Page 29 of Bound By Love
“What if the ones traveling here don’t get here in time?” Caro asked.
“I really don’t think that’s something we have to worry about. They may not all live in the same place, but I think they’ll all be in the same area. They’re stronger together. If for some reason I’m wrong, then I think they’ll wait to attack.
“Once they know where we are, if they expect more demons to arrive, they won’t come for us immediately. They’ll monitor us to make sure we don’t leave while they grow their army before trying to enter. When theydocome for us, they’ll accept nothing less than death, and there will be no mercy.”
Caro already knew all this, but hearing him say it in that flat, assured tone made her gulp. “No mercy.”
“And we won’t show them any either.”
She had no intention of doing that, but she was unsure how she would handle killing something. Though she’d stabbed some of them before, none had died at her hand. It wouldn’t be easy, but she’d do whatever it took to stay alive and protect Saber.
“We’re going to have to be careful not to become injected, too,” Saber continued. “We know how to cure those who are now, or at least we’re pretty sure we do, but it will slow us down.”
“And be just awful,” Caro said with a shudder.
“That too.”
When the hole was deep enough, Caro set her shovel aside and scrambled out to retrieve the wooden stakes they’d sharpened into lethal points. She returned to the trap with them.
She handed some to Saber, and together they hammered them into the ground. Careful not to accidentally fall onto one of the stakes, Caro tiptoed around the wood as it filled more and more of the hole.
When they finished, they tossed their tools out and pulled themselves out of the hole. Caro’s heart hammered as she tried not to picture losing her grip and tumbling back onto the stakes, but she managed to escape the death trap without any holes in her body.
Once outside the pit, they carefully placed the sticks, leaves, dirt, and branches they’d gathered over top of it. When they finished, Caro stepped back to admire their handiwork. If someone wasn’t aware of the trap, they’d never know it was there.
Caro wiped her hands on her jeans as Saber lifted the map Declan, Julian, and Roland had printed out from the numerous computers they brought in. It laid out, in intricate detail, every inch of her property.
Xs marked the places to set traps. The numbers next to each trap indicated which team was supposed to create them. They were DT3, also known as the Death Trap Three team.
Any X with a circle around it meant the job was complete. The Xs didn’t start until a few hundred feet from the wall. They would lure the demons and Savages into a false sense of security before unleashing a ton of death in the form of clustered Xs that would be impossible for all of them to evade.
Saber circled the X they were working on now and pulled out his handheld radio from where it hung in a holster at his hip. He hit the button to inform the other twenty groups in the woods that they’d set trap number two hundred.
Those twenty groups would circle it off on their maps, and back at the main base of operations, her parents’ dining room, Roland would mark the large map hanging on the wall. They had to make sure no one else accidentally wandered into one of them.
Not all the traps were full of stakes. Saber had also established land mines throughout the woods. It was now more dangerous to stroll through her woods than to steal a bear cub from its mama while running through a nest of vipers.
Caro leaned on her shovel’s handle while she surveyed the trees that once offered solace and limitless places to hide as a child. She’d daydreamed about ghosts, trolls, ogres, and all sorts of fantastical creatures beneath these boughs. Some were her friends, some were not, but all of them made each day more fun.
“Ready?” Saber asked.
His question tore Caro from her reverie. To hide her sadness, she smiled at him as she pulled her shovel from the earth. “On to the next death trap.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
They walkedto the next X designated for them on the map. It was the last one they had to set today, which meant the other teams would finish soon too.
And once they finished with this, they’d shower and eat before heading to White Bridge with Declan and Willow. She hoped they’d have some time to sit and relax first, but she wasn’t going to rush Saber through setting the land mine.
Not having much experience with the damn things, she hovered twenty feet away as he worked with the ease of someone with a lot of experience. That didn’t ease her anxiety as she chewed on her bottom lip and gripped her shovel so tightly her hands ached.
One wrong move… Stop it!she scolded herself.He knows what he’s doing.
Still, it killed her to watch her mate working with something that could tear away pieces of him. Instead, she focused on their plan for tonight in the hopes of calming the wild flutter of her heart.
They’d decided against bringing any more than the four of them tonight. It would be too obvious to the demons if a bunch of Alliance members suddenly showed up with swords.
However, they already knew she and Saber were in Maine. The Savages, who arrived at her parents’ store to try taking her, would have gotten word back to the demons about who they were hunting and what they looked like. The demons would recognize Saber.
