Seven’s phone buzzed, startling her. “That’s weird,” she said. “The only people who ever call me are here.” Reaching into her pocket, she checked the caller ID on the screen.
Violet Marchand calling.
Seven glanced up at Riddick. “Looks like the where problem is about to solve itself.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Are you fucking insane?” Lucas hissed. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you do this.”
It had been an hour since Nikolai had given Seven his location and told her to meet him. Seven hadn’t laid out her plan until they reached the abandoned warehouse because she’d known Lucas wouldn’t be happy. Neither would Riddick.
But she hadn’t really counted on just how much they’d hate her plan.
Knowing there was no way she was going to sway Riddick, Seven decided to focus on Lucas. She grabbed his hands and laced her fingers through his. “Just give me a chance to talk to him before you and Riddick go in there to take him down. Maybe I can convince him to turn himself in.”
His hands tightened on hers. “I can’t take that chance. If something happens to you…”
He’d mourn her forever. That’s what happened with wolves. They mated for life, and when a mated wolf died, the one left alive was never really the same again.
She tugged him closer so her body was pressed to his. “I have no intention of letting anything happen to me.”
Lucas swallowed hard. “You’re assuming he wants to talk at all. He might be planning to kill you as soon as you walk through the door.”
Behind them, Harper cleared her throat. “He’s not. He wants to talk to her. He wants to find out what mission she’s carrying out. If he finds out that she was targeting someone dangerous, he plans to finish the mission after he kills her.”
Lucas didn’t take his eyes off Seven as he said, “Not helping, Harper.”
Harper ignored him. “Just let us go in with you,” she pleaded with Seven. “He didn’t tell you to come alone. He must realize you’ll bring someone with you.”
“Cleaners always work alone,” Seven told her. “He didn’t tell me to come alone because it never occurred to him that I’d ever ask anyone to come with me.”
“What about Benny?” Harper asked. “I can call him back. He can shift into his rat and sneak in with you. Nikolai would never know he’s there.”
“She’s not going in there,” Lucas practically roared. “I’m going.”
“If anyone should go, it’s me,” Riddick argued. “This guy’s a dhampyre, like me. You don’t even know if you can take a dhampyre on your own.”
Lucas bared his teeth at Riddick. “Try me.”
Harper huffed out a disgusted noise. “Ugh. We get it. You’re both big, strong, alpha men. Don’t go whipping out your dicks and peeing on Seven just yet, alright? We’ll figure something out.”
“You guys are forgetting something,” Seven began quietly. “I’m a dhampyre, too. I’ve had the same training Nikolai’s had. I can take care of myself. Trust me.” She pressed Lucas’s hand to her heart. “Please.”
“Goddammit,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
She shook her head. “He’s like me, Lucas. Like I was, anyway. He’s all alone. If I can convince him that another kind of life is possible, he has a chance to find what I have. Family. Friends. Love.”
“You’re not just trying to save Vi,” Lucas said on an exhale, sounding like her words had drained all of his energy, leaving him feeling exhausted and defeated. “You want to save him, too.”
“Like you saved me,” she said, so quietly only he could hear her. “You could’ve given up on me and you never did. He deserves a chance.”
He lowered his head so that their foreheads were touching. “I can’t believe I’m actually considering this,” he grumbled.
“I’m going to be fine,” she assured him. “There’s no one that can take me away from you. No one.”
“Have you all lost your damn minds?” Riddick asked, voice thick with what-the-fuck. “He could kill her.”
Lucas ignored him. “Are you absolutely sure about this?” he asked Seven.
“I am. I have to try.”
He closed his eyes for a beat. “And you promise you’ll get out of there if at any point it isn’t working?”
She tightened her hands on his. “I promise.”
“Twenty minutes,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. “Not a second more. At twenty minutes, we’re coming in, guns blazing.”
“Twenty minutes,” she agreed immediately. That was about nineteen more than she’d expected him to give her, so she considered it a huge victory. “Trust me.”
With zero hesitation, he said, “I do.”
The feeling threatening to choke her was so foreign it took a minute to identify it. Joy. Absolute, pure, unadulterated joy. This man who’d saved her and pieced the broken bits of her soul back together trusted her. He loved her. He was hers, and she was his.
Beyond words, she let go of one of his hands so that she could snake her hand around his neck and drag his mouth down to hers for a quick, hard kiss.
When they broke apart, Harper pressed her cell phone into Seven’s hand. “There’s a panic button on the home screen. Hit that if shit starts to go sideways. It rings to Riddick’s phone. There’s a tracer on there, too. Just in case.”
“Wow,” Seven said, “you guys are scarily prepared for situations like this.”
Harper chuckled. “Not my first rodeo, sweetheart. If I had a dime for all the times I’ve been kidnapped…” she trailed off with a frown. “Well, I guess I’d have two dimes. I didn’t really think that through. Not all that impressive or helpful, huh?”
Nope. Not at all. Seven patted her shoulder comfortingly anyway, and pocketed the cell phone. “It’s fine. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Harper tipped her head in Riddick’s direction and said, “Don’t tell me. Tell him.”
Riddick was standing there, hands on hips, head tipped down, muscle in his cheek twitching under the force of his clenched jaw. In other words, he was the absolute picture of tense, fighting-for-self-control alpha male. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it if she pointed out that his posture perfectly mirrored Lucas’s at the moment.
Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. After a moment, he let out a harsh sigh and returned her hug.
Seven pulled back just far enough to look up at him. “I’ll never be Grace, you know.”
He frowned. “Sweetheart, I don’t—”
“Grace was the person I would’ve been if our mom had lived,” she interrupted. “If…Sentry hadn’t existed. She’d probably be…an accountant or something. Someone’s mom, maybe, living in the suburbs.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” he mumbled.
“Grace would’ve been useless today.” She smirked up at him. “I’m not useless. I’m going to go in there and I’m going to get him to surrender.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I’m going to kick his ass.”
That earned her the smile she’d been hoping for. “You will, huh?”
“Absolutely. There’s no way I can lose.” She glanced back at Lucas. “I have way too much to live for these days.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Violet’s heart and stomach battled for a place in her throat as Seven walked into the warehouse, just as calm, cool, and collected as always. For once, she would’ve liked to see some concern on her patient’s face. There was, after all, a highly trained assassin waiting for her. Was a little ninja-like vigilance too much to ask?
Seven lifted her chin in Vi’s direction. “You good?” she asked.
Violet nodded. “I’m fine. But Seven, you need to get out of here. He’s—”
“I know what he is and I know what he wants to do. It’s fine. Don’t worry.”
Yeah, sure, no problem
at all, right? Why worry about the six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound killer? Everything’s just hunky-fuckin’-dory.
“754821,” Nik said from behind her. “You’re looking well.”
Vi closed her eyes for a moment. It just wasn’t right that he should have that voice. Lunatics should sound like lunatics. What was the world coming to when the bad guys sounded sexy?
Seven cocked her head to one side as she studied him. “I just go by Seven now. It’s much less formal than 754821.”
He chuckled and damned if the sound didn’t shoot straight to Vi’s lady bits. Stockholm syndrome, she thought. It was the only reasonable explanation for what she was feeling.
“You can call me Nikolai,” he told Seven. “As you say, it’s much less formal than 654590.”
Vi’s eyes bounced back and forth between them like she was watching a game of ping pong. And weren’t they just the most polite people who were about to try and kill each other that she’d ever seen? It was all so surreal that she fought the urge to pinch herself. Maybe if she actually did, maybe she’d wake up and realize this had all been a terrible dream.
Vi gasped as Nikolai stepped around her and leveled a gun at Seven’s chest. Seven didn’t even bother to put her hands up. She just stared at Nikolai like she had exactly zero fucks to give. From where Vi was sitting—still tied to the chair—Seven’s level of chill was badass and terrifying in equal measure.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Seven said.
His eyes narrowed on her. “Of course I do. We’re the last. You know what needs to be done.”
“I know that Sentry is gone and there’s no reason for you to carry out their final orders.”
We were supposed to die.
Vi couldn’t hold back her squeak of alarm as she remembered Seven’s words from the day they first met. If Sentry folded, the last cleaner was supposed to kill himself. It was like Highlander, only instead of gaining knowledge of all things, the one left standing got to commit hari kari.
Nikolai didn’t just intend to kill Seven. He planned to kill himself, too!
Well…shit. That was a wholly unpleasant idea, Vi realized. Was it her Stockholm syndrome that made her heart hurt at the thought of Nikolai killing himself?
He let out a humorless chuckle. “You didn’t see what became of the other cleaners without Sentry’s guidance.”
Seven nodded. “I heard. But you and I are different, aren’t we, Nikolai? We’ve always been different. That’s part of the reason you were sent for reprogramming so many times. Following their orders didn’t come naturally to you. So why do it now?”
Nikolai’s brow furrowed. “How do you know about that?”
Vi’s stomach clenched at the thought of Nikolai enduring Sentry reprogramming four times. Many of her patients had been employed by Sentry at one time or another, and she’d seen pretty much all of the agency’s policy and procedure books. Reprogramming for cleaners was really just a fancy term for torture, breaking the subjects down physically and emotionally until they doubted everything they were. When they were nearly incapable of trusting their own judgment, they were considered reprogrammed and usually followed orders without question from that point on.
“My sister-in-law is a psychic,” Seven answered. “And my friends on the Council have your records.”
This time, Nikolai’s chuckle held the tiniest hint of genuine mirth. “Cleaners don’t have families and friends. What angle are you playing? Who is your target?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a target.”
“It’s true,” Vi blurted out. “And Riddick really is her brother. She’s not lying.”
Nikolai’s jaw clenched, but Seven, oddly enough, smiled. “He knows that. He’s like me. He can tell when someone’s lying. Do you know about dhampyres, Nikolai?”
“Only rumors from the other cleaners,” he murmured.
Rumors he was only now starting to understand he was a part of, Vi realized. She could see it on his face. He was struggling, but he was actually starting to believe Seven! He wasn’t the inhuman monster Sentry had tried to turn him into. Which made her feel moderately better about her Stockholm syndrome. But only moderately.
“It’s all true,” Seven told him. “As far as I know, you and I were the only dhampyre cleaners. It’s what made it possible for you to resist reprogramming so many times. Think about it, Nikolai. Sentry is gone. You know I don’t have a target, so there’s no reason to kill me. There’s no reason to kill yourself. You can start over, just like I have.”
He looked at her like she’d just sprouted a second head. “Just because you don’t have a target…you think that makes you deserving of a life among regular, normal people?” He jerked his chin in Vi’s direction. “You think you’re fit to be with people like her? You think I’m fit to be with people like her?” The laugh he let out this time practically gave Vi frostbite. “We’re killers, 754821. We. Don’t. Deserve. To. Be. Here.”
Seven let out a harsh breath. “I thought that way for a long time, too. But people like Vi helped me see I was wrong. We’re not that different, Nikolai. I have friends and family now. I have love. And I get to spend the rest of my life with people I love while I do what I can to contribute to society. Maybe I don’t deserve to be here right now.” She shrugged. “But I won’t stop trying to be worthy of what I’ve been given. And no one—not you, not anyone—will take that chance away from me.”
And with that, Seven flung her hand out in Nikolai’s direction. The gun flew out of his hand and sailed across the warehouse, smacking into the far wall before clattering to the ground.
There was a pregnant pause as Nikolai stared at the gun that Seven had managed to throw across the room without actually touching it. Then he said, “Nice parlor trick.”
“Sorry,” Seven said, sounding anything but. “I don’t like guns being pointed at me. If you want to kill me, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do it the hard way.”
Vi swallowed hard. Was she crazy? Seven looked so tiny compared to Nikolai! And they’d had the exact same Sentry training. How did she think she could hold her own against him?
The smile Nikolai threw at Seven reminded Vi of a wolf baring its teeth at prey. “I’ll tell you what, little one. You beat me in a fair fight? Maybe I’ll believe you and turn myself over to the authorities. If you lose? We do things my way.”
And by “his way”, Vi could only assume he meant murder/suicide. This time she was pretty sure her gulp was audible. “Don’t do this, Nikolai,” she whispered.
He glanced her way and she gasped. The depth of emotion she saw in his eyes was staggering. Pity, remorse, regret, desire, longing…it was all right there. But then he blinked and it disappeared, making her wonder if it had all been a figment of her imagination. Or a result of her Stockholm syndrome.
“I’m sorry, kotehok,” he murmured.
Seven tossed Vi her cell phone. “Press the panic button on the home screen if it looks like I’m about to lose. But not until then, OK?”
Vi nodded, fighting the urge to immediately press the panic button. Because what she was feeling right now? It was definitely panic. Throat-closing, heart-stopping, stomach-churning panic. She didn’t want either one of them to lose!
Vi started gnawing on her thumbnail as they faced off. Their stances were so similar—knees bent ever so slightly, one leg further forward than the other, bodies turned diagonally, hands balled loosely near their faces—that Vi was once again reminded of how similar their training must have been. In instances where both fighters were equally skilled, didn’t the bigger, stronger of the two always win?
But Seven wasn’t about to just sit around and let herself get beat. Apparently, her speed leveled the playing field between them a bit. Before Vi could even blink, Seven shot forward, whipped her leg behind Nikolai’s, and dumped him on his ass.
But Nikolai wasn’t exactly slow either, and before she could strike again, he’d leapt to his feet in a smooth, fluid
motion that up until then, Vi had only ever seen Bruce Lee accomplish.
“I underestimated you,” Nikolai said.
Seven smirked at him. “Most people do.”
Seven managed to evade his next two strikes and block a third, but Nikolai caught her wrist and threw her to the concrete in a move that must have wrenched her shoulder something awful. He moved to kick her while she was down, but Seven rolled and kicked out at the same time, catching his upper inner thigh. He went down.
They both stood up slowly this time, eyeing each other more cautiously than before. Maybe Seven had underestimated Nikolai as well?
What happened next had Vi’s finger twitching over the panic button. They clashed in a blur almost too fast for her human eyes to track, going at each other with everything they had in a brutal mix of martial arts, grappling, and brute force. He punched, she blocked. She kicked, he ducked. On and on it went. It was almost graceful in its brutal precision, like a kind of violent ballet.
Nikolai caught her next punch, spun her around, and manhandled her into what looked to be a bone-crunching bear hug. She clawed at his arm, but even Vi could see the veins and tendons popping out under his skin as he tightened his hold.
Vi pointed to the panic button. “Now?”
Seven’s face was turning red, but she still managed to force a surprisingly firm “No” past her bloodless lips.
Vi was about to argue when Seven threw her leg up in a move that would make any Rockette proud, somehow managing to kick high enough to catch Nikolai in the face.
So, apparently, speed wasn’t Seven’s only advantage over Nikolai. She also had Gumby-like flexibility. Huh. Maybe it was a fair fight after all.
Nikolai dropped her and swiped a hand under his bleeding nose. A nose that now listed slightly to the left, obviously broken from Seven’s kick.
Not that it slowed him down any. He dodged the hard left hook Seven threw at him, and managed to catch her with a glancing blow to her temple. Vi sucked in a sharp breath, sure that a hit like that must hurt like a bitch, but Seven just shook it off.
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