Heat bloomed under her skin, the sensation bright and immediate, and it pulled her focus like a hook. Her eyes snapped across the courtyard, scanning through the smoke and movement, narrowing in on the source before the pain had time to settle into anything duller.
Where is he. There. There he is.
He was still firing.
The rifle bucked in his hands, rounds snapping past where she had been and then where she was supposed to be, his corrections coming just late enough to miss her each time. She shifted her line between his shots, closing the distance in a pattern that denied him a stable aim, each step taking her out of the space he committed to.
He fired again. She was not there.
He fired again. She was already inside his range.
She hit him before he could adjust, her hand closing on the rifle and ripping it free with a twist that took his grip with it. The backhand that followed sent him into the wall hard enough that the air left him in a sound he did not finish making. He started to fall, sliding down the stone, his legs folding under him.
She did not let him reach the ground.
The rifle drove through his chest as he dropped, her motion precise, the force carrying him into the wall and pinning him there. The impact fixed him in place, suspended for a second in a position that made the point clear in a way the plan had not required.
He got me. He actually got me. Okay. That's fair. That's— no. Stay.
She stepped back from him, the moment passing as quickly as it had arrived, her focus snapping back to the rest of the courtyard.
Abigail appeared at her side without warning, ash blonde fur catching the light from the burning cache, her presence settling into the space like it had always been there.
"Good work."
The words were simple, genuine, and already behind them as Abigail's attention moved on.
Anissa's ear flicked once, a small acknowledgment she did not put into anything else. She did not need to answer.
Abigail tapped her earpiece.
"Perimeter."
Amber's voice came through warm and bright, threaded with a laugh she did not bother to hide.
"It's mine. You can come play too if you want."
Abigail did not smile, but something in her posture shifted, the confirmation landing clean.
"Proceed."
The connection clicked off.
***
The perimeter had been busy and was not anymore.
The ground bore the marks of something large moving through it at speed, tracks cut deep into the dirt where they had not needed to be and then disappeared entirely where the movement had left the ground altogether.
Trees at the edge of the woods showed breaks at heights that didn't match anything human, branches torn away in passing, the path of it visible only in the aftermath. There were bodies where there had been attempts to run, spaced out in a pattern that told its own story about how far each had gotten.
The silence that followed wasn't complete, but it had a shape to it, the absence of organized resistance more than the absence of sound. The estate behind it still burned and shouted, but out here the work had already been done.
He hadn't made it far.
The man lay half in the dirt and half against the roots of a tree, his hands clawing at the ground in front of him in a motion that had lost any real hope of progress.
His legs were gone below the knee, the edges of it ragged and wrong, the blood trailing behind him in a line that marked how long he had been trying to move anyway. His radio crackled faintly at his side, the channel still open to something that was not answering him.
He heard her before he saw her.
The sound was not heavy the way it should have been for something that size, the steps controlled, almost playful, closing the distance without urgency. When she came into view, she was upright, the shift already done without ceremony, her form still massive, fur lying along muscle that moved easily under it. Her eyes found him and lit in a way that had nothing to do with the fire behind her.
There he is. Told him I'd find him.
She crouched down in front of him, bringing herself to his level, one hand resting on her knee as she tilted her head slightly.
"Hi there," she said, the word soft and bright, like they had met somewhere else under better circumstances. "There you are. I was looking for you."
He tried to push himself back and did not move, his arms slipping in his own blood as the motion failed. His mouth opened and closed around something that didn't come out right.
"You said you were going to fuck me," she continued, her tone almost conversational, like she was reminding him of a detail they had agreed on. "I told i'd come find you and let you do it in person. So I did." She gestured lightly between them, her fingers indicating the space they shared. "In person."
He shook his head, a small, desperate motion, the denial not anchored to anything that could change what was happening.
"Please," he said, the word thin and stretched. "Please don't—"
She looked around for a second, her gaze drifting past him and then back, as if searching for something else.
"Where'd the tough guy go," she asked, genuinely curious, her brows lifting a fraction. "The one who was going to turn me into Swiss cheese. I thought he'd be here." She leaned in slightly, peering at him as if checking if he might have hidden him somewhere. "No?"
Her eyes dropped to what was left of his legs and she nodded once, as if acknowledging a point in a conversation he had not been part of.
"I have to say," she went on, her voice warming, "compliments to the chef." She smiled, the expression easy and unforced, like she meant it. "Really good."
He made a sound that broke halfway through, his body curling in on itself as much as it could.
"I'm going to make it painless, just this one time," she said, and there was something almost reassuring in the way she said it, like she was offering him a kindness she did not have to give. "One thing first."
She reached down and unclipped the radio from his belt, the motion gentle in a way that contrasted with everything else. She turned it in her hand once, then held it out to him.
"Call for backup," she told him, the instruction clear and simple. "Tell them to bring everything their money can buy. All the bosses are going to die tonight, and they should know it's coming."
For a second, he just stared at the device in her hand, his mind lagging behind the shift in what she was asking of him. Then his fingers closed around it, shaking, and he brought it up to his mouth because it was something he could do, something that fit into a pattern he understood even if nothing else did.
"This is—" he started, his voice catching, then forcing itself through. "We need everything. All units. Bring everything. They're— they're here." His breath hitched, the words coming faster now, spilling over each other. "All the heads are going to die tonight. You need to—"
The transmission crackled, a burst of static cutting across it, and somewhere far from the estate a monitoring station flagged the unknown channel for a single moment before the signal dropped.
He lowered the radio slowly when it went dead, his hands loosening around it as if it had lost its weight.
"Gun," he said after a second, the word pulled out of him with what little he had left. "Give me a gun. Let me end it myself."
Amber watched him for a moment, her head tilting the other way this time, the request landing somewhere that made her consider it.
"Hm," she said, the sound thoughtful, her eyes flicking down to his hands and then back up to his face. "Where would be the fun in that."
It was not cruel when she said it. It was honest.
His expression shifted at that, something like disappointment moving through it, the last small hope he had held onto slipping away. There was a sadness to it that did not have anywhere to go, settling into his features without dramatics, his eyes filling quietly.
"You promised," he whispered, the words barely there.
She nodded, as if that mattered, as if she was taking it into account.
"I know," she said, and there was a softness to it that might have been kindness if it had been anywhere else.
She reached out and placed her paw on top of his head, the size of it covering most of him, her claws resting lightly against his scalp without breaking skin. The contact stilled him in a way nothing else had, his body going rigid under the weight of it.
"I've always wondered something," she went on, her tone shifting into something almost curious, like she was sharing a thought that had been sitting with her for a while. "You know how much force it takes to squeeze a human head until it pops like a melon or a balloon?" She glanced up as if checking a number in the air. "It's a lot. More than people think."
Her gaze dropped back to him, her eyes bright.
"I think I can do it with one paw," she said, the idea clearly interesting to her. "What do you think."
He was crying now, the tears coming quietly, his breath hitching around them without any attempt to hide it. There was no answer in him that mattered, but he tried anyway, a sound forming that did not resolve into words.
She watched him for a second longer, taking that in, then nodded once like she had reached a conclusion.
"Well," she said, the word light.
"Let's find out."