by Vyne, Amanda
Light exploded behind her eyes from the blow. It sent her reeling back, and she lost her grip on the case. That had definitely not worked out precisely as she’d anticipated. Damn, she hated firearms.
A screech of steel being wrenched filled the room, puncturing the dull ringing in her ears as her vision shrank. The floor rose up quickly, and she couldn’t twist fast enough to get her hands beneath her. The concrete was cold against her cheek. Her head bounced off the floor, muting even the sounds of gunfire and roars. She could barely manage to open her eyes, but she needed to see where those books went. Dr. Rupple was there, on the floor in front of her, black gaze blinking back into focus even as a guard was dragging him through the hidden passageway.
The lab books. They were on the floor. Dr. Rupple was clawing at them as he was being hauled to safety, and Brit knew she couldn’t let him have them. Her consciousness was narrowing to the barest pinpoint, but it was still enough for her to concentrate through. She had to have those books. It was important. Using the last of her waning strength, she fought against the hands that pulled at her and slapped a bloody arm down over the scattered pile. She clung to them—to her hope of fixing the damage she’d caused.
Chapter Nine
Vin peeled the door back. Where the strength came from, he didn’t know or care. Alarms pierced the air around him, but the sound of the gunfire and the smell of Brit’s blood filled his senses until there wasn’t much room for rational thought. He had to reach her, protect her. Anything beyond that was inconsequential.
A frantic search of the room, and he could see her crawling toward a scattering of lab books. A guard dragged Dr. Rupple back and another reached for her. Vin’s dragon exploded inside him with a violence that bordered on insanity, barreling up through him. His breath burned through his nose with each exhale. Without pausing he grabbed a nearby tray table and launched it at the guard as though it were a throwing knife. The metal leg skewered the guard, but Vin was already following it. He wrapped his fists around it and jerked it up through the guard’s body to ensure the kill.
The dragon inside him demanded it. No threat to his mate could live.
A frenetic energy crackled over his skin, and his dragon tattoo burned like hot coals on his arm. He threw back his head and roared. The sound was returned, resonating through the facility. A call to arms. The other Drachon were engaged in the battle, fighting together as his people had once done in days long past. There was no force more powerful than Drachon males, and somewhere inside him, in a place he’d kept dormant for so long, he felt a primal spark ignite.
Pushing a cabinet out of his path, he dropped down next to Brit, her bright hair rippled on the floor like a flame. He gently lifted her, but she resisted, eyes closed, arms still reaching for those lab books. They had to be what she was looking for. Information. What could be more important to a scientist than information?
Vin jerked his head up. His awareness of Tag crackled through his mind a bare moment before his brother launched himself over the destroyed steel door. Tag had a gun in one hand, the muzzle spitting fire, and Vin turned to see another guard slam against the wall, tissue and jagged ribs a macabre frame around the hole in his chest. The cabinet was sliding back into place as the others retreated.
“The doctor is escaping through a hidden passage.” Vin motioned to the cabinet as it clicked shut. Tag nodded and knelt down on the other side of Brit, gun still clutched in his fist. There was a distinct buzz in Vin’s head that indicated his brother was communicating with someone else.
“How bad is she injured?” Tag smoothed her hair from her face. There was a vicious knot over her left eye, the swelling bad enough to split the skin until blood oozed from the tear. Added to the damage from the day before, she looked as though she’d survived a war. “Damn, what the fuck happened to her?”
Vin lightly pressed around the dark bruise as Tag moved his fingers over her collarbones and down each arm. “I can smell her blood,” Vin said and looked over her body.
“Gunshot wound.” Tag grunted and ripped away the bloody sleeve over Brit’s right shoulder to reveal a jagged furrow across the pale flesh high on the outside of her upper arm. “Superficial.”
Vin watched his brother’s brusque movements and reached out to touch the surface of Tag’s mind, careful to keep his presence light. There was a linear focus to his brother’s thoughts, a sense of purpose that was direct and disciplined—a distinct change from the brother he’d grown up with. Where humor and spontaneity had once made him crackle with a life that was always electric, now Vin could only feel this heaviness that lay over Tag, muting him.
Did I do that to him with the choices I’ve made?
Tag was calm and efficient as he tied the rest of her sleeve around the wound. Vin felt his brother’s appraisal and subsequent dismissal. “Vin?”
Vin glanced at the books on the ground, stained with Brit’s blood. “She was after something and convinced them to take her to Dr. Rupple.” He touched her pale cheek. “She didn’t lose too much blood, but I don’t like that she hasn’t gained consciousness yet.” The longer she remained unconscious, the higher the chance her head wound was serious. He reached for her mind and felt normal brain patterns. That meant the head trauma couldn’t be too severe. “What’s the status on the others?”
Tag leaned back on his haunches and frowned at his bloody hands before he shook his head and holstered his weapon. A static crackled around Vin that indicated Tag was speaking with others again. “The reports coming in are that most of these bastards are retreating. Those that didn’t are being taken alive—when possible.” His smile was lethal. “The shock of being attacked by Drachon males made the guards easy marks. Forestor wants us to stay put until the rest of the facility is secured.”
Vin nodded. They knelt there for a long moment with Brit lying between them as the strains of the battle receded. With little effort, Vin could pick up on the energy spilling from the people in the facility, and if he really focused, he could pinpoint a specific person and touch their thoughts. Species of the Arcane possessed natural barriers against telepathy, but Vin’s abilities had always been beyond extraordinary. He had to use more exertion, but other Arcane were still accessible to him. In an emotionally volatile environment like this, he wouldn’t have to put too much effort into it. He could feel the others in this complex—pick up on the myriad of their emotions. Particularly Tag’s. They simmered just below the surface and hardly required any talent in telepathy to discern.
Tag was pissed—particularly at him, although Brit was the subject of a healthy amount of it. However, the resentment that tinged his brother’s anger belonged solely to Vin. Tag would have to get over it, because Vin had no intention of leaving. Not this time.
“We claim her.” Vin said the words aloud, mostly for himself. It made them real. So many times he’d entertained the thought of them in his mind, his dreams, but always with the knowledge that they were nothing more than words.
When he’d left the complex in Ireland, he hadn’t any thought beyond protecting her by getting her away from the Triumvirate. Even then his motivations were grounded more on instinct than any real intention. Now that driving impulse to protect her was still there, still an insistent throb in his gut. Looking down at her, he didn’t think it would ever fade. He’d often wondered if he would be capable of letting her go twice if he ever saw her again. Now he had his answer.
Tag’s gaze was harsh—raw—as he stared back at Vin. A muscle ticked in his jaw. Vin could feel the battle raging in his brother, his desire to claim Brit warring with a need to distance himself from Vin. Nearly twenty years spanned between them, and the memory of their bond from the time before only echoed in the emptiness, emphasizing just how wide the breach truly was.
Would their shared connection to Brit be enough to bridge it? Vin wasn’t sure, but he knew one thing, and that was if Tag wanted Brit as badly as he did, then his brother would find a way to move past it.
“Fine,” Tag finally bit out. “We claim her.”
* * * *
Brit studied her intertwined fingers folded on the cold, smooth tabletop in front of her. She’d been bandaged up in the clinic but had refused any strong painkillers. Her head still throbbed something fierce, but at least the pain in her arm had receded to little more than an incessant ache. That damn rat doctor had shot her, and she’d been so sure he wouldn’t risk it.
“Maybe next time you won’t overestimate your worth to a damn psycho, Doc.”
Pressing her lips together, Brit refused to acknowledge Tag’s needling with so much as a glare. He was in one of his moods, and she didn’t feel up to engaging him, not with most of the high-level Incog agents staring her down across the expanse of the interrogation table. It was bad enough he and Vin flanked her, hovering like a matching pair of assholes.
“You thought that a bit loudly, love.” Vin was unnaturally still to her right, his attention sharp, hands in his pockets. He was close enough that she could feel the heat from his body, which she would not think about right now. She shot a quick glance at him.
“How much intel did you give the Triumvirate?” The words were soft, low, drawing her attention. Kyeros Forestor, the owner of Incog, assessed her with those obsidian eyes of his, and she steeled herself against the instinct to shift in her chair.
Instead she straightened, careful to betray none of her apprehension. “None. I would never.”
“Then how do you explain the missing files?” Raife snapped.
“I deleted them.”
Tag pulled up short where’d he’d been pacing back and forth next to her. “I looked. I couldn’t recover them.”
“If you could recover them, then they wouldn’t truly be gone, now would they?” Brit said as though she were talking to a child. A growl rumbled low in Tag’s chest, and Brit merely cocked an eyebrow at him, more to irritate him than anything else. “I used one of those shredder programs you’re so proud of. It seems you were right. They left no trace.”
Tag’s face went slack in disbelief.
“Don’t seem so shocked, Taggart,” Brit said in a haughty voice. “It isn’t my fault if you mistook my disinterest for ignorance.”
Brit flicked a bored glare at Vin when she felt his amusement. She wanted to be up on the top floors, where she knew the victims from the research facility were pouring in. She knew this damn inquisition was going to happen, had to happen, but it still made it difficult to sit here when her sister could possibly be among their numbers up there. Here. Under the same roof as Meghann after all this time.
“Damn it, woman…” Tag began.
Forestor cast Tag a quelling look and refocused on Brit. “If it wasn’t to offer intel, then why did you initiate contact with the Triumvirate?”
“I didn’t contact the Triumvirate. Not directly anyway.”
With a frown, Forestor narrowed his eyes on her. “Agent Jennings traced those communications. They were sent to and received from the Triumvirate Citadel in Europe.”
“I’ve never actually dealt directly with the Triumvirate, despite my years in their Citadel. It was always through the same emissary.” Brit sighed, and she swept her gaze over the others at the table, their anger clearly visible. “He approached my parents when I was ten with an offer from the Triumvirate that they didn’t feel they could refuse. Being crossbreeds, there wasn’t much choice but to accept the Triumvirate’s hospitality. I spent several years in the Dublin Citadel being educated by the best minds in the world. Several years later, the same emissary helped me escape the Triumvirate.”
Memories of fire and blood ripped through her unguarded mind, and she jerked away from them, carefully pressing them back into the dark recesses where they belonged. Vin moved in a subtle ripple of muscle and cotton. Once again she experienced that ghostly sensation of a hand gliding down her back.
“The research I was working on was to have been destroyed in the same explosion that killed my family. When I treated Ms. Schaffer, I suspected some of what was done to her was based on my research from that time. Then I was positive it was when I saw the files recovered from the facility she was held in.”
“Did you contribute in any way to the experimentation that was done on Ms. Schaffer or any other research for the Triumvirate while you were in the employ of Incog?”
Brit shook her head and vehemently protested, “Never. What they are attempting is unethical, and I will not be a part of it.” Yet even as those words left her mouth, the image of her sister strapped into that chair rose vividly in her mind, and she wondered if she would be so strongly opposed if it meant her sister’s life.
Beside her, Vin stiffened and frowned down at her, and Tag stopped pacing. She could feel their touch in her mind, the heat of their combined gazes on her back. She had to be careful to guard her thoughts. The Jennings brothers obviously thought her mind was their personal playground, and the last thing she wanted was them to gain any more of an advantage where she was concerned. They made her lose focus, and right now she couldn’t afford the distraction.
Brit cut a glance at Katya where she sat at the opposite end of the interrogation table. She was pale, and Raife hovered. Katya couldn’t afford the distraction.
Brit inhaled and gasped as a spicy burst of air rolled over her tongue, filling her lungs with a heat that spread out to her shoulders and breasts. Her nipples tightened, and she cleared her throat, shifting forward to conceal her reaction. From the moment she woke up with Tag and Vin hovering over her, her libido had been in overdrive. What was it about them together that created such a reaction in her, so much stronger than they did apart?
Forestor’s obsidian gaze flicked from the two Drachon lingering so closely over her before settling on her. His nostrils flared, and her skin prickled in irritation. Forestor was a Guardian—a full-blood, strong-as-hell Guardian—and he used all his senses to see his surroundings in the innate way most people used only their eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d scented her, but it was the first time it felt intrusive and…offensive.
Tag and Vin began to rumble like engines on either side of her, and oddly enough, it soothed her uneasiness. She shook her head in confusion, the pounding in her skull making it difficult to think.
“If you found what they were doing so offensive, why contact this emissary?”
Brit cleared her throat again and fixed her gaze back on Forestor. For a moment, she was alarmed, wondering if he too might be reading her mind but then realized he was talking about her claim to have refused help with the research. She’d never had this much trouble concentrating. Her mind was always sharp, always running the probabilities, but she could barely get two brain cells to fire at the same time.
She glared up at Tag, then Vin. This was their fault. They were doing something to her, making it hard to focus.
“I don’t think so, love. When we do something to you, you will know it.”
The sexy promise in the voice that slithered through her mind had her dropping her hands to grip the arms of her chair. Her body was starting to throb in time with her head. She shot a fierce look at Vin. Just being near him had overwhelmed her from the first moment. Tag was enough, but now there were two of them.
“Dr. Mahoney, if you had no intention of helping them, why bother to contact them?”
“I was angry,” she snapped before she thought better of it and acknowledged it was partially the truth. She was so careful to keep her emotions in check, but when she had discovered her research was still in existence, she’d experienced a fury so strong it had made her head pound with a ferocity that rivaled the headache she had now. All these years she’d managed her grief over the loss of her family with the consolation that they’d died for a damn good reason. When she’d realized their deaths had been for nothing, it felt as though she were watching them die all over again. She couldn’t explain that to Forestor.
Not with all these eyes on her, judging her. Then there were the two Drachon st
anding so close, pulling the air from the room and ripping away the barriers between her mind and theirs, seducing her body with their damn presence alone. The combination made her feel impossibly vulnerable, and that pissed her off even more. Brit carefully drew air through her parted lips, afraid of that spicy scent and what it would do if she drew it in too deeply.
“I’m responsible for that research, Mr. Forestor,” Brit explained in a calmer voice. “It doesn’t matter if I never contributed another minute to it.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “I created it. I wanted—needed to know how far they’d gone with it.”
“And what did you discover?”
That my sister was still alive. “They haven’t gotten too much further. When I contacted the emissary, he hadn’t expected to hear from me. I was sure that they sent Ms. Schaffer here aware that I would recognize what they had done, hoping to draw me out.”
Raife stabbed his fingers through his long hair. “Do they know their fucking science project was a success? That they fucking robbed a lifetime from my mate?”
Brit remembered Irial Carrick’s nearly imperceptible reaction when she’d said Katya’s name. “I don’t think they are aware how far their research has gotten.” Did that mean the mutation of the ARSA gene had occurred after she’d been rescued? If so it was progressing even faster than Brit suspected. If she didn’t do something soon, Katya would die.
“You don’t think?” Raife snarled and slammed his fist on the table.
Vin jerked forward the barest inch but stopped himself. Brit impatiently waved him back and met Raife’s burning amber eyes, struggling with the guilt that never faded. “I can’t be certain. I saw his files, but all the subjects are identified with numbers, and I didn’t speak extensively with the doctor in charge.”
“You were there for over three fucking days, and you’re telling me you don’t know anything? That’s bullshit. You’re hiding something.”
Both Tag and Vin slammed against the table on either side of her, leaning across menacingly, growls rumbled through the room as the three Drachon faced off against each other.