Omega's Run (28 page)

He was eyeing the wolf-kind behind us warily and I sucked in a deep breath, Remus’ hand descended on my shoulder and I looked up into his foreign face, his eyes though, familiar and warm.

“He’s right, we need to move, you guys coming?”

“No choice now, they know we’ve helped you.” Jordan said and Mason was nodding readily. They fell in, the wolf-kind behind me shifting nervously. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I didn’t fully trust either Mason or Jordan, though I admit I trusted Mason more.

“The underground garage is our best bet,” Jordan was saying, filling us in as we moved through this floor to the stairs leading up two floors and out into the base most level of the seven story, underground, parking structure.

Jordan made the breech and I followed through, calling back, “Clear!” in a harsh whisper-shout.

Remus followed, then Jordan then Mason and the rest. We moved around, heading up the ramp, we’d have to go three floors up before we hit a street level entrance/exit to the garage.

I swept in front of me, following procedure, Jordan flanking my left, and Remus on my right, one floor down, two to go and I rounded the corner. A shot rang out and I ducked down behind a cargo van, I eased over, and returned fire.

We went back and forth; I know I took out at least two, before my automatic weapon clicked empty.

“Shit!”
I hissed, “I’m out.” I unzipped my jacket to go for a magazine in the inner pocket and a shot rang out, much closer. I whirled to a course of growls. I had just enough time to register that Mason was down, Jordan standing over him with the proverbial smoking gun. He turned it on me and I was dead to rights a goner. Remus attacked, Jordan’s arm jerked, the gun went off and I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

Remus tore him apart, and I slapped a hand over my stomach, low and on the left of my body. And when I say tore him apart I mean it quite literally. He grabbed Jordan by both wrists and the muscles in his shoulders bunched powerfully as he pulled in opposite directions, ripping the man’s arms off with a sickening squelching sound that I barely registered, so intent was I on the bleeding hole in my gut. He’d managed to stop Jordan from shooting me through the heart, but I was hit and it was bad. Real bad. I couldn’t focus for a second. Hands were scrabbling at my guns in their holsters strapped to my thighs, it was Markus, he was human again and pulling my guns from their holsters like he knew how to use them.

I was sliding to the ground, and William and Chloe were over me, William pressing his hands over my stomach. I cried out and choked down the scream that was trying to come out.

Oh shit, this was bad. This was really bad.

“Remus!” I called. I wanted to say goodbye. I knew what this meant.

“Ava, hang on Babycakes,” my vision swam in streamers of light and dark.

“Shut the fuck up, Fido,” I coughed, from my prone position I could see it… I raised a hand and pointed. “Key, get the key.” It was a magnetic key safe holder thing on the underside of the frame of the van. “Out, get us out.”

It was the girl from the cage that reacted; she scrambled forward on all fours, and felt under the van and snatched the key holder open. She made a triumphant cry and went to the back of the van we were hiding behind while Markus laid cover fire. She got it open.

“Get us out, get us out; get us out!” I repeated over and over. I looked down my body at my shirt, soaking wet with blood and groaned, “Oh god!”

I panted, the pain unreal, and I made a solid mental note to never make fun of Remus for being a pussy after I’d shot him, again. If there would ever be an again for me… Christ there was a lot of blood.

I was lifted, a pair of arms sliding under my back and my legs, and I howled in agony. I was passed from one set of arms to another, the dim fluorescent lighting of the garage passed into shadowy dark. Doors slammed, an engine turned over and we lurched, and I passed right the fuck out.

Chapter 25

Remus

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
That goddamn, piss ant, little fucknugget! I should’ve killed that waste of semen the second I’d laid eyes on him.

“Turn left,
left
I said, you idiot!”

Motherfucker had killed Mason; Whippy as I’d known him, and had tried to kill Ava. I wasn’t too broken up about Mason but Ava... I looked down at her in my arms. Hardly aware of Chloe sitting next to me as Markus and Craig argued in the front. William was sitting behind us with the unconscious dude from the cage and the girl whose name we still didn’t know.

There was a lot of blood; all of it Ava’s.

I’ve never had a problem with blood. Not like I get woozy at the sight of it or anything; and it’s not like I get turned on by it either. It just was. Blood kept the body operating. Remove too much of it and the body stops working. Like motor-oil in a car engine. But this wound. This gunshot in her gut...

There was a lot of blood.

“Remus!” My head jerked up, away from the blood still seeping slowly through my fingers where I had them pressed over the wound in her stomach. I snarled, baring my teeth.

Markus just gave me a calm stare, cell phone clutched in one hand. “We’re gonna get her some help, Son,” he said, quietly, as Craig fishtailed us around a right turn and then pressed the pedal to the floorboards. “Not so damned fast, Pup!” Markus growled. “I know we’re in a hurry, but it won’t help us if we get pulled over either.”

“We can’t take her to a hospital, they ask questions about gunshot wounds.”

“We’re not taking her to a hospital. We’re going to take her to a Galen.”

“She’ll never make it back to Washington.”

“Not
our
Galen. Now look, Son, calm down. I have an old friend, lives here in Colorado. He started his own pack. They’re not that big, about twenty strong, but
they
have a Galen. I just got off the phone with the Alpha. They’re already waking the Galen up and we’re going to push it as best we can to get there. They’re about twenty minutes out at this rate.”

I nodded but didn’t trust myself to say anything else and just focused on keeping pressure on her wound. Her complexion appeared paler to me, and was her skin really colder to the touch? Or was I just imagining it in my panic?

The next few minutes were a huge blur of motion and voices. Lights outside the van’s windows slid by illuminating Ava’s face in the harsh yellow glow of street lamps for just a moment before plunging the interior back into darkness as we moved through one pool of light and hurtled into the next.

It became a steady rhythm to me.

Light.

Dark.

Light.

Dark.

Light.

In those moments when I could see her fully illuminated I took every second to study her features, etching her face into my memory.
Just in case
, I thought and wanted to slap myself upside the head.

No just in case.
She was going to make it.
She would!

“She’s going to make it,” I growled angrily and Chloe suddenly reached over and placed her hand atop mine on Ava’s belly. I flinched when her fingers touched the back of my hand but I refused to pull away. Doing so would mean letting even more of Ava’s blood spill free of her body.

“She’ll make it, Remus,” Chloe assured me and I finally looked away from Ava to acknowledge my sister-in-law. “She’ll make it. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure she does.”

“What’s your name?” William asked and I craned my neck slightly to see that he was talking to the girl we’d rescued from the facility. She stared at the man, lying with his head on her lap again, but said nothing for several minutes before, quietly, “Macy.”

“How long were you in there, Macy?” William tried, but he got no further information from her no matter how many questions he asked or how he worded them. She simply sat there, staring at her unconscious friend, stroking his hair as if the rest of us didn’t exist.

“Remus, we’re here, Pup,” I turned back to the front to find that Markus had directed Craig to pull into the parking lot in front of a warehouse looking building. Craig drove past a chain link gate that was pulled shut by a man in dark jeans and with a leather vest thrown over his bare chest. A line of motorcycles stood to our left, at least twenty of them, and I started to get a sinking feeling in my gut.

“Seriously?” I asked, staring out the window. Craig stopped the van and threw it into park before he pulled the key from the ignition and climbed out, coming around to pull open the door on my side “Seriously, Markus?” I asked again. “You think a dirty warehouse in the middle of the city is the place to go?”

“More to this place than it seems, Boy. Trust me and let Craig carry your girl inside.”

“She’s not my girl,” I muttered, absently and Markus snorted and reached back, patting my shoulder once. When Craig tried to take Ava from my arms I snarled at him, teeth bared until he backed away. The bleeding had slowed considerably so I slid my arms under her and lifted her carefully.

“Sure, Kid. Whatever you say,” Markus muttered behind me.

We all piled out of the van amidst a whirlwind of motion as people met us at the door, ushering us into the building. I could barely get half a second to gather in my surroundings as I felt a hand at my back, pushing me down a hall from what looked like a comfortably furnished rec room. A pool table, couches, and arcade games dotted the space, but before I could take much more than that in, I was being directed into the back. We walked past a large and well-appointed kitchen where half a dozen people moved and worked, spinning around each other as they made their way from one station to another, cooking up a veritable feast.

Then we were in a medical suite and I was being told to put Ava down.

“What tha fuck is this, Markus?” A voice growled. A high, nasally voice with a hint of an Irish accent. I could already tell I wasn’t going to like this prick. “Ye told me ye had family tha’ was hurt and asked fer me Galen. Now, tha only reason I’m lettin’ so many o’ the Washington Pack into me territory is because I owe ye fer that time in the Sudan. But I ain’t lettin’ ya bring no feckin hunter bitch inta–”

That was as far as the guy got before I lost my shit completely. I spun and lunged across the space, clearing five feet easily and slammed into the speaker. He was a lanky, gangly sort. Like Jack Skellington level skinny, but not nearly as cool.

“That ‘hunter bitch’ just helped us destroy three different hunter facilities where the fucking Hangman is doing experiments on wolf-kind. He’s even turning some of his own men into wolf-kind to better hide them and to better fight us!” I roared, spitting in his face as I held him pressed against the wall. I jerked him toward me and then slammed him forward again and I heard a cracking sound as the wall splintered against his back.

“She’s no more a Hunter any more than you are, you fucking twat-waffle. And if you’re not going to help her then maybe I should just shove your head up your ass. Because if she dies right now I’m damned well going to punish someone and it looks like you’re it.” Someone was pulling at me, shouting at me, screaming in my ear but all I could see was blood, and all I could hear was the pounding of my heart and dimly, the weak beats of Ava’s heart, struggling to pump blood through her body and instead just pumping it right out the hole in her gut.

“Remus, fucking let him go right now!”
William roared and I finally turned, wide eyes staring at him but seeing nothing. The gangly little prick slid from my grip, collapsing to the ground as he coughed and wheezed, heaving in deep breaths of air into his battered lungs. William grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, hard, until my eyes finally focused on him and not whatever images were playing across my memories.

“Go outside. Right now,” William commanded in a low tone and I glared at him.

“You can’t order an Omega, Little Brother,” I snapped and he shook his head.

“I’m not ordering an Omega. I’m telling my
brother
, I’m telling
you
, go outside. Clean up and get some clothes. Play nice with the other wolf-kind and try not to get us into a full blown war. I promise you that Ava will get the best possible care. Markus and I will make sure of it. But you need to get out of here and get your shit together or you’re going to end up executed under pack law, and exactly how will that help Ava out?”

It took a minute before all the words registered. It took longer for the blind panic and rage and madness working its way through my body to subside enough for me to see and understand reason. What the fuck was wrong with me? I was always the level headed one. When did I turn into such an emotional wreck that I couldn’t see the big picture anymore.

I froze a second later as the thought came, unbidden to the front of my mind. It was probably somewhere around the time that I had started to realize that I was in love with Ava Martine.

“Ok,” I sighed and took a slow step away from my brother. His arms slipped from my shoulders and I looked around at the half a dozen people still in the room. Stepping over the man on the floor I stopped by the hospital bed and leaned down to smooth the hair away from Ava’s face and press a soft kiss to her forehead.

Then I made my way out of the room, aware that someone was following me but ignoring it entirely, instead making my way back toward the front room. Six people still worked in the kitchen, and based on the smell they’d be at it for a while longer before anything truly edible came out of that room.

By the soft sound of the footsteps behind me I could tell it was Chloe following on my heels as we finally got back out to the front room. Another even ten men and women lounged or stood around the room, all of them wearing the same black leather vest that I’d seen on the guy outside when he closed the gate behind us on our way in.

One of the women had her back to me, a tiny little thing with long black hair tied into a braid and under that I could just make out the patch in the center of her back. A wolfs head, tilted back as if it were howling up at the moon. Above the Head was the word ‘Alpha’ and below it ‘Wolves’ with a small MC in red stitching.