To Hell And Back: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Trials And Tribulations Book 3)

by Natalie Grey

  She took her time walking to join him, letting her feet land softly and deliberately.

  “The administrator is holed up in his office,” she explained. “It looks as if everyone else is sheltering in place. He wanted us to leave and refused to talk to us. He says he knows the ‘truth’ about Hugo. It was on the news, so I suppose we had to expect that someone would find out sooner or later.”

  Stephen nodded. “The facilities were supposed to be closed off, but a smart administrator would make sure they had a conduit to the outside world. The question is, what’s his plan now?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Jennifer shielded her gaze from the sun and looked at him, her blue eyes unexpectedly grave. “If you’re him, you know people are coming and you think they’re going to kill you, and you know you won’t be getting any more supplies, how would you try to get everyone out safely? You’re on a time limit, remember.”

  “I don’t think you can get everyone out safely,” Stephen said bluntly. “Surely he must realize that this is his last stand.”

  “Not if he intends to go out with a bang,” Jennifer replied grimly. “Or if he intends to let them be cannon fodder and leave on his own. Those are the only two feasible plans.”

  “Throw them under the bus and...” Stephen shook his head. “Yeah. I think you might be right. Unfortunately for him, I don’t think we’re going to leave him any space to slip away.”

  Jennifer grinned but sobered quickly. “Here’s the deal. They’ve had a lot of electrical problems at this facility, but never ones affecting the labs or the experiments. Always things to do with surveillance and communications. ADAM thinks this guy was also taking down the automated systems Hugo used to spy on people.”

  Stephen’s mind made the leap easily. “So, what else has he added in?”

  “Exactly.” Jennifer nodded. “What the hell else are we going to find in there? ADAM was able to get rid of the automated poison systems and all of that, but what if he’s put in secondary systems we can’t touch? We haven’t had the time for him to do a complete technical readout of the building, and frankly, I’m not sure we can afford to wait.”

  Stephen nodded, “You’re right. A strike team to the administrator’s office, I think. Get the truth out of him—what I wouldn’t give for Barnabas about now—and take the rest of the facility.”

  “Sounds good.” Jennifer nodded decisively. She beckoned to the older woman. “This is Zurya. Zurya, Stephen. If you can come with us, we’ll leave the rest of the people here, infiltrate to the administrator’s office, and find out what’s going on in there.”

  Zurya nodded. “I’m on board.” She hesitated. “And as much as I hate to say it, you’re doing better than I would be.”

  Khachmaz, Azerbaijan

  The little plane touched down near Khachmaz in the early afternoon, and Emeric left the pilot with money for fuel. He was not certain if he would need a ride back, but he wanted a loyal pilot if he did.

  The journey through the underbrush to the meeting place went quickly, and he was there long before the team he had radioed for rendezvous: local pack members, all of them searching for their loved ones.

  He buttoned on a lab coat as he walked. It barely fit across his shoulders, but it made a good enough disguise. People were only too willing to write off scientists as a threat. In Emeric’s experience, that was a big mistake.

  The scientists at Gordes had been sadists, every one of them. Even the ones who were shocked when they first arrived quickly turned their coats to save their own skins.

  That was why he was determined to see the humans pay. Over the years, he had heard many justifications about why the Unknown World must keep itself hidden. Always, he was told that humans would not understand. That there would be fear and violence. That it was simply easier to stay hidden and lay low than to try to reach for more.

  And all that boiled down to was that humans were cruel at heart. Emeric had seen resentment fester even in the non-shifter descendants of the pack lines. Humans could not stand for other beings to have powers they did not have, and because they could not stand it, they tried to control it the way they would control a horse or a dog.

  Five minutes past the rendezvous time. He checked his watch.

  Were they not coming? If not, why not?

  His heart sinking, he crept forward and scanned through the greenery to see the facility.

  Everything looked normal. There were no streaks of blood on the ground or bodies...

  He kept moving, scanning the wall and looking back occasionally at the still-empty rendezvous point. Nothing seemed out of place, but his instinct told him that something was wrong.

  Was it possible that TQB had been here already? No, they wouldn’t have had time.

  Right?

  He reached the gates and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were some frozen tracks through the mud, the treads of the supply trucks immortalized in the dirty field that surrounded the building.

  On a whim, he scanned the card he had gotten from Gerard. The light on the gate blinked green, and the big doors slid back into the wall itself.

  No one spoke through the intercom. No one questioned him. Certain that something was wrong, he walked to the side doors of the facility, and he pulled them open with a jerk, ready for men with guns.

  There were none. Nor was there screaming. Emeric walked down the hallway in eerie silence, checking each room as he passed. No dead bodies, and no live ones, either.

  His steps quickened as he became increasingly sure that the facility was empty.

  The second floor held the first set of labs, and he looked inside them to see every cage standing open. No signs of a struggle, as he would expect if Hugo’s people had gotten here before him. Not the faintest speck of fresh blood.

  No, they had gone willingly.

  And that meant...

  Emeric’s jaw tightened. That meant the vampire had double-crossed him. He had promised to work with Emeric, then he had decided to take matters into his own hands.

  He was going to pay for that.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone, retreating to the outdoors for a signal.

  “Sidonie? We have a problem.”

  QBS ArchAngel

  Aibek cradled Gulnara in his arms. The personnel had told him apologetically that they were out of beds in the main medical bay, but that he could take her to one of the crew cabins.

  Aibek didn’t care. He sat on the floor of the med bay himself, holding his young niece and savoring the weight of her in his arms. She was still alive. She was real, and she was here, and she was all right.

  Having shown a proclivity for being a shifter, she had been separated from the adults. In halting words, she described them trying to tell her to give up her independence and shift on command, to obey orders while in wolf form.

  What she was too young to explain was how deeply wrong those orders felt—and while she couldn’t explain it, Aibek knew exactly what she meant. A pack member did not simply obey anyone who asked for obedience. They obeyed their alpha and their alpha’s representatives. At a young age, when Gulnara’s shifting capabilities were hardly even developed enough to follow such commands, she still understood why she shouldn’t.

  And, if he understood her story correctly, she had lied to her captors with the exact angelic smile she used while stealing cookies. She told them she was trying to shift. She pretended to be their friend and trust them. But she made sure not to obey their orders all the time, and make it look as if she wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing.

  She wound them around her little finger, just like she did everyone else in real life, and he had never been so proud.

  So proud, and so full of grief—because her parents were gone. Her father, Jehan, had fought too early and too much to try to get back to his wife and child, and had been killed in front of the other prisoners. His wife, Aibek’s sister, Hana, had died of grief not long after, perhaps believing that Gulnara w
as dead, too.

  Aibek’s arms tightened involuntarily, and his niece stirred in his arms, half-waking from her slumber.

  He loosened his grip with a murmured apology.

  How was he going to rebuild this? How?

  For a fleeting moment, he entertained the notion of seeking out Emeric Carre and his associate. He would be dreaming of revenge for some time, after all, and why should he not have it?

  It was his second-in-command who provided the answer. Ruslan crouched nearby, examining a young woman’s arm. She had been patched up with the same near-magical treatments as everyone else and was smiling up at Ruslan gratefully. As Aibek watched, his friend helped the woman to her feet, and they went to check on her son.

  They needed this, Aibek realized. They did not need to plunge into revenge and anger once again, they needed to rebuild. Launching attacks on human towns would get more of his kind killed, and those at the facility had already paid for their crimes—Aibek had watched them be judged.

  His phone rang, somewhat incongruously. He had assumed they were out of range of his little network, but the technology on this ship was clearly beyond all understanding for him.

  It was Emeric’s second-in-command, Sidonie.

  Aibek put the phone back in his pocket and gathered Gulnara close once more.

  He had all he needed.

  Sofia, Bulgaria

  Dedov hobbled up the incline. Adrenaline was pumping through him, and he could hardly speak.

  “Dedov? Dedov?”

  “I’m here!” He could barely force the words out, he was breathing so hard, but he wanted to shout his excitement. “I’m all right!”

  He had followed the hallway as far as he could, seeing wolf bodies and human bodies on the floor. Embarrassingly, he'd thrown up once—but no one had to know about that.

  There had been computers and burned pieces of paper. He didn’t think there was anything to salvage, and he certainly wasn’t going to haul a server out, not up that slope. If Milen wanted it, he could go back for it.

  But the wolves were real, and they truly were massive. A few times, when the building groaned, Dedov had thought he was hearing the growl of a wolf and had almost sobbed with fear.

  No wolves appeared, however, and eventually he climbed up and out into the night, grabbing Milen’s hand to haul himself onto a wall. His legs shook with exhaustion, but he could not remember ever feeling so alive.

  Milen waited, trying to be patient but getting more and more intrigued as the minutes went on.

  Finally, Dedov couldn’t hold it in any longer—even to make the other man wait. “I found it. There were wolves down there. Not the height of a man’s shoulder, maybe, but bigger than wolves should be. And there were human bodies, too.”

  “Anything about this place and who owns it?”

  “The computers were destroyed,” Dedov explained with a shrug. “There was a fire. Maybe from the bombing?”

  “Maybe.” Milen shook his head as they both looked at the black void of darkness at the center of the ruins. “I don’t understand it. There were always ghost stories about this place, people would say they heard screaming, and now maybe there were wolves here, and…it’s just unbelievable. Maybe the wolves got in and killed everyone, and that’s what your friend knew about.”

  “Maybe.” Dedov shook his head. “But why the bombing? Who did that part?”

  “Maybe we’ll find the connection in Spain,” Milen suggested. “Because it looks like she went there, too.”

  Both of them jumped as the gunshot-sharp crack of wood was followed by a low groan and tumble of rock.

  “Let’s get off this wall,” Milen suggested, with feeling. “We can make a plan back in Sofia.”

  “Da.”

  As Dedov climbed down the wall, heedless of the danger to himself, all he could think about was the wolves.

  The wolves that existed.

  How had Arisha ever found out about this?

  16

  Naftalan, Azerbaijan

  “I’ve opened the door for you.”

  “Thank you, ADAM.” Stephen turned the handle on the door quietly, listening for the sounds that would indicate guards on the other side. He heard nothing and pulled the door toward himself as slowly as he could, stopping as soon as he heard a creak.

  He edged around it and into the darkness.

  No doubt the administrator had wanted to make it difficult for anyone who was not a worker at this facility to find their way around, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that this particular set of opponents could see very well in dim light.

  Stephen gave a feral smile and rolled his shoulders, feeling the gun’s harness readjust.

  At the stairs, they found their first complication: a metal stairway, almost certain to clang loudly if they walked down it.

  “These bastards,” Stephen muttered. “Couldn’t they afford concrete like everyone else?”

  “Had to cut corners somewhere,” Jennifer replied mournfully. “And of course, it wouldn’t be the cages.” She pointed to a shadow in one corner. “There’s the poor, sad surveillance camera. I wonder how many times he killed them himself?”

  Stephen shook his head, “Crazy is as crazy does.” He paused. “Though I have to admit that on the subject of mistrusting Hugo, this guy was spot on.”

  “You know, that’s a good point,” Jennifer agreed.

  “Not to interrupt,” Zurya said calmly. “But how are we going to get down?”

  “Oh. I had an idea.” Stephen headed for the railing. “If this doesn’t work…well, get ready to fight.”

  He climbed carefully over the railing and worked his way down until he hung from the edge of the concrete landing. He took a moment to scope the next landing below swung his body a few times and dropped silently.

  “It worked,” he called up, as quietly as he could.

  “You go next,” he heard Jennifer say to Zurya.

  The Wechselbalg landed next to him a few moments later. She stood up and brushed off the knees of her pants, then offered him a hand. They waited as Jennifer dropped, rolled, and cursed slightly when she slid into a wall.

  “How are you pure death in a battle and so uncoordinated outside of one?” Stephen teased her.

  “The same way you’re a perfect gentleman most of the time and a total ass other times.” She stuck out her tongue at him.

  “I am—” Stephen began, but she cut him off with a grin.

  “Let’s argue it out in that restaurant in Paris.”

  “It’s hard to stay mad at you when you have such good ideas.”

  Stephen listened at the door for a moment. He could hear faint movement in the building. Even when people were quiet, small actions reverberated through to form a small hum of background noise. But were there footsteps?

  “ADAM, can you tell me if there are any guard patrols nearby?”

  “Yes, one patrolling the outside corridor of this floor,” ADAM reported. “Or at least, two humans circle regularly. You are presently at the southwest corner facing north, while they are at the northeast and circling clockwise. You could most likely reach the administrator’s office, which is along the north side, without the guards spotting you.”

  “Huh.” Stephen peered out the window. To his left, the corridor turned north. “Head to the left and be quiet,” he told them, for Zurya’s benefit. “Guards are patrolling.”

  He eased the door open, and the team slipped out.

  “We should wait here,” he told the others as softly as he could and still be audible. “I’d rather not have them circle around and complicate matters while we’re trying to question the administrator.”

  “Yes, that would be…bad,” Jennifer agreed.

  Zurya simply nodded.

  It wasn’t long before even a human could have picked up the tramp of boots. The guards were walking in lockstep, talking quietly about... Stephen strained to hear. What were they discussing?

  Their favorite actresses.


  Stephen, who had been the paramour of quite a few prima donnas in his day—not to mention quite a few ambitious understudies—could only shake his head. The women of the stage in past years had been intelligent, well-educated, daring. One had to be daring, after all, to risk the censure of society at large. Every one of them had been free spirits, as cunning in pursuit of fame as any banker in pursuit of money.

  It just wasn’t the same anymore. Actresses today were little more than pretty, in his opinion. He had yet to see a single tabloid photo that brought to mind the larger-than-life personalities he had encountered in his younger years.

  Of course, they had also been prone to trying to kill him in his sleep after finding out about his dalliances with the understudies...

  As the footsteps drew closer, Stephen allowed his claws to extend. Jennifer and Zurya stepped back, and the moment the guards turned the corner, Stephen was in motion.

  The guards’ lives ended in gurgles as his claws took them in the throat.

  He didn’t bother to move the bodies. With stairways at each corner, they were likely to be seen no matter where he left them, and they were against the clock now. He jerked his head to Jennifer and Zurya, and the three of them slipped down the corridor toward the administrator’s office.

  In the dark of the office, Nikhil’s eyes were locked on the door. The panic button was nearby, easy to press and release the poison if he needed to do so, and his gun was solid and comforting in his hands.

  In twenty seconds, the patrol should come around again.

  In the past few days, he had learned the mannerisms of each patrol. The first shift walked slowly, dawdling in a way that made Nikhil want to kill them. The second shift tended to vary their speed, sometimes moving fast and other times strolling along, though their salutes were always crisp when they saw him. He figured there was no harm in irregularity. But he liked the third shift best. Their circuit varied by no more than one or two seconds. They were creatures of precision, just like him.

  Ten seconds until the patrol came around again.

  When he got out, he didn’t even know which direction he would go. If he set out into the wilderness, he might confound anyone looking for him. On the other hand, the reason they would expect him to go into town was that it was the only sensible thing to do in the middle of winter. He didn’t have cold weather gear, a map, or supplies.