#Chapter 365 – Assault
Sinclair
We move quickly through the sewers, getting to our launching point in less time than I had estimated it would take. I glance at my phone, not anticipating that we’d have been able to receive any messages from our home base, but disappointed regardless.
As our men range themselves on either side of the exit to the sewer, which will open directly onto Xander’s property, Roger turns to me.
“Ready for this?” he asks, his face tight.
I simply nod to him, doing my best to ignore my wolf prowling anxiously inside my chest. Then, as one, my brother and I move forward to the front of the line. If there’s any unexpected fire, I want us to take it – not our men.
Our men stand tense behind us in two lines as Roger slowly, silently, pushes open the door. And then, with one final glance at him, I’m through.
I pull myself out of the sewer and find myself in a garden with significant cover, which is good. We sent a drone to scope out the landscape, of course, but we hadn’t quite been able to discern the height of the plants. I crouch down immediately, looking around for anything suspicious, but am greeted only by silence – just the cool sounds of a large suburban garden at night.
I turn towards the Tudor house to my left – Xander’s home, where he’s been living since his brother left the throne. It looks…almost too innocent, too nice, to be housing such a maniacal man – who plots to get unsuspecting women pregnant and steal their babies. I shake my head, hating him anew, and then I turn back to the sewer to gesture my brother and our men forward.
As they filter out of the sewer behind me, I move forward towards the house.
Our father did good work in the past days – we have plans of the house from the city that were updated only ten years ago when Xander, apparently needing more space for his schemes, added a small extension. Those plans allowed us to identify an entrance to the house’s basement through the garden which serves our needs well.
As I slink towards the house, I’m relieved to see that the entrance is precisely where we thought it would be. Nodding to Roger, asking him to wait, I skirt across a garden path and inspect the double doors that will lead to a set of steep stairs that head down into the basement. My eyes flit over the wooden doors, their rusty hinges and chipped paint. When I turn to the handles, I’m surprised to see that they’re held shut with only a rusty old chain.
Frowning a little, I reach out and take the chain in my hand, giving it a hard, sharp yank. It falls to pieces.
I turn back to my brother, knowing that he’s watching my every move. He frowns at the chain in my hand, and I know that his thoughts are echoing my own. Is this all…
Too easy! My wolf howls, pacing inside of me, his tongue hanging out of his mouth slathered in his stress. Can’t be – too easy no-no- – turn around – try again –
I take a deep breath, shaking my head as I study the door. Honestly, it does feel too easy…
But are we going to turn this down? Walk away from the opportunity to infiltrate this man’s house with a full stock of healthy men just because it’s too easy? Isn’t it also very possible that, after twenty-some years of going unnoticed, that Xander has just begun to think of himself as untouchable and dropped his guard?
I sigh, signaling Roger forward. He’s at my side almost instantly.
“What do you think?” I murmur, looking between him and the doors.
“I’m suspicious,” he says with a sigh, but then he just shakes his head. “But Dominic, I don’t know when we’re going to have a better chance to do this. If we can get inside…shouldn’t we take the chance?”
I nod, agreeing, though my wolf snarls and snaps. I run a mental hand down his ruff, asking him to steady, but he shakes me off. I frown and shake my own head, determined regardless.
“Okay,” I say, yanking one of the doors open and peering down into the basement. “Let’s go.”
Then I haul the other door up and slip down the narrow stone stairs, peering into the darkness with my keen vision and working hard to determine if there is anything waiting for us down here. When I see nothing, I signal Roger forward with me.
We both enter the basement, which is dusty and filled with a bunch of junk, but otherwise largely unremarkable. We sweep the room as quickly as we can, using our hearing and our senses of smell to determine if anything is down here but…
“I don’t think anyone’s been down here for months,” Roger murmurs to me when we come back together. “I think…we keep going.”
I nod, agreeing, and signal our men to follow, which they do..
When half are in the room, Roger and I move up the basement steps towards the first floor, listening closely for any noises from the house. But from our position behind the door, we can’t hear anything.
I look down the stairs towards my men. The man in the lead nods to me, letting me know that we’re all in, except for the two who we’ve left guard in the garden. Understanding, I flip on the radio on my shoulder so that we can stay in contact, knowing that once we go through this final door…
There’s not going to be any need for secrecy. Then, glancing once more at Roger for any reason to stop – he just holds my gaze steadily I press open the door to the main house and slip through.
The house is quiet as if…well, as if it’s the middle of the night, and everyone is upstairs sleeping. Or…I hesitate to think it but the thought pops into my mind…as if nobody’s here at all.
Roger comes to stand next to me, surveying the kitchen for any threats, any reason to hesitate or attack….
But there’s nothing. No one’s here.
Our men start to come up the stairs behind us so Roger and I move through the kitchen towards the living room, looking for the stairway upstairs to the bedroom levels that I know starts there. But as we move – as our men continue to follow with us – I start to hesitate more.
Because because Xander is not an uncareful man. He might be a recluse, and someone attuned to anonymity, but he’s also someone who has contracted with priests of a dark god for decades, who had them following my mate and her sister for their entire lives…
So why doesn’t he have any guards?
Not even one?
My head snaps back towards the kitchen as I hear a door slam. I see one of my soldiers flinch, looking back at the basement door in surprise, his eyes wide.
The door is shut but I can tell, when he looks at me, that he did not shut it. That the door, for all he can tell, shut itself.
My eyes fly back to Roger’s at my side and we both instantly fall into defensive crouches. “Shit,” Roger says, looking all around. “I think -”
But before he can tell me what, light flares through the room. And around us, priests materialize from thin air, their hands glowing with spells, their faces lit with wicked grins.
