“Anyone have any night vision?” Mom grumbled, taking a rifle from the guy sitting beside her and looking through the scope. “Aww, perfect,” she said with an evil grin. “This is mine now. Get out of the way.”

The guy scrambled to the middle as she maneuvered her small body over and rolled the window down enough to stick out the barrel of the gun. “Get ready for some shouting,” she warned just as she pulled the trigger.

It was a symphony of pained screams all the way up to the cabin. She’d thinned out the herd a good bit, but there was no way we could just jump out and run inside. Instead, the driver floored it and took us right into the first floor of the cabin.

“Motherfuck!” Mom shouted. “Warn a bitch before you do shit like that.”

“You okay?” I asked, but my gaze was on the dust and debris falling outside the SUV.

“I’m good,” Mom assured me, tossing the rifle aside and checking the magazine of the other gun I’d given her earlier. “Let’s get the girls back, shall we?”

All four doors opened, and the six of us got out, guns drawn, our bullets flying just as five men appeared near the stairs we’d stopped short of when we came through the living room area. Garret was the first to start shooting, hitting all five of them before any of us could even squeeze our triggers.

“Up or down?” he snarled, his chest rapidly rising and falling as he scanned for more enemies.

“They were coming from upstairs, so I’m going to take a wild guess and assume they were protecting something up there,” one of Pop’s friends called out. “You three take the second floor.” He indicated Garret, one of his own men, and me. “Anya, you’re with us. A place like this must have a basement.”

Garret was already halfway up the stairs before I could move. Cursing, I ran after him, the other guy whose name I didn’t know right behind me, our guns at the ready. At the top of the stairs, he started kicking in doors. Knowing he was going to get himself shot if he wasn’t more careful, I took point behind him.

The number of rooms upstairs seemed endless. Bedroom after bedroom was found empty. Other than the five men Garret had taken out when we first entered the house, no one else was up there.

“Sonofabitch!” Garret bellowed and stormed down the stairs.

In the kitchen, we found a door and a set of stairs that led to the basement. As we started down them, I realized that the sound of bullets flying was now eerily absent. I could hear voices coming from downstairs, some of them I recognized—Zio, Pop, Adrian, Dante—others were only vaguely familiar and those of Pop’s friends.

With each step I descended, my heart started racing more and more until I felt like it was going to explode. My hands began to sweat, and my stomach started to roil. Nova wasn’t down there. I knew she wasn’t. I couldn’t feel her or the magnetic draw that always—fucking always—pulled me to her. The smell of blood hit me before we reached the last step, and the guy behind me started to gag, letting us all know he wasn’t used to gore.