In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,148

had guns. The other knives. While the taller one shot her way down the hallway, nailing guard after guard with shots to the head; the other, smaller woman slashed and stabbed her way around. She moved fast, swinging herself onto guards’ backs and cutting their throats or stabbing them in the top of the head.

One guard grabbed her off another’s back, and she turned lightning fast, slamming him into the wall and ramming one of her knives under his chin and into his head. She stared into his eyes, smirked, before letting him slip to the floor and yanking her weapon out.

“Down!” the taller woman called out, and she fired, killing another guard about to attack the smaller one.

He looked at his team, made a motion with his hand to ready for attack. His group had automatic weapons so they were just going to sweep the entire area with gunfire until everyone in that hallway was down. Unfortunate about any of his fellow guards, but he didn’t have time to play nice. Not when something had gone very wrong downstairs. They didn’t have time to play games with little girls.

With a nod, his team started around the corner but the roar that made the glass in the office doors shake and then shatter, and the screams from below made everyone who wasn’t already dead stop.

The building began to shake more but not from roaring. From something else. It took him a second but he realized it was running. Like a herd of animals, coming right for them.

He turned back the way he’d come just as the stair door crashed down. The first thing that came running out had tusks. Behind it were a cat and a canine. But the thing bringing up the rear . . .

“Run!” he screamed, trying to get his people to move, to use another exit, but before he could take a step, the blade slid across his throat and he saw that smile flash by him as he dropped to his knees, his hands wrapping around his neck, trying to stop the bleeding.

But he only managed to give himself enough time to feel the paws slam into his back, push him into the ground, and crush his bones to dust.

* * *

Ric wasn’t exactly okay with the massacre that was going on inside that building, but he wasn’t going to complain either. He just wanted his friends back. Then he felt the earth move beneath his feet. Like an earthquake. And he heard the roaring.

Shen stepped past him, staring into the building. Then he yelled, “Run!” And everyone scattered. No formation. No pulling back in an orderly line. Nothing. Nope. Like the true predators they all were, they thought only of themselves and made a crazed run for it.

That’s what predators did when they came across a bigger predator. It was always your best bet.

When Ric felt he was far enough away, he stopped and looked back.

Bo Novikov came out of the damaged building first. He was in his shifted form, but once he was outside, he turned back to human, grabbed the still-shifted Blayne and Gwen around their waists, and ran. Then the front of the building was destroyed even more as something galloped from it.

He watched at least two tons of beast tear out into the open. Tiger striped but built like a honey badger, it wasn’t alone. It had James Wells caught between its fangs.

He was screaming, begging, trying to fight. But Stevie MacKilligan, in her shifted form, dove over the trucks and SUVs and went on a sort of romp around the property, shaking Wells, tossing him up in the air and catching him again. Then she dropped him to the ground. He tried to drag himself away, but she just batted him around with her front paws. Stopped once to scratch her ear with her back leg, which gave Wells a chance to get to his feet and run.

That’s when Stevie pounced. Literally. She just watched him running for a few seconds and then up she went, crashing onto him with her front paws.

He stopped screaming then.

She batted his limp body around a few more times, but when he didn’t respond, she picked him up between her teeth, walked over to the front of the now-totaled building, and laid him out.

It seemed a strange move until blood-covered Charlie and Max walked out. Unlike everyone else, the sight off their sister hadn’t sent them fleeing, so they’d continued their original mission