Ashes of the Covington Legacy
The travel from abandoned Hollywood backlot, ‘Confrontation Ground’ to Climax: Central square of the backlot, under a burning marquee consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The marquee blazed overhead, a roaring column of fire that turned the backlot square into a theater of shadow and orange light. The heat warped the air between the two men, but neither blinked.
Lucas Davenport stood flat-footed on cracked asphalt, no crouch, no predatory sway. He was simply a man watching another man hold a rifle. Dorian Covington’s knuckles were white around the stock, the sniper’s scope catching the flames and throwing a ruby glint across his cheek.
*He wants me to react to the gun,* Lucas thought. *He wants the wolf to rise so he can call me a monster in front of the cameras he’s hidden in the marquee struts.*
He didn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Outnumbered,” Lucas repeated. He tilted his head, counting the shadows behind Dorian. Two men by the prop stagecoach. One prone behind a row of oil drums. Three more flanking the costume trailer. Seven total. Not ideal. But workable. “I’ve counted worse odds on a Tuesday.”
Dorian’s finger rested on the trigger guard, not the trigger. Professional. “Your security chief is pinned behind the catering tent. Your woman is hiding in the dark with your whelp. You have nothing, Davenport. Sign over the production rights, walk away, and I’ll let you keep the boy’s legs.”
Lucas smiled. It was a thin, cold thing. “You talk a lot for someone who’s never thrown a punch without three bodyguards holding the other guy’s arms.”
The radio clipped to Lucas’s belt crackled twice. A single pulse. *Jasper is in position.*
The clock on the water tower behind Dorian read 9:47 PM. Lucas had forty-three seconds before the Covington snipers finished their thermal sweep of the eastern lot and found Isabella and Max.
Thirty-eight seconds now.
“Aren’t you going to check on your son?” Dorian asked, sweet venom in his voice. “The little gold-eyed freak. Does he know what you are yet? Does he beg you not to change?”
The words landed. They were meant to. Lucas let them sit in his chest like stones, felt the weight, and then pushed them down into the cold vault where he kept everything that could make him lose control.
*He’s trying to trigger you. Don’t let him.*
“I gave up on begging the night I buried my father,” Lucas said. “And I buried him with his eyes open.”
—
Isabella pressed her back against the generator housing, Max’s small body tucked against her side. The boy’s hands were clamped over his ears, but his eyes—those impossible gold eyes—were wide open, fixed on the flames consuming the “CineStar 9” sign above the square.
“Mom, is Dad going to fight that man?”
She tried to find words that were both true and safe. “Your father is going to do what he always does. He’s going to protect us.”
“They have guns.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of his statement cut through every lie she could have told. Max was eight. He wasn’t stupid. He’d seen the men with rifles, heard the heavy boots on gravel, watched his mother drag him through the dark like they were in one of the horror films shot on this very lot four summers ago.
Isabella’s hand found the junction box bolted to the generator’s side. She’d helped wire half the practical effects on this backlot—blow-away walls, gas explosions, the collapsing bridge they’d used in *Badlands Reckoning* three years back. The production crew had run temporary feeder cables from this generator to the marquee, the water tower floodlights, and the row of gas-propane fire pits they used for night shoots.
The master relay was right here.
Burn the building. A flash of thought from earlier: If I can make noise, I can make chaos. A distraction.
*It’s not combat,* she reasoned. *It’s theater.*
She popped the relay cover with her thumbnail. Inside, a row of breaker switches. She traced the circuits with her finger—red and black, thick as her wrist—and found the two that ran to the propane main.
Max watched her hands. “What are you doing?”
“Remember how we used to set off the ‘explosion’ for the action hero to jump through?”
“The big boom that sounds like thunder but is just gas?”
“That’s the one.” She kissed the top of his head. “Cover your ears, baby.”
She threw both breakers.
—
The first explosion ripped through the eastern prop warehouse. A column of fire punched through the roof, sending a wave of heat across the square that made the marquee flames look like candles. The snipers behind the oil drums broke cover, scrambling for solid ground.
*Now.*
Lucas moved.
He didn’t shift. Didn’t growl. Didn’t do anything a werewolf would do. He simply sprinted—a flat, hard, human sprint—toward the fire-scored gap between the costume trailer and the stagecoach. Dorian raised the rifle, tracking him, but the heat from the warehouse explosion kicked up a wall of dust and debris that blurred the scope’s vision.
“Light him up!” Dorian shouted.
The two men by the stagecoach raised their sidearms. Lucas hit the ground, slid on his knees across the asphalt, and came up behind the wheel of a rusted farm truck used in the period dramas. Bullets punched through the cab, spiderwebbing the glass, but the engine block was solid.
*Seven targets. One is calling the shots. Two are fixed positions. Four are mobile.*
The radio crackled twice more. *Jasper is inside the perimeter.*
Lucas risked a glance around the wheel well. Jasper was fifty yards out, using the overturned catering cart as a mobile shield, advancing slow and methodical. The security chief caught Lucas’s eye, tapped his own chest twice, then pointed toward the costume trailer.
*Flanking right.*
Lucas responded by popping up and firing three rounds from the pistol he’d drawn from his ankle holster—two covering shots at the oil drum position, one wide to keep the stagecoach men pinned. None of them hit. They weren’t meant to.
They were meant to draw attention.
Dorian took the bait. The Covington heir stepped out from behind the burning marquee, rifle still raised, and walked toward the farm truck with the confidence of a man who’d never lost a fight.
“You’re stalling, Davenport. You think your people are coming? The police? The local news?” He laughed, and the firelight painted his teeth yellow. “I own this city. I own the sheriff. I own the permits that let this lot burn to the ground. There’s no cavalry.”
Lucas counted the distance. Twenty-three feet. He could close it in two seconds. But Dorian’s finger was still on the trigger guard, not the trigger. The man wanted a conversation. He wanted Lucas to beg.
*Keep talking,* Lucas thought. *You’re already dead. You just don’t know it yet.*
“You keep saying you own things,” Lucas said. “But I’ve looked at your books, Covington. You don’t own anything. You owe. The family trust is leveraged to the hilt. The only reason you need this production is because the bank called in your father’s loans this morning.”
Dorian’s smile flickered.
*Got you.*
“Owen Covington is being arrested as we speak,” Lucas continued. “Not by local law. Federal. Wire fraud. Interstate racketeering. The kind of charges that don’t get dismissed by calling in favors with the county sheriff. Your father is going to die in a cell, and you’re going to follow him there.”
“Liar.”
“Your father’s safe combination,” Lucas said, “is the date of your mother’s death. That’s where he keeps the recordings of every bribe he’s ever paid. I know because I found them. I read them. And I handed them to the FBI this morning before I came here.”
Dorian’s face went white. The rifle dropped six inches.
Six inches was all Lucas needed.
—
Isabella watched from behind the generator as Lucas exploded from cover. No supernatural speed. No wolf. Just a man who knew exactly where to put his weight and exactly when to move.
He slammed into Dorian’s chest with his shoulder, driving the rifle barrel wide. The weapon discharged once, the round screaming into the night sky. Then Lucas’s arm came up, caught Dorian’s wrist, and twisted.
The rifle clattered to the asphalt.
Dorian swung with his free hand—a wide, wild hook that would have broken a lesser man’s jaw. Lucas took it on the forearm, pivoted, and drove his elbow into Dorian’s ribs. The sound was wet. Dull. Like a fist hitting raw meat.
“You think—” Dorian gasped, staggering back, “—you think you’ve won?”
Lucas didn’t answer. He stepped into the gap, planted his foot, and threw a straight right hand that caught Dorian square in the mouth. Blood sprayed. The Covington heir’s head snapped back, but he didn’t go down. He had reach, training, and the kind of desperate adrenaline that came from watching your entire life burn in front of you.
He came back with a low kick that buckled Lucas’s knee. Lucas dropped, caught himself, and ate a knee to the ribs for his trouble. The pain was bright and specific—two cracked ribs, probably. He’d had worse.
*Keep him talking to yourself. Don’t let him see you’re hurt.*
Dorian grabbed a fistful of Lucas’s jacket and yanked him upright. “Where is he? Where’s the boy?”
*He’s not asking for the boy’s location. He’s asking for confirmation that you’re afraid.*
Lucas looked past Dorian’s shoulder. Jasper had neutralized the oil drum position—two men down, zip-tied, their weapons in the dirt. The stagecoach crew was surrendering, hands raised, watching a third man flee into the dark.
*Targets reduced to one.*
“Max,” Lucas said, loud enough for the fire to carry, “cover your ears.”
From behind the generator, a small voice: “Okay, Dad!”
Dorian’s eyes went wide. He started to turn, started to look for the source of the voice, and that was the mistake that ended it.
Lucas grabbed his collar, pulled him close, and headbutted him directly in the bridge of the nose.
The crunch was satisfying. Dorian’s grip went slack, his eyes rolled, and he dropped like a sack of concrete. Lucas followed him down, one knee on his chest, one hand around his throat.
“You wanted to see the wolf,” Lucas said, breathing hard. “You wanted to prove I was a monster. But I don’t need to change to be what you fear.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that not even the fire could carry. “I’m just a man who’s going to watch you rot.”
Dorian tried to speak. Blood bubbled from his split lip. “You… you can’t…”
“I already did.” Lucas stood, pulled his phone from his pocket, and dialed. “Jasper. It’s done. Bring the restraints.”
—
Isabella ran across the square before the smoke cleared. Max’s hand was tight in hers, his small legs pumping to keep up, but he didn’t complain. He’d watched his father fight a man with a rifle and win. To an eight-year-old, that was the most incredible thing in the world.
“Is he—” She stopped, breathless, as Lucas turned to face her.
His left eye was swelling shut. There was blood on his lip, a cut above his brow, and what was definitely going to be a spectacular bruise forming along his jaw. He looked like he’d been through a war.
He looked beautiful.
“Is it over?” she whispered.
Lucas’s arms came around her, pulling her and Max into his chest. The boy pressed himself against his father’s side, and Lucas held them both like he was afraid they’d dissolve into the smoke.
Dorian lay unconscious at Lucas’s feet. Jasper cuffed him. Isabella ran to Lucas, Max in her arms. “Is it over?” she whispered. Lucas kissed her forehead, blood on his lip. “It’s over. They’re done. Now, we start.”