Zubair stepped into the open where the heat line he’d rolled off the grain bin met the shade.

The first pair of dogs locked on him and darted in a pincer. They were highly trained.

The dog on the right feinted and skittered, his teeth flashing for a calf.

The left took the head-on line—the kill line.

Zubair spread his fingers and let the air between his palms turn heavy with temperature. The heat didn’t jump; it thickened, a curtain right at muzzle height.

The lead dog hit that curtain and reared, not understanding why the world suddenly hurt for no reason at all.

Its momentum died in three stuttering steps. The second tried to shoot the gap and found the same wall. Their fur curled at their shoulders. The smell of singed fur lifted under diesel and old grain.

"Back," Sera ordered, and Luci stayed, every muscle trembling with the insult of it.

Hunters used the dogs’ rush for their own push.

Three men took the left bin’s shadow, one slid under the light truck’s bumper, and two angled for the auger legs where Lachlan crouched, grinning like a lunatic at the choice.

Elias’s rifle worked in clean punctuation—one-two, one—holes opening right of center mass, heads snapping back, bodies collapsing with their gear still neat.

Zubair stepped toward the dogs and the line of men behind them felt it.

They checked, then shifted fire off him toward the humans who looked easier to kill.

Bullets nosed rock and ricocheted off bin ribs. A round whined past his ear; heat jumped instinctively around the sound and left the air glittering.

The dogs tried again, their training overriding their sense of danger.

He gave them a lane that looked open and then tightened it to nothing at jawline.

They snapped at what wasn’t there and bit heat instead. They would learn. They were not stupid. They were only loyal.

"Pressure right," Alexei called out, his voice as sharp as ice breaking.

He slid behind the pallet stack and knifed a hunter who tried to vault it, one hand closing gently over the man’s mouth while steel went home under ribs.

He let the body fall down like a gentleman setting a chair.

Lachlan launched from cover and met both men rushing his post with blue tinting his skin from head to toe.

He didn’t bellow so much as he laughed. Pushing the first man’s barrel aside with a forearm, he took the second’s legs out from under him with the machete’s back edge.

The leg stayed attached to the body. Barely. Only a few ligaments connected something that had never split apart before.

The man’s scream flipped into a gargle as Lachlan moved on and planted a boot in the first one’s chest hard enough to rattle his spine on the concrete.

The rifle tumbled to the ground, and Lachlan stole it and worked it like he’d been born with it.

The heavy rig’s belly fire climbed a crossmember and flirted with a hose again. Zubair flicked two fingers and the flame flattened, then leaned kindly the other way.

It was always controlled. Zubair intentions carrying through with every pass.

Keep the yard.

Cook the intruders.

Leave the trucks.

He pushed forward through his own flames, into the gap he’d made.

The dogs backed away from him, their ears flat, and their eyes white with fear.

But Zubair didn’t care about them. He wanted the men who trained them.

The handler whistled sharp and the pair snapped left as one, attempting to slip the edge of the zone and circle back for Sera.

Zubair stepped into their line and dropped a sheet of heat to the gravel. The dogs skidded and aborted.

The dog’s training fought terror... and for the first time since they were pups, terror won.

"Over the bins!" Elias barked. A hunter had climbed rib ladder rungs and brought a rifle up on the roofline.

Zubair didn’t look. He felt the angle, lifted his left hand, and brought heat up the corrugations like water up a wick.

The man shouted and let go at the wrong second.

His boots slipped, hands flailed; he slid through his own shadow, hit the pad on his back, and the breath left him in a grunt that never quite got back in.

"Launcher down," Elias added, his voice calm again. The man with the ruined tube tried to crawl for it anyway, face blistering where it had belched on him.

Alexei sent him to sleep with three inches of steel that went in quiet and came out clean.

The seventh truck’s driver picked that second to angle the nose and try to punch through the ice lanes with muscle.

Alexei smiled—small, mean—and thickened the glaze across both front tires to a clean plate. Rubber spun and shaved itself into ropes that flapped the fenders.

The engine redlined, and the truck refused to move.

Elias put a round through the block just to make sure that it stayed that way, and the engine obliged by dying with a sulk.

Zubair kept walking.

The yard heat crawled ahead of his boots and made mirage puddles that didn’t reflect anything but trouble.

Hunters tracked him and fired in bursts that stitched hot air. He kept the temperature between them and the world a little wrong so their sights lied.

Two bullets passed where he had been, not where he was. He didn’t run. He let them waste ammunition.

The dogs finally did what good dogs do: they tried to go around.

They cut for the bin ends and aimed for Sera’s flank, mouths open, eyes on the soft target that wasn’t soft.

Luci launched toward them like a thrown spear.

He met the first mid-chest and flipped it.

The second hit his shoulder and bounced; fangs clacked on fur; Luci twisted and took the throat.

Blood sprayed the gravel in a bright arc. Sera didn’t flinch.

She stepped past both animals and put a boot on the second handler’s wrist when he reached for a belt blade.

Bones popped and the handler choked on his own surprise.

Her rifle answered twice and made him forget knives forever.

The ninth truck’s passenger door kicked open and a man in nicer gear slid out low, his movement tight, and his eyes smart.

Definitely Captain material, not street trash.

He sighted on Sera first because men like him did the math and always picked the best solution to any problem.

Zubair felt the aim land on her like a fly he couldn’t see and wanted to kill.