Page 93 of Dagger

She twisted violently. “Don’t touch me!” She used her balled up fists to strike him a hard blow across his face.

Herrera laughed, the sound sharp and echoing in the confined space. “I want him to watch. Let’s see if he’ll still be quiet while you scream.”

Quinn was trembling now, not from fear, but rage. Her eyes met Dagger’s across the space, defiant, furious, unbroken.

The man assaulting Quinn didn’t hesitate. He yanked her upright, cutting her bonds with a flick of his blade, then spun her and slammed her against the wall. Her shoulder hit hard. She twisted, tried to fight, but he gripped both wrists in one hand and locked them together behind her back with his big hand.

“Let go of me, you bastard!” she snarled, thrashing.

Dagger surged against his restraints, fury lashing through him like an electric current. Flash’s jaw clenched, rage flickering like a storm behind his eyes.

That bastard leaned in close, Quinn recoiling. He groped for the clasp at her pants. Dagger’s world narrowed, his lungs crushed under the weight of rage and helplessness.

Flash surged forward instinctively, held back only by the bite of his restraints and the sheer need for timing.

Quinn struggled, one arm freed as she lashed out, raking her nails across the man’s face, drawing blood.

He snarled and backhanded her brutally, sending her head snapping to the side.

“No!” Dagger roared, lurching forward in pure instinct.

Quinn’s knees buckled. The man laughed, reaching again for her pants.

Then… the pressure shifted.

A sound, barely audible.

A breath with no body.

A breeze with no source.

The kind of stillness that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. A hush thathunted,like something sacred and terrible had just stepped through the veil.

Then the junglescreamed.

Howler monkeys shrieked in frenzied terror, birds launched from the canopy in a chaotic flutter, wings beating like war drums. The ground seemed to shudder, alive with the thrum of things older than man. Insects hissed, branches trembled,and unseen creatures bolted into the underbrush like the underworld itself had opened.

That’s when the wall blew apart?—

A detonation of violence, smoke, and screaming stone, like the world itself had gasped and shattered to make way for the thing that wore her skin.

She was here. Lechuza. Not a ghost. Not a woman. Something between bone and blood and nightmare. The jungle’s own daughter, born of feathers and fury, carved from dark myth and whispers around the fire. She didn’t step into the scene. She claimed it.

Her presence sank teeth into the air, made the light shiver, turned oxygen into omen. Every leaf bowed. Every shadow recoiled. She didn’t make a sound. Shewasthe sound.

Boom. The explosion ripped through the hacienda like a cannon blast, fire and steel erupting in a rain of debris. Smoke roared in, thick and blinding. Shadowguard breached, silent, surgical, and merciless, black-clad ghosts with silent eyes and unforgiving aim.

Lechuza led the charge, slipping through smoke like a predator on the hunt, silent wings, golden eyes, blades flashing like talons. A living, lethal weapon. In her wake, a golden owl flew. Not in body, but in shadow, vast, soundless, and utterly unnatural. It swept across the room, passing over heads like a silent judgment. When it passed over Dagger, terror struck him like a blade to the heart.Not fear. Not panic. Something older.Primal.The kind of dread that didn’t belong to the battlefield. He had never felt it. Not in combat.Not ever.The shadow moved on, narrowing, tightening, until it fell directly across Herrera. The man, monster that he was, collapsed into horror, his face stripped of its mask, all pretense gone. A man who knew his death wasn’t coming. It wasalready here.

The jungle itself seemed to hush.

Even the fire held its breath.

Dagger exhaled, ragged, shaken. “What the hell was that?”

Flash didn’t flinch. Didn’t even glance at him. Just watched her, calm and still as a man who’d already accepted the truth. “Her shadow,” he said quietly. “She’sfoundher prey.”

A soft smile on her mouth, she said, looking directly at a cowering Herrera, “I warned you. The jungle doesn’t forgive.” Her eyes narrowed, gleaming like gold struck by lightning. “Shall we dance, brothers?”

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