The software automatically bypassed the login and used the network to hack into the security system. Rebel took over the cameras for this floor and forced them to play a recurring loop of the last few minutes, so the watchers in the security control room would see nothing but empty rooms and hallways. She had fifty-seven minutes before guards passed through the hallways on their next security sweep, and the control room realized they couldn’t see them on the video feed.
Plenty of time.
She used the security hack to disable the locks and motion sensors in the storage vault, and access the files on the serum she was about to steal.
Then she took an extra minute to download the latest security protocols and alerts, in case their intel was out of date already.
Which it was.
There was a red flag from two days ago. A breach of one of the labs, and a theft of Shifter Toxin DRA-4269. Whatever that was. The company had tripled their security team, and were doing sweeps every twenty minutes.
Instead of fifty-four minutes before the next sweep, she now had fourteen.
Fuck.
Thorne? she called out mentally as she headed for the door, and then she repeated it out loud. “Thorne?”
There was no answer to either call. Damn. They’d been prepared for the possibility that the security system covering the windows and exterior doors contained some kind of dampening technology that would block signals from coming in and out of the building, including telepathic conversation, but it still sucked.
It also made her feel suddenly alone.
Stop that, she told herself as she made her way into the dim, thickly carpeted hallway. This company must be making a crap-ton of money—even their hallways looked expensive. You’ve been alone all your life. It’s better that way. In the end, there’s no one you can count on except yourself.
She sprinted down the hall and around the corner to the office that fronted the vault. It was unlocked, courtesy of her hack, and as she entered she could see the heavy metal vault door with its combo lock and opening mechanism that looked like a miniature steering wheel.
For a second, nerves crept up Rebel’s spine. The last time she was in a vault, things hadn’t gone well. Of course, this time she wasn’t in a rogue witch’s house, going after an idol with the essence of an evil sorcerer in it, waiting to get his hooks in her.
So there was that.
She moved to the vault door and spun the wheel. Score. The security hack had worked here too, and the door was unlocked. The heavy bolts thunked as they disengaged, and she was in.
Her problem came when she got inside.
The vault was way bigger than she’d expected. It held thousands of tissue samples, vials, and jars of various substances. There were dozens of shelves and drawers, including three refrigeration units.
Needle. Haystack. Awesome.
She managed to narrow it down by about three-quarters when she realized all the liquids were kept in one section, but that didn’t help much. She still had to go through shelf after shelf, drawer after drawer, looking for what she wanted.
Shifter Serum UN-8825. Shifter Serum UN-8825. Come on.
Rebel glanced at her watch, her stomach starting to clench with anxiety. Normally she was calm while doing a job. Even happy—she loved her work. But the mission timer was ticking down the minutes until the security cameras would need to be back online, and she could feel that this was all about to go sideways.
Bail, her instincts told her. Normally she followed that instinct without question, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it now. Thorne needed this serum, and Rebel was the only one who could help him. Not the witch, not his magical brothers. Her. She couldn’t let him down.
She opened up another drawer, searching through the rows of vials, one eye on the minutes relentlessly ticking down.
There. Shifter Serum UN-8825.
She grabbed the flat metal transport box out of her vest and opened it, carefully packing the two vials of serum between the foam inserts. She was about to close it up when something in the next row caught her eye.
Shifter Toxin DRA-4269. The same substance that had been stolen in the recent break-in.
DRA for dragon? Could it be a toxin that specifically affected dragons? That thought made the back of her neck prickle. Her instincts were telling her this was important, and this time she listened to them.
Rebel tucked the two vials of toxin into the remaining empty spaces in her box, then flipped it shut and snapped the locks, slipping it into a zippered pocket in her vest.
Time for her to get the hell gone. She had two minutes to get down the hall, out the window and back up to the roof.
She was out of the vault and headed for the office door when she heard the crackle of a radio in the hallway, and a man’s voice, faint with static.
“Sector 40, I do not have you on visual. Verify your position.”
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. The guards were early for their sweep, and as soon as they verified where they were, the control room would realize the security cameras had been messed with.
They were also between her and the office where she’d entered—and the cable and winch that would get her back to the roof.
Rebel needed a Plan B.
Good thing she always had one.
She was already moving when another voice crackled through the radio, right outside the door. “Breach in Sector 39. I repeat, breach in Sector 39. Intruder may still be in the building.”
No time to lose. Rebel leaped up onto the desk and pulled a slim tool out of her vest, prying the vent cover off the ceiling. She hoisted herself into the ventilation shaft just as the office door slammed open and two security guards entered the room, guns drawn.
As she crawled frantically through the shaft, she heard one of them snapping into his radio, “Intruder is in the ventilation system, origination vault room, Section 39. Security protocol A-12.”
A second voice came back. “Roger that. Emergency security troops deploying. Lethal force authorized. Intruder is to be stopped by any means necessary.”
Chapter 5
Thorne circled around the office building for what felt like the hundredth time, his huge wings effortlessly catching an updraft and soaring high above the ground. It was a brand-new tower in a suburb of Tacoma, surrounded by smaller buildings and a green gated campus that looked pretty and innocent, even in the dark of night.
But if Gen-X was involved, it was anything but innocent.
And his Destined Mate was in there alone, because he couldn’t shift and go with her.
His dragon hated that with all his being. Of course, if his dragon had his way they’d lock Rebel in their lair and not let her out until she agreed to be their mate.
There were days when Thorne was seriously tempted.
He circled again. Rebel? he called in his mind. She didn’t answer. He didn’t know if she couldn’t hear him, or she just didn’t want to.
She was probably ignoring him. She always thought she could do everything herself.
As he had so many times over the last few weeks, he wondered why the hell the ancient Draken Arkyld had entrusted the Seals to humans in the first place. They kept dying, for one thing, so they had to pass the Seals down from one generation to the next.
And of course they’d lost them. At least Blaze’s had been tattooed on, so she couldn’t lose it, although she hadn’t known what it was.
The other two had no clue about theirs. In the careless way humans had, their ancestors had mislaid the Seals and then just gone about their business.
Stop being reasonable, Thorne growled. I’m busy blaming people. It makes me feel better.
He had to get his ability to shift back. Proud as he was of his Draken form, there were things it just couldn’t do.
ragons storming a castle.>
What the hell do you know about storming castles? You’ve never even seen a castle.
Not if we destroy the building with her inside it, Thorne said. Also, we’re looking for a serum. As in, a delicate substance in a fragile glass vial—which don’t really do so well when tons of rubble comes crashing down on them. Besides, those were movies. Dragons probably never stormed castles in this world.
Thorne sighed mentally. His dragon was getting stronger, the longer he remained in this form. More unmanageable, with too many damned ideas.
He had a point there.
Sinuous tail? That was supposed to be a selling point?
Thorne said, You do get that human women don’t typically fall in love with people because they have snaky tails?
Doubtful. Nonetheless, Thorne twisted his head to look at his tail. It was almost twenty feet long, covered with midnight-blue scales that shaded to black on the underside. Supple and strong, with wicked barbs every few feet that could punch a hole in a steel-bodied 1957 Cadillac. Which had totally been an accident.
It had taken a couple of serious memory-blurring spells to make the humans who owned the car forget how that had happened.
You’re completely imagining the awe, Thorne said. And she is not in love with us. Or our tail.
The creature just never let up. And he was pretty sure Rebel was not impressed with his tail, or his scales, or his horns, or anything dragony about him. Of course, the one time they’d met when he was in human form, she hadn’t seemed impressed with that, either.
He sighed, a small flame coming out of his throat. There was no way Rebel was going to fall in love with him, dragon or not. She’d already made that clear. Which was going to make mating with her a problem.
And he had to convince her to mate with him. The Draken Lord had come way too close to breaking free a few weeks ago. They needed the second Seal, and that meant he needed Rebel. If being her mate was the only way to fulfill the prophecy and find the Dolphin Seal, that’s what he had to do.
He just had to convince her to agree to bond with him. The problem was, she was a professional thief. He wasn’t sure her sense of duty stretched to committing herself for life to a grouchy, uninteresting, un-fun Wild Dragon.
He’d thought she would like his gold. Thieves liked money. That’s why they stole things, wasn’t it? But she’d tried to gamble most of his mating gifts away in poker games with the other dragons.
He needed to find another way to win her over.
Shut up.
He called out to Rebel again, growing more worried when she still didn’t answer.
What if she were hurt? Captured?
Dead?
No. He would know if she were dead. They were connected by the prophecy. Surely he’d know.
His dragon was right. He should never have let her go in there alone. It was his duty to protect her, whether she wanted him to or not.
He was perfectly willing to do his duty. To become her mate, to do whatever it took to get the Seal. They could make a decent life together, the way Draken mates always had.
Her beautiful wavy dark brown hair and her taut athletic body with its soft breasts and hips were unimportant. As was the rare, flashing smile that lit up her entire face when he was lucky enough to bring it to the surface. The sadness he sometimes saw in her eyes that made him want to hold her close. Her fierce courage, her strength, and her determination.
All completely irrelevant.
They certainly didn’t have to get all sappy together the way Zane and Blaze were. With Zane’s bear shifter blood, he couldn’t help being sentimental.
Thorne was never sentimental. He and Rebel would have a respectful, sensible, dutiful mating. No drama.
That’s what they’d do.
Below him in the building, windows began to light up. Moments later, red emergency strobes began pulsing, and his sharp dragon ears caught the sound of alarm bells ringing.
The parking lot and the roof of the building were suddenly ablaze with floodlights.
They’d found her.
Thorne was overcome by a sudden wave of protectiveness. MINE! he roared. My treasure! And no one messed with his treasure.
Thorne folded his wings and dove.
Chapter 6
Back in the Batcave, Tempest lay on one of the couches, watching a rerun of Touched by an Angel while the others played poker. She could tell their hearts weren’t really in it, though. It was just something to do while waiting for Thorne and Rebel to get back from their mission.
So many things could go wrong. And even if everything went right, what if Thorne still couldn’t turn human?
What if they couldn’t find the next Seal?
But this growing feeling of anxiety in her stomach wasn’t about that.
It was still about the dragons. All of them, lying dead, and even though it couldn’t happen like that because Thorne wasn’t here, she still felt like it was about to.
Part of her wanted to go over and sit next to Tyr. When she was with him, the bad feelings went away, and so did the visions. Sometimes she wished she could just be his mate the way he wanted, and be with him all the time.
She liked Tyr. Really like-liked him. He was sweet and funny and kind, and unbelievably hot. Way hotter than any guy who had ever noticed her before.
She even liked his dirty mouth. The things he said made her laugh.
But if she couldn’t see her visions when she was with him, she didn’t know if they could be together. Her visions told her important things, and she knew, deep inside, that one day soon she would need them.
What if something really, really bad was going to happen—like the dragons dying or Vyrkos coming out of the mountain or something happening to Rebel—and she didn’t know because she was all snuggled up to Tyr?
What if she didn’t fix it?
The feeling in her gut grew even stronger; she felt almost nauseated. In her head, all around her, she could see dead dragons. Sometimes they were down here, in their dragon forms. Sometimes they were upstairs, in the house, lying in the hallways, human but still dead.
There was never any blood. No wounds. Just their still faces and their blank eyes staring up at her accusingly.
Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. Very quietly, she rose and slipped out of the room, like she was just going to the bathroom.
Really, she was patrolling. The way she used to patrol the neighborhood around her store in St. Johns. Walking up one street and down another, fixing things so that the visions she saw wouldn’t happen.
Giving money to the crazy man outside the coffee shop, so he’d go off to buy a bottle and wouldn’t hurt the blond lady that said nasty things to him as she passed.
Stopping the man outside the bar and asking him what time it was, so he didn’t go inside at the wrong time and start a fight and get hit over the head with a jagged bottle.
Moving a trash can that somebody was going to trip over, and break their leg.
Just making sure everything was okay.
But as soon as she walked out the door of the Batcave into the big arc
hing atrium that led to all the other tunnels, she knew it wasn’t okay.
She saw it again, clear as anything: all the dragons lying dead.
She had to fix it. She had to change it so the story ended differently.
She stood with her eyes closed, running one scenario after another. Get in the elevator and go upstairs to the mansion. Go down to the portal room that led to Vyrkos’ tomb.
Go down the corridor that led to Tyr’s lair. Zane’s. Thorne’s.
That was it. She walked down the corridor, her sneakers making hardly any sound on the big stone floor. She passed door after door, all huge and carved with amazing designs—animals, trees, suns and moons and planets, abstract designs.
Some of them still had hoards of dragon gold behind them. She imagined she could hear the gold singing, the way Blaze told her Zane’s hoard sang.
That must be amazing. She’d like to see Tyr’s hoard, but it was the one thing he hadn’t shown her.
She came to a fork in the tunnel and closed her eyes again. Left. Not towards Thorne’s lair after all, but down the tunnel that led toward the entrance that the dragons used when they wanted to go outside from the tunnels. It led to an opening in the cliffside, one that could only be accessed by someone flying.
Tempest felt a breeze and smelled rain. She opened her eyes. Rain? That wasn’t right. The magical forcefield on the entrance was supposed to keep out people and animals and weather.
Was it Rebel and Thorne? No, they couldn’t be back yet. They’d flown all the way to Tacoma.
Unless something had gone wrong…
She was about to start down the tunnel when she saw a flash of movement at the other end—a glimpse of a dark figure crossing the end of the tunnel. Instinctively, she shrank back into the shadowy entryway to one of the lairs, pressing herself against the great carved doors.
But the person didn’t even glance her way. They headed away from the exit, deeper into the tunnel complex.
Dragon's Rebel (Wild Dragons Book 2) Page 3
