Blood and Bone | 1

4 | 5

I paced in the hotel room that we'd bought with more stolen cash. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Jake was pondering over the map he had, trying to figure out the best strategy to take the airport with. I was antsy, having nothing to do and ready to go accomplish what we'd been working towards this entire time.

I looked over to see Jake glaring flatly at me, wanting me to stop walking back and forth. I sat down on the couch opposite the chair he was in.

"What have you found out?" I questioned, nodding my head at the map he'd been poring over.

"Well, we've already established that we should come in on the east side," Jake told me, pointing to a place on the map of the town we were in. "The eastern side is where the larger aircraft are stored. It's most likely the place where they'll be loading in the prisoners." We had gone to the airport earlier to scope it out and see what we were dealing with. There were no signs of the Club there yet.

"Okay," I said slowly. "So we ambush them. But we can't take on a whole gang by ourselves so we need to be crafty."

"Luckily, crafty is my specialty. We're going to plant a trap."

"What's the bait?"

He answered my question with one of his own. "What do they want the most?"

"Money and power?"

"And who is standing in their way of getting those things?"

Us. "So one of us two is the bait that lures them to an early demise."

"Exactly. I will purposely get caught and lure them into this space," he pointed at a niche between rows of hangars, "I'll be buying time and keeping their attention while you kill as many as you can."

"We're not going to be able to lure all of them over to you," I reasoned. "What about the others?"

"We'll need to get as many of them away from the plane as possible. By then, they'll be loading up the prisoners as fast as they can because they'll know that we're coming for them. So you need to work especially quickly. Do anything that you need to do to get them away from the cargo."

"And once we have the rest of our teammates? What happens then?"

"So many of the members will be dead or wounded that it will be easy to fight the rest off. We'll steal one of the Club's trucks and make a quick getaway. They used to keep homemade bombs in the back of their soldier-carrying trucks. If needed, we can bomb them down while we escape."

It made me uneasy that we were going up alone against the entire might of the Crepuscule Club while the rest of our team would be carted away in chains. Their lives depended on us. I didn't think I'd ever had that kind of power before. I'd never killed to save good people; I had only killed to ruin them.

"Do you understand the plan?" Jake questioned, his cool jade eyes staring into my face.

"I do," I answered, knowing that there were a million ways that this plan could go wrong. It then occurred to me that Jake was probably ready and prepared for that if it was to happen.

     "Hundsen could be there," I noted after a moment of thinking.

      "He could be. Even if he is, the plan doesn't change," he dismissed the thought with a curt reply.

      The room was quiet. I thought about the position that Jake was in, constantly fighting against the man that had apparently wronged him so badly. It reminded me of the old days, when I was in a similar situation.