his stuff, though. He dipped the Seahawk in a sideways tilt, slipping them across the landing zone away from the direction of the incoming fire, all while flying no more than five feet off the ground. Once out of immediate danger, the pilot leveled off and started to climb. Kendra could already see the other helicopter clearing the treetops. She let out the breath she’d been holding. They hadn’t started to gain altitude themselves yet, but they would be any second. They were all going to make it.
“What the hell…?” the crew chief shouted from his position at the open side door.
Kendra didn’t have to wonder what he was talking about, not when the crew chief drew his pistol from a chest holster and started shooting out the open door. A moment later, a snarling hybrid jumped onto the helicopter. Crap! The pilot had kept them too low for too long.
Seeing a ravaging monster with red eyes, fangs, and claws was just too much to take for the pilot and copilot. Kendra was shocked the helicopter didn’t go down on the spot. Luckily, the pilot got himself back together and steadied the Seahawk. The crew chief hit the hybrid at least three times in the chest and abdomen, but as Kendra knew from experience, the damn things were slow to react to even life-ending injuries.
Declan launched himself at the hybrid, yanking the creature off the crew chief and slamming the thing against the side door frame, smashing its head repeatedly against the metal supports there.
Kendra tried to get out of her seat to help, but the helicopter was spinning around so wildly she couldn’t get her seat belt undone. Even if she could, there were so many flying arms, legs, and claws, she knew she’d be risking her life just getting near them.
But she couldn’t just sit there and watch Declan fight this thing on his own.
She finally got her lap restraint undone and clambered around the bench seats, almost slipping on the huge amount of blood spilling on the floor of the cabin from the dead crew chief. But she made it to Declan’s side, spreading her legs wide in an attempt to keep from being thrown out the open door of the almost out-of-control helicopter.
Declan must have seen her out of the corner of his eye because he let out a growl and shoved the hybrid against the interior wall of the bird, pinning its head and one arm at the same time. The move left Declan open to the hybrid’s claws, but Kendra jumped in before the creature had a chance to do any damage, pushing the barrel of her M4 into the thing’s chest right over his heart and unloading the five remaining rounds.
The bullets ripped right through the hybrid’s body and out the side of the helicopter. Thank God there wasn’t anything critical in that part of the airframe. But it had been worth the risk—even a hybrid needed a heart to pump its blood.
Declan flung the creature out the door with a growl. They were a good hundred feet above the ground now, and the crash the hybrid made as it slammed into the treetops was audible even over the thump of the rotors.
Kendra sagged against one of the seats. Holy crap, they’d done it. They were going to get out of here.
Then something slammed into the underside of the Seahawk like a bull had kicked it. Kendra would have fallen out the open door if Declan hadn’t grabbed her and pushed her toward the bench seats. As she scrambled to get a grip on something solid, the torn, lifeless body of the crew chief tumbled out of the helicopter, leaving a trail of blood on the floor in its wake.
Crap. She’d jinxed them. Whatever had just hit them was way bigger than small arms fire. The helicopter bucked and spun out of control, alarm buzzers screaming in warning as smoke filled the cargo compartment. Kendra was so disoriented, she could barely tell up from down.
The pilot and copilot shouted at each other, fighting the controls to keep the aircraft up in the air. But she knew their heroics were in vain. They were going down—right back into the middle of the pack of hybrids and soldiers who had been trying their damndest to kill every one of them for the last three hours.
Declan had known they were going to crash even before the rocket-propelled grenade had slammed into the belly of the copter.