by Mina Carter
He shook his head.
“You. Not us. We’re too much of a liability. Only four of us left with the new virus. Kelwood heard ’em talking. It’s all they had left, synthesized from the blood of a successful subject. So if they don’t have us…”
“They can’t make more of you.” She nodded in understanding. They were a weapon, pure and simple. And one she couldn’t afford to let fall into Project hands again.
“Go on then, and no chomping on any civilians.”
Her lips quirked as he let her go. She stepped back, adding bravado she didn’t feel to her voice.
“Or I’ll have to track you down and kick your ass.”
A crooked smile split his lips, showing a brief flash of straight white teeth before he winked.
“Darlin’, I’d look forward to it. But all we want to do is disappear somewhere they can’t find us. Can’t use us anymore. Die in peace and let this shit die with us.”
She nodded, watching as the four men walked down the corridor. Fredericks paused when the rest turned the corner and looked over his shoulder. He lifted his hand into a salute. One soldier to another.
With a heavy heart and a grim sense of determination, Toni returned the salute. Then turned and carried on up the corridor. Now she knew there were no more weird-ass RAs to run into, blood was going to be spilled.
Chapter Thirteen
That thought, the thought of blood being spilled and vengeance, wrapped up in the violence only a Blood was capable of, sustained Toni as she carried on along the corridor. It gave way to a larger area, opening up to reveal another holding room.
Long and thin, it looked seconded from its original purpose. It looked like a waiting room. She turned a semicircle. Yeah, there was an old coffee table and chairs stacked up in the corner, plastic, metal and cheap fabric with the desolate air of abandonment lay thick over them. A magazine lay underneath, pages curled with age, surrounded by dust and dirt.
The cages had been crammed up in the other end of the room. Jostled in together and packed like sardines, they’d all had their doors ripped off. The scent of blood hit her when she ventured farther. Wrong blood. Corrupt. Black and dead. She held her breath, everything within her rebelling against the smell, and forced herself forward. All but four cages held a body, or the remains of one. Something long dead and rotted. Decayed.
She slapped her hands over her mouth and tried not to breath, forcing herself to look. These were the RAs she’d seen in the ring, they had to be. She looked closer. Yeah…in the corner cage there was a skull, two more and a thigh bone over in another. And in the one nearest the door opposite the one she’d entered was a foot—just one, like Cinderella had taken the shoe but left something more important.
She walked down the center of the room, not bothering to check any of the bodies. They were dead, including the couple of guards by the door. Fredericks and his men were thorough, she’d give them that. She suppressed a shiver and headed for the door opposite. The broadcast room had to be back here somewhere. Wouldn’t make sense for it to be too far from the ring.
It took her a few minutes in rabbit warren corridors covered in dust, tracking the only scents that weren’t at least a decade old to find the broadcast center. Brave assholes, keeping the new RAs between them and the ring and—more importantly—the lifts to the surface. Having seen what they were capable of, she’d have wanted them way below her. Encased in concrete. She wasn’t sure even that would stop them.
On the last corridor, she hit pay dirt. A blue rectangle glowed from under the one at the end.
“Bingo.”
She broke into a light trot, reaching the door in seconds. How long had it been since she’d trashed the holding room and opened the cages? She didn’t know, but time was running out. Hand on the door handle, she pressed down slowly. The latch gave with a small click, barely audible to her hearing, and the door swung open silently to reveal a hive of activity.
“Fuck, we’re four minutes behind and heading up to four ten. Speed it up guys, or the Colonel’ll have friggin’ kittens. You know the paying customers like their blood and guts on time.”
Screens filled the far wall, all showing Darce and Steele’s fight in brutal Technicolor. Three men sat in front of the desks, hands swift on keyboards while they sliced and diced the feeds from what looked like three different cameras.
“Rob, pick up the blood splatter from camera three on time segment five fourteen,” the one in the middle of the trio, obviously the man in charge by his body language, ordered. “Overlay in with the fall in slow-mo…then cut to Steele’s snarl.”
Toni winced as Darce took a heavy right hook to the jaw and went down. Hair hung over his face, but the camera zeroed in on the blood dripping onto the floor.
“Catch the blood guys…ratings go up the more of the red stuff we show ’em.”
Her eyes narrowed. Even with the obvious time delay on the feeds, there should be Lycans and Bloods tearing up the place like teenagers at their first college party pretty soon. Her gaze cut to a smaller monitor set off to one side. It showed a different view than the one on the main screens. The sound was off, probably to avoid distracting the workers.
The screen was half black, half white. She frowned. Was it off? Then she turned her head and realized the camera was on its side and she was looking at the floor. Clawed feet flashed in front of the camera, then something else. One of the guards dragged, wild-eyed and struggling, by his feet across the floor. He screamed silently, mouth stretched wide and clutching anything which came within reach, even the camera. Then he was yanked clear, disappearing from view.
“Okay…yeah, good. Focus on his face. Then get Steele coming in for the kill. Focus on the claws…”
She turned her attention back to the three humans. They were so engrossed in their work that they hadn’t seen her. As she closed the door behind her, a commotion started up in the crowd on screen. The camera wavered, the operator distracted, then a scream cut in over Steele’s snarl.
“Yeah…what the—fuck!”
Taking advantage of their surprise as they stared, dumbstruck, at the events on-screen, she moved in. But the guy on the left turned and caught sight of her. She hissed when he whirled and went for his desk drawer. Gun. She could smell the oil from here. Covering the rest of the distance within a heartbeat, she slammed the drawer shut on his hand and smiled at the sound of bone crunching. Palming the back of his head, she introduced his face to the desk. Blood splattered over the smooth surface and he slid off the desk to a crumpled heap on the floor.
“Holy crap!”
The two other men scrambled out of their chairs. One went for a gun on the other side of the desk, and the other for the door. Body and blood singing with adrenaline and the sheer joy of combat, she grabbed the first thing she could reach. A coffee mug went flying, hurled with lethal accuracy at the back of the fleeing man’s head. It hit with a clunk, dark liquid cascading over the man as he fell. Toni snorted. She’d always said the coffee on base was kill or cure.
Rounding on the last man, she found him pointing the gun at her with shaky hands.
“Stay right there, or else!”
His voice shook more than his hands. She took a step toward him.
“Or else what?”
“I—I’ll kill you.”
“Too late, sunshine. Been dead for months.”
Heart thundering so loud that she could hear it, he pulled at the trigger. The gun didn’t fire. Toni grinned and smacked it out of his hand, closing her other around his throat, claws and all. “You forgot the safety catch. Now, talk.”
Perhaps seeing his own death in her eyes, the guy started to babble.
“We-we just work here. Take the feeds, edit and stream them out. I dunno where, we get given the routing data for each session before we come down here. T-that’s all, I swear!”
Toni growled and slammed him against the wall. “What about the ‘ratings’? Is that what this is to you? Enter-fucking-tainment?
What about those who die?”
“What about them?” He struggled against her hold, so she shoved him a little higher. Couldn’t kill him yet, not when she needed information. “They’re just animals that would have been put down anyway. Might as well make some money out of them.”
She paused, fury making her muscles freeze even as they ached. “Money? This is all about money?”
The guy laughed, a gurgling sound with her hand wrapped around his throat.
“Of course it’s about money. It’s always about money. Do you know how much we all make from this little gig?” He pulled at her hand on his throat and looked at her again. “I’ve never seen a Blood female up close before. You don’t look as dangerous as they say.”
“Oh, I’m not dangerous.” She leaned in until her mouth almost touched his. “I’m fucking lethal,” she whispered and ran her lips down his neck, hearing the blood in his veins singing to her.
“Oh, fuck yeah.” He groaned, arousal and lust rolling from his skin in sickening ways.
Toni smiled. She had him right where she wanted him. Then she snapped his neck.
Minutes later she emerged from the broadcast office, leaving a trail of sparking monitors and trashed electronic equipment in her wake. She’d managed to cull the address of a management company and a domain name, but there had been nothing useful on the computers. Nothing that she could get to, anyway. She wasn’t the most able when it came to computers and the internet, she never had been. Smartphones? Way too many buttons.
But a physical address—that was something she could use.
She stepped out into the corridor at the same moment all the lights snapped off. Amusement rolled through her. Standard operating procedure. Yeah, like that was going to stop any of the Project’s creatures. Vampires and werewolves—Monsters of Myth and Legend. Typical Project. Perhaps they’d send down the traditional RAs too, before the human forces. Something to give the guys down here an appetite before the main course.
She made it past the new RA holding area, through the corridor where she’d met Fredericks and his men, and almost to the main holding room before she ran into trouble. A Lycan burst through the doors ahead, fully shifted, his eyes amber and feral as he bounded toward her.
She flattened herself against the wall just in time to avoid being flattened by rampaging wolf. But he wasn’t interested in her, racing right by. The doors crashed open behind him. Smoke grenades followed, bouncing once, twice, three times over the shiny, industrial floor. One rolled to a stop in front of her, spewing noxious purple-gray smoke into the air. She coughed, smoke stinging her eyes and lungs. Soldiers in gas-masks poured through the door and the world took a sharp tilt to the left. She stumbled, realizing she had one shoulder against the wall and was sliding down the vertical surface.
What the fuck?
Shots fired, the muzzle flash blinding her. She reached the deck, bracing herself against the floor. Behind her, the Lycan yelped, and something heavy crashed into the wall. Poor fucker. She lifted the pistol, but her hand wavered in the air. She blinked, mouth open, wiggling her jaw to make her ears pop and relieve some of the pressure. She tried to aim at the shadowy figures which emerged from the smoke. It was no good. No sooner had she focused on one figure, then it split into three, all dancing around her.
Fuck. What was in that stuff?
It couldn’t be the usual sedative. She’d led most of the suppression missions so she’d long since built up immunity to the stuff. Fire ate at her lungs and her eyes streamed with tears. She coughed, doubled over on the floor while her body tried to expel the smoke choking her, lungs and all.
“One down. Someone pick the Blood bitch up. The colonel will want to see her.”
The base was locking down for the evening and quiet. As a group, the wolves hunkered in the undergrowth and watched the activities. They’d parked the truck up off the road and hidden it behind scrub brush. From the patrol notes they’d recovered, the vehicle wasn’t expected back until the early hours of the morning. Perfect. The base would be on the graveyard shift, and if they picked their time right the guards would be sleepy but not close enough to the end of shift to be alert and looking forward to changeover.
Sanders lay on his back, looking up at the sky. They had enough eyes on the place to know whether a mouse broke cover. They didn’t need him watching too. Idly, he counted the stars but his attention wasn’t on the task. Instead, it was on Leon, lying less than ten feet away—that lean, hard body on the same dirt as him.
Sanders lifted his hands and studied them. They were large, with a wide palm and broad, blunt-tipped fingers. Working hands, his dad used to call them, before Sanders had joined up. Killing hands more like. Reaching inside, he opened the door between himself and his wolf, thinking about sex and feeding the creature a bolt of pure lust. Not Richards. Even Sanders could see letting his change become dependent on someone—anyone else—was a disaster waiting to happen…but pure, raw lust. Fucking in its most base, primeval form. That worked.
He watched the change in his hands. Skin slid, sprouting fur as bones snapped and popped with what had once been sickening sounds. Now, they were normal, even verging on comforting. His fingers elongated and changed shape, his fingernails growing with a speed any manicurist would envy and sharpening into hardened claws. Fur spread over the skin, racing halfway up his forearms.
“Hey, you’re getting good at that,” Nic said with approval, smiling at him over her shoulder.
“Yeah. Had a bit of a breakthrough.”
He couldn’t help the pride lacing his voice. He’d figured it out. Him, Sanders. The runt. Oh, none of the others had ever said anything, but he’d felt that way anyway. He was the smallest in the pack when shifted, and had been the slowest to master the change. Hell, Jack had even said they’d been surprised he’d survived the infection—he’d been out of it for three days after they’d all been injected.
So sure were they he was going to die, the medics hadn’t even kept him under observation in the lab. Instead, he’d been thrown into a corner of the barracks to shiver and sweat through the fever with only the pack to watch him. Survive or die. Rule of the jungle. And he’d just kicked its ass big time.
Over to the side, Leon grunted and hefted himself to his feet. Sanders reversed the change, letting his hands revert to normal while the sergeant disappeared into the scrub-land. No doubt for a piss.
Yeah, Leon always seemed to have a new girl on his arm, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t…maybe bi? Then there was that look. It must have meant something, surely? Sanders worried at his lower lip and contemplated going after the bigger man, the expression in Nic’s eyes when she spoke of her feelings for Jack uppermost in his mind. Time was short, and each battle could be their last.
He had to find out.
Muscles galvanized with both fear and the need to know, Sanders rolled to his feet in one lithe movement and strolled the way Leon had gone. The straggly bushes parted under his hand as he followed Leon’s scent trail. The wind shifted for a second, bringing the fullness of Leon’s scent and the sharp stink of urine, but just as quickly it shifted again. Sanders slowed his steps. Not too fast. He didn’t want to disturb the guy taking a piss.
The bushes ahead rustled and Leon emerged into view. He paused for a second when he registered Sanders’s presence in the darkness.
“Hey Joe.” His shoulders relaxed a little in recognition. “Might wanna go on up a bit farther. More cover. You know what Nic’s like and I dread to think what the boss-man’d do if one of us flashed Lilly.”
Sanders snorted. The pack spent a good proportion of their time naked, but since he’d found his mate, the alpha had turned into a prude and fussed about them all being dressed around Lilly.
“Mind you,” Leon carried on. “You’d probably be okay. It’s not like you’da meant to do it, what with you being… Might save you an ass-re—ahhh…ummm…might save you from him ripping you a new one.”
If Sanders wasn’t so keye
d up, he’d have chuckled at Leon’s verbal acrobatics to avoid the phrase “ass-reaming”. As it was, he managed a small smile, ducking his head and looked up at Leon through his lashes. How could one man be so frigging hot?
“Yeah, there is that.”
He paused and lifted his chin, looking directly at Leon. God, it wasn’t fair. Leon had such gorgeous lips. Full and bow-shaped, Sanders ached to claim them. Taste them. Ached to nibble along the full lower curve before nipping and pulling it into his mouth to suck on. His brain made another leap. Those lips wrapped around his cock, his fingers tangled in Leon’s hair while he bobbed up and down, sliding along his…
“Joe? You okay, man?”
Leon’s voice brought him back to the present with a crash. Sanders dragged a breath in, dispelling the fantasy roughly as he looked at the object of his desire. Now or never. You didn’t know if you didn’t ask.
“Leon.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
Okay. Jokey. Jokey was good. Sanders scuffed at the dirt with a bare foot for a second before he pulled himself together. Alpha male. Be the man.
“Okay…you know I’m…”
Leon beat him to it. “You prefer dudes. Yeah, I know man. It’s cool. I know most…yeah, well there are some assholes. But you’re pack. We ain’t got no problem with it.”
Fuck. No. He didn’t want the solidarity speech. The “you’re different but we’re cool. We got your back” thing.
“It’s not that. I—I…” He swallowed to moisten his throat and went for broke. “Leon…I like you. Like really like you. And the looks you’ve been giving me…”
He trailed off, aware that Leon was looking at him in dawning horror. His heart stuttered, then stopped and all hope crumbled into dust.
“I’m sorry,” he babbled, stumbling away. How could he have been such an idiot? “Forget it. I—I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Fuck…no. Joe, wait!” Leon called out after him, but he shoved through the bushes the way he’d come, desperate to get away.