Lycan Legacy - Paladin: Tales of Luna White - Werewolf Veronica Singer (children's ebooks online txt) 📖

a voice so savage even I didn’t recognize it. I grabbed the sword and plunged it hilt-deep in his ass, spitting him like a chicken.

He was dead before he hit the basement floor.

I grabbed the two canisters still spewing that noxious mixture and tossed them down the stairwell. The survivors scrambled to drag themselves away from the gas.

I expected an attack on the second-floor stairwell, but it was clear. I dropped my gas mask spell to get a good sniff and popped the door open to see if there would be anyone on our rear.

From the prayer room came the sounds of crashing and cursing in Arabic—as if a pissed-off man were trashing the room searching for something. The glass bottle in my bag suddenly seemed a bit heavier and I was glad I had stolen—no, disarmed my enemy.

I shut the door, then welded the lock shut with a burst of magic. With the door jammed and the elevator stuck, even if he found something to attack us with, our host would have a hard time getting to us in time.

The first floor was clear. I held the door open as Mike and Manny hustled through. Manny was flagging. Older and lacking the upgrades I had given Mike, and coming from extended infirmity, he was tiring quickly. Still, he followed Mike with dogged persistence.

I slammed the door and welded it shut behind us. I pushed the wolf down, retracting fangs and muzzle to allow me to communicate better.

I raced to get ahead of Mike and Manny and opened the exterior door. Far away, an alarm sounded. I hadn’t bothered to bypass the alarm sensors. So what if we woke up a few more people?

Mike and Manny waited patiently for me to give them the go-ahead. Manny took a knee, using the pause as an opportunity to rest.

From outside, the sounds of the Arabic prayer call wafted from multiple mosques across the city.

Oh well, they had to get up for prayers anyway.

I pushed the thought away. The call to prayer occurred when a man could discern the difference between a white and a black thread in natural light. In other words, just before dawn. In just a few minutes, we would lose the protection of darkness.

“Manny, hit the demo on the power,” I said.

Manny fished out a remote detonator. Before clicking the switch, he patted Alisha and said, “This’ll be loud, but you won’t be hurt. Just keep quiet and you’ll be fine.”

A sharp sound, louder than a thunder strike, came from a block away. All the lights in this subdivision blinked off. Darkness dropped across the inner compound.

“They’ll have a backup generator that will come on in a few seconds,” said Manny.

Beside the open door was a metal panel inset into the wall, the junction box where all the power lines for the home entered. Just as the sound of generators started from an outbuilding, I put a hand on the box and sent lightning down the wires.

The panel arced and started smoking, emitting acrid fumes. The generator abruptly stopped.

“You sure I can’t get one of those EMP gadgets?” asked Manny. “We could have used that in Fallujah.”

Ignoring his question, I said, “Stay under cover while I check our exit.”

I stepped through the door into the sudden darkness. The building had a roofed-over porch, ten feet deep, a design that would keep all windows shaded from the fierce desert sun.

Instinctively, I zipped over to the cement pillar that supported this section of the porch. It was conveniently wide enough to shield a slim woman from view.

A quick peek showed two groups of armed men arrayed on the front yard. Each group was about thirty meters away from me and thirty meters apart from each other, making the front door the apex of a deadly triangle.

A shot rang out and a bullet hit the pillar, much too close for comfort. Even worse, the bullet reeked with the stench of silver.

Another peek revealed that some of these bastards had night-vision goggles.

“Sit-rep, Luna?” whispered Mike.

“We’re screwed,” I said.

19

“Screwed?” Mike said. “I don’t think so. You’ll come up with something.”

Sometimes I hated to hear that blind faith in his voice.

If only Mason was here, he could bowl the entire group over with hurricane-force winds, or hit them with lightning strikes, or use any of a dozen other spells to eliminate the threat.

Or create a hurricane that destroyed the city, or fried hundreds with lightning. Mason’s spells were powerful but had no way to spare innocents.

Don’t think about what you don’t have, Luna! Focus on using what you do have.

Okay, I had a spell to knock people out with nitrogen. But these groups were too far away and too widely dispersed for me to target.

I had a spell that would render the primer in bullets inert. Once again, my targets were too far away. Worse yet, the spell was omni-directional and would render my team’s weapons useless.

I had a bag with some magical trinkets, a glass bottle I was terrified of breaking, a piece of sentient rope, and the clothes on my back.

A random thought intruded—a scene from an old black-and-white western I had seen years ago. The hero had been pinned down. He had put his hat on his rifle barrel and lifted it up, as if peeking out. The ensuing shots had left holes in his hat, but had also let him discern exactly where his enemies hid. Then, in an uncanny bit of marksmanship, he’d shot them all.

Could I do something similar? I was no marksman. Hell, the nearest rifle was back with Mike and Manny. But maybe I could get these shooters to waste all their ammo on an empty hijab?

I pulled off my head covering and fished through my bag for something to poke inside so I could use it as a decoy. No convenient magic wand or stick appeared, but the genie bottle was long and slender. It might wo—

A sudden premonition pushed that thought away. Breaking the