by J. R. Ward
Like a robot, he marched out of the door and took a left.
The human woman spoke up sharply. “How did you do that? What did you . . .”
Murhder glanced at Ingridge’s young. “Come on, son, let’s take you out of here.”
And then he looked at the woman. Did they scrub her memories and leave her? Or take her with them?
Either way, her mind would have to be dealt with later—he didn’t have time to do that now. They had to move.
“You’re not safe here,” he told her. “You’ve got to know this. You need to go underground. We can help.”
Anything to get her to come with them.
“Are you with PETA?” she asked.
Given that she seemed relieved at the idea, he nodded.
“We gotta go,” Xhex said.
“I’m coming with you,” the woman blurted as she put an arm around the young.
Perfect, Murhder thought—with a surge of possession that frightened him.
As Xhex gave Kraiten a shove, the man in the suit led them out the door and to the right. Motley group they were, three heavily armed fighters, a young in a hospital johnny, the human woman and Mr. Bleeder. As they passed beneath the mounted security cameras on the ceiling, Murhder prayed like hell that the security guard did a good job with his erasing.
This was a highly unstable situation, Murhder thought. Sooner or later, some other security personnel was bound to catch them on camera and wonder about the weapons and the cuffs.
It looked like a kidnapping.
’Cuz it was.
Good news came as Kraiten stopped in front of a door that was not frosted glass, but stainless steel. There was a red sign over it reading “EXIT,” but as Murhder punched the bar, the thing refused to open.
“Give me the code or your card,” he demanded of Kraiten.
When the guy started shaking his head like a little bitch, Murhder had just about had it with delays. Taking two steps back, he kicked the goddamn door with such force, it exploded out of its lock.
It took all he had not to turn around to Kraiten and flip the man off.
As he jumped through into a concrete stairwell, he glanced back. The human woman was staring at him with those wide eyes again and the young was looking up at him like he was Superman. Xhex, on the other hand, was chuckling under her breath like she knew the truth.
So what, he wanted to say. I wanted to show off for the woman. Sue me.
“We had to get through the goddamn door,” he bitched at Xhex.
“Sure,” she said with a wink. “And look, we did.”
When he turned back around, he could have sworn she tacked on “He-Man,” but he wasn’t going to follow up on that. Because he was blushing, damn it.
The group started to follow him down the stairs, moving faster and faster, clomping a descent toward some underground area.
They’d gone a good three levels down when the woman said, “Wait, stop.”
At the sound of her voice, Murhder’s body jerked to a halt, sure as if he had a choke chain around his throat and she held the leash. Worried that someone was hurt—other than Kraiten, that was—he looked over his shoulder . . . and had an eerie sense that he would never be the same.
As Xhex held on to Kraiten, and John guarded them all with his guns, the human woman crouched down next to the pretrans. The young was trembling and seemed suddenly weak, and Murhder kicked himself for not considering what it would be like for the kid to be rushed through the facility by strangers, even if he knew they’d been sent by his mother.
His now deceased mother.
The woman took the young’s fragile hands and murmured to him. Her words didn’t carry far. Her compassion went around the world: There was a sheen of tears in her own eyes as she reached up and brushed his hair back. After a moment, he nodded.
In response, the woman wrapped her strong arms around him and picked him up, sitting him on her hip. As the young held on to her shoulders and tucked his head into her neck, Murhder knew that the simple act of kindness to a frightened young in the midst of a nightmare was . . .
Well, it was the sort of thing that told you everything you needed to know about her character, didn’t it.
Unconsciously, Murhder’s eyes dipped to the ring finger on her left hand. Humans marked their matings in that manner. Hers was bare.
That was a treacherous relief.
“You got him?” Murhder asked softly.
Her honey-colored eyes shifted up to his. “Yes. I do.”
Well, brace yourself, he thought. Because I’m very sure you got me, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Murhder refocused and shoved at Kraiten’s shoulder, reigniting the march of descent, the lineup moving down the concrete stairwell with more shuffle than alacrity. At the bottom, Kraiten stopped and seemed to want to speak.
Murhder ripped the gag out of his mouth. “What.”
“I need . . .” Given that the man was still fighting the commands he’d been given, his voice was slurred. “Credentials.”
“Where are they?” Xhex said.
“My breast pocket.”
The female shoved her free hand into Kraiten’s suit jacket and came out with a black alligator-skin wallet, key fob for a car, and a pass card. She swiped the last one through the reader next to another steel door, and after the lock released, they broke out into an underground loading dock and delivery area.
A black Lexus SUV gleamed under the caged fluorescent lights, and as Xhex pointed the fob at it, its running lights flashed.
Thank God it isn’t a two-seater, Murhder thought.
Leading the young and the woman over, he settled them in the backseat, and then looked at Xhex and John.
“I’ll get these two out,” he said. “Kraiten’s yours to play with.”
The man in the suit started blurting all kinds of threats, his survival instincts partially overriding the mind control.
Murhder stepped up and clapped a hold on the guy’s throat. Leaning in, he put his mouth to the human’s ear. “I could tear your beating heart out of your chest and eat it for what you’ve done.” He eased back and measured the true terror in those eyes. “But I’m going to leave you to them—especially her. What she is capable of will be much, much worse.”
As he felt his fangs elongate, he wanted to take a hunk out of the side of the man’s throat, but he was aware of the woman in the car. She was watching him through the glass as she held the pretrans tight.
Backing off, Murhder nodded at John and Xhex, and then he took the car key from the female, the pass card—and for good measure, the wallet. Turning away, he went around the hood of the SUV and got behind the wheel. Glancing up to the rearview mirror, he found the young and the woman holding each other and staring at him.
God, that face, he thought as he focused on the woman. He had been looking at it for twenty-five years . . . and now she was with him.
It was as if a ghost had become real.
But why did she have to be human? And why did they have to meet like this?
“Buckle up,” he told them. “And you’re going to have to tell me where to go.”
He started the vehicle and put it in drive as everyone clicked in.
The woman leaned forward. “I know where we are. Go that way.”
As she pointed to a metal garage door, he hit the gas. The panels rolled up as they approached, and then they were out in the night, on the plowed lane that went around the facility.
“Take a left . . .”
She was efficient with the directions, helping him to navigate the route to the single point of entry onto the site. The good news? No flashing lights on the buildings. No security guards coming after them. No human police arriving in a rush.
“That’s the gatehouse up ahead,” she said. “I don’t know how we’re going to get through security, though.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
They approached the checkpoint and slowed down. The fenci
ng system that surrounded the property was worthy of a federal penitentiary, some twenty feet tall and mounted with security cameras. As he hit the brakes and prepared to come to a complete stop, he prayed the alarms didn’t start going off just as he dealt with the guard’s mind—
The gatehouse’s sliding door opened on their side, and an arm extended out from the sentry point, giving a little wave-through. Then the gates began to part.
But of course. The SUV’s windows were all tinted and up tight against the cold—so whoever was on duty was just assuming the CEO was behind the wheel.
As Murhder cruised through, he stared straight ahead and lifted his hand as he guessed Kraiten might have. Then he beat feet out of there.
As they came off the property, he went to the right and sped away.
“Everyone okay back there?” he asked roughly.
“Yes, we’re good,” the human woman said.
“All good,” the pretrans echoed.
Murhder started to smile.
He’d done it, he thought as he squeezed the steering wheel. He’d fucking done it. The young was out of that hellhole, and nothing was going to happen to the kid now.
He hadn’t let Ingridge down.
All at once, this strange energy entered not just Murhder’s body and mind, but his soul. After everything he had been through with his unreliable thoughts and his swirling craziness, it was hard to trust the rush. But damn, it was as if sunshine had entered him on the inside, the dark spaces between his molecules illuminated with a heavenly glow, whole sectors of his personality, previously eclipsed by penetrating sadness, now bathed in a healing warmth.
With the same abruptness as it had failed, his switchboard seemed now fully operational and ready for business again, his circuits up and rolling, his wires uncrossed, his functioning returning to a normal that he had previously taken for granted, as the healthy and whole always did.
That smile pulled hard at the corners of his mouth. And then, like an athlete after a warmup, his lips stretched wide. Sure, he was in an arguably stolen vehicle, which was owned by a man about to die in a grisly way, and he had an orphan and a human woman in the backseat who both needed his protection.
But after two decades of being in an insane wasteland, he felt like himself.
Fuck that, he felt like a goddamn superhero.
“Are you taking me to my mahmen?” the boy asked.
Murhder’s eyes flashed up to the rearview. As he met that hopeful stare, he felt a piercing pain in his heart, and all his optimism collapsed.
“We need to talk, son,” he said grimly.
In spite of all the reasons Xhex had to slaughter Kraiten where the bastard stood, she decided not to go that route. It was too easy. He had earned a much worse fate and she was just the symphath to give it to him.
“Hold him for me?” she asked her mate.
As John nodded, she transferred Kraiten over into what turned out to be a vicious headlock—and yup, she had a moment of reconsideration. Her hellren had bared his fangs and was looking like he was ready to make a meal of the guy.
Except she had a better plan.
“John,” she said, “you gotta loosen that hold on his neck. He’s turning blue—there you go. Respiration is a good thing for the living.”
Certain that John was in control of himself, in spite of that bloodthirsty snarl of his, she calmed herself and entered the human’s brain.
Kraiten’s emotional grid was interesting, and one not uncommon to sociopaths: He had little to no registry around the core of his superstructure—which meant that nothing affected him deeply. Everything was superficial to him, with the ego sectors the only thing that were lit up elsewhere.
He was very protective of his position of superiority.
Well, that was going to change. And she was also going to teach him a lesson in what it was like to be out of control.
Using her symphath side, she set the man upon a path that was going to make him insane, and as she worked, she thanked the higher powers for the opportunity to ruin him. She had never expected to run into the guy, and this was such a bonus to getting that young free.
After she was done, she erased his memories of the infiltration, the hostage taking and the rescue, making sure that he would have no recollection of any of this. Then she nodded to John and he let go of the human, shoving him in the direction of the door to the stairwell. They both watched him stumble and then start pounding on the door.
No doubt the first time he had been locked out of his own business.
“You ready to go?” she asked her mate.
John’s hands were quick to sign, Tell me you did enough.
“More than enough.” She leaned into him and kissed him on the mouth, lingering with the contact. “Thank you for coming with me. And for believing me when it comes to Murhder. We have a shared history, but not a shared future. It’s you who I love like that. No one else.”
The small, secret smile she was used to seeing appeared on his face. It was his special one. The expression that he never gave anybody but her. It was how he said “I love you” without using his hands.
Abruptly, she felt a relief and gratitude so enormous, she had to blink quick. “Let’s go.”
One after the other, they dematerialized, leaving the loading dock through the tiny gaps in the garage door’s slats. They re-formed on the perimeter of the lab property, in the snow field on the far side of the high concrete wall. No alarms. No signs that the infiltration had been noted or responded to. There might be some confusion for the security folks when they saw the video feeds, but with any luck, Murhder’s guard took care of all that.
John tapped her on the arm. Are you sure you’re okay leaving like this?
As Xhex exhaled, her breath left her in a white cloud. It was impossible not to measure this departure against her previous, toast-your-marshmallows-and-then-some one. And the truth was, she was never going to be perfectly okay with any of it. Not what her bloodline had done to her or to Murhder. Certainly not what had been done to her body at the hands of that human she’d just scrambled the brains of.
But burning this lab down and slaughtering a bunch of innocent humans working security detail was not going to bring her any greater measure of peace.
Besides, she had taken care of things when it came to the drug company. Kraiten had a special project he was going to work on over the next couple of days.
“Yes, I’m all right.”
She turned and faced her mate. As a cold breeze ripped by, like it had discovered a zip code that wasn’t frigid AF and was determined to take care of that oversight, John’s hair ruffled on one side.
As she reached up to smooth things, he captured her gloved hand and kissed the center of her palm.
She thought of him meeting Murhder—and the seizure he’d had. Then she thought of what she knew, but had not told him, about his emotional grid. And of the scar on his pectoral, the one that he said he had been born with.
John whistled in an ascending sound, his way of asking what was up.
Xhex glanced over to the lab’s wall and wondered if they shouldn’t get moving. But what did it matter. If any humans came after them, they could just dematerialize away.
Or kill the bastards.
It was more than time for her to say this, and why not here? “John . . . you belong in the Brotherhood. And not just because you’re a good fighter.”
He frowned. And then shrugged.
“I know, it’s not your decision or choice. But . . . you recognized Murhder, didn’t you.” Yes, that was a leading question. “In your heart, you know him. You know all of the Brotherhood. Have you ever asked yourself why that is?”
John shrugged again and let go of her hand. It just is the way it is. I get along with them.
“It’s more than that. And you’ve sensed this.”
Her beloved mate had a total anomaly when it came to his emotional grid. In fact, she’d never seen anything like it before. The structu
re of his emotions and sense of self were perfectly normal, the norths and souths, easts and wests of his feelings in an orientation that was exactly as it should be. What was not? The fact that there was a shadow grid directly under his own, an echo of his pattern that precisely reflected whatever he was feeling, like she were seeing double. She had often wondered if maybe he’d had a twin who had died . . . but there was no way of knowing that because the details of his birth and the whereabouts of his mahmen were unknown.
And more to the point, she would have seen this construct before if it were associated with twins.
There was only one other explanation, and even considering it made her feel like she was going Conjuring on the situation.
It wasn’t like the ghost of a deceased Brother had taken up residence inside of him—and manifested that star-shaped scar on his pectoral.
That just was nuts.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, John signed. But I really hope someday that . . .
You already are a Brother, she thought to herself.
She kept that to herself because the yearning in his face broke her heart—and made her angry at the Brotherhood. Why couldn’t those males just do the right thing? And not, like, fifty years from now or some shit. John was a helluva fighter. He deserved the recognition and the honor.
“Come on, let’s head to the safe house,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As Kraiten’s SUV slowed and the commando behind the wheel turned them in to a driveway, Sarah frowned out of the side window in back. They were about an hour outside of Ithaca, to the north, and the fact that she hadn’t been in the area before wasn’t a news flash. It wasn’t like she and Gerry had traveled a lot upstate.
Scratch the driveway part. This was more like a lane, the curving, plowed passage winding its way through snow-draped evergreens that crowded up close.
Some two or three hundred yards in, the definition of cozy made its postcard’d appearance, the brick house and its smoke-curled chimneys like someone had made a model for a Christmas ad.