Another, darker thought slid into my consciousness. She might not be waiting for anything. Maybe the rat I’d seen had been just that—a rat that had huddled inside Bones’s clothes to escape a barrage of gunfire, then run the first chance it got. Not my shapeshifting best friend in disguise.
If so, I wasn’t merely on my own. I was strapped naked to a table unable to free myself, let alone free Tate, Juan, Dave, and Cooper. Or make Madigan pay for what he’d done. Hell, I couldn’t even prevent Dr. Obvious from plunging another needle into my jugular so she could extract more blood.
“Screwed” didn’t begin to cover my situation.
Despair crept into my emotions, sinking them deeper into a pit of darkness. If only that was the worst that happened to me, but Bones was gone. Even if Denise magically appeared, and we managed to kill everyone here except for my friends, he would still be gone. Tears began to trickle from my eyes. All I had left of him was that body in the freezer and a tiny bit of his blood in me that hadn’t been drained out yet . . .
Blood.
Amidst the black mire of hopelessness came a crack of light. I still had some of Bones’s blood in me, which meant I had absorbed his abilities as I did with every vampire or ghoul I drank from. Drawing from his incredible strength hadn’t been able to budge the multiple titanium straps restraining me to this table, but that wasn’t Bones’s most impressive trick. His newest one was.
I waited until Dr. Obvious finished with her latest extraction and had disappeared to the other side of the room before I started on the smallest strap. The one that restrained my head. I didn’t move a single muscle in my attempt to budge it, but instead, focused all my concentration on imagining the strap snapping open.
Nothing.
All right, so I didn’t get it on the first try. When had anything important been that easy? I closed my eyes and concentrated again, trying to force the strap open with the strength of my thoughts. A little more, little more, okay, one more should do it . . .
Still nothing.
I let out a frustrated sigh. The ability had to be in me. My mind-reading skills came from Bones’s blood, though granted, Bones had mastered that fully, and he was still exploring his fledgling telekinesis. That’s why we’d assumed I hadn’t manifested it before, but it still had to be there even if it hadn’t spontaneously shown up yet—
Did the metal strap vibrate a little? I couldn’t be sure, but I told myself that yes, it did. Then I concentrated harder, willing those vibrations to increase until it snapped off.
They didn’t. I felt no snap, no vibrations, nothing except the cool metal against my forehead and my growing anger at the fact that Madigan might have won after all.
Dammit, I might not deserve to beat him, but he deserved to lose! And Bones deserved something, too. He’d been on that pier because he was trying to protect me, so the last thing he’d want was me stuck on this table as Madigan’s latest lab rat. He’d want me up and unleashing hell on everyone who’d helped imprison his people, who’d shot him to death, and who’d hustled me into this twisted underground lab—especially the asshole who’d orchestrated it all. If Bones were here, he’d demand that I stop trying to pop my restraint open and make that thing fly across the fucking room to beam Dr. Obvious right between the—
Click.
With that single, glorious sound, the pressure on my forehead vanished. Dr. Obvious didn’t hear it, though. When I turned my unfettered head all the way to the side, she was staring at her computer, mentally running comparisons on the percentage of similarities in my genomes versus the percentage in human and normal vampire cells.
She wouldn’t get a chance to finish her findings. Anger had always been the catalyst for my abilities, but in my near-crippling state of grief, I’d forgotten that. How fitting that Bones’s memory had reminded me. Now all I had to do was let my rage flow forth, and considering everything that had happened, that part was easy.
With a fury-fueled push from my mind, the other six straps snapped open with multiple clicking sounds. That got Dr. Obvious’s attention, but before her hand could finish flying to her mouth in disbelief, I was across the room and yanking her up by the lapels of her lab coat.
“We were never properly introduced,” I said in a vicious purr. “I’m the Red Reaper, and you’re dead.”
Seventeen
After I crushed her larynx, I stripped the late Dr. Obvious’s lab coat from her and put it on. Not because I thought I’d fool anyone into thinking I worked here, but there was something unsettling about walking around stark naked while on a murder spree. Then I searched the room for weapons, keenly aware that I only had moments. Like every other place in this facility, there were security cameras. Sure enough, soon the whoop of an alarm went off. I’d only managed to find two semi-automatic pistols and two extra clips, which wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
Then I burst through the doors right before they shut and thick bars slid into the doorframe in some sort of automated lockdown. Once in the hallway, I ran toward the cluster of thoughts approaching me instead of away. As soon as the soldiers rounded the corner, I flung myself forward, belly-flopping onto the tile with enough force to break my ribs. The pain was fierce and immediate, but their shots went over my head. I kept my arms straight out as momentum and the polished tile carried me forward while I fired until both guns were empty.
The guards dropped with multiple thumps. They’d been outfitted with Kevlar vests and mesh steel collars around their throats, but while their tinted visors were proof against mind control, they weren’t bulletproof.
I dropped my handguns into my pockets along with the extra clips. Then I snatched up as many of their assault rifles as I could carry.
Now this was more like it.
Not a moment too soon, either. In the hallway ahead, another stampede of booted strides sounded. I glanced around, decided being out in the open was too risky even with my new arsenal, and propelled myself upward hard enough to blast through the ceiling. It left my head ringing with more than the sounds of gunfire as the next set of soldiers found their buddies and began shooting at the hole I’d made, but I was long gone from it by then. The outer shell around this facility was too reinforced to blast my way to daylight, yet like most hospitals and laboratories, it had interstitial spaces between its floors.
And this one, at least, wasn’t guarded or equipped with automated lockdown doors.
I jumped over pipes and other equipment as I ran toward what I guessed was the vampire cell section, based on the thoughts of the employees plus the fact that it had a solid wall of steel going all the way up into the next floor. Before I could attempt to shoot my way through the base, though, I had to duck a barrage of bullets. The soldiers had found their way into the space between the floors, too.
“We have Specimen A1 cornered above Section 9!” someone barked.
That was followed by a reply I didn’t catch when I had to dodge another hail of gunfire. I took cover behind one of the steel buttresses, keeping low as I fired back. With the distance and smoke from all the gunfire, I didn’t have nearly the same success rate. Only a third of the guards dropped with their visors shattered, and I heard more reinforcements coming.
I began firing at the soldiers with one gun while shooting into the floor with another. Glancing back and forth between the two and needing to change position to keep from getting shot made my accuracy nosedive even more. The split in my attention also resulted in getting grazed by more than a few bullets. To my surprise, they were firing regular rounds, not silver. Still, if one struck me between the eyes, I’d be helpless while my brains knit back together enough for me to think.
Then a grenade was lobbed into my corner. I kicked it away a mere fraction of a second before it exploded. It wasn’t an amped-up concussion grenade like they’d used on the pier, but it contained silver shrapnel. They must be getting impatient. I spent a tens
e few minutes firing blind while my eyes healed, and when my vision was restored, to my dismay I saw that the steel barriers above my friends’ cells were still intact despite my emptying two full magazines into the floor.
Another silver-filled grenade exploded nearby, forcing me away from the protection of the bullet-resistant buttresses. I couldn’t risk one detonating near my heart.
Frustration made me almost oblivious to the pain as I was shot several times despite keeping low to the floor. The steel barriers above the vampire cells were too thick—I couldn’t get to Tate and the others this way. Very soon, I’d have to propel myself through this ceiling or risk getting blown up where I crouched, and that was only if I beat the soldiers who were already on their way to the sublevel above me. From the thoughts I overheard, not to mention their communicating on their wireless devices, Madigan had ordered them to attack me from the upper level, too. He might want more of my blood for testing purposes, but he wouldn’t risk my escaping to get it.
Madigan.
My fingers tightened on the M-4 despite its having been fired enough to make the metal scorching. It looked like I wouldn’t be able to free my friends, but there was still something I could do.
I spent several precarious minutes trying not to get shot while sending my senses outward to weed through the myriad of thoughts in this compound. At last, I found the ones I was looking for, and for once, he wasn’t singing something to himself. Madigan was implementing emergency security procedures that had never before been needed, all while rushing to get to a safe place in the facility.
I focused on his thoughts as if they were a homing beacon. Then I used the straps to hang two M-4s around my neck before I yanked up a large thermal control unit. Holding the metal machine in front of me, I flew toward the opposite corner of the enclosed space, wincing as more rounds found their mark. Still, none of them were near my head. I couldn’t fire back while holding the bulky unit, but it was an effective, if crude, bulletproof shield.
I also used it as a battering ram when I shoved it above my head and propelled myself upward at the same time. Debris hampered my vision, and my lower half took the brunt of gunfire as I forced myself through concrete, wood, and steel to the next level above me. It took longer since this section was far more reinforced than the other one I’d blasted through. Then, amidst a cloud of dust and insulation particles, I looked for Madigan. He wasn’t here, but from his thoughts, he was close. Before I could leave to search for him, a new set of guards rushed up to the single doorway. Without hesitation, I chucked the demolished coolant machine at them.
With the supernatural speed I’d used, it made a smear out of the ones it hit, but sadly, that was only a few of them. The rest poured through the door while opening fire.
I tried to escape by smashing through the nearest wall and ended up splatting against it as though I were in a cartoon. The room I’d forced my way into had steel walls that had to be two feet thick and its single door sealed shut with the ominous sound of heavy locks. When I tried to force my way through the roof next, I had the same dismal results, with an added detriment of cracking my skull hard enough to daze me.
This was no ordinary office. With its lack of furniture or other fixtures, plus its incredibly thick steel walls and door, it had to be a panic room. The only way out was down, and a glance into the hole I’d made showed almost a dozen guards with weapons aimed right at me.
Son of a bitch, I’d trapped myself in Madigan’s panic room before the bastard made it in here!
“Switch to silver ammo,” a helmeted guard barked, to the accompanying sound of multiple magazines being slammed home.
Uh-oh. I tried to jam their weapons with my borrowed telekinetic abilities, but it didn’t work, probably because my head still really hurt. I didn’t think all the cracks in my skull had knit back together yet, and I didn’t want to know what the wet, sticky thing was dripping down my neck.
“There’s no way out, suck head,” the same guard spat. “Stand down.”
Suck head? That made me laugh, which sent alarms to the part of me that could still think. Do what he says, or they’ll kill you, that part urged. You’re in no shape to fight, and they’ve got you cornered.
True and true. But when I spoke, I didn’t say “I surrender.” Instead, I said two other words.
“Fuck you.”
Death didn’t scare me. It was my way back to Bones.
Then I tensed, about to attack and take as many of them with me as I could, when a frantic voice burst through their com system.
“This is Falcon 1. Specimen A1 is loose in Section 6!”
Wasn’t Specimen A1 what the other guards had called me? Huh, same as the steak sauce . . . I shook my head in aggravation to stop that useless line of thought. Heal faster, brains!
“Negative, Falcon 1. This is Falcon 7, and I have Specimen A1 contained in Section 13,” said the one who’d called me suck head.
“Falcon 7, I’m looking at A1,” came the emphatic reply.
“You can’t be, the bitch is here,” my guy snapped, sounding pissed.
My haziness lifted, either because my head finally finished healing or because I was the only one who knew how two people could swear that I was in different places at the same time. When I laughed again, it wasn’t in a dazed way. It was with relief.
Denise was here, and from the screams that came through on the next transmission, she was kicking serious ass.
“I’m telling you A1 is here, and we’ve also got an unknown hostile tearing up Section 11. They need backup, now!”
Helmeted heads began to swivel between me and the guard that I’d deduced was this unit’s leader.
“What the fuck?” someone muttered.
I didn’t know who this other “hostile” was, but I knew a good distraction when I saw one. I flung myself up and sprang off the roof to maximize velocity as I plowed into the guards. The impact killed two on the spot, but the others opened fire. I pulled one of the dead guards on top of me, using him as a shield as I lunged toward the rest, snapping ankles and then necks when they fell.
The sealed room that had trapped me now trapped them. The guards below began to fire through the hole, but they hit their friends more than me. Plus, with the extensive Kevlar the guards wore, my dead body shield kept the bullets away from any vital spots, though my arms and legs sizzled from all the silver pumped into them. I ignored the pain, concentrating on finishing my task. For all I knew, one of these guards had fired the shots that killed Bones, so I was merciless in my actions.
Snap. Crush. Tear.
I repeated those until nothing around me moved. Then I shoved bodies into the hole to stop more bullets from peppering the room and ricocheting off the steel walls. When that was done, I let out a victory howl that ended when I realized I’d won, but I still couldn’t get out of the room unless someone opened the door.
Maybe I could get someone to do that. Seized with an idea, I grabbed the nearest dead guard and spoke into his communication system.
“Denise,” I shouted. “You’ve gotta find a way to open this door!”
“Who the fuck are you?” the voice on the other end snapped.
I didn’t care enough to answer. I heard background noise from him, which meant Denise should have been able to hear me, too, if she was still near this guy. From the fierce sound of fighting, she had to be.
Then a different voice blasted from a com device on another body.
“ALL units to Section 13! Situation critical!”
Aw, hell, Section 13 was where I was. The guards below must’ve called in the fact that I’d demolished the soldiers in the panic room.
“Hurry up, Denise!” I yelled into the com. Then I began to gather up M-4s that had the most ammo left before pausing to pull a Kevlar vest off a dead guard. Much more manageable than taking his body with me.
“I
repeat, situation critical!” screamed the panicked voice through the com. “Hostile sighted and . . . oh God. What is that? WHAT IS THAT?”
I pulled on the blood-spattered vest, wondering what Denise had shapeshifted into this time. From the sound of the guard, could’ve been a Tyrannosaurus rex. She’d made it to my floor fast, too. Just moments ago, she’d still been in Section 6, wherever that was—
The thick titanium bolts around the door snapped back into the walls faster than they’d deployed. Then it didn’t open; it crashed inward, flattening a body beneath it with enough force to make something that looked like raspberry jam spurt from its sides.
But that wasn’t what made me freeze, my M-4 halting halfway up in its arc. It was the thing on the other side of the door. White hair framed a face that showed more skull than skin except for a set of blazing emerald eyes. Bullet-riddled clothes hung off a body that looked like old leather and dried meat wrapped around bone. When it bared its teeth in a hideous version of a smile, I instinctively recoiled.
And then it spoke.
“Hallo . . . Kitten.”
Eighteen
Later, I’d be ashamed that I didn’t run into his arms when I realized who it was, but at the moment, my brain refused to reconcile the half-rotted, walking corpse with the man I loved.
Bones didn’t have my hesitance. He also didn’t have over sixty percent of his flesh, but that was the point. He grasped my arm and yanked me out of the panic room, then propelled me down the hallway. I let him lead me, still trying to grapple with the reality of his being here, let alone trying to make sense of the condition he was in. Bodies of guards littered the hallway, their heads ripped mostly off and puddles of their blood causing me to slide once or twice as we ran. Red lights flashed, and alarms blared, but we didn’t encounter more guards, and if this section had employees, they’d long since evacuated.
Then a large set of double doors barred our path into the next section. From the empty security station, the entry guard had left his post, and through the small viewing panel, I didn’t see anyone in the room beyond, either.