by Lizzy Ford
Zoey leapt up to the linoleum floor. The flare illuminated the area outside the elevator, and battery-operated backup lights glowed throughout the hallway running to the right and left.
It was silent. The corridor was lined with five doors on one side and three on the other.
“You want right?” Zoey asked Vikki as she hopped up beside her.
“Sure.”
Ginny joined them. “I’ll stay here and relay messages. Holler if you need anything.”
Zoey started to the left, senses picking up nothing, not even Vikki and Ginny. The halls had some sort of magic absorbing the traces of sex energy every member of the supernatural societies normally left.
As with the main entrance, the first door she came to had an electronic lock and palm reader, both of which were disabled. She pulled the door open and looked around inside at the massive lab that ran the length of the hallway. Her flashlight reflected off of metal and glass, scientific technology she was unfamiliar with and workstations.
“Shit,” she grumbled, entering. With no electricity, they managed to get in easily – but couldn’t check computers to see if there was any information they’d want off them.
She took in the entire lab, counting twenty workstations with computers, before her eyes fell to an office on the far side. Trotting through quiet rows of tables and counters, she nudged the door open with her hip and entered. A heavy safe was in one corner, a filing cabinet in the other.
The safe was bolted with a manual lock, the file cabinet filled with neatly filed paperwork. A quick glance through them indicated they were administrative in type, many of which had to do with budgeting.
Growing frustrated, she went to the desk and yanked out drawers, searching for anything portable that might contain information she needed. There was a laptop in one drawer and two thumb drives in a second. She grabbed all three, tucking the computer into the bag at her back and the drives into cargo pockets.
Leaving the lab, she checked her watch and trotted to the first of the two doors on the opposite side of the hall. The door to the first was open, and she quickly evaluated the vacant room. The back half appeared to be a server room while the front was storage.
“Not enough time,” she said under her breath with a curse.
“Z?” Vikki called from down the hall.
“Nothing! You?”
“Nope.”
Zoey went to the second room and closed the door after a glance. “Fucking break room. Tell me you have something, Vikki!”
“I think I do.”
The odd note in Vikki’s voice drew both Zoey and Ginny. She stood inside one doorway, flashlight on the form at the center of the room.
“Ethan,” Zoey said, frowning. She approached the glass wall of the cell.
Declan’s father was drugged. He appeared to be awake but dazed, lying strapped to a hospital bed staring at the ceiling.
“What’d they do?” Ginny asked, shifting her weight between her feet. “He’s not even reading as strong as a Cambion.”
“They dulled his magic for sure,” Zoey agreed. “If Olivia can do this, why does she want us?”
“Did you find anything?” Ginny asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t exactly turn on the computers to see what’s on them,” Zoey pointed out. “I grabbed a laptop and a thumb drives.” She tried the door separating them from the incubus Councilmember. It was secured still. She tapped the glass. “Bullet proof.”
Vikki whipped out a lock picking kit. Zoey held the flashlight for her.
“Have you ever thought about talking to Declan about why he cheated?” she asked.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Zoey demanded, astonished as much by the question as her friend’s odd timing. “Did they start brainwashing people now too?”
“Hold that shit still!” Vikki snapped.
“I swear when this is over, I’m telling Liam you’re pregnant so he can drag you off to some cabin in the woods. When you’re normal, you can come back.”
“Where are you getting this shit?”
The lock clicked, and Vikki pushed the door open.
Just then, the lights overhead went on. An alarm blared down the hall.
“Guys!” Tiff’s shout was muffled by the distance.
“Go.” Zoey nudged Ginny towards the door. “He looks heavy.” She crossed to the hospital bed. It was nailed to the floor, dashing her hope of rolling him to the elevator.
Vikki tapped his cheek.
Ethan’s eyes slid to her, but he didn’t appear able to focus.
Zoey sliced the straps binding him. “Ethan?” she called, leaning to peer into his features. “Can you understand me?”
He nodded slowly once.
“Can you move?”
“Z, we’ve got a problem,” Ginny said, reappearing in the doorway. “Comms are back up. They’re blocked down here, but Tiff said all hell is breaking loose. She said the Sucubatti are undergoing lockdown procedures.”
Zoey and Vikki exchanged a look. “We gotta hurry.” Lockdown procedures involved full deployment of the Halfling and succubae security forces to every property of importance. Within twenty minutes, the underground bunker would be crawling with forty members of the Sucubatti.
“C’mon, Ethan,” Zoey grunted. She and Vikki hefted his upper body off the bed. “V, I don’t think he’s gonna be able to walk.”
Tiff shouted down the shaft. Ginny darted down the hallway once more to check in with her.
Zoey and Vikki helped the large, muscular incubus off the bed. His body weight almost pulled them to the ground. Bracing herself, Zoey glanced up as Ginny returned.
“I gotta clear the way,” Ginny said, drawing her knife.
“Gin, if we don’t make it up, take off,” Zoey told her.
“No way.”
“Yes way!” Zoey shifted Ethan and tugged off her backpack, dropping the thumb drives into it. “Take these to Chrissy and follow the backup plan.”
“What backup plan?” Vikki asked.
“The one where I stay here.”
“What? No!”
Ginny frowned.
“It’s only until I can confront Olivia. Besides, if I’m trapped down here, I can’t kill or kidnap anyone,” Zoey reasoned. “Gin, go!”
The tall brunette left reluctantly.
“Or Olivia will brainwash you one last time,” Vikki pointed out.
“That won’t happen,” Zoey snapped without feeling assured at all of her words. “Just help me get him to the lift!”
They struggled to carry him, the blaring alarm making Zoey flinch as they strode beneath it.
“Zoey!” Ginny called long before they’d made it to the elevator. “We gotta go! Now!”
Zoey glanced at Vikki and then at Ethan.
“Go,” Ethan managed in a hoarse whisper. “I’m … fine.”
“My ass,” Vikki responded.
“No, he’s right,” Zoey said. “You need to leave, Vikki.”
“I’m not going without either of you.”
“Grand …baby,” Ethan added.
“You told him?” Vikki demanded.
“No, I didn’t tell him!” Zoey snapped. “I told Declan.”
Vikki muttered curses. “Did you fucking read the book?”
“What is it with you people and books? Look, Vikki.” Zoey released Ethan. “Believe it or not, we have a plan. Chrissy and the others know what I’m doing. Hell, even the Professor thought it was a horrible idea but one that might help us out. It’ll be easier for me to do this if you aren’t here for them to torture.”
“Listen, just because I’m –”
“It has nothing to do with that!” Zoey groaned. She took Vikki’s shoulders and shook her. “It has everything to do with why I’m having blackouts and why our Halflings are getting sick. If the information isn’t on the shit we grabbed, I gotta get Olivia or her lab rats to admit to it here. I’ve got three weeks, Vikki. Three.”
Surprise fl
ickered across Vikki’s face.
“Okay? Let me fix my shit, so I can be there when you have that kid.”
“The Professor approved of this plan,” Vikki repeated.
“Well, he didn’t say no.”
Vikki nodded, taking in her features. “Fine. But in twelve hours, I blow this place apart to bring you back.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Vikki moved away, dissatisfied.
Zoey turned back to Ethan, aware she wasn’t going to drag him anywhere. She took up a seat on the floor across from him to await Olivia’s goons.
“Z,” Vikki called from the elevator. “In case something happens and you get permanently brainwashed.”
Zoey met her gaze.
“Declan didn’t know he was cheating on you. He was drugged by Olivia and tricked by Heidi. He’s too much of a fucking idiot to tell you.”
Zoey’s mouth dropped open.
Vikki disappeared into the elevator.
“She’s … right,” Ethan added in his drowsy, ragged voice. His head rested against the wall behind him, his whiskey-hued eyes on her.
“Why wouldn’t he tell me that?”
“Afraid … lose you.”
“Declan? He’s not afraid of anything,” she said. “I think you’re both high.”
Zoey knew the power of the IAB chief to drug people into doing something they wouldn’t but Declan? He was too strong to be taken out the same way a Halfling could.
She looked over at Ethan, whose eyes were closed. He was there because of something she did while under the influence of Olivia’s tampering. Would Declan pull their funding after seeing what she did? Would he refuse to talk to her ever again?
She wasn’t in control when she committed those acts. But she’d still fucked up. She’d unwittingly taken part in his abduction operation and killed – or at least dumped – Heidi. Not at all certain how to reconcile the two concepts, she sat back and got comfortable, lining up her weapons beside her so as to make her surrender convincing.
Ethan watched her through slitted eyes.
“I know what happened to Sienna,” she said. “We’ll get you out of here, Ethan.”
“Pro…fessor?”
“Yeah. I swear to god, if I go to take out Olivia and you don’t back me, the next time I come for you, I won’t be in blackout mode,” she said. “I know you have a plan, Ethan, and I know you should’ve pulled the trigger long ago. Now Declan and the rest of them are in danger from the same threat that killed your wife and will overthrow your society, if you don’t do something about it.”
A faint smile pulled up one corner of his lips. “You don’t know … the half of it … Zoey.”
“I don’t give a shit! If you weren’t so stuck on politics instead of realizing that your world is about to come crashing down, no matter what you want to happen or when you want it to happen, then you’re a fucking idiot.”
“Declan loves …you.” Ethan’s eyes closed, and his breathing grew deep enough to tell her he was unconscious.
The wheezing words deflated her anger and caused her throat to tighten. Zoey rested her head against the wall. Of all the concerns she should have waiting for Olivia’s people to capture her, the only one worth thinking about was how Vikki and Ethan both claimed Declan had been drugged by Olivia, the same way she was.
If it’s true, why didn’t he tell me? She wanted to will the question through the connection with Declan for him to answer.
Did it matter? After what she’d done – kidnapping his father – she was lucky he hadn’t tracked her down yet to drag her back to the Incubatti Council.
The alarms silenced, allowing her to hear the faint purr of the elevator as her soon-to-be captors returned to the compound.
Zoey rose, banishing any thought of Declan from her mind. She stepped back from the weapons and raised her hands. The security detail descended first, two Halflings and two succubae armed to the teeth.
“Don’t shoot,” she called.
They whirled to face her.
Anger bubbling once more, Zoey dropped to her knees with her hands behind her head. “Why doesn’t someone get on the phone and tell Mommy her precious little girl wants to have a chat?”
Chapter Fourteen: Decided
Declan sat behind his desk, listening to the verbal recordings of reports from across the organization. The EMP strike had managed to knock the systems offline of everything within a twenty-five mile radius of DC. From intelligence outposts to underground compounds to his apartment building, every Incubatti site was sent into chaos. Engineers were scrambling to restore computers and electricity to the operations center and headquarters first. In the meantime, the compound was operating on generator power, which meant dim lighting, no computers and only emergency security measures in place.
By all rights, he should be in the command center. He’d returned to his office to grab his water bottle, only to find the mask Aiden joked about getting him in the middle of his desk. The sight of it made him pause, a reminder of the nights he’d defied his society’s rules to sneak out of the compound and watch over Zoey.
His office was quiet and dim, the opposite of the bustling command center. It fit his mood. Forbidden from pursuing the woman who had kidnapped his father and forced to hunt down his own soul-mate for the deed, he couldn’t remember a time when he was less a part of his world than he was now.
“You can change things, can’t you?” he asked the mask.
He couldn’t act openly against Olivia, but there was nothing stopping an unknown masked vigilante from opposing anyone. Struck by the absurdity of the idea, he also felt a shift within him, one that relished the challenge of evening the odds and welcomed a different approach. Mask or no, he was troubled to consider clandestine rebellion a valid alternative to being hogtied by the Council. He had the power of the Enforcer Chief without the freedom to pursue his people’s true enemies.
The smooth material slid through his fingers, and he debated for another split second before stretching across to reach into the top drawer of his desk, where he kept two more of the armbands he’d given Vikki earlier.
A knock at his door made him replace them. In the way of his brothers, the door opened without anyone waiting for him to admit them.
“Hey,” Wes said, striding to the chair before his desk. “Any word about what’s going on?”
“My best guess is that Olivia set off the EMP, though it seems short-sighted to knock out her own systems. It didn’t come from any of our facilities for sure,” Declan replied. “We should know more when the systems are up. Grant is gonna have a heart attack about this one.”
“He’ll live,” Wes said wryly. “Any word about Dad?”
“None.”
Concern flickered across Wes’s face. “You think Olivia found out about our plan?”
“What plan?” Declan asked with more heat than he wanted. “The one we’re not executing because we want to give her a head start at fucking us over?”
“Yeah, that one.” Wes smiled. “You know what the Council says. The IAB is off limits.”
But you don’t know what Olivia’s people did to our mother. Declan clenched his jaw to keep from responding.
“We’re treading water,” Wes added. “I don’t like it, either, Declan, especially because I know the position you’re in. Zoey’s strong enough to survive this.”
Declan rose and paced, wishing again he had a window to stare out of instead of the white walls. “We’re getting further and further from our goal,” he said. “Olivia is slowly rolling the rug out from under us. How long before we realize it’s too late to act?”
There were days when he understood Zoey’s dedication and relentless pursuit of what she thought was right – and envied her with all his heart for being able to throw every care to the wind and act. He was forced to turn the other cheek to injustice, for the sake of protecting his family and their soul-mates. His father’s plan to upheave the Incubatti society – many years
in planning – had been put on hold indefinitely until they were able to figure out how to break the alliance between Olivia and Paul.
“I agree,” Wes said. “She crossed a line by taking our father. Proving it was her and not Zoey is the challenge. We have to be patient a little longer.”
“Until what? Olivia kills Dad?”
“She wouldn’t dare.”
“She would, Wes,” Declan said, hushed. “She would take him apart in pieces.”
“And disrupt the current warm fuzzies between us and them?”
“Yeah.” With the knowledge of what the Sucubatti had done to his mother, Declan began to chafe more at the inability to act to save his father. “The longer we wait, the more danger he’s in. She’s declared war, and we’re sitting on our asses.”
“The Council may be willing to act since one of its members is missing.”
“Not openly. Chandler told me as much. He wants me to stop Olivia discreetly. The Council won’t sanction any action against the Sucubatti.”
“That’s fucked up.”
Olivia had already won. There was no doubt in the minds of most Incubatti members that Zoey was the monster Olivia had set her up to be. If his soul-mate survived this, the chances either of them ever knew true peace were gone. Waiting two months for her to come to terms with what happened had never seemed like a waste of time before, and regret filled Declan. He should’ve tried to talk to Zoey, and in doing so, maybe prevented her blackouts from happening.
Despair crept into him at the thought that it was too late, that he’d never wake up every morning to her beautiful body and sweet face.
“I have faith, Declan. Something’s going to change.”
Declan turned his attention outward once more. Wes was concerned yet calm. “I think it’s too late, Wes. I think we need to do something soon. I just don’t know what.” He’d spent many hours agonizing over how to juggle his duty and his heart without ever finding a possibility with the remote chance of working. With his faith in his organization cracking, he began to think his father’s plan couldn’t wait much longer, or the Incubatti would collapse upon itself, once Olivia began her war more openly.
