Page 32 of Dark Rebel's Fortune

Kyra followed, her heart heavy with the weight of everything this family had lost and everything they still had to face.

But they were alive, they were together, and they would overcome.

14

MAX

"Stay alive," Kyra said in Max's earpieces. "And leave some scum for me to finish. I'll be back as soon as my family is safe in the vans."

Max calculated the odds of finishing the job before Kyra managed to come back. It was a twenty-minute trek at a human walking pace to where they'd left the vans, then a few minutes to settle her family, and an additional few minutes for Kyra to run back. It wasn't enough time to clean up the compound before her return.

"Stay with them," he said. "We can handle this."

"Not a chance. You can't take the entire compound down with five people. Dima and Anton will keep my family safe."

"Stay in the van, Kyra," Yamanu's voice sounded on the comm. "That's an order."

There was a long moment of silence and then a terse, "Yes, sir."

Max had a feeling that Kyra wasn't going to obey Yamanu's order. She wasn't a Guardian, and although she'd agreed to Yamanu leading the extraction, she was not duty-bound to do that, and she was a rebel.

Max let out a breath.

It was time to finish the job and ensure not only their safe escape, but also the rescue of Kyra's other sisters. That meant killing everyone in this installation and, most importantly, all the Doomers.

It seemed ludicrous to attempt that with the limited resources at their disposal, but with Yamanu's thralling and the incredible power of Jade's female crew, it might be possible. He wished Dima and Anton could fight as well, but it was more important for them to safeguard Kyra and her family.

Backtracking, Max placed explosives at key structural points throughout the building, not enough to bring it down but sufficient to create a distraction. After all, there might be more prisoners behind the closed doors who didn't deserve to die tonight.

A Doomer appeared at the end of the corridor, his inhuman speed marking him an immortal. He wasn't pointing a gun, but his fangs were fully elongated, and the half-crazed, determined look in his eyes was one that Max had seen in countless others over the centuries. The fanatical devotion of these brainwashed monsters and their religious fervor for their twisted ideology made them dangerous beyond their immortal physical capabilities.

Capture was not an option for Doomers. They fought to the death.

Max was happy to oblige, and as the thirst for Doomer blood clouded his senses, he charged instead of first aiming at the Doomer's head, which was one of the few ways of killing an immortal. The problem was that it was a nearly impossible shot to make at a moving target, and hitting him anywhere else on the body would only slow the Doomer down but not kill him.

The immortal's body would fix the damage in minutes, and he would be back to hunt them and Kyra's family. Besides, if he managed to subdue the Doomer, he could get him to reveal how many other members of the Brotherhood were in the compound and what their plans were for Kyra's other sisters.

As Max collided with the Doomer, the force of that collision would have shattered human bones. They grappled, a brutal dance of strength against strength. The Doomer's fully extended fangs sought vulnerable flesh, but so did Max's, and long decades of superior combat training gave him an edge over the enemy.

With a move that combined leverage and raw power, Max forced the Doomer against the wall, pinning him with one arm while placing his free hand over the immortal's heart.

"How many of you bastards are in this compound?" he commanded an answer.

The Doomer struggled and kept his mouth shut, his eyes blazing with hatred rather than fear.

Max punched through his chest and wrapped his hand around the Doomer's heart. A normal human would already be dead from such an assault, but immortals were much harder to kill.

"How many?" he repeated his question.

Instead of answering, the Doomer spat in his face in defiance.

"Wrong answer." Max closed his hand around the beating heart and ripped it out.

The body crumpled to the ground.

He wiped his bloody hand on the Doomer's shirt and moved to his next position.

Max pressed the trigger on the detonator, and a heartbeat later, the night split open with a thunderous boom. The ground shook beneath his feet as a section of the building's outer wall collapsed in a cloud of dust and debris.

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