by Kat Falls
“Stop it,” I hissed. “Just stop.”
“Is there anything else we need to know to find him?” Everson asked.
Deepnita shrugged. “Wraith stays in the woods, out of —”
“Rafe,” I corrected.
Deepnita continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “ — sight. But he’s always there, casing the compound.”
“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Why does a predator sniff out prey?” Charmaine asked softly, suddenly back in the land of the sane.
I flinched as her eyes sought me out and she inhaled deeply. When a slow smile curled over her mouth, I wanted to run back to the hatch.
“Cruz!” Captain Hyrax’s voice barked out of Everson’s radio. “What did you think you were doing, letting that animal out of its cage?”
Charmaine snarled, but Mahari hooked her by an arm and drew her aside. She beckoned the others over as well and then spoke to them in a low voice. Too low for me to hear, though I tried.
“I’ll brief you later,” Everson told the captain in a flat tone. “I got the intel on the target’s location. I’ll drop McEvoy on the beach south of Gateway. Send the strike team in a Zodiac.”
“Where’s the target?” Hyrax demanded.
“Downriver, in central Illinois.”
Why wasn’t he telling Hyrax about the rivers merging? That had to be a very distinct location. Especially if the lionesses were talking about where the Illinois River joined the Mississippi. Not a place you could miss. And he wasn’t saying anything about the compound either. Heartland. Maybe to give me some leverage with the guards? A bargaining chip to keep Rafe safe? I couldn’t read Everson’s expression, and he wasn’t meeting my eyes as he finished his recap.
I glanced to where the lionesses had been huddled, but they were gone. No thank-you, no good-bye. But then, we were just humans.
Everson switched off the radio and said, “You don’t have to go with the strike team. They can handle it.”
I scowled. “By handle it, you mean take Rafe’s blood, then shoot him.”
“You promised to put him down when he turned feral,” Everson said gently. “Sounds like he’s there.”
The thought of it made my chest ache, as if my heart might shatter into pieces. I didn’t want to see him foaming at the mouth or snapping like a rabid dog. I wanted to remember him the way he’d been — the wild boy from my dad’s stories — handsome and rude and funny and fast and vulnerable in ways he’d never admit. I should let the guards handle it. Rafe hadn’t asked me to shoot him, only to see that it got done when the time came. If the lionesses were right, that time was now. But no matter how much I wanted to hand the whole painful mess over to the patrol, I couldn’t. “I need to see him with my own eyes.”
“And if he’s feral?”
“Are you sure the cure can’t bring him back?”
“If the virus has damaged parts of his brain, there’s no undoing it.”
“Then I’ll keep my promise.”
Everson raised his brows. “To put him down?”
I nodded despite the prickle behind my eyes.
As we cut through the meadow for the riverbank, Everson handed me a cigar-sized metal cylinder. “A collection vial,” he explained as he flicked on a slim flashlight. “Touch that end to Rafe’s forearm.” He trained the light beam on the wide end of the cylinder. “Over his vein, then push the button. It’ll draw his blood without any effort from you. Just hold it steady for thirty seconds.”
I slipped the metal cylinder into a zipped pocket on my jacket above the glow stick, which was beginning to dim. My legs felt shaky, but still, I wanted to meet up with the strike team and head into the zone. I couldn’t let another minute slip by in case the virus had wormed its way into Rafe’s brain. Every minute I wasted could be another brain cell destroyed.
“Remember to take his blood before you give him the —” Everson inhaled sharply, his attention on the river’s edge. “What the —” He sprinted for the bank.
The riverbank looked fine to me from where I stood — dark and rocky — but I followed the bouncing flashlight beam and saw the problem soon enough. The strike team lay scattered across the beach like logs of driftwood. Dead or unconscious? I slowed my steps, hesitant to get any closer until I knew —
“What did you do to them?” Everson slammed to a stop in front of the black speedboat pulled up on the rocks.
And there were the lionesses, looking supremely pleased with themselves as they lounged on the boat’s rubber hull — all except Neve. She sat cross-legged on the rocky shore, humming to the unconscious man she had cradled on her lap.
“What did you do to them?” Everson asked again. There was fury in every line of his body.
“Nothing. Hit them.” Neve rubbed her cheek over the unconscious guard’s blond buzz cut. “He smells nice.”
“You hit all of them?” I crouched by one of the downed guards but saw no hint of blood. “Are they alive?”
“As alive as they’ll ever be,” Deepnita said with a chuckle. “They are human after all.”
With a bouncing leap off the boat’s prow, Mahari landed within feet of me. “If a pack of guards can’t defend a boat, how’re they going to keep you safe, little sister?”
With a bared foot, she flipped the guard at my feet onto his back. He groaned but didn’t crack an eyelid. If he was awake, he wasn’t admitting to it. Not that I blamed him. If a wild-haired Amazon of a woman was huffing over me, I’d play possum too.
Mahari hooked a toe-claw under the neck of his shirt. “We got within striking distance — upwind — and they still didn’t know we were here. You think they can track down Rafe for you? Think again. He’ll smell them from a mile away. Hear them crashing through the woods like the stinking, stumbling humans they are. You need us, so we’ve decided to help you.”
Everson locked hard eyes on her. “For a price.”
She smirked. “You’re smart for a human.”
“You want the cure,” I guessed. Did I want them to come with me? Guards or the pride: Which would be worse for my health?
“Three doses,” Mahari confirmed.
All the patrol cared about was getting Rafe’s blood in a vial. They wouldn’t chance getting close to him if he was a threat — feral or not. Why risk their health when they could just shoot him from afar and take his blood as he lay dying? The lionesses, on the other hand, wouldn’t be afraid of Rafe’s bite since they were already infected. Plus, they would be the better trackers and not just because of their lion DNA but because they knew the zone. It was their home after all. And as for protecting me? Well, I didn’t matter to either group, but the lionesses might actually look out for me considering that I’d helped them twice now.
“Okay,” I confirmed.
“Okay, with conditions,” Everson corrected, his gaze pinned to Mahari. “First, you help us find Rafe and then get us back to the base unharmed. Only then do you get your three doses.”
“Us?” I demanded.
Mahari cocked her head, amused. “You don’t trust me?”
“You’re smart for a mongrel,” he said dryly.
Claws slipped from her nail beds and her lips pulled back, but I jumped between them before it went farther. “There’s no us. You’re not coming,” I said firmly. “Your mother would skin me alive,” I added in a whisper.
He waved aside my words as if I was exaggerating, which I wasn’t.
“I’m not letting you go alone with them,” he said.
“I didn’t ask for your permission,” I snapped.
He nodded past me to Mahari. “She hates humans. Got real poetic about it back in the lab — her plans to slaughter every human she could get her claws on and bathe in our blood.”
“Lane doesn’t count as human.” Mahari flicked a hand toward me. “She set me free.”
“Twice” was on the tip of my tongue, but I settled for “Thanks.” Faint gratitude was still gratitude.
“Lane gets a pass, but you …” Her voice hummed with warning. “You should stay here.”
Her glittering gaze reminded me so much of Chorda’s that an electric current shot through me and fried my peace of mind. Not that I’d had much to start with.
Everson hooked a thumb at the boat — a Zodiac. “So one of you knows how to drive that, huh?”
Boats were not in my skill set, and going by the abrupt crease in Mahari’s brow, they weren’t in hers either.
“No?” Everson crossed his arms, unfazed. “Guess you’ll be walking, then.”
“Fine,” I said quickly. “You can come.” Chairman Prejean’s wrath was the least of my worries right now. I had to find Rafe, somehow get a vial of his blood, and then give him the cure … or kill him. Yep, Everson’s mom — low on my stressor list.
Mahari didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue. Good. Because we were out of time. Hyrax was going to check in with the strike team any minute now.
“Grab their weapons,” Everson ordered as he crouched by a downed guard. “Everything. We’ll sort through it on the boat.” As we all bent to the task of tossing guns and Tasers into the Zodiac, Everson whispered to me, “We don’t have the gear for this. It’s reckless.”
“I’ve got a few things in my back — what?” I asked when he snapped to his full height.
“This isn’t going to work. There are patrol boats up and down this river. One look at them” — he jabbed a finger at the lionesses — “and we’ll be blown out of the water.”
He was right. Manimals on a boat were exactly what the guards were patrolling for. Infected people near the quarantine line — aka the Mississippi River — were shot on sight. “It’s dark. We’ll be in a patrol boat. Anyone looking will assume we’re guards,” I said, talking fast. “If they put on fatigues …”
“Like they’ll pass,” he scoffed.
“People see what they expect to,” I argued. “The guards on river patrol won’t look twice at a bunch of uniforms in a Zodiac.”
“We can act human if we have to,” Deepnita said, then glanced at Charmaine. “For a little while, anyway.”
“Strip them.” Mahari swept a hand at the fallen guards.
“Yay!” Neve clapped like a kid on Christmas.
Charmaine crinkled her nose. “And stink of human?”
“This one’s mine.” Neve gathered her guard in a tight hug and dropped kisses on his head.
“You’re taking the uniform, not the man,” Deepnita reminded her, then stepped over the limp form of a female guard to divest the biggest man of his jacket.
“Toss the radios, or the patrol will use ’em to track us.” Everson unclipped the radio from his lapel and chucked it into the prairie grass. The lionesses did the same, except Neve, who was still crooning to her guard. Mahari crouched beside her, unclipped his radio, and tossed it into the river. Then she put her fist under the man’s nose like she was letting a dog sniff her.
“He’s breathing,” Neve said defensively.
“He is,” Mahari confirmed as she rose and brushed off her drawstring pants. “And his heartbeat is steady.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I can hear it.”
“Oh.” I exchanged a glance with Everson, who looked equally surprised.
Mahari pointed a commanding finger at Neve. “Drop the human and take his clothes.”
Instead of obeying, Neve cradled the limp guard closer and rose without so much as a huff of exertion — and the guy was not small. She lifted her chin. “I’m keeping him.”
Mahari and Everson sputtered in unison, but he found his voice first. “His name is Stanton. And in no way are you keeping him.”
Charmaine rolled her eyes skyward. “Not again.”
“You play too rough, little girl,” Deepnita said, not unkindly. “He’ll just run away like the others.”
Others?! How many men had Neve tried to keep? And had they gone along willingly? As beautiful as she was with her leonine features, she wasn’t exactly tame …
“I’ll be really careful this time,” she promised. “I won’t wrestle with him or play Catch the Prey or —”
“This isn’t a discussion,” Everson snapped.
“I’ll feed him!” she shouted. The other lionesses hurried to shush her. But she ignored them, her expression fierce. “He’s mine.”
“He’s not a pet,” Everson snapped. “You don’t get to just take him.”
“You took me,” Mahari pointed out. Despite her purring tone, she looked less like a contented cat and more like one about to disembowel a chipmunk. That got a frown from Everson, but he didn’t slap back a retort. Because he realized she had a point? I could hope.
Neve’s clutch on her guard only got tighter. “He wants to come!”
I opened my mouth to argue that unconscious people tended not to have opinions, but Deepnita sent a head shake my way. More like a head shift, but I got the message: Don’t bother using logic.
“Drop him,” Everson ordered.
When he got in Neve’s face, the Klaxon horn in my head put my nerves on red alert.
“Now,” he warned. “Or you don’t get in the boat.”
A rumble rose in her throat, but he didn’t back up or back down. I tensed, waiting for the claw lash that would tear open his throat, but it didn’t come. Instead — while scowling so hard her face must’ve hurt — Neve opened her arms and dropped her guard. He hit the ground hard. Wincing, I started forward, only to get shoved back as Neve plowed past me and hopped into the boat.
Mahari and Deepnita exchanged a look, brows hiked with surprise.
Everson crouched beside Stanton. After a quick check, he rose and met Neve’s lethal stare. “Out. We have to push it into the river first. And quit it with the growling.”
She didn’t quit it with the growling, but she did leap out and drag the boat to the water’s edge. Beside me, Charmaine began to growl as well. Her eyes were pinned to Everson, and if she’d had a tail, it would’ve swished.
“Get his uniform, sister,” Mahari told Neve as she strolled over to Charmaine, nonchalantly putting herself between Everson and the enraged lioness.
“Breathe, kitty,” Deepnita crooned into Charmaine’s ear. “There’s no trouble here. Everything’s good. The human is helping us.”
Heart hammering in my ears, I eased back into the prairie grass. As the other lionesses coaxed Charmaine into the boat, Everson joined me. I rolled onto tiptoes and put my mouth to his ear. “Maybe you should go back to the lab and get —” I began, but he shook his head before I could finish.
“It’s too late,” he said, his voice no more than a breath. “The virus is in her brain.”
“But —”
“We’ve tried. It won’t work. She’s too far gone.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t be getting in a boat with her.”
“We shouldn’t,” he agreed. “It’s a stupid idea. Suicidal.”
“Without us, human,” Mahari snapped, “you won’t find Rafe.”
“Wraith,” Neve corrected.
They stood a good twenty feet away by the water. Obviously, their hearing was as inhuman as their strength — something we’d do well to remember.
“So find your courage and get in the boat,” Mahari commanded, sounding exactly like the queen she’d been.
“We’re coming.” I pulled my ponytail tight, dropped the dial down the inside of my shirt, and zipped my flak jacket. Then I tugged Everson over to the Zodiac and climbed in, keeping sharp eyes on Charmaine.
She seemed calmer … for now. Sane. Serene, even, as she gazed at the choppy waves that lapped at the sides of the rubber speedboat. Mahari leapt aboard with a bundled uniform in her arms, including boots. As the others settled along the Zodiac’s inflated sides, I took a seat on a padded box in back that was bolted to the floor. Oars were lashed to the grip bar on either side of the outboard motor.
Once Everson dropped onto the chest behind the wheel, our comb
ined weights had the boat sitting low in the water — a fact that especially bothered me when he warned us not to fall out. “The water’s near freezing, so you’ll go into a cold shock response. Staying afloat will be hard, and that’s if we can grab you before you’re whipped downriver.”
He selected a rifle from the pile of weapons and slung it across his back by the strap. Following his lead, I took a handgun and put it into my backpack. He threw the Zodiac into reverse and maneuvered it out of the lock and under the bridge, where the river ran deep and slow. The lionesses rode in silence, gripping the rope handles, watching the base with wary eyes until we rounded a bend in the river and Arsenal Island was just a glowing spot above the trees.
“Stop sulking,” Mahari told Neve. “You would’ve gotten bored with him. You always do.”
Deepnita slid to the bottom of the boat and stretched her long legs. “Humans make terrible pets.”
Neve rounded on her. “I like them.”
“They don’t like you,” Charmaine snarled. “You’re a beast to them.”
“Stop talking,” Everson ordered in a low voice. “Voices carry over water, and you don’t sound like line guards.”
The lionesses didn’t seem offended by this pronouncement as they pulled on their stolen uniforms over their clothes — except Mahari, who shimmied out of her scrub pants without standing up. She didn’t seem to care at all about letting us know that she was going commando. Everson cared, though, going by the way his spine snapped straight. From where I was sitting at the back of the boat, I couldn’t see if he was uptight or annoyed. Probably both.
The moonlight slanted in through gaps in the cloud cover and cast ominous shadows along the riverbank. It had been only twenty years since the exodus, and yet nature had swallowed most of the signs of civilization. The remnants of razed buildings lined both sides of the river, though the Titan wall overshadowed the ruins on the west bank.
Everson glanced back at me, his expression grim. “I can’t use the spotlight,” he said quietly. “Move up front and watch for debris, floating and submerged.”
I ignored his domineering tone — this time — and scooched past the steering wheel console, which was chock-full of equipment, including a large radio. I tucked myself into the front of the boat in the nick of time. A concrete pillar jutted a foot above the water directly in front of us — all that remained of a bridge that once crossed the Mississippi. “Turn, turn, turn,” I shout-whispered.