That was a very bad sign.
Her heart sunk a little as she noticed the blank timer hanging on the wall above the weapons. If she had woken up in a weapons training room that meant…
Bingo.
In the opposite corner of the room from where she had woken up, a figure was just starting to stir. She recognized the figure immediately.
Well, she had to give her parental unit some credit.
At least he was blatantly predictable.
She tried not to freak out too much. While this room was loaded with weapons—knives, swords, guns, wooden sparring sticks—the upside was there was a constant MP that ran through the room.
At least powers were neutralized in the room. Honestly, that didn’t make her feel any better.
Her father really was a bastard.
Derrick awoke to find himself laying in a bed. It was huge, surprisingly comfortable, and the only object in the small room. The walls of the room were clear, so he automatically knew he was in a cell at one of the many compounds the general conducted his research—experiments—from.
The heavy metal mosh pit bouncing around in his head, along with the feeling that someone was hammering an ice pick into the base of his skull, told him that there was a constant MP flowing through the room.
While the walls were clear, he knew that they were made from a form of two way glass. When he looked at the clear glass, he saw whatever picture they had projected onto the glass. The images could be an ocean view, a sandy beach, an overhead city view… The possibilities were endless with modern technology.
He was currently staring at the New York skyline.
The two way part of the clear glass come into play here. The people outside of the cell—the guards, the general himself, scientists—could watch and observe him all they wanted. His every movement was tracked and watched like he was the main attraction at the local zoo.
Observe the Firestarter in his natural habitat…
Derrick ran his hands through his hair, not bothering to sit up. He was going to be here for a while, might as well get comfortable. He stayed lying on his back and studied the while tiles of the cell ceiling.
As much as this sucked, at least it gave him some time to think. He could finally take a breather from the drama of the last few days. He was able to process some of the information overloading his brain.
He started with the most obvious shock.
The quiet, withdrawn woman he had met two and a half years ago and fell head over heels in love with had a few secrets of her own. Under normal circumstances, he could accept that. No one, no matter how close they are to that person, told even their best friend every single thing about them. That would make the friendship boring.
What he couldn’t accept was that the woman he had finally convinced to trust him, to date him, two years ago was Annelise Yves.
Though, to be perfectly honest, now that he looked back on how jumpy, withdrawn, secretive, and guarded she had been, he saw that it made a lot more sense. Well, not perfect sense, but he could actually see how Annelise might have turned into the Megan he came to know after everything she’d been through.
He was the last person on the planet who could fault her for wanting to start over. For wanting to fade into the shadows and be normal.
That was essentially what he had done, sans the whole complete identity makeover.
Still, after two years, she hadn’t trusted him enough to come clean and tell him who she really was. She had lied straight to his face for two years. They shared a home. A bed.
He didn’t even know the person he shared those things with.
That statement said all that needed to be said.
Her being Annelise, well, that brought this whole sordid mess around to the fact that she was still technically married to another man. It didn’t matter right now that they were separated. And, in all honestly, that really wouldn’t have been a deal breaker for him in the grand scheme of things. Or all that awkward under normal circumstances.
What mattered was who her estranged husband was.
Her husband was his best friend since the age of five.
Even factoring in his penchant for being a colossal asshat didn’t make Derrick feel any better about unknowingly shacking up with Scott’s wife.
Now, onto the part that absolutely blew his mind. All of this time, he had been worried about all the danger he had been putting Megan in by hiding his ability from her. He had feared what she would think about him if she ever found out. Not to mention, he was feeling beyond guilty about having to hide his ability from his best friend for all these years.
Come to find out, the joke was on him.
Not only did they both have abilities, but they were the alphas of the superhumans. They were among the first.
They were the most powerful. They were the reason all the other superhumans had powers.
Suddenly, the sliding door to his cell swooshed open. A guard dressed in all black popped his head in.
Up and at em. The general waits for no one.
Derrick snorted, throwing up his mental blocks long enough to safely think, the general can go fuck himself for all I care.
He dropped the mental walls, sighing as he climbed off the bed. He motioned for the guard to lead the way.
Stopping at the door to his cell, he placed his hands out in front of him so that the guard could place the MP cuffs around his wrists. Once they were secure, Derrick followed the guard out of the cell and down the hallway lined with similar cells, keeping his eyes trained on the gray floor.
“Jesus Christ, Raleigh! What the hell?”
“Don’t ‘what the hell’ me, Nox. You know damn well what.”
Megan sighed. “Okay. Fine. I know what. Is the choke hold really necessary?”
Honestly? Yes. Not because Scott was angry or pissed, but because he liked having her trapped against the wall at his mercy. He could probably release his one handed grip on her neck—for the record, there was barely any force behind it. It was more of a way to keep her in place than to exert a power play or to really choke her.
Don’t get him wrong, the urge to choke her was strong. He wasn’t going to lie about that.
How the fuck had she hid the fact that she was a shifter from him for sixteen years? Yeah, he knew he was only a member of The Guard and his powers weren’t up to par with Shanna and Rhyder’s, but he could still sense supernatural creatures.
Okay, so maybe the superhuman part of her was overpowering the shifter side of her. Detecting hybrids wasn’t an exact science.
He could understand her feeling like she needed to keep this from the others. Hell, he completely understood wanting to keep people out of your personal business.
They weren’t supposed to keep secrets like that from one another.
Well, other than him being an Infinity Coven warlock, that is.
This was the one thing she shouldn’t have kept from him. The one thing she didn’t have to keep from him.
Though, in retrospect, her relationship with Jay made a hell of a lot more sense now.
Which brought him back to…
“Beres knew.” He dropped his hand, stepping back from her.
Megan slid down the wall, squatting at the base of it, breathing heavily. She pushed a few unruly curls off her face, not looking up from the mat.
“Of all the people, other than me, that you could’ve told, you chose to tell him.”
She looked up, the pain in her eyes clear as day. “I’m sorry, Reece. What else can I say?”
Scott blew out a breath, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Nothing. Thank you for not making up excuses.” His eyes met hers as he dropped to the mat, bringing one leg up and wrapping his arms around it. “You could’ve told me, Megs.”
“I know. It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?” he muttered.
They both looked up as a bell chimed and the flat screen in the corner of the room turned on.
A me
chanical voice began to read the words that appeared on the screen. “This is a no powers allowed match up. Guns are the only weapons banned from this exercise battle. All other weapons are legal.”
Megan and Scott looked at one another.
“This will be a four on two match up,” the monotone voice continued.
Of course it was.
General Yves wouldn’t want to play fair right out of the gate. That would be a sign of weakness.
They exchanged knowing looks, slowly rising to their feet.
The computerized voice read on. “This battle will be fifteen minutes in length and the teams are as follows: Megan Nox and Scott Raleigh versus the Zabójca Wilk alpha team.”
Now, Scott’s Russian was a bit rusty, but he swore that translated to they were facing the killer wolf alpha team.
Shifters weren’t killers, though. They possessed a bite that was toxic to a superhuman, but they weren’t capable of killing them. All shifters were a backup control mechanism. Their bite contained an obstupefacio serum, a paralytic serum the scientists cooked up to keep superhumans in line. All the serum did was paralyze the superhuman for easier transport.
Their job was containment, not murder.
Unless…
Unless the alpha team was a team of real shifters. A natural born shifter could heal faster in human form than a genetically engineered shifter. If the general was messing around and experimenting on actual shifters, they were screwed. The shifter would lose all ability to think and act like a human once they shifted.
They would be feral.
Deadly.
They would be constantly fighting their animalistic urges, even in human form. The effect of a Gen En shifter was virtually unknown.
Oh, my God. We are the test run.
Four guys dressed in black tactical gear entered the room. The tattoo on Scott’s left forearm lit up with the heat of a four alarm fire. He sucked in a breath, covering the red and irritated skin with his hand.
Yep. It was official. The four football players on steroids were definitely hybrid shifters. They were wilki zabójca.
The general and his team couldn’t be content with their success in making their superhuman—supersoldier—army, along with making a backup paranormal army that could assist and control them. No, not them. They had to take it a step further and create their own elite paranormal assassination squad to take out their original assassination squad.
Wow. They really were sick and twisted.
The big, bulky guy closest to the door pointed directly as Scott. “He’s a member of The Guard. He’s not a superhuman.”
Shit.
Megan and Scott backed up as two of the four men shifted, tearing their clothes to shreds. They growled, drooling disgustingly as they stalked towards them.
Awesome. They had just outted him with the sole intent of killing him.
This night just kept getting better and better.
“Mother—”
CHAPTER 40
January 2001
Shanna flew through the stone archway, slamming into the stone wall on the other side of the room. With a moan, she slid down onto the roughly cut stone floor. Rubbing her chest, she muttered, “Note to self, plasma balls thrown by pissed off hybrid dragon demons hurt.”
A man dressed only in a pair of baggy gray sweatpants stalked into the room. His eyes were glowing red and his bare feet left scorch marks on the floor.
Shanna groaned, raising a hand as she mumbled, "Hoc ipso tempore Rigéscunt Necesse quinque minuta auris."
There was a bright flash of light and the angry half-dressed male froze in his tracks, the air around him moving in barely visible ripples. Well, she had managed to buy herself five minutes by freezing him, now what was she going to do with it?
“Hey, Toto…”
Shanna groaned, burying her face in her hands.
Great. Now she was hearing voices. She was going to kill her brother when he was unfrozen.
This wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Yes, Dorothy?” she asked on the off chance that the male voice wasn’t in her head.
“Yeah, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.”
Shanna jumped to her feet, backing away from the wall. She craned her neck, studying the cage that was chained to the stone wall and hanging roughly five stories in the air. D had his face pressed against the bars of the cage, his hands gripping the bars on either side of his head so hard his knuckles were white. His eyes had the wide eyed crazy look of a man who had reached his this can’t be real quota for the day.
Shanna hung her head as she grumbled, “Don’t get your skirt in a twist Dorothy, I’m working on getting you back to Kansas.”
D shot her an unamused look. “Did you just refer to me as Dorothy?”
Shanna threw her hands in the air. “You called me Toto!”
“Yeah…but you’re an actual dog.”
Shanna rolled her eyes. She waved her hand and a white ball of light shot up at the cage. D ducked, swearing as the ball skimmed the top of his head. “Next time, Tiern, I won’t miss. And, for the record, I am a demonic dog with unforetold powers that hunts souls and demons for a living. Say the word and I’ll make you next on the list. Grim Reapers have nothing on a Hellhound.”
D glared at her. “Well, sorry for offending your delicate disposition! In case you’ve forgotten, this is all new to me! I didn’t even know witches were real, let alone demonic dogs and demons.”
“That’s still not an excuse to be rude,” she pointed out.
She spun around, ducking as she barely avoided a bare foot to the face. “Seriously, Jason, I said I was sorry!” She blocked a punch. Her eyes widened as she jumped back to avoid a knife in the gut. “It’s been a hundred years! Get over it!”
“You killed me!”
“Okay, first off, that was in the sixteenth century. And seriously? You don’t get to attack me for that. I took you out for killing an innocent human child.”
“I was under the influence of a Greater Demon and you knew it!” Jaison tossed the knife to the ground, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“Which is exactly why I killed you! To break the Greater Demon’s hold on you.”
“I didn’t see you trying to take out Phoenix for killing more than a few of the kids in that village. He told me you knew what he had done when you killed me.”
Shanna’s eyes widened. She placed her hands in the air, backing away from her brother. “He didn’t!”
Jaison smiled, pushing a strand of dark hair off his forehead. He nodded. “Oh, he did. You know, it’s part of the whole best friend’s package. They tend to tell one another everything.”
“You and Patrick are not best friends, so you might what to climb off that high horse of yours before you fall on your face. You two are demonic hunting buddies at best. And seeing as I haven’t seen you in five hundred years, you don’t get give me that knowing look.”
“I’m still your older brother.”
“Yeah, that’s debatable lizard boy. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a scared shitless human to get home and a lot of backtracking to do to make him forget this little trip—literal trip—into the inner circles of hell. Feel free to kill Patrick.”
With that, she snapped her fingers and she and D disappeared from the stone room.
“Are you sure this will work,” Patrick whispered, assuming his position.
“Yes. I did a complete mind wipe. So now we get to pick up where he found us together and answer for what happened in November. Suck it up and take it like the over three thousand year old man you are.”
“I hate you.”
“The feelings mutual there buddy.”
Shanna picked up one of the towels beside the mat, assuming the position she last held when this scene took place earlier in the evening.
“Carter said I might find you here.”
Crap. Of course he did. Shanna took a deep breath, preparing to play a role that could easily win
her an Oscar for best performance.
Her blood ran cold as she stopped mopping her face. She pulled the towel away to see D standing at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed.
Patrick dragged himself off the mat. “What brings you to my humble abode? Other than seeking out your girlfriend, of course?”
“Trying to decide if the two of you are still screwing or if it was just a onetime fluke of misjudgment. Which is it?”
As startled as Shanna was at the question, she had to admit it was an accurate assumption. Deciding this conversation was between the two men, she wussed out, tucking her tail between her legs as she headed towards a much needed shower.
She just hoped they were both alive when she got out.
Patrick backed slowly away from D, his hands out in front of him in peace. He silently cursed Shanna up and down for tucking tail and running.
“D, this isn’t what you think.”
D stayed at the bottom of the stairs, arching an eyebrow. “So, you haven’t been my girlfriend’s dirty little secret for the past year?”
Well, technically, he had been her dirty little secret for a lot longer than that, but why make things worse?”
Patrick swallowed hard. “Well, I’m not her dirty little secret quite in the sense that you’re hinting at. Has she hidden our workout sessions? Yes. Beyond that, things have been squeaky clean.”
“And, while I’m asking questions about the two of you, why do you two have the exact same tattoo?”
Well, you see, we’re supernatural assassins living human lives under the guise of being human mercenaries for Cristian. The tattoos brand us as belonging to him.
Yeah, he saw that explanation going over well.
“We have the same tattoo?” he went with instead, dropping his hands.
D arched his other eyebrow, waiting for the real answer.
“Look, D. You’re going to have to ask her about that. Does she even know that you know she has that tattoo? That’s not my secret to tell.”
D pushed away from the staircase, heading towards the girls locker room. “You know, you two have a lot more in common than you give yourselves credit for. How about you tell me this. Have you slept with her? Or is that not your secret to tell either?”
Surviving Today Page 33