by Natalie Grey
There was pain in her eyes now. But, she still pressed the next button.
The whispers became shouts, drowning out every attempt Irina made to think clearly. She was struggling against the shift to her wolf form, but she no longer remembered why. It would feel so good, wouldn’t it? She would be strong, powerful. One more moment spent struggling, and she broke. The change rushed through her so fast that she hardly heard the sound of the chains snapping open, released by some hidden lever. She threw her head back and growled in satisfaction before hunkering down onto the floor. She could smell blood—the scent of victory.
A voice caught her attention and her head whipped back to stare through the window. Two humans stood there, two weak humans who sheltered themselves behind glass and steel. She lifted her lip in a snarl and saw them both swallow. One, a tall man, was trying to give orders to the other—a woman, dark-haired.
Irina tilted her head. The woman seemed familiar, and searching for the memory calmed her. She felt sanity returning as she met the woman’s black eyes. The woman looked sad as she stared back.
Why was she sad?
Irina padded close to the window, staring up at the two figures. The man flung a hand out, pointing at her, and said something that Irina could not hear. When his hand slammed down on the desk, pressing an unseen button, there was a screech of metal and a cage descended.
This was where the blood was coming from, Irina realized. There was a bloodied, half-conscious human in the cage. The door slid open and she sniffed cautiously. The human here was not fully Wechselbalg, but his blood carried traces of that familiar scent. One of her own. Irina sat, tail wrapped around her legs.
The sight of that woman had steadied her, even if she no longer remembered why, and the smell of familiar blood steadied her further. No matter the whispers to lash out at this man and take out her anger on him, she would not do so.
She would not attack a pack member.
Through the glass, Hsu stared at Irina and tried not to cry. She was the one who had fine-tuned these techniques. She forced the subjects to transform, out of control and susceptible to suggestion. She could not tell her fellow scientist that, of course—she was not supposed to be alive anymore, and he clearly had no doubts about the research they were performing. Indeed, he was staring at her as if he was going to turn her in. What had she done, coming back here?
She and Irina had agreed that this was necessary, but now Hsu did not think she could go through with it. That man in the cage was going to die if she went through with it. Irina knew it, too—that’s why she was sitting back on her haunches instead of attacking.
The other scientist crossed his arms, and Hsu felt a jolt of fear. Her jaw clenched. She had to do this. She had to gain their trust so that when the time came, she could set the rest of the prisoners free. Her finger trembled as she pressed the button to deliver another jolt to Irina. The wolf twisted uncomfortably, thrashing as it tried to resist her control, and Hsu heard her own voice as if it came from very far away.
“Kill him.”
She forced herself to watch.
—
“Filip?” Stoyan’s voice came down the line. “What’s wrong? Is the house under attack?”
He didn’t know, Filip realized—Stoyan had no idea that Filip had escaped. Had his team not passed along the information? Once he would have taken pleasure in telling Stoyan about how they had slipped up, but right now he didn’t have time to throw them under the bus.
“I’m not there. I got taken by … I don’t know who they are. They asked me about you.”
“What?” Stoyan’s voice rose. “How did they get you?”
“Not important! They know everything. I didn’t want to tell them, but they used knives.” Filip looked down at his bloodied legs, still in agony after his crawl across the floor. He’d taken the cell phone and huddled in the far corner, gasping from the pain. “Any time I didn’t answer, they—”
“Don’t.” Stoyan’s voice was full of despair. “You don’t need to tell me what they did. I’ve heard what they can do. What did you tell them? What do they know?”
“Everything. They know about you, where the headquarters are in Sofia….” Filip’s voice trailed away in horror. Was that why Stoyan didn’t know about his escape? Was it because the headquarters had already been overrun? Oh, no. There was a rustle on the other end of the line, and the indistinct murmur of voices.
A new voice spoke a moment later: “Where are you now?”
“Who are you?”
“Not important.” The man sounded impatient. “Answer the question.”
“On a plane. I think we’re going back to Bulgaria.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Me, and … I don’t know. I would guess two men named Gerard and Hugo.”
“Hugo Marcari? Excellent.” The voice grew less distinct. “Jennifer—are you on the line with ADAM? Ask him if he can pick up any aircraft being tracked in Hugo’s system. Yes, a plane.” A pause. “Interesting.” The man spoke to Filip again, “You’re correct about who is on the plane. Have they told you where in Bulgaria they’re going?”
“They said they were inspecting something. Where is Stoyan?”
“Also not important.” The voice considered. “Thank you for your information. We will try to be back in contact with you.”
A click announced that the speaker had hung up.
“Wait. Wait!” Filip tore the phone away from his ear, heart pounding. “Dammit. Not now, not….”
A sound made him turn. Heart in his throat, he looked to the door and gave a little moan of fear.
Gerard was watching him with a cold smile. “Thank you,” he said. He strolled over and plucked the phone out of Filip’s numb fingers. “I didn’t think you would be stupid enough to take the bait … but it looks like I was wrong. And now that we have their location from the trace on that call, we can head off their grand attack on the Velingrad facility. Your friends have no idea what they’re walking into.”
He could kill Gerard. Right now. And after Gerard, Hugo.
Filip drove himself up from the floor with a guttural yell. His muscles were in agony, knees bruised from blows that had been carefully calibrated to inflict the maximum pain without lasting damage.
But the pain didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to survive this, after all—that much was clear, and he was furious. He didn’t let himself think, or process the pain. He only acted. His fist shot out to catch Gerard in the stomach.
His opponent doubled over as the air was knocked out of him. He stumbled back and Filip cast around for a weapon. There was nothing. He followed up his first strike with a weak punch to the head and staggered sideways. He would normally have used his knee to smash his opponent’s nose in, but his legs were in agony. He curled his aching fingers into a fist and drove them at Gerard’s head again. Another punch followed, and another.
Two shapes appeared in the doorway, and Hugo’s bodyguards tackled Filip to the floor. He screamed as his bruised body hit the floor. He barely had time to register the fact that a fist was headed for his face before pain exploded through his head and stars filled his vision. Another hit at his face, and one at his torso. Someone grabbed at his hair and yanked his head back, and he saw Gerard’s face, eyes narrowed and nose pouring blood.
“You’re going to pay for that,” the man gritted out.
“Leave him.” Hugo’s voice. The order came from the door.
Gerard stared at Filip, his chest heaving. The fingers did not loosen in Filip’s hair.
“I said ... leave him!” Hugo snapped.
Filip saw the hatred that flashed in Gerard’s eyes. For a moment, the fanatical devotion slipped and the man thought of disobeying his employer. Gerard wanted to hurt Filip. But, fingers shaking, he flung the other man away and stood.
Hugo looked at Gerard for a moment.
It was one of the first times Gerard had not obeyed an order instantly, and he did not like it. A punishment mig
ht be in order, but not now, he decided. Gerard had obeyed in the end—and Hugo did not need the man sulking during the coming inspection. “We’ll be landing soon,” was all he said, and he left the others in the tiny back room of the airplane.
—
“You hung up on him?” Stoyan stared at Stephen in rising fury. “He’s in danger!”
“So are the people at the facility,” Stephen said bluntly. “And I don’t trust that man.”
“I agree.” Jennifer met Stoyan’s eyes. “When we first met him, he was attempting to con the two of you into giving him information he could use to get Arisha into bed. He’s enough of a weasel that you said you’d have your guys lock him in a room — how did he get out?”
“They attacked!” Stoyan could not believe what he was hearing. Jennifer and Stephen were both staring at him without any guilt at all. “They abducted him and … wait.” He sat down heavily on the pod bench. “He said he told them where the house was. And I’d told Horia to tell him that the other people who wanted this information were not nice people, and he was being kept there for his own protection.” He sank his face into his hands. “He got out of there on his own and went to find them. He wanted the payday.”
“Now you understand.” Stephen crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “You need to understand this about the way I operate, Stoyan. I represent my Queen, and she is forgiving of some mistakes—the ones that happen when you’re trying to do the right thing. Ones that happen when you make a bad moral call? Those, she doesn’t forgive, and I don’t, either. Filip’s mistakes have sold people out, and he knew what he was doing.”
“Can’t even really call it a mistake,” Jennifer murmured. “It was on purpose. He was going to go give the people who took Irina more information, so they could get more of your family.”
Stoyan’s fingers clenched. He tried to hold it in, but a yell of fury burst out of him and he slammed his fist against the side of the Pod.
>>Is everything okay?<< ADAM asked Stephen.
“The mission just got a little more complicated,” Stephen murmured. “But on the plus side, we may have a shot at Hugo.”
“I can’t do this,” Stoyan gritted out. “I led people away from my pack, and every single decision I’ve made since then has led to more deaths. I didn’t attack soon enough, and the families at the facility died. I left earth and left Irina to die, too! I trusted Filip. And now I’ve gotten the rest of them killed by trying to keep them out of it.”
“Being an Alpha is not simple,” Nathan told him. “There’s a reason I never tried for that role in my former pack. Even in peacetime, it’s not simple and it’s not easy. In war, you have to face the fact that any choice you make may result in deaths. Right now, though, you need to not be thinking about this. You need to be preparing for the fight we’re about to have.”
Stoyan nodded, his eyes fixed on the floor. He had been sinking slowly into despair since he left his pack. The truth was that he always feared he had made the wrong choice. He believed that his intention of going after Irina was enough, but he saw now that intention was worth little on its own. And the lesson might have come too late for all of them.
Stephen watched the Wechselbalg sadly. Of all those in the Pod right now, he thought he understood best what Stoyan was going through. True, Stephen had not been raised in the structure of a pack, but he had trusted in others to make what he thought would be the right choices—and that trust had resulted in death and pain.
“You left your pack to stop the people running these facilities,” he told Stoyan. “That, you can still do.” He met Stoyan’s eyes briefly and gave a nod. “We don’t have time for self-pity right now. Our timeline just got compressed. We have reason to believe Hugo and Gerard will be at the facility and that we will have a shot at taking them out. What we need to do is make sure we get as much data as possible, and don’t let Hugo give any commands that will result in the destruction of more facilities before we can rescue the captives held there. Are we all clear?”
Nods from all around the cabin.
Stephen met everyone’s eyes in turn, “Most of the plan is unchanged. We still need to get the data, and we still need to get everyone out of there before the guards have a chance to trigger anything—but now getting to the data is time sensitive as well. If I were Hugo, I’d take the data and run. Any ideas on how to split our forces?”
“ADAM.” Jennifer’s voice was quiet. “Can you get me the information to hack the servers?”
Everyone with the earpieces heard ADAM’s immediate reply, >>Yes.<<
Jennifer looked up at Stephen with a nod. “We won’t have time to leave the blueprint scanners for as long as we wanted. You and I go for the servers, Stoyan and Nathan concentrate on getting people out. Arisha will take them to the safe point.”
Stephen nodded. “And we can join Stoyan and Nathan and get the guards between us.”
“If you can get into the rest of the servers, you may be able to turn off the defensive systems,” Nathan pointed out.
“That first,” Stephen decided. “Then the data. Any last questions?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Good. ADAM, have the Pod set us down at the wall closest to the servers. We’ll fight our way in from there while the rest of the team gets to the prisoners.” He nodded to Jennifer. “Ready?”
Her smile warmed him. “Always. Let’s go kick some ass.”
—
An alert blared over the loudspeaker and Hsu, nursing a cup of coffee, tuned it out by force of habit. She was still shaking from the morning’s experiments. She had been forced to leave and let the other scientist handle the task of putting Irina back in her cage. They only had to be strong a while longer, and Hsu told herself that this cruelty would be happening no matter if she was involved in it or not, but it was still destroying her to stand by and watch.
The loudspeaker blared again, and there was a sudden flurry of activity around her. Hsu looked around herself as scientists leaned in to whisper to one another.
A few hurried from the room.
“What did they say?” She looked over to a woman nearby, and the woman turned a haunted look on her.
Hsu swallowed. Suddenly, she thought she knew what might be happening. She knew that look. It was the same look she wore when….
“Gerard is coming to inspect the facility,” the woman said quietly.
“I see. I’ll, uh….” Hsu gestured vaguely toward the door, then left her coffee cup and slipped into the hallways. Once there, she broke into a run. Her heart was pounding all of a sudden.
Irina had cautioned Hsu to wait for her signal that all of the prisoners knew the plan, and knew to trust Hsu as well as Irina, but if Gerard was coming, they had no more time.
They had to get out now.
—
“What do you see?”
Jennifer peeked around the edge of the building. “Two cameras and one patrol.” She knelt down and unpacked two pucks. Using the laser sight in the bracelet Jean had made for her, she marked the coordinates of the two cameras and pressed a button. The pucks flew through the air, guided by instructions beamed from the Archangel, and adhered to the cameras. She took cover with Stephen again, and they waited for the go-ahead.
>>The feed has been replaced with the loop of a few seconds of the empty street,<< ADAM informed them. >>The plane has landed and the occupants are transferring to a helicopter. You have ten minutes before they arrive.<<
“Thank you, ADAM. Make sure the other group knows the time frame as well.” Stephen’s voice was calm as he pulled out his weapons and checked them over. He severed his etheric connection with ADAM and pressed a button on Jennifer’s bracelet to do the same.
“What’s going on?” She frowned at him.
“Before we go in, I wanted to say something.”
Jennifer felt a stab of fear. Going up against these people was what kept her focused. When she was fighting the people who held her kind captive
, she had no doubts. She tried to find something to stave off the conversation. “The helicopter’s inbound.”
“I know. This won’t take long.” He gave a half smile and reached up to cup her cheek for a moment. He drew her in for a kiss. “It’s easy to get jaded,” he said finally. “I’ve spent centuries learning to act quickly and not look back. When I thought I had failed, Bethany Anne gave me a new purpose. But you, Jennifer? You remind me why I follow Bethany Anne. You inspire me to do the right thing and never forget what it costs, because you care. It’s easier to tell myself that we have to sacrifice people sometimes, when I can just let myself forget that decision and move on to the next one. In the moment, that’s what a warrior needs to do. But in the end, we need to remember. You remind me to remember.”
