Page 35 of Unleash Hades (Ungoverned Spaces #5)

Hugo

“ T he beacon’s activated,” Rose said, her eyes frantic. Her small, but strong hand grabbed my wrist, and pulled me along. In the same movement, she handed me a Glock, and I subtly placed it in the back of my jeans. She probably had one at her waist, and her side as well.

“Wait, I can’t see Cali,” I tried to pull my wrist away.

“She’s probably fine! We have to move now!”

She was right. The beacon activating was either a sign of distress, or a signal that Olena was ready to come forward. The mission might be complete, if we could just convince her to come over to our side.

Rose pulled out her phone, took a look, and power walked through the arena. I followed close behind. My heart thundered in my ears, not because this was the moment in the Op where things started to hit the fan… but because I couldn’t find Cali in the crowd.

A strange intuition electrified the air. The hair on the back of my arms rose, and I felt the uncertainty of a tingling, unmitigated disaster coming our way. Like the change of wind before a tsunami.

“Through here,” Rose said, as she slammed open a door.

Immediately, there were guns out. One was pointed at my chest, another, at the She-Bear’s girl. Another gun was pointed at me, two at Rose. Everyone must have had something pointed at them, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to figure it out.

I mentally tallied four mafia men. The She-Bear could fight, but she had no gun. The girl was on our side, but useless. That left me and Rose against four, but we could even out those odds. It was likely the She-Bear could use a gun, if we could get her one. That was just a hunch, though.

Rose had a pistol in each hand, each pointed at a different man. I did the same, covering the other two she wasn’t.

“Who the fuck are you?” one of the Mafiosos snarled.

“Such short memories, you have,” Rose said with an amused sparkle in her eye. The woman thrived on violence.

“I know, right?” I agreed.

Humor was a shield. Humor was a sign of psychopathy, and we needed these men to think we were fearsomely insane.

“Oh, Gadzooks!” A shriek came from the door as it swung open and closed.

It was the peacock, Calissandra’s flamboyant companion.

“Get out of here!” I commanded, because I could not deal with him, or what he might be to Calissandra. Would he end up on the growing list of people I had to keep alive? There were too many to count already.

“Oh, dear! This violence will simply not stand in the Underground!” he said, indignantly. “Put those weapons down immediately! I insist!”

“Who the fuck is this guy?” The first mafioso asked, clearly confused at the whole outfit he was wearing.

“How dare you!” I didn't look, but I could imagine the man twisting his nose in the air in offense. “I am Lucien Bellamy, Duc de Mouron! I insist you put your guns down at once !”

I heard a click of metal and had to turn my head.

Bellamy had produced two Sig Sauer pistols and pointed them to the Italian-American men. And suddenly, our ranks were a little more even.

“I dread violence, I truly do,” he kept on talking. “I don’t even like hunting, you see? I barely know how to use these things, but I will if needs must, and all that. So I suggest that you put your weapons down, and let the two ladies come with me.”

“Fuck you!” one of our enemies said.

“You’re not my type,” Bellamy retorted.

We were in a standoff. A real standoff. Caledonia Security had a strict policy about ensuring the odds were stacked in our favor. If we didn’t stack it so hard that we were practically cheating, then it wasn’t good enough.

So being evenly matched did not feel good.

“Loose?” The girl whispered.

Lucien straightened. My ears perked.

“Lucy?” Lucien slowly turned, his eyes narrowed at the khaki girl with her hair still over her features, obscured further by the scarf around her head and mouth.

“What did you just call me?”

“Lucy-Goose?” The girl said, and her small, slender hand came up to the scarf over her face. She pulled it away, and a heart shaped face emerged with narrow lips. The girl was pale, with delicate features. Her mouth was small, like a porcelain doll.

Bellamy’s eyes widened.

“Mini Mina?” he said, his eyes falling out of his head. “Wilhelmina Mountbatten?”

He looked at the men, then at the She-Bear.

“Mina… go outside,” he commanded, his voice completely changed.

The girl, Mina, shook her head.

“Go outside, right now, and scream your own name as loud as you can.”

Mina looked at the She-Bear, and then at Bellamy, her face shaking. She was saying no.

“Do it!” Bellamy ordered.

“She won’t go. She knows we’ll kill the She-Bitch!” One of the men with a gun to Olena’s temple said. “Then we’ll kill the little one too.”

“Her brother is outside, and if you harm one hair on her head, he will bring down the wrath of God upon you vile creatures!” Bellamy stepped forward, the men recoiled away.

He was positioning himself. I didn’t know for what or where. But if we could get a shot off, all at once, each of us hitting a different person, we could make it out. Or the girls could, at least. I looked to Rose, who was steady in her grip, her face purely impassive.

She belonged here. She was a fighter.

I didn’t need to worry about her one bit.

“Run,” Bellamy said, his eyes trained on the one with a gun to Mina’s head. “He so much as thinks of firing, I will kill him.”

“Then I will kill you,” one of his companions quipped. Bellamy laughed.

“Then they will kill you. So I’ll be dead, and you’ll be dead, and we’ll all be dead!” He laughed, the sound of it high as a bell and sarcastic as fuck. “But the girl will live. I find that I am dreadfully attached to that outcome.”

“Run,” the She-Bear said, backing up Bellamy’s play. “Run, and find your brother.”

My heart thumped in my chest. If the girl ran, and we got back up, we stood a chance. If she stayed, and we had a shootout, we would have less of a chance.

Unlike what Rose thought, I now had something very concrete to live for. Something very real, and very pressing.

“Run!” the She-Bear growled, and the man who held her pressed his pistol into the bottom of her jaw. She snarled.

The man snarled back.

Something extraordinary happened.

It was as slight as the flap of a butterfly’s wing. As delicate as a thread pulled taut, snapping under the pressure.

She-Bear grabbed the hand of the man with a pistol to her neck, cupping the pistol grip in an uppercut motion until it pointed upward.

He popped off a shot that went high, hitting the ceiling, spraying drywall around us in a puff of mist. I fired my weapon, and that man’s head fell back, his face opening up like a pomegranate fruit, red and white juice spurting out.

The girl screamed, running for the door.

At the same time, Rose fired, hitting center mass on one man. Bellamy fired once, and another man went down. Rose fired a second shot, and it went wide, glancing on the fourth man’s shoulder as he fell to the floor.

The She-Bear lunged.

The man falling to the ground with the shoulder wound fired his weapon at Mina’s retreating back.

The She-Bear threw herself into the air, absorbing the bullet into her abdomen, thrown off her trajectory and into the wall.

Mina screamed.

The door opened.

She screamed, “Aldon! Aldon! Aldon!”

There was a commotion around us, as bodies filled the room.

Rose and I both lifted our hands in the air, the pistols on safe, as black-clad men and women of the Underground Circuit stomped in, guns blazing, separating us all.

The She-Bear and the girl were together again. Mina was guarding her with her lithe body, her hands over the wound that bubbled through her fingers. Bellamy tried to approach, the She-Bear growled.

“Stay away!” Her arm shot around Mina, as if to protect her, even as she bled out.

“Don't you understand?” Bellamy growled. “I know her!!”

“You don’t touch without her consent,” the She-Bear’s eyes darkened, and I swear the ground shook beneath the two of them, the distance between Bellamy and the two women growing.

“Do you know this man?” A woman in black said, her long straight hair down to the middle of her back. She was talking to Mina, and nodding at Bellamy.

She placed a gun to Bellamy’s head, looking at the girl with suspicious eyes.

“Tell me who is holding you here against your will,” the woman asked, pressing her Desert Eagle into Bellamy’s temple. He looked at her with a strange fascination that looked nothing like fear, but amusement.

A man walked in, his simple, well-cut suit with midnight blue lapels were understated in a way that reeked of wealth.

“What on earth is going on here?” he asked, pulling a watch on a chain from his pocket, flipping it open, then closed again. “Who is calling me?”

“Aldon?” Mina’s little voice came through the blur of chatter.

Aldon’s eyes widened, then narrowed. They widened again as he gasped and fell to his knees.

Bellamy fished a phone from his pocket, and it vibrated in his hand. His eyes narrowed.

“Bloody Hell. Handle this, Mountbatten,” he said, as he ran out of the room.