Blindsided (41 page)

He paid for the moment of distraction by receiving a kick to the knife wound in his side. Fuck! He stumbled back, hit the shelves which knocked the wind out of his lungs.

Bryon smiled, cracked his knuckles in anticipation. Behind him Aria was crawling one handed toward the couch.
 

That a girl.

Byron noticed Aria’s movement and spun on one foot, his other following in a hard kick to her ribs. She screamed and went sprawling. Garret roared as he threw himself across the room at Byron.

As if it was all one graceful movement, Bryon followed the spin around, his arms hugged in like a skater or something, then flying out like a fucking ballerina. Light glinted off dull metal. There was a loud crack, followed by an impact to his right shoulder that sent Garret back into the shelves again, which was good this time since it was the only thing that kept him up.

Can’t move. Can’t breathe. He dropped his gaze, watched with detachment as the blood bubbled, soaking his shirt. He looked back up. Across the room the cloud around Bryon dissipated and he could see what the bastard was holding in his hand.

My own damn gun. That’s just wrong.

***

The vibration of impact shot up through Teigan’s legs as he leapt the half-dozen feet to the ground. Behind him, the ET chopper rose, its spotlight illuminating the long drive. No Byron. At least not in sight.

Teigan ducked into the forest. He knew Byron would be aware of the incoming craft, but it had seemed smarter to count on the woods for some cover than to have them drop down in the lawn and be sitting ducks. Besides, he didn’t know if there was room with the fallen pine. Now he just had to hope Garret had a chance earlier to take out the traps.

Teigan made it less than a hundred feet through the woods when there was a crack and a flash, and the trunk of a nearby tree sprayed shrapnel over him.
 

“Nuh-uh. Not that way.” Byron stepped out from behind another monstrous oak. Above them, the news chopper’s spotlight passed over, but couldn’t find them through the dense canopy. It created enough light to see Byron was smiling, despite the multiple cuts and bruises he sported on his face.

Teigan went for his stunner, getting off a shot before spinning behind the nearest tree. Byron laughed.

“Close! Keep it up and you might just turn out to be fun!”

I’ll show you close
. Slipping John’s stunner into his other hand, Teigan took a page from an old western he’d once watched and went out, guns blasting, as he tucked and rolled to the next bit of cover, but not before there was another resounding boom. The answering burn that flashed across his back as he finished the move told him he should thank his lucky stars Bryon had caught him when he was on his front and not his back.

“Woo-hoo! Even closer! If it hadn’t been for the tree in the way,” Byron taunted.

Yeah, yeah. Asshole.

He risked a peak around—boom—and got another face full of sprayed bark. Pressing the stinging half-foot long graze against the trunk in hopes of slowing the bleeding, he considered his options, which equated to…stall and hope the troops arrived. He knew he couldn’t take on the Viadal one on one, so this little game of tag in the trees was his best option. And either Byron wasn’t a very good shot with Garret’s revolver, or he was willing to play along for a while. The fact that it was Garret’s revolver had a ball of bile rising in Teigan’s throat. There was a good chance Garret was dead. Good chance Aria might be dead, too.

He brushed the thought away and ducked out for another volley of shots. Only Bryon wasn’t where he’d left him and there was no return fire to give away his new position.

Teigan dodged behind another large tree, stunners raised, searching, searching.
Shit. Where the hell did he go?

A hand latched onto Teigan’s left forearm, swinging him around the trunk and smashing him into the bark. Pain exploded in his nose and was accompanied by an answering sting on his lower lip. Fuck. Shit. He’d heard of hugging trees, not kissing them.

He tried to force his body to move, but lights were dancing behind his eyes and the throbbing pain from his broken nose was coursing through his system, making his muscles momentarily weak.

“Come on. Let’s give them a show.”

The remaining stunner was ripped from Teigan’s grasp and he felt himself being dragged across the forest floor. Leaves and sticks gave way to grass and he was plopped down. Overhead the sound of the chopper roared and the spotlight shone down on them like a halo.

Egotistical bastard.

“Come on. Get up. Let’s see how long you can last.”

Oh yeah, getting up would be real smart right now. Instead Teigan snapped out his leg, taking Bryon’s own out from under him. The Viadal didn’t fall, but he did stumble back. Teigan scrambled to his feet.

Attack, keep him off balance.
 

Byron shifted and kicked out, so fast Teigan barely had time to register the move before the foot whammed into his knee, popping tendon and taking him down to the ground. Fuck. Damn.

Byron laughed. “Willis taught me that when I was seven. He came to regret it a few months later.” He jerked his head. “Get up.”

Patience. Wait him out. Teigan’s fingers found a branch nearby that had fallen during the storm. It was too long and flimsy to wield as a club, but the thicker end was splintered nicely and might work as a stiletto.

“Get up!” Bryon primed a kick and let loose. Teigan rolled into the move, grabbing and twisting Bryon’s ankle and—holy shit!—bringing the fucker down. He jammed the branch into Bryon’s side, the soft part right below the ribs. It sunk in about two inches, then broke. Better than nothing. Byron roared in anger. Teigan scrambled, half-scurry, half-limp, toward the edge of the clearing. Get in the woods. Find the stunner, or at least a damn good hiding place.

He’d just reached the first saplings when Bryon plowed into his back. They rolled, each of them striking and jabbing. There was no contest. Bryon won, pinning Teigan down, his forearm across his throat.

His other hand came up with a short paring knife in it, the end tipped in blood already. Teigan’s gut twisted thinking of whose blood might be on the blade.
 

“Should I make you blind, too?” The knife pressed into the skin under his left eye. “Pop the sucker out? So you can match your
wife
? My sister told you about her first boyfriend, right? What I did to him?” Byron waited, cocking his head to the side as if he actually expected Teigan to answer. The blade pressed deeper, splitting skin. Blood dribbled into Teigan’s eye. “Huh?”

“You killed him,” Teigan croaked.

“That’s right. I did. Just like the other ones too.” Bryon’s features flattened. “I don’t like other guys touching my sister.”

This is it. This is where I die.
Using his com, he’d left enough pleas for help. Now he lifted his gaze to the sky and sent out one more.
Let them both be alive. Let me have bought enough time for help to arrive and kill this motherfucker.

Out of the corner of Teigan’s eye he caught movement. Hope sprung, until he saw it was just an animal, and not a very healthy one at that. It was attempting to slink unnoticed through the undergrowth—drawn by the blood?—but was only managing an ungainly stumble as it moved toward them.

The creature crouched, growled. What the fuck? Frodo? Bryon’s head flung back, searching for the source, just as the black bundle of matted fur leapt, knocking Byron off Teigan and back into the clearing.
 

Go mutt!

Teigan rolled over and wiped the blood out of his eyes. The chopper had found them again and its spotlight illuminated Byron, who was kneeling in the center of the halo, one hand latched around Frodo’s collar holding the mutt’s snapping teeth away as the other hand lifted the gun…oh shit…

A crack split the air.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“There’s something wrong with him, Bruce.”

Byron crouched down to peer through the old-fashion keyhole in the heavy mahogany doors to his father’s study, watching the ongoing argument between his father and mother.

“No!” Bruce slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. Byron had a fleeting thought his mother was lucky the leather bore the imprint of his father’s fat fist this time and not her face. She knew better than to test Bruce’s patience, or at least she should. “He’s ahead in his physical development for a twelve year old, that’s all. Once he matures the behavior will moderate.”

Mother wrung her hands, fear lacing her scent, yet the stupid cow didn’t have the brains to hold her officious tongue. “He tortures and kills bunnies!
 
What type of human being does that?”

“A curious one. Every boy plays with ants or worms or frogs at some point in time.”

“He’s not a child anymore, and they’re not ants. They’re cats and dogs, and bunnies.”

“So?”

“He’s
not
playing, he’s killing them!”

Bruce cocked an eyebrow. Bryon had to give him some points for the look. When he was on his game, his father was good at controlling others with a just the slightest change in expression.

“What about what he did to Willis? What about that?”

“That was four years ago. And an accident. He hasn’t harmed anyone since.”
 

“Maybe not, but you can tell he wants to.”

Bruce waved a beefy hand. “I don’t want to hear another word more about it. He’ll grow out of this phase.”

“What about how he looks at his sister?”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Like one minute he wants to wring her pretty neck and the next he wants to kiss it.”

“You’re imagining things that aren’t there,” he scoffed.

She stiffened, her face pinching from having her concerns dismissed. “Mark my words. Your son is a psychopath. One of these days he’s going to rape and murder my daughter, and then he’s going to come after us.”

“Jesus, Yvonne.” Bruce shook his head. “Have you been forgetting to take your medicine again?” Byron could hear the disgust in his father’s voice. That was right. Mom was on other meds besides the genetic suppressant. She was prone to hysteria, paranoia, and telling outright lies. And that’s all these were, lies.
 

She leaned in over his father, her eyes more intense, more lucid than he remembered them ever being. “Don’t forget it. Don’t forget what I said. For when that day happens, I want you to remember it was
your
quest for perfection that killed us all.”

Byron had come away wondering if there wasn’t some truth to his mother’s words. Maybe his little experiments into the boundaries of pain and suffering, life and death were the marks of a psychopath. But as the years passed and he became even stronger, even better, he decided there was nothing to be concerned about. Life, really, was just a game. The people he killed were the weaker players, and what was more? He liked killing, he was good at it, so why the fuck shouldn’t he?

Chapter Thirty

Teigan blinked once, lugging through that split second of time that seems to freeze just before you know you’re going to die; only he wasn’t sure he was going to actually die. He couldn’t be sure of what had just happened. The gun lifted, arcing in his direction, the crack of the shot, the expectation of the burn, but instead he’d seen a spray of gray matter, staining the set of bushes behind Byron.
 

Yet Byron stood.

Time sped back up. Byron went lax, buckling into a heap upon the ground. Frodo yanked out of the ineffective grip, and then lunged forward again, ripping into Bryon’s throat.
 

Good Mutt. Why don’t you make sure he’s dead for me while I catch my breath?

A hand appeared before his blurring vision. Instinctively he clasped it, letting the shadowy figure drag him up. Agony screamed from multiple points of his body and he thought his knee was going to give at any moment, but he managed to remain standing. The spotlight from the news chopper landed on his rescuer and he was able to make out the features beneath the dark paint. Carthridge.

“What happened to bringing him in whole?”

“I was too far removed from the situation to effectively stop the man about to shoot an agent. And my only clear shot, given the presence of a third party,” Carthridge glanced at Frodo who was still growling at the fallen target as if expecting him to come back to life, “was to take the head shot.”

Fucking mutt, he didn’t just owe him once, he owed him twice. But only if Aria and Garret were all right. “I haven’t found Aria or Garret yet.”

Carthridge gave a curt jerk of his head, sending Nolan skirting around them to search the woods. “We’ll check the house.”

Teigan let the super-soldier help him along, their gait ungainly as if they’d been given a handicap in a three legged race—
yeah, me
. He chaffed at the passage of time, when really, it was less than a minute before they were rounding the corner of the garage and heading for the sliding door off the solarium. Only, it wasn’t there. Crumbled glass lay like glitter in the yawning opening, sparkling in the reflection of the circling news helicopter’s spotlight.