by Lizzy Ford
Vikki, Tiff, Ginny and Chrissy checked in. She half-listened, readying her weapons and memorizing the route of advance they’d chosen for the compound. The Halfling driving pulled the van to a halt and killed the engine, extinguishing the light inside the cargo bay.
Zoey opened the door and dropped to her feet, taking in the facility at the center of a compound the size of two football fields. Floodlights lit up the perimeter, which was lined by a chain link fence. They had left the main road for a slow journey through the forest to reach a hill overlooking their target in order to make last minute adjustments to their plan.
“We’re not alone,” Vikki said.
Zoey turned away from the bright compound to see the three other vans lined up alongside hers. Beyond them was a sight she’d been too preoccupied to notice.
Declan. He stood at the head of a car, hands on hips, immaculately dressed in a suit with his unreadable Enforcer mask on. Her insides bloomed into warmth, her skin growing sensitive fast and her blood on fire. He stood with more people than she expected to see: his eight brothers, his father, Lydia and a face she loathed to see, Paul.
Vikki, Tiff and Ginny joined her, their focus drawn by the immense amount of restrained power rolling off the powerful incubuses.
“Shit,” she murmured. After a brief hesitation, Zoey strode forward, unease and desire stirring in a volatile combination within her.
Declan moved away from the group and met her halfway between their parties, his scent and heat washing over her in a way that made her thighs tremble in anticipation. His eyes were golden in the light of the nearby compound.
“Trust me, Zoey,” he started. “I’m not here to stop you.”
She shivered at the intensity of their connection. It made her want to take his hand so they were touching and never leave his side again. “Why is Paul here?”
“He and my brothers are here to ensure none of his Cambions disobey the Council’s directive not to interfere in Sucubatti business,” Declan said smoothly. “And so I can keep an eye on him.”
She managed not to smile.
“I told you. I’d clear the path for you.” Tenderness lit in his eyes. “My father wanted to make sure you come away with Olivia’s head. Once you do, the Incubatti Council is willing to remove the warrant they issued for you.”
Zoey glanced past him at Ethan, who was in much better shape than he had been the last time they met. She lifted her chin in greeting, and he nodded in response, features grim. “I’ll bring him her head,” she said. “For your mother’s sake.”
“You know.”
Zoey looked up at her soul-mate. By his expression, he’d been told the secret the Professor said none of Ethan’s son knew. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I do.”
“Then you know how worried I am.” Declan’s tone was hushed, a flicker of concern piercing his façade.
“I got this.”
“I know. I’m still worried.”
“This might help. Or scare you more.” Zoey handed him an ear bud. “You can listen. Just don’t get in my way, and I might come over tonight.”
“When this is over, you aren’t leaving my bed for a fucking week, Zoey.”
She studied him, loving the depth of his emotion for her yet concerned about the mission that stood between them. “We’ll see.” With a wink, she spun away and left him standing. “Lydia, come on!”
The blonde Halfling responded immediately, trotting to reach Zoey. Wes cursed, and Lydia grinned.
“You okay?” Zoey gave her a sidelong look.
“Mostly.”
“You’re on comms and operations, Commander.” Zoey handed her the iPad with the details of their raid listed, along with maps showing locations of all members.
Lydia accepted it, her features lighting up. Chrissy joined them.
“And you’re in charge of this.” Zoey handed her a small, remote detonation device. “We’re blowing this place to hell. When the charges are in place, they’ll light up on the screen. I alone give the order to go. Code word Rock. If the mission is compromised, code word is Paper. If I’m under duress and being forced to give the code word, it’s Scissors.”
“Got it.” Lydia accepted the communications headset from Chrissy. “Hey girls!”
The other core members greeted her. Zoey smiled, happy her family was back together again. The infectious, upbeat flow of energy among them boosted her hopes.
“We ready for this?” A tremor of excitement, tinged with fear and a little desperation, went through her.
The others nodded.
“Everyone has an energy shot mixed with adrenaline in a shot, compliments of Chrissy. You’re your armbands on,” Zoey said. “Assume your positions.”
Without another word, the five members split up. Vikki took her team of Halflings to the point position at one corner of the compound, while Ginny and Tiff moved quickly down the hill to their assigned corners.
“Set, Wendy?” Zoey asked, crouching beside the sniper assigned to the hill.
“Yeah.”
Zoey watched the other teams move into place. Chrissy and Lydia shifted into position at the van, each monitoring two teams. The Professor emerged from the passenger seat of a van and joined Zoey. She rose.
“Be careful, dear,” he said, grave gaze on the compound.
“Never,” she replied. “This ends with her death or mine. There’s no other solution.”
His dark eyes shifted to her.
“I’ve always loved you, Alexander,” Zoey said and waved her team into place. “Take care of Declan if anything bad happens.”
“Of course. But I believe only you can do that, Zoey.”
She gave a quick smile and started towards the trail leading down the hill. Afraid she’d cry or lose her focus if she looked at Declan again, she whispered instead. “I love you, Declan.”
I know, Zoey.
She sighed at the influx of sex energy he sent. It filled her, sharpened her concentration and gave her the sense of giddy invincibility.
Zoey led her team down the hill and towards the fencing to her assigned point, the one farthest from the hill, and crouched. Adrenaline shot through her, and she awaited the signal.
“Electrical fence down in three, two, one,” Chrissy said.
The hum of electricity vanished. Two Halflings snapped links in the fence with sharpen bolt cutters to create a hole large enough for a person.
“Moving in,” Vikki reported.
Zoey waited, eyes roving the area around them. “Chrissy, the cameras on this corner are still up.”
“Working on it,” came the preoccupied response.
“Gin, you’ve got movement. Some sort of guard on a smoke break,” Lydia warned them. “V, keep south to avoid detection. Tiff, you’ve got the guard. Zoey, go in ten.”
Zoey began a slow countdown.
“Cameras down,” Chrissy said.
At the end of her count, Zoey and her team slid through the fence into the compound. There were no buildings or terrain features large enough to hide them in the fifty yards between Zoey and the central compound. They sprinted to the side of the building and stopped when they reached the concrete wall.
“Good!” Zoey reported breathlessly. “Proceeding to west entrance.”
“Guard down.”
“No security systems on doors.”
“We’re in.”
Zoey processed the reports absently as she moved to the door assigned to them to infiltrate. She was going in on the ground floor of the four story building on the side thought to house the boiler room and air conditioning systems. Zoey tested the door and found it locked before motioning to a Halfling to use a lock pick set to open it.
“Wendy, take out the sentry,” Lydia ordered. “No idea where she came from.”
Zoey didn’t hear the report of a weapon but knew Wendy wasn’t one to miss, or she wouldn’t be assigned to the sniper position.
Someone followed you, Declan’s whisper slid through her.
<
br /> Zoey snapped her attention towards the way they’d come. She saw shadowy movement from the corner of the fencing without seeing how many were there. She recognized the magic radiating off them, though.
“We’ve got Cambions at my seven,” she reported. “Unless there’s any objection, I’m thinking Wendy needs to take car of them.”
“Paul will call them off.” By the edge in Declan’s voice, the Cambion leader wasn’t being given a choice in the matter.
The lock clicked open beside her. Zoey drew her weapons and entered. The roar of industrial air conditioners on full blast came from her right. Various pipes, ducts and hoses lined the walls, ceilings and floors. The self-sustaining facility had its own mini-desalination plant, power plant, climate controls, and several backup systems that she could identify. It was loud, smelled of oil, and the air was charged with electricity that made the hair on her arms stand on end.
Aware no one would hear her without shouting, Zoey used hand movements to direct her team. She trotted to her first objective, the power grid, and pressed explosives to the fuse board directing the flow of electricity. The other three members of her team tackled trunks of electricity and communications.
Declan, why would a facility this size needs its own water, cooling and power plants? She asked across the bond with her soul-mate.
He didn’t answer immediately, and she trailed her team members to the stairs leading to the catwalk and office overlooking the impressive set up.
The woman running point crept to the lit office and whipped open the door. Zoey’s knife was in the throat of the succubus within before she had a chance to stand.
They moved to the main entrance leading into the building, and Zoey slid into a much quieter hallway, able to hear the chatter once more.
“Zoey and Gin’s charges are up.”
“… four guards.”
“Two more sentries …”
I’m betting this is her medical facility and the lab you found in Maryland her research facility, Declan responded.
Zoey shuddered, not wanting to know what they’d discover after hearing the tale of what happened to his mother. She checked her watch, where Chrissy had programmed directions to their different objectives. “Rendezvous point alpha in five.”
Armed and wary, she led her team at a trot through a set of sterile corridors with white walls, white linoleum flooring and no doors or windows. Her route was the one believed to be of least resistance, and she was pleased to find they’d thus far evaluated the target correctly.
“Five guards. Be back,” Vikki reported.
Zoey quickened her pace. Following the directions on her watch, she turned down a hallway, this one with double black doors on the left.
“Chrissy, cameras!” she hissed, ducking back into the previous hall.
“Checking … locating and … done!” Chrissy reported.
“Z, the hallway you’re in is marked as a former mortuary,” Lydia said. “Dead people don’t need cameras.”
Zoey headed down the hall and paused before a set of doors, peering into the scratched, ancient window. “We’ve got … five succubae and …” She drifted off. The morgue was huge and lined with row upon row of still bodies on gurneys covered in sheets. At one end was a crude surgical area outfitted with better lighting and equipment than the rest of the room. “… it looks like forty dead bodies.” She watched one succubus in a lab coat approach the body on the surgical table. She had a medical saw in one hand and clamps to prevent bleeding in the other. “This is weird.”
Zoey dropped back onto her heels and started away before what she’d seen hit her. She stopped in her tracks. Dead people don’t bleed. “Rendezvous delay,” she reported. “Gotta take care of something.”
“Proceed to delta after,” Lydia instructed her.
She crept into the lab and motioned for the Halflings with her to take the four succubae out on one end of the room while she inched silently towards the woman with a saw. The device came to life with a high-pitched whine, and Zoey darted forward, throwing one knife to disarm the succubus and the second to take her out silently with a knife to the throat.
The woman dropped, and Zoey collected her knife before crossing to the figure on the table. Expecting to see a defenseless Halfling tied to the table, she was surprised to find a Cambion.
They’re conducting medical experiments on Cambions, she told Declan.
The creature was unconscious and showed signs of having had his skull sawed open then sewed shut. Rather than free him, she left and went to the row of white draped gurneys nearest her. The body was that of a Cambion, along with the second one she looked at. She peeked under a few more sheets. Everyone she found was a Cambion.
Olivia is trying to find a way to make them no longer dependent on incubuses, Declan supplied.
“Because they can’t produce the antitoxin,” she murmured. “She went from perfecting Halflings to Cambions.”
She perfected you. Someone like her doesn’t understand that she’s hurting people. She sees only medical progress.
“She’s fucked up.”
The other succubae were dead. Zoey rejoined her team and checked her watch for directions, the chatter over the communications system in one ear while she listened to her surroundings with the other.
“Proceeding to delta,” she reported.
“Everyone but Zoey is offline.” Chrissy sounded confused.
“Something’s wrong,” Lydia whispered.
Urgency jolted through Zoey, and she increased her speed, racing through the hallways towards the secondary meet up point. She reached the door to the room denoted as an administrative office on the schematics.
Pushing the door open, she frowned at the large, open bay that didn’t exist on their blueprints. “Definitely not an office. Lyd, the layout we have for this place isn’t entirely accurate.” It was the size of a small gymnasium with four points of entry, one on each wall. “This is weird.”
“We’re noticing that. Vikki found new hallways and Gin a dead end where there is none on our schematics,” Lydia said. “I show all of you at the point.”
Dread sank into her. She looked first at the ceiling, where drops of some liquid still clung to the sprinklers above, down to bright blue tarps. Three tarps, one in front of each of the other doors, covered the unmistakable shapes of bodies. “The floor’s wet. There are …” Zoey drifted off. She knelt and rubbed a finger in the liquid. It was thicker than water yet not gelatinous. “What the fuck is this stuff?”
“Zoey, can you see the others?” Chrissy asked anxiously.
“Maybe.” She wasn’t about to tell them what she saw or what she feared. Motioning for the Halflings to remain at the door, she ventured onto the slimy floor. It was slippery, and she moved rapidly and carefully towards the first tarp. The sense that they’d walked into a trap thumped at the back of her mind. “Lyd, blow the boiler room in two minutes.”
“Will do.”
Putting her weapons away, Zoey skated her way to the blue tarp and bent, throwing it off. The bodies of Vikki and her three Halflings were motionless beneath the blue, covered in the strange liquid. She knelt and pushed Vikki over, fear tearing through her at the though of losing her best friend.
Vikki’s pulse was strong. Zoey checked the others, confirming they were alive. “They’re here but … fuck. Someone knows we’re here. Chrissy, what do you have? Cameras? Comms? Anything?”
“Nothing I can pick up. Olivia’s comms are jammed, and I could get in to shut down the cameras but not hack them.” Chrissy was worried.
Zoey stood. “This is a trap. Olivia knew we were coming.”
“It’s not possible,” Lydia insisted. “I didn’t even know until I got here.”
“No one did,” Chrissy added. “Except us.”
“And Grant,” Zoey whispered. “You check in with him today, Chrissy?” Sprinkles hit her hand. Zoey glanced down and saw her clothing was already covered with droplets. Another glance ove
rhead told her the sprinklers were operating like misters, sending out a stealthy, wet fog.
“No. I will now.”
Zoey’s gaze blurred, her body growing sluggish, the way it had when first injected with the goo at Olivia’s other lab. Panic hit her, and she whirled, darting forward. Sudden clumsiness and a slippery floor sent her smashing onto her stomach, and she scrambled up. “Stay back!” she shouted to the Halflings. “Don’t let this shit touch you!”
All four doors to the gym slammed shut simultaneously.
“Zoey, what’s wrong?” Lydia demanded.
“Fuck … the stuff … Olivia’s lab …” Zoey’s control began to slide away from her. She scrambled across the floor to the door, collapsed to the floor and staggered to her knees. “Chrissy … antitoxin.”
“Use the shot!” Chrissy shouted across their network. “It’s why I gave it to you!”
Zoey fumbled for the cargo pocket containing the single shot of incubus toxin, mixed with adrenaline, was. She managed to yank it out and flung herself onto her back, clamping her mouth closed to keep the mist from entering her lungs. With effort, she slammed the shot into her thigh.
Fire tore through her, and sex energy flooded her, filling her and pushing back the numbing effects of the antitoxin.
“O…kay,” she panted and sat. Feeling returned to her extremities, and she stumbled to her feet and half-slid, half-ran to the door. “It worked. I might need another.”
“Only if necessary. It’ll put you close to blackout mode,” Chrissy warned her.
Zoey reached the door and yanked it open. The sudden grip of her boots on the solid floor sent her tumbling into the wall across from it. The Halflings were armed and poised, waiting. “Take a shot and head in,” she ordered them. “The others are immobilized. Work on getting them all awake and out of here. I’m going after Olivia.”
“Zoey, you can’t –” Lydia started.
“Blow the boiler room, Lyd.”
Catching her breath, Zoey stood and swiped at the goo on her. She peeled off the thick shirt with its protective skin and tossed it to reveal the tank top she wore beneath.
The distant rumble of thunder was followed by lights around them flashing out, along with the sprayers in the gym. Bathed in darkness, Zoey clicked on the flashlight at her waist and wiped the slime from her features.
