Javier (Alpha Heroes #12)

Chapter Thirty-seven

Missy

“Two minutes to contact,” Micah announced.

The van sped down the road. From where I sat, I could see us as a blue blimp moving toward a red line on Bozeman’s screen. Fear plugged my throat: fear for Javier, for Dash and Thena, for every person who was part of our team.

I bit down on my lip, clasped my hands together, and glanced up at Javier. He sat on the bench seat, leaning his head against the window, his eyes hooded. Only the sheen of sweat glistening on his face and the tight clench of his jaw revealed he wasn’t taking a harmless tour of the countryside.

“Move to the second row,” he murmured. “Get under the seat, make yourself small, and stay there. If you faint, you’ll be safer back there.”

I started to get up. Then I paused and looked around me. Dash drove with one hand on the wheel and a gun in his other hand. Micah handled the tablet and his rifle. Thena sat on the last row with her weapon ready, looking like her namesake, the goddess of war and wisdom. Javier propped his carbine against his chest and clicked off the safety, ignoring the pain that swelled his fingers to the size of sausages.

I plopped back down on the seat. “I’m not hiding and I’m not fainting either.”

“This is no time to be stubborn.” Javier glowered at me. “Move to safety. Now.”

“No.” A cool calm descended on me, a strange and eerie sensation.

He blinked several times. “Angel, please—”

“Don’t you Angel me.” I aimed an attitude-rich glare at him. “I’m not a kid. I’m part of this team now. I need a weapon.”

He straightened on his seat. “You don’t do weapons.”

“You taught me how to use the gun when Rozina tried to abduct me, remember?”

He studied my face. “You’ve never shot a gun before.”

“And yet you tell me all the time that I’m a fast learner.” I winked at him.

He curved his lips into a smile. “Fastest learner in the West.”

He reached back with his good hand, slid out his gun, and deposited his Glock in my palm. The weight of the weapon reminded me that this was an instrument of death. A shiver crawled up my spine.

“My helmet is in the duffel,” he said. “Put it on. Take the right flank. Put the duffel between you and the door and kneel behind it.”

“Got it.” I followed his instructions.

“Thirty seconds to contact.” Micah’s low bass sounded mournful.

“Any words of wisdom?” I asked Javier as I braced behind the duffel.

“Shoot at the bad guys.” He clicked off his safety. “Do not shoot at the good guys.”

“Around the curve,” Micah called out. “Fifteen seconds.”

My shaking fingers fumbled on the safety, but somehow, I managed.

“Here we go.” Javier lifted his carbine and propped it on the left side window.

I braced my hand on the van’s right windowsill. The sounds of a pitched firefight reached us before the battle came into view. Smoke rose from fires burning from several vehicles. The aerial drone laid to one side of the road, burning. The land drones were still shooting. One had corralled a group of mercs behind an upturned truck.

While we watched, the other drone blew a hole through the concrete barricade. Dash adjusted the wheel and accelerated toward the opening. The van’s tires crunched over metal and debris. I choked on an acrid gulp of air and blinked off the smoke from my eyes.

“Disengage the drones,” Dash ordered as we approached the line of fire. “Now!”

Micah tapped his screen. I caught a glimpse of the drones as they ceased firing.

Plink, plink, plink .

Bullets clanked against the van from every direction.

“Return fire!”

The burst of automatic fire filled the van, a deafening ruckus that matched my racing pulse. Javier, Micah, and Thena let loose. Several people dropped as we sped through. Javier mowed down everything in sight. I fired my weapon. A bunch of mercs hit the dust. Whether my shots hit or not, I had no clue, but the men fell out of view. When I looked again, the battlefield was behind us.

“We’re through.” Dash accelerated away from the fray. “Activate the drones again.”

Micah thumbed his tablet. “Activated.”

“Thena?” Dash shouted.

“I don’t see anyone chasing us,” she yelled back.

“Missy?”

“We’re clear on my side.” I engaged my safety.

“Bozeman?”

“Verifying.” The man pulled up a different screen. “We’ve got no bogeys on the radar.”

“Guzman?”

Silence.

I spun around. Javier slumped over his carbine. My stomach jumped to my throat.

“Javi!” I stuffed my gun in the back of my jeans and reached for him. “Talk to me.”

“I hope we gave those fuckers hell,” he slurred between heaving breaths.

“Is he hit?” Dash demanded.

“I don’t know,” I said, desperately looking for wounds.

“I don’t see any blood on him.” Thena was there, helping me look.

“It’s the venom.” I glanced at the clock on the van’s console. “It’s been over thirty minutes. We’re running out of time. Please, Javi, hang on,” I begged. “Don’t go. Stay with me.”

Too late did I recognize the desperate voice from my dream. It was mine. It’d been me crying out in anguish all along.

***

Javier

The angst in Missy’s pleas recalled me from the void. Her voiced ached and throbbed like my arm. “I’m here, Angel,” I mumbled. “Still here.”

It took everything I had just to drag out the words. I’d used the last of my strength to shoot at the bastards. I’d persevered even as the weakness grew until I could barely feel my limbs. The pain, on the other hand, I could feel. Flames licked through me, scalding everything in their path, melting me from the inside out, leaving behind a thick, sticky blackness that wrapped around me, smothering my senses.

Was this the same cold darkness that Missy faced every time she fainted?

Fuck no, I wasn’t gonna faint.

Was I?

“Can you go any faster?” Missy’s voice came from some distant place.

“ETA,” Bozeman’s voice boomed in the distance. “Three minutes to the hospital.”

“Three minutes.” Missy’s breath blew over my ear. “Almost there.”

“Hang on, Guzman,” Dash’s voice registered faintly as if reaching out from outer space.

“Javi, we’re so close.” Missy’s arms came around me, held on to me, wrestling me back from the edge, from the oppressive blackness gobbling my consciousness. “Please, don’t give up on us. On me.”

“Never,” I managed to rasp.

The darkness that swallowed me whole proved greater than my will.