Page 31 of Blood & Bond (The Bouchers #2)

It was locked. I could see the way the dead bolt was pointing. That would give me a few extra seconds if someone made it onto the front porch.

Crouching, I hurried into the living room where a row of three windows with filmy curtains let the moonlight in. Pulling one back as slowly as I possibly could, I looked out. There was no one near the porch. Yet.

Praying that no one could see me, I reached through the curtains and slid open one of the windows a few inches.

Then I moved to the next and the next. I didn’t open any of them much, just enough that I could shoot through the screen if I needed to.

A rifle shot came from somewhere above me, and I jumped, backing away.

All of them were opened exactly the same amount, so I hoped that at first glance, you wouldn’t even notice that any of them were open at all.

It helped that all the lights in the house had been turned off.

It was actually lighter in the yard because of the porch lights and the moon.

I looked around the room and rushed to the couch, sliding it across the floor so that I had a barrier between me and the front door. I moved a chair too, so the couch wouldn’t look out of place.

“What are you doing?” Matilda hissed from the darkness behind me. I nearly shit myself.

“Watching the front door,” I replied, my voice barely a whisper. “Go back with Erik.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I have a pistol,” I replied dumbly. I figured I shouldn’t mention the bat unless I wanted her to really think I’d lost my mind.

Gunfire sounded too close for comfort outside, followed by a rifle shot from above us.

“Go,” I whispered, making a shooing motion. “I’ve got this.”

I didn’t have it in any way, shape, or form, but I was determined to fake it until I made it, and at the very least, go down swinging.

There was very little room for fear, probably because of the adrenaline racing through me, mixed with the burn of the mating heat.

It hurt like hell, but it was also strangely comforting, like having Ambrose with me.

Reese’s rifle went off again. Again. Again.

They had to be getting closer to the house.

Laying the bat across the couch, I moved into place, kneeling below the first window, only my eyes and forehead above the frame.

My palms were sweating as I checked to make sure the pistol was loaded and pulled back the slide.

Carefully, I rested the barrel on the windowsill, flicked off the safety, and waited.

My pulse was pounding in my ears so loudly that I didn’t hear the first man until he came into view at the top of the porch steps.

I lifted the pistol off the windowsill. Aimed.

He was three steps in when I fired. The bullet hit him somewhere in his torso, and he spun toward me.

I fired again, hitting him in the crotch.

He went down like a sack of potatoes, screaming, and fell off the porch.

I swallowed the enormous amount of spit in my mouth, trying not to gag as I waited for the next one.

I hit him in the chest and belly because he’d turned toward me right away. He dropped in a heap on the porch, and I had to keep looking at him as I waited for the next one.

All the while, Reese fired from upstairs. I hoped she was hitting her marks because I felt like I was going to hyperventilate. I didn’t want to shoot anymore. I didn’t want to watch any more men fall. I didn’t want any of it.

I hit another as he came onto the porch, but he disappeared back off of it before I could shoot again. Which meant there was a wounded man who knew where I was shooting from.

I moved to the window at the opposite end. I could see the stairs better, but I didn’t like being in the line of fire from anyone in the yard. I glanced toward the front door.

I just had to keep them from the door.

Two men rushed the steps, and I panicked, shooting the pistol until I was out of ammunition.

I hadn’t thought to bring a spare magazine, only the extra ammo. Throwing myself to the side, I hid against the wall between the windows and the door as I ejected the magazine and reloaded it with shaky hands. I wasn’t sure how many bullets I dropped, but it was too many. It was taking me too long.

I’d barely gotten the magazine loaded back into the pistol when light from the moon was blocked by a large shadow outside the window.

Rolling onto my side, I pointed toward the window and fired.

Glass shattered and fell everywhere. I was covered in it. But the shadow dropped.

My relief was short-lived when someone shot at the door. Bang. Bang. Bang. The door rattled as I scrambled toward the couch, keeping one eye on the windows. One of them was basically just a frame now, an easy entrance.

When the door flew open, I screamed and fired.

The man stood there for a moment and then dropped in a heap. I couldn’t even tell where I’d shot him.

“Lucy,” Matilda called.

“I’m fine,” I called back. “Stay there.”

“The hell I will,” she said from somewhere behind me as I scrambled for the front door. I slammed it closed, but the lock and doorknob were absolutely mangled.

“The sideboard,” she said, racing toward me. She heaved the long cabinet down the foyer a foot before I’d even gotten a hold of the other end.

Someone must’ve been looking down on us, because I wasn’t sure how we managed to get the heavy cabinet wedged in front of the door before anyone else had made it onto the porch.

Reese’s rifle sounded again.

Okay, maybe the person looking down on us had been Reese.

“Did you do that to my window?” Matilda asked, breathing heavily as we snuck over to the couch.

“Charlie will reimburse you,” I said, crawling across the floor to where I’d left the box of ammunition. I clutched it to my chest and half-crawled, half-scooted back to her. “He’s filthy rich now, apparently.”

Matilda scoffed, but her lips turned up in a little smile.

“How much longer do you think we have?” I asked. It felt like we’d been at it for hours, but I knew that couldn’t be right because Ambrose would’ve been there already.

“Half an hour,” Matilda replied. “Fifteen minutes if we’re lucky.”

I nodded as we watched the windows.

“How’s Erik?”

“He’s going to be livid when he wakes,” she replied softly. “But otherwise, he’ll heal.”

“That’s good.”

“Do you—” She stopped and shook her head.

“What?” I asked. “Do I what?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on now,” I teased gently, my voice trembling with nerves. “If you can’t ask me now, when could you? We’re practically besties at this point. We’ve moved furniture together.”

“Do you think Charlie would be offended if I let him know he could call us Mom and Dad?”

If I hadn’t been staring so intently at the windows, searching for any hint of a shadow, my mouth would’ve dropped open in shock. It was the oddest time to think about my parents, but I couldn’t stop the memories that flashed through my mind.

Dad pointing at the door, a silent order for us to leave for school even though we’d begged him to stay home.

I’d been suspended later that day when the boy who’d been threatening to beat up Charlie actually attempted it.

I’d jumped on his back and choked him until he passed out, falling like a tree with me still dangling off his back.

Mom brushing us off when we tried to tell her that Charlie’s teacher wouldn’t stop the kids from harassing him. That she’d made him stand in front of the class for an hour while she taught because she said he’d been disruptive in his seat.

Dad picking Charlie up off the bed he’d made on my floor and carrying him crying out of the room because he said Charlie was too old to be sharing a room with his little sister.

Mom ignoring my scuffed cheek and elbows, rat’s nest hair, and dirty clothes because some kids had ambushed us on the way home from school. Charlie’s nose had been bleeding. She hadn’t noticed that either.

“I don’t think he’d be offended,” I replied flatly, pushing those memories away. “He’d probably like that.”

“And what about you?” she asked.

Was that a shadow? Why was it so quiet outside? The hair on my arms prickled.

“What about me?” I breathed, trying not to spook myself.

“Would you be offended?”

“Of course not,” I replied, rolling to my knees.

Something was about to happen. I didn’t know what, but I knew.

The other two windows shattered as bullets sprayed into the room. I threw myself on top of Matilda and put my arms over my head as we cowered at the end of the couch. Something stung my ankle, and I jerked my legs back. It felt like it went on forever, but it had to be only a few moments.

As soon as it stopped, I dragged myself off of Matilda and looked at her. She nodded silently. She was okay.

We both turned toward the window, and Matilda racked the shotgun.

She shot the first man dead center. It was gruesome and fucking disgusting the way the closely grouped balls tore through him. She was racking the shotgun again when the second man came through. I shot twice and hit him once as we backed away.

Matilda shot him again and then snapped the shotgun in half, pulled two more shells out of her pocket, and reloaded.

I shot the next man three times.

Then there were too many to count.

I couldn’t hear anything as they came in the window, every sense almost muffled as I fired and Matilda fired beside me.

They didn’t shoot back, and that was almost scarier because I knew what it meant. They didn’t want to kill us.

I shot until the bullets ran out, and then I threw the pistol at the closest man, hitting him in the face. He didn’t go down, but it gave me enough time to grab the bat where I’d left it on the couch.

Matilda and I worked our way backward as she fired.

Then, from the top of the stairs, came a rifle shot, and the next man went down.

Another.

Another.

They just kept coming through the fucking window.

There were so many of them. They had to step over the men who had already fallen, and sometimes they stepped right on top of them.

It was heinous and terrifying. Reese just kept shooting, and Matilda just kept reloading and shooting again, but eventually one of them got close.

I swung the bat so hard that when it bounced off his shoulder, it reverberated in my arms. I took aim again as he reached for me and hit him in the side of the face that time, knocking him out cold.

All the while, the room rang with gunfire.

Bang. Bang. BANG. Bang. BANG.

Matilda let out a whoof sound, and I glanced at her.

Blood bloomed on the front of her housedress.

I lost my fucking mind.

Screaming so loud that I drowned out everything else, I ran toward them, my bat braced over my shoulder.

I hit the first one in the throat, and while he was clutching it and trying to draw in air, I swung for the next one.

He lifted his arm to block it, and I heard his forearm snap as he screamed. Then I reached the one who’d shot her.

We both knew he wasn’t going to shoot me because he wasn’t sure who I was, but that didn’t mean he was going to let me hit him, either.

Reese was still firing, but her shots were limited now that I was in the middle of everything.

I swung the bat, and he ducked, taking it on his shoulder as he rushed me.

The air in my lungs left in a whoosh when his shoulder hit my chest, but I didn’t let it distract me.

As he tried to lift me off the ground, I arched and threw my weight backward, throwing off his center of gravity.

We both fell to the floor in a heap, and I landed half on and half off a still-warm body.

“Little bitch,” the man spat, reaching for my throat.

Twisting, I elbowed him in the side of the face and tried to drag myself out from under him.

He gripped my hips like a vise as he tried to crawl his way up my body.

Reaching for him, I dug my thumbs into his eye sockets as he screamed.

Still, Reese fired from the top of the stairs.

How many of them could possibly be left?

It didn’t matter if I didn’t get this beast off of me.

When he let go of my hips to try to push my hands away from his eyes, it was all I needed.

I dug my feet into the carpet and swiveled my hips out from under his body.

I felt my leggings sliding down my ass as I pulled my legs out from under him.

His fingers dug into my wrists as they pulled my hands from his eyes.

But now my lower body was free, and he was fucking blind.

Throwing my body sideways, I lunged onto his back, my arms screaming as they twisted in his hold. He was still yelling and cursing me as I yanked them away and wrapped them around his neck.

“Lucy,” Reese screamed.

Bang.

Heavy weight landed on the lower half of my body as I tightened my arm around the monster’s throat. Something wet was running down the inside of my thigh.

I ignored it.

The monster gagged and scratched at my forearms as I wrenched his head back as far as I could.

When he went limp, I readjusted my grip.

Then I snapped his neck.

My entire body slumped with relief.

All of a sudden, the house was strangely silent.

“Reese?” a deep voice called from somewhere.

“Beau!” Reese called back frantically.

“Lucy?”

I’d know that voice anywhere. A flare of heat emanated from my chest, instantly making me lightheaded.

Ambrose.

I opened my mouth to call back to him when everything went black.