progress inside Dragos's lair along with Dylan and Rio, fear twisting like a serpent in her stomach with each step Andreas and the others took deeper into the horrible place. Now her fear shot up her throat, exploding out of her in a scream as the sounds of ripping bullets, shouts, and chaos filled the vehicle.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, her blood freezing in her veins. "Oh, my God! No!" She made a frantic lunge for the door handle beside her in the backseat, but Rio pivoted around from in front of her and clamped his hand down on her shoulder, keeping her in place. "Stay, Claire. You can't do anything to help them," he said, his Spanish accent rolling, dark-fringed eyes grave. He hissed a curse as more gunfire cracked over the receiver. Then, another disaster, this time from the ground level post near the barn's entrance, where Renata and the male called Hunter were stationed. Renata's voice came into the vehicle in a breathless rush.
"Ah, shit. We've got company. Four guards coming into view right now outside the old barn... Fuck, I think they're Gen Ones--" Blam! Blam! Blam! More bullets began to fly the racket cutting Renata off and echoing from out of the forest like thunderclaps. "Oh, Jesus," Dylan whispered from her seat beside her mate in the front of the SUV as the Order came under attack both inside Dragos's lair and outside on ground level. "Rio... what should we do?" "Stay here, both of you," he ordered them grimly, pulling a nasty-looking pistol out of its holster on his belt and loading the chamber. He threw open the driver-side door and leapt out.
"Stay in the Rover and keep it running in case things go any further south and you need to haul ass out of here. I'm going in."
The Gen One assassins rained down a hail of bullets on Reichen and the warriors caught within the UV prison below. Returning their fire wasn't easy. The light bars were blinding and searingly hot, offering little room to dodge the incoming rounds while the warriors volleyed back shots with their own weapons.
From his periphery, Reichen saw Tegan take a bullet to the shoulder. Another grazed Nikolai in the thigh, knocking him on his ass for a second before he locked and loaded a second pistol and squeezed off several semiautomatic rounds. And up above, secure behind the bulletproof Plexiglas that shielded him from the fray, Wilhelm Roth was still watching, still gloating. Smiling, as though it were all merely entertainment and he'd already won this war. Reichen's fury churned on a swift, hard boil. Already the pyro was rising up inside him; he felt the living heat ripple over his skin, watched with nonchalant acceptance as the bullets that should have punctured his body instead fell away the instant they met the field of psychic energy that enveloped him.
"Get behind me!" he shouted to Tegan and the others, spreading his arms wide to create an even wider field of protection. "Not too close," he warned. "The heat will deflect the bullets, but it also kills." The warriors moved in as tight as was prudent, using Reichen's body like a shield as they continued to strike back at their attackers, who had the advantage of unrestricted movement and seemingly endless firepower.
Reichen's vision began to warp before his eyes. His pyro was building faster now, burning hotter than ever as he glared up at Roth. He let his rage expand, coaxed the flames to swell even bigger from within him. He summoned every ounce of fire at his command, letting it tumble and roil in his gut, willing it to strengthen as he held it down well past the point of pain. Past even the point of sanity. Some threadbare shred of instinct told him that he was courting disaster, but he shoved reason aside and stoked the flames brighter. Tasting the need for vengeance--for a final, bloody justice--like potent liquor on his tongue. "Wilhelm Roth," he bellowed darkly, centering all of his hatred, all of his white-hot energy, on the male who had taken so much from him, even before he'd called for the slaughter of Reichen's Darkhaven kin. "Tonight you die, Roth!" Focusing his talent, Reichen fisted his hand and punched it through the ultraviolet light bars of the cell. He felt no burn, other than the heat coursing through him already.
He glanced up and took great satisfaction in the sudden, slack-jawed astonishment written across Roth's