“Not like me, then?” Nobody would call her fragile. Or elegant, for that matter.
“Nothing like you,” he told her quietly.
The agony burned through her in a crippling spasm. “Why does it sound like a compliment?”
“Because she only looked beautiful. In our world nobody has the luxury of doing nothing,” he said. “Everyone has a function. I protect. Someone else oversees mining. Someone else oversees stocks and finances. Galatea’s family had only one function: to provide Base Strain to the House. For that they were sheltered, fed, and protected. Galatea never worked a day in her life.”
“Must be nice,” Karina whispered.
“She didn’t think so. She wanted the mutating agent.”
“She wanted this? Why?”
“Power,” Lucas said. “She thought she would become something much more prized than a donor and she would be free of me. Her father was my first donor. She wasn’t supposed to become one, but he died, and she had to take his place. She thought I was an animal. She was convinced that once I fed, she would become a Ripper and could use it as leverage to be free of me.”
“What did she become?”
“An Electric. She senses electric currents. It’s not an uncommon subspecies. A lot of technicians come from it.”
“Uh-oh,” Karina managed. Her lips were so dry, but there was no water. “Let me guess: it was your fault, right?”
He nodded. “It was everyone’s fault. She used to scream and throw fits, and then she wanted to fuck and she wanted me to beg for it. I was young and stupid. She was older, smarter, and beautiful.”
Karina raised her hand and touched his haggard face. “You loved her.”
“Yes. And I was so dumb, I thought it was enough. That’s why I let it go that far. She once told me that we, the House, had stolen her life. She wanted to stroll the streets of London, visit the Tate Modern, go to concerts in Royal Albert Hall. I offered to take her. She told me that it wouldn’t be the same. My presence would poison London for her.”
“She sounds charming,” Karina managed.
“I am what I am,” Lucas said. “No illusions. Life with me is hard, but she made a personal hell for me and her. I wasn’t the one who started sex, but I finished it. I dealt with it for four years and when I turned twenty-two, I decided I was done. I went on synthetics and told Arthur to find her a different place. He transferred her to a technical work crew. She tried to stab me with a knife when she found out. Galatea was never fond of getting her hands dirty. Three months later, during an attack, she disappeared. The next time Henry sensed her presence, we ran into the Ordinators.”
“She betrayed you.”
“Yes, she did.” Lucas shifted her carefully. “And now you know the whole story.”
“Do you miss her?” she asked.
He peered at her face. “How did you know?”
“I miss my husband,” she whispered. “I don’t blame you, you know.”
“For what?”
“For any of it. For the motel, for the feeding, for this.” Karina tried to swallow the pain away, but it remained. She wouldn’t make it. She could feel death crouching just a few feet away. “Lucas, you’re not a bad person. You have no idea how scary you are, but you’re kind and patient. If things were different . . . It has to start right . . . And we just can’t, because I would never be more than a slave and you would always own me. Please take care of Emily for me. Don’t let anyone hurt her. She’s a great kid.”
He didn’t answer. He just held her.
Karina awoke slowly. Within her body, the pain subsided, gradually, like a receding tide, fighting for every step of its retreat.
She opened her eyes and saw Lucas’s neck. Her face was buried in it.
He was kneeling on the floor, looking up. She was wrapped in his arms.
Her voice shook. “Why are you holding me?”
Lucas turned to look at her. His face was too close to hers. “I didn’t want you to die alone on the floor.”
She said things. Stupid, stupid things. Maybe it was a dream. His eyes assured her that it wasn’t.
“Please put me down.”
He let her go slowly. Karina slid down onto her knees and sat clumsily on the floor. Her legs shook a little. She felt light, so light and cold. “Is my change over?”
“Yes,” he said.
She had survived. “I don’t feel any different.”
“The change isn’t always obvious. Something will trigger it sooner or later.” He was looking up again. She glanced up, too, and saw a monitor in the ceiling. It showed an empty hallway.
A man in dark clothes darted across the hallway, brandishing a machine gun, and hid behind the wall.
“We’re being attacked,” Lucas said. His voice was calm, almost casual.
“How is that possible?” Emily. Henry had her. If they were being attacked, her daughter would be in danger.
More people flickered past on the screen.
“The Ripper must have been an Ordinator mole,” Lucas said. “We should’ve gone to a ranch in Montana—that’s our evacuation route from that base. Instead we’re in Detroit. This building is nearly abandoned; only the bottom three floors and the top five—those are ours—are operational. The blocks in a one-mile radius around it are basically deserted. We’re sitting ducks here.”
“Why didn’t Arthur evacuate us?”
“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “The Ordinators likely blocked the exits. We landed into a trap.” His face was dark. “Our best chance is to stay here.”
No. No, she had to go and find Emily. “Why?”
“I’m at my limit. Normally I would be drugged and sleeping this off for the next two or three days until my body came to terms with my venom. I could barely hold you. Most likely Arthur has sent for reinforcements. The vault is solid and must be opened from the inside. It will take them several hours to get through the door, so it’s likely they won’t bother with us right away. By the time they get around to it, we might be reinforced. Our best bet is to stay here and wait it out. We probably die either way, but here we have more of a chance. Especially if we’re quiet.”
“You have to let me out.”
He looked at her, obviously trying to decide if she was crazy. She had to convince him she wasn’t.
“Henry has Emily,” she said. “She’s out there somewhere.” Out in an abandoned building full of people with guns and God knows what sort of weird powers.
Lucas looked at her for a long moment.
“I have to find her, Lucas. You don’t have to come with me. All I ask is that you help me open the door, because I don’t know how. I’ll find her myself.”
Lucas looked at the door. If they opened the vault, he would walk out of it a dead man. She stood before him, her eyes huge and brimming with worry. She just wanted her little girl back and she didn’t understand how far gone he was or how many enemies they would face.
Everyone dies, Lucas reflected. He’d been a selfish bastard all of his life. If he walked out of that door and died helping her find her child, at least he’d die doing something worthwhile, not cowering like a dog in the vault, waiting to be gunned down.
And she couldn’t go out there alone. She would be dead in minutes.
He sighed, rose, and stepped to the wall. Karina clenched her hands. She couldn’t read his face. He touched it and a section of it slid open, revealing a number keypad and a small speaker. His fingers played with the keys. “Cousin?” Lucas said softly.
A faint hiss of static issued from the wall, then Henry’s faint voice came through. “Lucas. Red, gray, seven, pinned.”
Lucas grimaced. “Is the little girl with you?”
“Yes. Black.”
“How bad?”
“I’ll live.”
“Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”
“That’s unwise,” Henry said.
Lucas slid the panel back in place. “He is two floors below us. He’s been shot. Emily is okay; he is ke
eping her under. He can’t move because it’s too dangerous and he is cloaking, which makes him harder to find, but they will locate him eventually. The moment we leave this vault, you and I must fight to survive. Remember how you tried to cut me with your knife?”
“Yes.”
“Find that woman and be her.”
He had no idea how hard she had worked on hiding that woman and how ready she was to let her out.
“Don’t move.” Lucas walked over to the vault door, punched in a combination in the small number pad, and turned the wheel in the door’s center. Something clanged inside the door. Lucas moved to stand on the side. With a soft hiss, the door swung open and Karina stared straight at a man with a gun.
“Hands up!”
She didn’t move.
The barrel of the machine gun glared at her, black and huge, like the mouth of a cannon.
“I said hands up!”
Lucas nodded at her. She raised her hands.
“Subspecies?” the man demanded.
“I’m a donor,” she said.
The man’s eyes widened. “Get up and walk to me.”
Lucas shook his head.
“I can’t,” Karina said, keeping her voice monotone. “I’m sick. I can’t walk.”
The man moved into the vault, one step at a time, careful, the gun pointing at her. He took three steps in. Lucas lunged, so quick she barely saw it. His hands closed about the man’s neck. Bones crunched, and the man sagged down on the floor, limp.
A week earlier, she would’ve screamed. Now she just got up and ran over to the body.
Lucas staggered, leaned against the wall, and pushed himself upright. He wasn’t joking. He really was at his limit.
She crouched by the body and began going through the man’s pockets. “I can do this alone.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He picked up the man’s machine gun and handed it to her. “Safety here.” He flipped a small switch. “Point and pull the trigger. Your instinct will tell you to keep clenching it. Don’t. Count to three in your head and let go of the trigger. Short bursts.”
Karina took the gun and raised it. It was heavy like a cement block. “You do realize that I can kill you with this.” She didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.
“Yes.” He turned his back to her and went out of the vault. A pair of jeans and a sweatshirt lay by the door. Lucas pulled on the clothes and started down the hallway. She followed him. He moved like a cat, soundless on bare feet.
They came to the end of the hallway. Lucas leaned against the wall, glanced around the corner, and looked at her. “Point and pull the trigger,” he whispered.
“Count to three,” she whispered back.
He nodded.
There were people at the end of that hallway. People she would have to kill. It’s them or us. Kill or be killed.
She took a deep breath, stepped into the hallway, and pulled the trigger. The gun spat thunder. Bullets ripped into four distant shadows. She thought there would be blood, but no. They just jerked and went down, screaming. She pounded the bullets into the bodies for another long breath and let go. Lucas moved next to her.
It was a test, she realized. He had to know if he could rely on her. Well, he could. She’d kill every one of them to get to Emily.
“What happened to letting go on three?”
“There were four of them,” she said. Movies and books told her she should be throwing up now, but she didn’t feel queasy. Her mouth was dry. It would probably hit her later, but now only Emily mattered. “I decided to take two extra seconds.”
Karina followed Lucas through the dark passageways as fast as she could. She was squeezing everything she had out of her exhausted body. Now that the first flush of adrenaline had worn off, fatigue set in. She didn’t walk, she dragged herself forward, shot when Lucas shot, stopped when he stopped. Only the next step mattered and she gritted her teeth and managed it again and again.
They made it to a small door. Lucas punched a code into the lock, the door snapped open, and they went through onto a concrete landing. Lucas punched the lock and the small square light in its corner turned red.
“We rest,” he said. “Two minutes.”
Karina sank down to the concrete and he sprawled next to her. The grimy floor was like heaven.
“Why are you helping me?”
His voice was a quiet growl. “Because I like you. And your little girl.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the cold concrete under her cheek. That wasn’t it. Lucas was making up for his past sins, but that wasn’t all of it, either. She knew the true answer. She could read it in his worn-out face. He wanted to save her, because he wanted her to stop flinching when she looked at him.
“Thank you,” she told him. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Time to get up.” He rose.
She cried out as he pulled her off the floor and followed him down the stairs. An odd sensation clenched her, almost like some internal spring had compressed inside her and now begged to be released. She stumbled, and it vanished.
One floor. The landing. They were midway down the next flight of stairs when the door below swung open.
An icy presence clenched her mind in a hard grip. It shut her off, trapping her. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t speak. Time slowed to a crawl.
The door kept opening, wider and wider. She saw inside it; she saw armed people pour out onto the landing. She knew she had to fire. Instead she just stood there, disconnected from her body.
And then Lucas shoved her down and sprayed the landing with bullets.
The presence gripped her mind and squeezed. She couldn’t even scream.
Orange sparks flared on Lucas’s gun. It died.
More people spilled into the landing over the bodies. Lucas leaped into the attackers. He smashed one out of the way, cracking the man’s skull against concrete like a walnut. The man slid down, leaving a bright red stain on the wall. Lucas ripped a woman’s throat out with his hand, backhanded another man down the stairs, and shuddered as a handgun barked. Red spray shot out of Lucas’s side. He lunged forward and broke the gunman like a twig and dived into the doorway.
The sound faded. She was completely disconnected from her body now. Only her vision worked.
Lucas emerged from the door, bloody, his eyes furious. He must’ve jerked her up, because her view changed and suddenly he was directly above her. He barked something, angry. The world shook. He dived down. His lips closed on hers. She felt nothing. He jerked back up and rocked back and forth, screaming again.
Henry, she read his lips calling. Henry.
He kissed her again and rocked, his face jerking up and down. His hands pushed on her chest. She saw the muscles on his arms flex, but felt nothing. The red stain on his sweatshirt spread wider. Was he doing CPR? Was she dying?
Henry.
The ice cracked. She heard a distant female scream somewhere impossibly far. Warmth flooded into her. Something popped inside her mind and she saw a radiant light, bright and glorious.
She’s gone now, Henry’s voice said in her mind. She won’t bother you again. You’re free. Breathe, Karina. Breathe.
The world snapped back to its normal speed, jerking her back into her body. She felt everything at once: pain, the hardness of the stair under her back, and the rhythmic push of Lucas’s hands on her chest. She gasped. He pulled her up, into his arms.
“Mind Bender attack,” he told her. “Up. Keep moving.”
The scent of heated metal rising from Lucas was so thick, she almost choked. He wasn’t just hurt. He had to be close to dying. If he died, she would be free, but in this moment she didn’t care. She just wanted him to survive. “You’ve been shot.”
“We must move,” he told her and pulled her up to her feet. “Faster!”
He drove her down the stairs, through the door, and along the narrow hallway. They dashed past a row of offices. Lucas rammed a door head-on and they burst into a small conference room. Henry lay slump
ed in the corner, his back pressed against a wall that was mirrored floor to ceiling. His cracked glasses sat slightly askew on his blood-smeared face. Emily was curled in the crook of his arm.
Karina cleared the room in a desperate sprint and dropped to her knees. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine,” Henry said softly. “She woke up a little when I had to help you, but now she’s sleeping again.”
Karina hugged her, cradling Emily’s small body. Finally.
Lucas shoved the table against the door and landed next to them.
“I see you’re bleeding, too, cousin.” Henry smiled. “Nice of you to join me.”
“Where are the others?” Lucas growled.
“I don’t know. We were hit two minutes after you went into the vault. It was a concentrated assault. They came prepared. The seventeenth floor fell within ten minutes. We were retreating, when I got cut off. I went into cloak almost immediately. Our people may have evacuated.”
“Without us?” Karina stared at them.
“Arthur probably thought I fed,” Lucas said. “Your blood would give me enough of a boost to either get Henry and me clear or to hide.”
“They are surrounding us,” Henry said. “What’s the plan?”
“You and I go. They stay,” Lucas said.
“Ah.” Henry nodded. “I thought it might be something like that.”
“What are you talking about?” Karina gathered Emily closer.
“We’re going to open that door,” Lucas said. “Henry and I will take off. Henry will make sure they concentrate on us and I will make sure to keep them busy. They will follow us. You will wait here for three minutes, then you will take Emily, go out into the hallway, and turn right. You will come to an intersection. Turn right again. That will get you to the stairs. Shoot anyone you see. Then you get the hell out. If you make it out of the building, Arthur won’t look for you right away, since I’ll be dead and he won’t need a donor immediately. Don’t use credit cards, don’t stay twice in the same—”
“They will kill you!” No, that was not how this would go. The spring of tension inside her shivered, compressing.
“It was never about me surviving,” Lucas said. “I died when we opened the vault.”
Angels of Darkness Page 20