Hammer

3

Shots rang out behind him, and wood exploded from a tree to his right.

He turned and shot back, but after three rounds, his gun clicked. “Damn it!” He slung the harness over his shoulder. While empty, a rifle could still be useful for other things, and if he got his hands on some more rounds, he’d be back in business.

Another shot took him in the shoulder, and he tumbled forward and down an embankment. His head hit a boulder, and then ice-cold water soaked into his orange jumpsuit. He stood in the knee-high stream but stumbled, more from the blow to the head than anything else. His vision blurred, doubling everything before it solidified into one image. “Son of a b …”

A man tackled him from behind as he stood. Jostling the man over his shoulder, another man grabbed him by one leg before another grabbed an arm. The first man splashed down into the water, but before Hammer could land another blow, a fourth man jumped on his back.

“Vykovsky!” The general’s voice rang through the forest like a hammer striking an anvil. Nydia was certainly not a woman to be crossed, but cross her Hammer would if it meant freedom.

Hammer fought off the men, but more came. Elbows, knees, fists, foreheads, everything was used as a weapon for and against him. Eventually, four battered and bruised men held Hammer on his knees for the general while the others licked their wounds off to the side.

“Not too bad, Vykovsky.” Nydia grinned, clearly pleased that her guards, shifters themselves, had finally subdued him. Her green eyes sparkled like the stream they shoved him down in. “It’s clear you want your freedom. You left all the others to die back at the bunker. Lucky for you, we have a strict policy against wasting talent.” She gripped his short blond hair, yanking his head back to look at him in his blue eyes. “Do you want your freedom, Vykovsky? Are you willing to do anything for it?”

“I f*****g blew up half the dig site, didn’t I?” Hammer growled, jerking and twisting his arms in an attempt to break free. His shoulder screamed at him since it wasn’t done healing from the previous gunshot wound.

“A minor setback, but it’s your lucky day. I was actually just on my way to you when you started your little insurrection. You love insurrections, don’t you?” She grimaced and smacked him before her face melted into a sweet smile. “As I was saying, we just got a distress call from Dr. Jackson’s daughter, Charlie Jackson. We need someone who knows the area.”

Hammer spat off to the side. “The area?”

“You’ll be going home, Vykovsky. She’s in Thiorheil. Since you’re a dragon shifter, you can fly in and out for the grab and walk her the rest of the way to safety.”

“Why not have one of your f*****g goon squads do it?”

Nydia flipped her silver hair back over her shoulders. “We need someone expendable like you. Just in case, you know? Don’t want to deepen any hostilities by having one of our men get flagged in the area. And you … Well, you were just a runaway inmate who went to his homeland and got shot. Hell, we even have footage of you escaping now! Thanks for that. Locks our alibi down nice and tight. But don’t die. Okay? I’d love to see you back so we can have some more fun.”

Hammer cursed himself, then the general. “f**k you.”

“Oh, no, no, no.” She waved a finger in his face. “f**k yourself. You’re here because of what you did. Here I am offering you an out. You should be thanking me.”

What I did … What a crock of s**t. If it hadn’t been for that piece of s**t …

“Ajmal Basu has her in a camp nestled deep in your homeland. You get her out, and we’ll give you not only a get-out-of-jail card but we’ll even give you the money needed to set up a new life. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Hammer’s hard eyes stared up at her. “You know Ajmal is the man who pointed the finger at me, right?”

Her pink lips stretched into a sultry grin. “Oh, we know everything about you, Vykovsky. Your mission is to get Charlie out, but …” She frowned and shrugged her shoulders. “If you happen to find yourself pointing a gun at Basu, you’ll be cleared to pull the trigger.”

“How do you know I won’t just kill Ajmal and f**k off?”

She laughed before gripping the back of his neck, her fingers digging into his spine. “We’ll still have the tracker in your neck, dumbass.”

Her grip on his neck was like a child’s. Unlike her henchmen, she wasn’t a shifter, and no amount of grip on her part was ever going to faze Hammer. “Then how the hell am I going to shift?”

She knocked her knuckles on his head. “You’re not the thinker of the mission, Vykovsky. Leave that to your betters. Okay?” She let go of him to saunter off a couple paces, turning her back to him. “The tracker inhibits your abilities. We can deactivate that function …” She rounded on him. “… And we can reactivate it as well.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.” He grimaced as the bullet in his shoulder was finally pushed out. The bullet dropped to the forest floor as Hammer envisioned Ajmal dropping to the ground just the same, cold and covered in blood. Saving the girl would simply be a side effect, a by-product of obtaining his revenge.

I’d die to kill you, Ajmal, but better yet, killing you is going to let me live free.