing him and the blade.

He stepped back and licked the knife clean.

But as he spun around, three others were there jumping on him.

Shit.

As I fought to open my door, the thing mangled from the crash, I caught sight of Aurora making a beeline for me.

A wall of masks blocked her way.

She fired, her bullet driving into the thigh of one of them and making him scream, his knee buckle and hit the ground. The others launched themselves at her and she became a whirlwind of intense, violent motion then. Even as her gun was ripped from her hold, it didn’t even still her. She drew her Taser and shoved it into the throat of the first guy who reached her. Just like Jonah had promised proudly, it dropped him instantly, his body a writhing mass on the ground in a second. She spun into a spinning kick as another came at her. It blew him back. She’d barely landed stably, when a push kick came into play next, knocking another away from her. As two more moved to grab her shoulders in an attempt to subdue her, she ducked against one of them, then spun and came up, using the momentum to full effect as she delivered a brutal right cross to the underside of the other opponent’s jaw. As it destabilized him, she grabbed hold of his shoulder, wrenched him down, then thrust her knee into his face.

Movement flitting across my vision pulled me from the battle a second later.

A crash sounded to my left, and the driver’s window was decimated in the next beat, making me wince as glass exploded and rained down over me, biting into the exposed skin of my face and neck.

Before I could react, two sets of hands reached in and grabbed me, then hauled me out roughly.

I hit the floor before I knew it, and then I was being dragged across the grass and then the rough ground toward one of their vans.

“What… do you want?”

“You locked in a cage.”

They were taking me.

Well, so they thought.

As they focused on just getting me to where they needed me, to that van, I gritted my teeth, fighting the disorientation. I focused on all the years of training, calling on the adrenaline and pushing down all the rest.

“Hurry up, faster!” I heard one of them saying. “They’re putting up more of a fight than we’d expected. We’re losing too many.”

“Somebody’s fucked with our intel,” another said. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

“The boss wanted both, but we can only manage one for now. Next opportunity, we get the girl too.”

They hauled me up against one of their vans, thinking from the glazed look in my eyes, my near dead weight, that I was suitably incapacitated.

Working with assumptions… that was never a good idea.

Especially not when it came to me.

I was a different breed.

I didn’t react to pain like most others.

Not anymore.

You might say I thrived on it.

And when a spot of violence was thrown into the mix, let’s just say that all bets were off.

As one of them stepped back from me and moved to open the passenger door, I ran with it, drawing my knife from my ankle holster, spinning it in my hand, then driving it straight into the other guy’s carotid artery. His eyes shot wide. He moved to scream, but couldn’t. I’d taken that ability away. Along with his life. I shoved him away and he collapsed in a gurgling heap.

As his partner moved to react, I shoved on the open door, trapping his arm inside. He roared as I spun, gaining some momentum, then slammed my boot into the door, a satisfying crack sounding, indicating I’d broken it. I wrenched him free of the door by his mask, then smashed his face into the window. One. Twice. Three times. It shattered and I released him roughly, his limp body sliding down the door and leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

With them dealt with, I spun around, blinking back the powerful wave of dizziness that gripped me. Adrenaline was helping me out in a big way.

And something else too.

These fuckers had made the mistake of awakening my bloodlust.

The thirst to spill more, to exact more punishment and violence, coursed through me like the ultimate powerful drug, putting me in that altered state where nothing could touch me, where nothing could fucking well stop me.

Where pain became power.

Where I relished the hurt.

Where it pushed me onward and fed the darkest parts of me at the same time.

It was beyond euphoric.

“Fuck, yeah,” Jonah whooped as I passed him on by on my way to Aurora who was now being swarmed by more masks, becoming their target to drag away now that they’d just failed with me. His eyes widened when he saw his blade he kept holstered at the back of his belt in my possession. He called it magic. Really it was just sleight of hand. I’d lifted it while he’d been distracted gawking at me. “There’s my boy,” he said, before he smashed the head of one of his opponents into the trunk of their van, then looked out at me again.

He kept his eyes locked on me as he licked his bloodied lips and ran his fingers over his dripping knife in one hell of an erotic display that had my cock reacting. As if it wasn’t already having a field day as it was.

“You got this?” I asked him as five more masks headed for him.

His eyes lit up like it was fucking Christmas morning as he took them in hightailing it over to him. “No holds barred?”

“Save me one.” I wanted answers. I needed to know who these Heretics were, why they were gunning for us and so intent on bringing me and Aurora in.

He gave me a chin lift, and then he was bellowing out a battle cry and charging them.

I turned my attention to Aurora. She was over by our car now. I winced as she was shoved into the trunk, then bounced off from the brutal impact, and landed on her hands and knees in the mud.

Four masks closed in around her.

“You’re making this much harder on yourself than it needs to be,” one of them told her.

She snarled up at them, so fucking beautiful with the fierce, animalistic look on her face, blood all over her face and soaked, matted hair, caked in it and a shitload of dirt. She looked like a wild thing. My little beast in all her glory.

She’d lost her gun somewhere along the way, but that didn’t faze her, even as they closed in around her.

As one of them reached for her, she sprung from her hands and knees position and launched herself at them, wrapping her legs around their waist, and squeezing with her thighs, holding them glued to her as she slammed her elbows into the back of their neck, their back, over and over, until they lurched forward and tried to pull her off, slamming her down onto the trunk.

Right where she wanted them.

She used the momentum to rear back with her hold around their waist, and hauled them over her head. They hit the roof of the car with a jarring thud. She somersaulted back to her feet just in time to deliver a brutal roundhouse to another incoming assailant.

The bastard was a little faster than the other one and managed to catch her next kick before it connected, grasping her ankle. He tugged, ripping it out from under her and she cried out as she landed on the trunk, choking.

The three of them moved in, the guy on the roof easing off and staggering around to join them.

I was there as one of them went to grab her. I wrenched him off her and hauled him into his companions.

She was off the trunk in the next second and by my side, her arm brushing up against mine and sending a wave of awareness through me.

The scent of gas hit me. “Get away from the car,” I warned her, dragging her off to the side.

One of them, in their haste and determination not to lose us, jumped up onto the car. It rocked under his weight, and it was the final push. An explosion tore from it, blowing him off it. He screamed as he sailed several feet away and landed in the mud, rolling frantically as flames licked his body.

His comrades cursed, one of them moving to help him, the other two coming at us.

Aurora blasted one of them back with a spin kick.

I snagged the other one and tossed him into the car, right into the flames over by the hood.

He screamed as they seared his skin, melting through his clothes.

As he fought to pull free, I roundhoused him. He slammed into the guardrail of the bridge, lost his balance, then toppled down into the ravine below, screaming the whole way down.

I spun Jonah’s knife in my hand as I turned to deal with the guy who’d just finished putting out the flames on the burned bastard sprawled out in the mud.

I didn’t get to act as Aurora noted one guy breaking from Jonah and coming at us. She bolted forward to handle it, but she got too close to the car.

It exploded again, another burst of fire and metal.

The force of the blast blew her back.

She skidded, trying to maintain her footing, but the slick ground failed to provide the necessary fiction and she slipped, heading right for the ravine.

“Aurora!”

I ran toward the edge, skidding in the process, only just managing to maintain my footing.

Relief like I’d never felt before rolled through me when I saw her hand holding onto a piece of the mangled guardrail. She looked up at me, her eyes wide as she struggled and failed to throw her other hand up, while her body dangled over the edge.

“Hold on, sweetheart!” I called down to her.

“Not much choice,” she rasped.

I got right up to the edge and switched Jonah’s blade to my left hand, then drove it into the ground until it was buried in there deep.

I held onto the handle, then reached out over the ravine with my right hand, inching toward Aurora.

The guardrail she was clutching creaked and jolted.

It was giving way.

In my peripheral vision, I felt the masks coming at us.

I couldn’t pay it any mind, though.

I’d take the hit.

Pulling Aurora up was all that mattered.

She flailed her right arm, trying to swing so she could grab my outstretched hand without letting go of the guardrail with her left.

“I can’t… I can’t make it,” she cried.

I moved closer, feeling the blade shifting a little, straining to hold there in the ground compromised by all the fucking rain.

Shit.

I managed to grab hold of her wrist.

A second later, the part of the guardrail she’d been holding onto gave way.

All her weight yanked on my arm as the stability went away and the only thing holding her at bay was me. I roared out into the night as a blinding pain tore through my shoulder.

She screamed and flailed.

“Keep… still,” I gritted out against the pain. “I know it’s hard.”

“Asher,” she cried.

My shoulder was dislocated. I knew it. I’d felt it before, more than once. That meant pulling her up was going to be… challenging.

I looked back, just able to make out Jonah.

He was freaking out, seeing what was happening, but he was bogged down by masks, fighting frantically to get to us.

I looked away and told Aurora, “Just keep your eyes on me.”

I’d never seen her truly scared before.

Not even when I’d beaten her down in that ring.

But here she was, vulnerable, afraid.

And she hated it.

She was struggling to hold my gaze, to keep her eyes on me.

She didn’t want me to see.

“If I was dangling over a cliff, I’d be scared too,” I told her.

“Even you would?”

I smiled. “Even me.”

She beamed up at me.

I gritted my teeth against the blinding pain, trying to embrace it like I always did, instead of fighting it and allowing it to be a weakness.

It wasn’t enough this time.

But she was.

Knowing she was depending on me.

Knowing I couldn’t let her go for anything.

Knowing that I couldn’t stop.

I pulled her up, bit by bit, my shoulder screaming, my bicep straining, my arm shaking with every inch I forced on.

“Motherfucker!” I roared as I drew on every ounce of my strength to keep going, pulling her higher and higher.

I was snarling and sweating.

My senses were screaming at me about an impending attack coming at my back.

I pushed it all down and focused only on pulling her up toward me.

She threw her other arm out when she was finally high enough, and she managed to get a lock around my neck.

Grunting, she helped to push herself higher, getting a grasp on the back of my jacket.

“I’m there,” she rasped. “Let go. It’s okay.”

I released her wrist and she tumbled over my back and onto the ground, panting.

Jonah’s knife slipped before I could pull myself back safely.

I couldn’t use my right arm anymore.

It was fucking well done until I fixed my shoulder back into place.

A shriek sounded.

A mask sailed over my head and down into the ravine.

And then strong hands were wrenching me back.

I was dragged beside Aurora and I turned to see Jonah standing over us, wiping sweat off his brow, a haunted expression on his face that it had come so close.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed. “You all right?”

I took a moment, then pushed to my feet, staggering over to a nearby tree.

“I will be.”

As he gave a hand-up to Aurora, I angled myself, using the tree to full effect to wrench my shoulder back into place. “Argh!” I cried out, the sound echoing over the now eerily still battlefield.

When I’d managed to collect myself, I looked out to find Aurora gazing at me with fuck-me eyes.

Her gaze dropped to my cock and she bit her lip, her cheeks heating, before she asked, “How the hell are you hard after that?”

“How the hell are you turned on?”

Jonah chuckled. “Pain whores.”

“The way you… with the shoulder… it was… it was fucking hot, all right?”

“Fucking hot, was it?” I teased.

She grinned at me for a moment, then her expression sobered. “Thank you,” she told me, earnestly.

“You’re welcome.”

Jonah wrapped his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “Like he said, we’re in this together.”

I walked back to them. “Speaking of that, we need to get word to Killian.”

As I went to pull my phone out from its secure place inside my jacket pocket, movement through the trees either side of the bridge caught my eye.

Jonah was right behind me, easing from Aurora and spinning his blade that he’d retrieved a moment ago. “Seriously? These masks are like goddamn cockroaches.”

We watched as another ten of them poured out onto the road, then stalked our way.

I started forward, only for my good arm to be grabbed by Aurora. I turned to her in question.

“You just dislocated your shoulder. You can’t take another round right now.”

“It’s fixed back into place.”

“It needs time to heal, though.”

“You wanna retreat?” Jonah asked me. “We could make it out through those trees if we split right now. Make it to the main road, call Security to come pick us up?”

Retreat? The very notion of it was blasphemous to me.

Weakness.

“I kept one of them alive, like you ordered,” Jonah went on, gesturing twenty feet away at one of the masks slumped against the rear tire of a van. “I’ll carry him, you two lay down fire to cover our retreat.”

Before I could respond, a sharp whizzing sound had me jolting.

One of the masks slapped a hand to their throat. It came away doused in blood. They were slumping to their knees in the next moment, gurgling as they choked on their own blood.

Another was hit straight through the skull—instant kill.

Another through the temple.

It went on and on in rapid-fire succession until all of them were dead, either drowned in a pool of their own blood, or a hole blown through their skull.

“What the shit?” Jonah exclaimed, spinning around.

Aurora did the same.

I studied the fallen, determining the trajectory of those shots.

To the east.

High up.

I twisted around, staring in the determined direction.

A blur of movement caught my eye, high up in one of the trees.

But as I blinked to get a closer look, it was gone.

The screeching of tires burning rubber drew our attention back down the road, the way we’d come.

A black Audi came into view, hurtling down the road, kicking up mud all over the place, before it came to a halt a few feet behind the blown-to-shit car at the bridge.

Killian stepped out a moment later.

Alone.

He swung his head toward us, and then he was running over, all frantic.

“Where is Olivia?” I demanded.

He stopped when he reached us and shook his head in dismay. “She got a text and took off like a bat out of hell.”

“What?”

“She cuffed me to the fucking stairs. I’m ace with picking those things, but even the few minutes it took me to free myself were enough for a woman of her skillset to completely disappear. She left the Audi for me, so she must’ve disappeared into the forest surrounding the safehouse on foot.”

“Fine,” I muttered. “We’ll deal with that later.”

He took in everything. “Yeah, this current hell on earth seems to be priority right about now. Are you guys all right?” he asked, embracing us, then giving Aurora a kiss, and breathing her in, looking her over for any sign of serious injury, bringing a whole panicked element.

As Jonah and Aurora filled him in, I took in the carnage all around us.

The dropped bodies.

The burned out car.

It was a fucking mess and a half.

Fortunately, it had happened in the middle of nowhere so we had some time to conceal it.

Some time, still not a whole lot.

I pulled my phone out, wincing at the pain in my shoulder when I forgot to take it easy with my sudden movements.

I’d only just unlocked it to call Security for a cleanup when it buzzed with a text notification.

Blocked ID: Leave. Sanitization will be taken care of. Get clear. God speed.

I started, adrenaline sparking.

I looked out in the direction I’d thought I’d caught sight of somebody.

Nothing.

I scanned the area in the immediate vicinity, but all I could see was shadow.

God speed.

I knew that phrase.

I’d heard it spoken before.

It was distinctive to him.

To Revenant.

He was here. He’d done this.

It screamed of his handiwork. The smooth, efficient kill shots. Acting from the shadows. The ability to perform such a major cleanup on next-to no notice. The timing with Olivia.

All of it.

It was him.

He was here.

He still was.

Another text came in before I could tell the old bastard to show himself and end this charade.

Blocked ID: Take the Audi back to Hexwood House. Your extraction is covered so long as you leave now. Don’t take that mask with you. The Heretics aren’t your business.

Asher: The hell they aren’t.

Blocked ID: You want the Infidels, leave the rest, or I’ll render the intel you acquired tonight useless.

Asher: Don’t force my hand.

A shot rang out, drawing all our attention.

I watched as a bullet ripped through the skull of the mask Jonah had kept alive.

Son of a bitch.

“What the fuck?” Jonah exclaimed. “Who the hell?”

Blocked ID: Like I said.

Asher: You owe me.

Blocked ID: Payment is coming.

“Ash?” Killian called, rushing up to me, probably wondering why the hell I wasn’t reacting and already steps ahead. “We’ve gotta get out of here. Sniper in the trees!”

I took one last look scanning the area.

Fine.

I gritted my teeth.

“Yeah. Head to the Audi.”

As the three of them darted over there, I followed, feeling eyes on me.

“You think it’s Olivia?” Killian asked me, looking all around too like a paranoid stoner.

“It’s gotta be somebody on our side, right?” Jonah said, getting right up close and trying to shield me from potential fire in typical Jonah fashion. I batted him away in my typical fashion. “They shot everyone to shit but us,” he mused aloud.

“Yeah, it’s gotta be her. The timing was right on too,” Killian said.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Unless it’s somebody else and they’re planning to take us too, and that was just them clearing the way,” Aurora pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter,” I grunted.

“Doesn’t matter?” Killian asked, suspiciously.

“Because they’re not making another move?” Aurora asked.

I nodded. Sure. “So, we head out, recoup.”

“Seconded,” Aurora said. She grasped Killian’s hand and it jolted him from his suspicion, as he turned his focus to her in that whipped way of his.

Jonah caught my eye.

He suspected there was more to it as well, that was obvious.

But being my true loyal soldier that he was, he didn’t call me on it, or draw attention to it.

He merely nodded, trusting in me as he always did, then opened the front passenger door and slipped inside.

As Killian and Aurora settled in the backseats, I opened the driver’s door.

“We got what we came for,” Aurora said, as I slipped into the driver’s seat and shut the door. “That’s what matters, what we need to focus on. The mission was a success.”

I nodded and sank against the seat, taking a beat for a moment.

Then I blew out a breath and started the car. “Time to head home.”