"That's where they keep the medical test subjects, so unless they have completely reconfigured the layout of the building in the time it took us to drive here then yes," I said emotionlessly.
"Wow, what crawled up your ass and died?" he muttered and I ground my jaw against the desire to lay into him.
We were all on edge, each of us just trying to find a way to power through this uncertain time and do all we could to bring our girl back to us. His childish comments were a way for him to cope and as irritating as I found them, I was just pleased he hadn't fallen back on the habit of getting himself drunk and chasing adrenaline rushes. In fact, Blake had been perfectly single minded in his determination to get Tatum back into our arms. He had been by my side day and night while I used all of my connections and tactics to dig into my father's businesses and Serenity Pharmaceuticals in pursuit of her, wordlessly carrying out any and every task I'd asked of him to help speed up the process. So I could allow him the odd badly timed, non-amusing joke.
We climbed the stairwell at speed and paused on the top floor as I pressed an ear to the door, listening for any sign of movement beyond it.
Kyan took a pistol from his belt and Monroe drew his too. So far we'd managed to conduct these raids without killing anyone, purely to keep the investigations into the 'robberies' low priority and keep the police off of our tails. But the more places we hit, the higher the security was getting at the new targets. They didn’t know we were searching for our girl of course, but stories of the gangs breaking into medical research facilities and private hospitals all over the city to steal medicines were making them up their security.
Ideally we'd leave this place without getting blood on our hands, but if that was what it took then I wasn't against it. Besides, if our girl really was here then I had more than enough motivation to kill every last one of them if we had the time. But until we were certain, I wasn't looking to spill too much blood.
Nothing but the soft sounds of my brothers' breaths reached my ears as I listened intently for a full minute - ignoring Kyan's impatient growl - before cracking the door open.
The corridor was softly lit with night lighting and I spotted a woman in a nurse's uniform at a desk at the far end of the hall. Her back was to us and she was reading a book, seemingly lost in her own world. I took another moment to listen out for other sounds, but it seemed like she was the only member of staff nearby, and from what I’d learned in my research into this place that was to be expected. They kept one nurse on shift overnight and that was it.
Kyan slipped past me as I pushed the door wide and the rest of us waited as he stalked along the corridor, his eyes set on the woman as she stayed lost in her book, completely unaware that she was being stalked by a predator.
When Kyan pounced, it was so fast that I almost missed the move. One of his hands slapped down over the woman's mouth, stifling her cry and his other locked around her neck as he choked her out.
It didn't take him long to render her unconscious and I moved forward to tie her up, hidden beneath her desk where she wouldn't be discovered until we were long gone. My gaze fell on her lanyard for a moment as I memorised her name in case it would be of any use to me in future. Erica Mortensen. I have you marked.
Blake picked the paperback up from her desk entitled Warrior Fae, flipped it open to the last page and tore it out before scrunching it up and tossing it in the trash. Fucking savage. Not that I was complaining. She deserved to never find out the end of her book. If I had the time, I’d find a way to track down every copy in the world so that she could suffer forevermore without knowing how it ended. I wasn’t sure if there was any worse fate than that to bestow on someone.
Monroe, as usual, wasn't waiting for us and was moving along the corridor, cracking open doors and checking on the patients inside them as he hunted for our girl. I was guessing they were either sleeping or in no state to cry out in alarm at the sight of a masked man peering in on them, which was for the best. I quickly disconnected the alarm sitting on the desk in case any of them reached out and hit that red call button by their beds though. We didn’t need any of the guards posted downstairs to take it upon themselves to do another sweep of the building before their scheduled rounds in an hour.
I ignored the others and their haphazard methods of checking the place out as I quickly started searching on the computer at the desk, hunting down a list of patient records and frowning as I noticed the title for the clinical trials being conducted here. It appeared that they were working on a new form of cancer treatment, not a vaccine at all. But that couldn't be right. They had to be working on the Hades Virus. Tightness filled my chest and my knuckles paled as I gripped the desk. All signs had pointed me here when I'd hacked into my father's servers. It made no sense for that information to have been wrong. Unless he had suspected someone was on to him…
I banished the terrifying thought of what my father might do if he truly had realised someone was searching for Tatum and instead focused on the task at hand. That was a worry for another time. And as the motherfucker in question had managed to conveniently retreat to an unknown location which he wouldn’t even share with me, we weren’t even able to get our hands on him as a last resort. Which just meant that this had to work. It had to. I refused to consider any alternative.
I checked the list of patient names on the list and my upper lip peeled back as I read through them, obviously not finding Tatum's name anywhere but taking note of one patient who was only referred to with a number. If that wasn’t suspicious as fuck then I didn’t know what was. And it was exactly the kind of dehumanising bullshit my father would choose to entertain. If she didn’t even have a name, then he didn’t have to admit that she was a real person who he was hurting and possibly killing in pursuit of his own agenda. Not that I was delusional enough to believe he gave a fuck about murdering someone to advance his own interests, but this was precisely his style. Meticulous piece of shit that he was.
"Room thirty-nine," I growled, closing the computer down so that no one realised it had been used to find this information and turning to head that way.
Kyan had joined Monroe in searching the other rooms and I moved away from the two of them as they continued to open and close doors, stalking in the direction of room thirty-nine. Blake stayed tight on my heels, knowing full well I was the most likely to have tracked her down first and wanting to be there when I found her. I couldn’t fault him for that. We were all in desperate need of a reunion with our girl.
My heart raced as I closed in on the door at the furthest end of the corridor and I couldn't help but break into a jog at the thought of finding her there, of pulling her into my arms and looking into those bright blue eyes which consumed me. She was my drug of choice and I was hopelessly addicted. I needed my fill of her or I knew I was going to go insane.
Tatum Rivers was the one and only person who had looked upon this heartless monster of a man and somehow found a pulse thumping away beneath the vitriol and poison I wore as a shield. She'd seen the corruption and toxicity of my soul and had found something else there too. Something I'd never believed I even had and yet she'd discovered it all the same. I was her creature now whether she wanted me or not and she was mine too. My Night Bound. And I wasn't ever letting her escape me.
I reached the door and had to fight with every inch of self-control I owned not to throw it open as my fingers curled around the handle and I released a shaky breath. Blake laid a hand on my shoulder in solidarity and I nodded once before pushing it wide.
Inside the room, all was dark. The bed was nothing more than a hulking shadow in the centre of it. The machines which should have been monitoring vital signs deathly quiet.
"No," I breathed as a rock sank into my stomach, growing heavier and heavier, the weight of it threatening to drag to me to the deepest depths of the vastest ocean imaginable. I was drowning. Drowning in my grief and the knowledge of my failure yet again.
Blake wasn't so pessimistic as me and he found the
light switch, flicking it on as he raised his weapon and pointed it at the empty bed.
My heart thrashed and pounded within my chest like a wild animal, caged and desperate, doomed and dying.
Above the bed was a whiteboard with various observations noted on it from vital stats to notes on blood extractions and the condition of the patient who had been kept here.
At the very bottom of the board were words that set my whole world alight with a desperate kind of agony as I stared up at them.
Patient deceased: 10:07am.
Resuscitation unsuccessful.
I stared at the clear declaration before me with my pulse spiking and the most debilitating fear rooting me in place for far too long. But my heart refused to accept the words that had been scrawled on that board. I just couldn’t.
"No," Blake snarled in refusal, echoing my own thoughts and turning from the room. He was taking much less care than he should have been as he raced along the corridor and started opening other doors, checking the rooms where other patients slept as he continued his hunt, clearly not accepting the facts as they’d been presented to us.
I stepped out of the empty room and stood waiting in the corridor for the other three Night Keepers to finish up their search, but I already knew what they would find.
“She’s not here and I don’t believe for one fucking second that she’s dead either,” I snarled, refusing to allow them to even consider panicking or giving into some useless form of grief.
“How can you be certain?” Blake demanded, his eyes wild with concern, a desperation in them that begged me to give him a definite confirmation which I couldn’t give.
“Because my father knows she’s too valuable to allow her to die so quickly. Besides, I’m not fool enough to believe something I haven’t seen with my own two eyes. She isn’t dead unless I see a body and if any of you even consider giving up on her then you’ll answer to me over it.”
None of them voiced any complaint to that. We were all equally determined not to believe in her death, so I forgot about the words which had been scrawled on that board and set my mind to continuing our search.
Our girl wasn't here. But I was certain she had been. She'd been here and she'd been in that room. We could hunt the rest of this place to be sure, but I knew we weren't going to find her here now. Of course, now we’d have to rob the place to cover up this break in just like the others.
She wasn't dead. She couldn't be. If she was, I was sure I'd know it. I'd have felt it as my heart was torn to shreds and my world imploded with the impossibility of it going on without her in it.
She wasn't dead.
But she was gone.
And we were going to get her back.
M y body was breaking. Everything hurt. It felt like there was a fissure rupturing open in my chest every time I took a breath. And when I did, it was with a wheezing rattle that made fear splinter through me. But for every way my body felt weak, my soul was galvanised, refusing to break.
I will not give up.
I was running out of time though. And I had to do something now if I was ever going to survive this. As much as I knew my boys would be hunting for me with the bloody ferocity of hell hounds, I was also starting to accept that Troy Memphis may have just hidden me too damn well for even his own son to find. And as I caught sight of a nurse approaching the glass door and tapping in a code to open it, I knew now was my shot. Possibly my last too. Because I didn’t know how much longer I could fight this virus. Its roots were too deep in my flesh, its hunger for my death all too keen.
I feigned sleep as the nurse approached, my meds tucked away under my mattress. I’d taken none today. Every time I took them now, I seemed to sleep longer, deeper. And that frightened me in a way I didn’t want to admit to. My dreams were so vivid, and the more time I spent with Dad and Jess in my unconscious state, the closer I actually felt to joining them. And as tempting as it would have been to slip away into their arms once more, it wasn’t time for me yet. I had a life I was desperate to live. I had four men waiting for me who I’d never gotten to show the depths of my feelings to.
My monsters, my saviours.
I’d once stood on a beach in the pounding rain and placed my hand against the Sacred Stone before swearing an oath to belong to the Night Keepers. I hadn’t believed it and I certainly hadn’t wanted it. But fate had bound us and now I knew why. Because through all the pain, the suffering, the way we’d tortured one another, we’d all somehow healed each other too. They were four kings of the dark, and I had become their queen. The girl my father had always wanted me to be, the girl I had always aspired to be. So I needed to return to them and reclaim my position in our tribe.
“I thought you might not make it through another night,” the nurse murmured to me even though he must have believed I was out cold, and I recognised Jonas. The motherfucker hadn’t gotten sick after I’d coughed on him and I was pissed as all hell about that. “It’s a fucking miracle.”
You know what’s a miracle, assface? You still being healthy and well.
He took hold of my arm, rolling it out to get access to the bruised skin around the crook of my elbow which had been punctured by countless needles. “I’d be more grateful if you hadn’t kicked me in the balls though, but I guess I still got one of the first vaccines last week because of you so I can’t be totally bitter,” he said icily. Of all the people my blood could save, why this guy?
I felt his fingers on my face as he pushed my hair away from my forehead and I released a small murmur as if I was coming to, shifting on the bed.
“Shit,” he muttered then he moved away and I cracked my eyes open, watching as he drew up some sedative in a syringe just as I’d expected.
As he turned back toward me, I shut my eyes again, my fingers prickling as I mustered my strength. It wasn’t much, but all I had was going to be directed at this shit stain.
He gripped my arm again and just as the needle grazed my skin, I whipped my other arm around, catching his wrist and twisting it sharply, plucking the syringe from his hand as his grip loosened. He gasped, but he wasn’t fast enough to run as I jammed the needle into his neck and slammed my thumb down on the plunger with a squeeze of satisfaction in my gut. His eyes widened behind his visor and I grinned demonically.
“You little bitch.” His hand whipped out, crashing into my face and my head wheeled sideways from the impact. “Help!” he choked out, lurching toward the emergency button beside the door.
But he was stumbling, the sedative already taking affect. I pushed out of bed as his knees hit the floor, staggering toward him as my vision went from dark to light. He crawled toward the door, still reaching for the button then gave up and took his phone from his lab coat pocket instead. I leapt on his back with a grunt of exertion, making him crumple to the floor as I prised the phone from his grip.
“No one’s coming for you, so pray to whatever god serves small-dick douches,” I rasped.
He growled angrily, trying to fight, but it was no good. He was slipping away second by second and I pushed his face against the floor, hearing his visor crack as I waited for him to pass the hell out. “Goodnight, asshole.”
He finally fell still and I drew in a wheezing breath as I slumped down beside him and looked at his phone, finding it needed face ID or a code to unlock it.
I shoved Jonas to roll him over, the effort it took making my vision blacken again for a moment. My muscles shook with the exertion, but I didn’t slow as I ripped his visor and mask off, finding a hairy face beneath. Not a real beard, more like that bum fluff teenagers liked to grow when they couldn’t actually achieve proper facial hair. Gross.
I angled the phone down at him and the screen unlocked just as a cough crashed through my body. The doctor had given me a steroid injection which had slowed the bleeding on my lungs, so I didn’t taste blood this time. I was gonna take that as a good omen.
Adrenaline gave me a burst of energy as I dialled Saint’s number, my heart hammering mad
ly against my ribs like a tiger trying to break out of a cage. I’d never thought I’d think this, but thank Christ for Saint and his punishments because he’d once had me write out his phone number a thousand times after I told him Kyan had fucked me with the cucumber Saint had eaten in his salad for dinner. Not true, but totally hilarious.
Hope fluttered through me as ringing filled the silence, but a beeping in my ear signalled that the battery was low. I glanced at Jonas’s phone seeing it was on two freaking percent. What kind of psychopath diced with fate like that and let their battery life dance on the brink of doom? Trust my fucking luck to pick the one asshole in this place who didn’t keep their goddamn phone charged up.
“Pick up,” I hissed in desperation. But my hope waned as the call rang on and on.
It was an unknown number. What if Saint didn’t pick up to anyone who wasn’t in his contacts? He must have hated cold callers with a vengeance. And I knew he didn’t have voicemail because he’d once told me voicemails were left by peasants who didn’t value their time on Earth.
“Come on, devil boy,” I begged and miraculously, the call connected.
“Hello?” Saint asked, suspicion colouring his voice.
“Saint, it’s me. It’s Tatum.” But there was no answer and as I pulled the phone back to look at the screen, I found it was blank. “No,” I gasped, panic slicing up the centre of my being.
My hand shook and I wet my desperately dry lips as I considered what to do. And there was only one thing for it. I had to fucking run. I abandoned the phone beside Jonas and ripped the lanyard from around his neck which held a key card. I dragged the lab coat off of him next, putting it on before covering my face with his mask and visor. His feet were far too big for me to borrow his shoes, so I just had to hope no one looked too closely at my bare feet.
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