by Alyssa Day
“We activated the woman to believe she was a concert violinist,” Litton said, as the images on-screen switched to show her in a room, playing the violin with an expression of dreamy bliss on her face.
“It’s beautiful, but . . . wrong,” Tiernan whispered.
It was true. The woman’s music was technically proficient but oddly soulless, much like the look in her eyes when the camera zoomed in for a close-up.
“Think of how much this talent enhanced her life. Absolutely beautiful. That’s Bach, I believe,” Litton said. “Imagine the music we could bring to the world.”
“Where is she now?” Tiernan asked. “Playing the concert circuit?”
For the first time, Litton looked uncomfortable. “No. She, ah, she had certain difficulties.”
“What does that mean, exactly—difficulties?” Brennan asked.
At first, he thought Litton wouldn’t answer. The scientist clamped his lips together and glared at them. But then he gave a little shrug. “She became obsessed. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, or even stop to drink water. Never put down the violin, not even for a minute, and became extremely violent when we tried to take it away from her.”
“Where is she now?” Tiernan repeated, enunciating each word.
Litton glared at her, and Brennan’s fury spiked into his skull, starting up a pounding that almost drowned out the scientist’s response.
“She’s dead,” Litton spat out. “She played the violin, okay? While she starved and became more and more dehydrated. She played herself to death.”
Brennan looked at each of the men and women at the table for a reaction to the news they all surely must have already known. Some were ashamed and ducked their heads, pained expressions on their faces. Others were callously indifferent or even bored. A few were smiling, as if it were all a great joke.
He hoped those last were the ones who tried to get in his way when they left.
Tiernan’s hand, still resting underneath his on his leg, tightened until her fingers were digging into his skin. She was near to the breaking point, and he needed to get her out of there whether she wanted to go or not.
Litton, apparently completely unaware of the effect his video was having on them, turned back toward the screen, and the image changed again.
“Ah, now we get to the interesting studies,” Litton said. “The shifters. We’ve had mixed results with them because of the variances in brain structure from humans.”
“Shifters are human,” Brennan said. “Surely you know that?”
Litton spun around and stared at Brennan. “They’re animals. Mutants. Very little human about them. They make good lab rats, but that’s about it.”
Tiernan’s breath changed, and she made a low sound of anguish deep in her throat. “They’re human, you—you—”
Litton ignored her and turned back to the screen, where a woman wearing a hospital gown and cap, shown from the back, was being helped across a room. She was stumbling, obviously ill or injured. “Watch this and I’m sure you’ll change your mind on that. This is fox shifter subject 12A, originally located in Boston. She was one of the subjects most resistant to the activation, of any we’ve ever found, and we were forced to repeat the procedure on multiple occasions, over more than a week. Finally, however, she succumbed. Unfortunately, her brain rejected the activation when she was out in the world again on a practice run, and I believe she was killed by police.”
He said this in a completely calm and indifferent voice, as if he were discussing the weather.
“Boston,” Tiernan repeated. “Did you say Boston?”
Brennan’s anxiety for Tiernan soared to all new levels. He never should have allowed her to come here. Litton was completely, dangerously insane.
The men on the video moved out of the camera angle and the woman’s face was visible for the first time. Tiernan gasped and dug her fingers into Brennan’s leg.
“That’s Susannah,” she whispered. “That’s Susannah. This is all the proof we need, we need to get that video and get the hell out of here.”
On the screen, a scientist—Brennan looked at him closely and then at one of the men down at the other end of the room; yes it was him—put the helmet on Susannah. Before he’d even fully fastened the wires to her body, she began to scream.
Tiernan shot up out of her chair so fast that she knocked it over. “Oh, you evil son of a bitch. You are going to pay for hurting her.”
Brennan shot up to stand next to her, pulling his daggers out of their concealed sheaths as he did. “I believe that is my cue.”
Chapter 24
“We’re calling the police,” Tiernan said. “You’re all going to jail for a very long time.”
Most of the scientists jumped up and started running for the door in varying levels of panic, except for Litton and the ones Brennan had marked as zealots. Litton smiled that nasty little smile of his and signaled the man over by the computers. “Security. Now.”
“This is a new definition of undercover,” Brennan told Tiernan as she yanked her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’d thought we would gather the evidence, leave this place, and then contact the authorities.”
“Stash me someplace safe, you mean.”
“Ideally, yes.”
She started pressing numbers on her phone. “I don’t need safe. I need justice.”
“What you need is to put that phone down. Now.” Litton’s voice slashed across the room like the crack of a whip. “Or I will have my security team shoot first you, and then Mr. Brennan, in the head.”
The scientists blocking the door parted like water, and four thugs with guns entered the room, all of them pointing their weapons at Brennan and Tiernan.
“Right now, I need for you to shut up and sit down and watch the rest of our film, Mr. Brennan. You surely want to know what we’re going to do with all of that lovely money of yours after we take control of your mind, don’t you?”
“Was this the plan all along?” Brennan asked, calculating the odds that he could destroy all four of the thugs before one of them shot Tiernan.
“You didn’t think we’d show you all of this and then let you go, did you?” Litton laughed. “I must admit, I never took you for a fool.”
“Funny,” Tiernan said, handing over her phone to one of the scientists. “I always took you for a murdering bastard.”
Waves of fury were radiating from her skin, and Brennan wondered how nobody else in the room could feel it. She was running so hot that it seemed impossible that the paint on the walls was not blistering.
Or maybe he felt it only because of the soul-meld, which meant if anything were to hurt her . . . He’d seen berserker rage only once in all of his years, and the path of carnage and destruction had been hideous beyond belief.
If they hurt Tiernan, they’d see worse.
As the rage climbed higher and higher, pounding through his veins, Brennan’s power climbed, building and building until his body ached with the attempt to control it. Power sought release, and power this wild was going to blow the roof off if he didn’t control it. He glanced almost reflexively up at the roof.
Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Please sit down, Mr. Brennan,” Dr. Litton said with exaggerated politeness. “We have more to see.”
“We don’t want to see it, you sadistic monster,” Tiernan cried out. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to see you pay for that.”
Litton laughed, long and hard. “Oh, my dear Ms. Baum,” he finally said, wiping his eyes. “The lovely cliché of it all. The last thing you will do is probably going to involve your naked body and one or more of my guards. They like to try out the new subjects, and I see no reason not to let them.”
A red haze swamped Brennan’s mind, short-circuiting reason and logic. The need to kill, fierce and urgent, took over and filled him, searing through body and mind and soul, until nothing was left but the rage.
“You will not hurt her,” he said, snarling
the words.
“We have the guns, Mr. Brennan. Your knives are not much use, are they? I would be interested to know how you got those past the metal detectors, though,” Litton said. He beckoned his guards. “Take them to their accommodations, please. Oh, and leave the knives on the table.”
Brennan had no choice. The guards were trained professionals, and two of them always stayed well out of his range. They’d shoot Tiernan if he fought back. He’d have to watch for a chance when they left the room.
As they filed out the door, sandwiched among the four thugs, the images on the screen painted a violent threat of what their immediate future might hold. Susannah, still tied down to the chair, was screaming. Only this time, she was doing it in the shape of a fox.
One of the thugs shoved Tiernan and she tripped, twisting her ankle, and cried out. Brennan’s tenuous hold on his temper shattered. He lowered his head, pretending to look at the floor, so they wouldn’t see the magic glowing in his eyes, and he called power on a scale beyond anything he’d attempted before. He wanted water in destructive force.
He called the thunder.
The first percussive boom shook the walls of the building, and the crack of an accompanying lightning strike struck hard in its wake. Brennan pushed harder, and hail pounded down on the roof, its rapid drumming echoing through the room.
“What the hell?” one of the guards said, instinctively looking up when another lightning strike, more powerful than the first, smashed into the building and the electricity in the room blew out.
“Down,” Brennan shouted, hoping Tiernan would listen to him, but not willing to trust that she would. He launched himself at the two guards in front of him and snapped the first one’s neck before the man ever saw him coming. Brennan whirled around and sent a vicious kick into the second guard’s throat, not quite snapping his neck but taking him down.
The backup generators for the building came on, and a row of lights, dimmer than those that had been in the room before, switched on, and Brennan went for his daggers. He leapt over the downed guard and headed for the table, only to find that one of his blades was missing. He hurled the one he found into the third guard’s throat and spun around, searching the room for Tiernan, who would have been on the floor under the table, if she’d listened to his command.
She was standing over the body of one of the scientists, holding Brennan’s dagger, and the blade dripped blood. She raised her head and stared right across the chaos of the room at Brennan, horror and disbelief warring on her very expressive features. “I killed him,” she said, and somehow he heard her over all the noise and shouting and screaming. “I killed him.”
A gunshot tore through the noise and everything stopped. The final guard stood two feet behind Tiernan, and he’d fired the shot straight up in the air, ripping a chunk out of the ceiling.
“Everybody down on the floor and shut the fuck up,” the guard roared. “Anybody still standing in five seconds is going to get shot.”
Brennan didn’t move, and Tiernan didn’t seem to have even heard the guard, but everyone else but Litton hit the floor. Tiernan just stood, silent, possibly going into shock, staring down at the dead scientist. Tiernan dropped the dagger and flinched at the sound it made when it hit the ground.
Litton stalked across the floor toward her, and Brennan tensed to hurl himself at the scientist, but the guard leveled his gun directly at Tiernan’s head. There was no way he could miss from less than two feet away.
“You try it, buddy, and her brains hit the wall,” the guard said calmly. There was training in that calm; the man was cool and controlled when everyone else was frantic. He’d kill Tiernan before Brennan could even get close.
Brennan slowly put his hands on top of his head and released his hold on the power. A stray lightning strike might rattle the man enough to make his finger twitch on that trigger. The drumming of the hail on the roof slowed and then stopped.
“Kick her knife over here,” the guard commanded. “I won’t underestimate you again, rich boy.”
Brennan stepped closer to Tiernan and kicked the dagger across the floor. It skidded to a stop next to the guard’s boots.
Litton looked down at the dead scientist, the one from the video, and then he drew his arm back and slapped Tiernan’s face. Hard. Her head snapped back with the force of it, and Brennan felt her pain and shock. Brennan’s control, near to breaking, frayed even further. Only the gun trained on Tiernan’s head kept him from ripping Litton’s head off his neck.
“I needed him, you bitch,” Litton snarled, his face nearly purple with rage. “He was worth twenty of you. Journalists. Bunch of leeches upon society.”
He raised his hand again, but then shook his head. “No. You’re not worth it. I have a far better plan for you, Tracy Baum. You’re going to go in the chair. Tonight. I need a guinea pig to see if it functions properly since we repaired the damage. There’s a chance it will turn the next subject’s entire frontal lobe to pudding.” He laughed that nasty laugh again. “Who better than you to try it out?”
“You will die slowly if you touch her, Litton,” Brennan said, and the guard narrowed his eyes, measuring his opponent, then took a firmer grip on his gun.
Litton just waved a hand in the air. “Shut up. I don’t need to hear your mouth, I just need your signature on all those lovely wire transfers we’re going to do later. My worries about funding are now over, aren’t they?”
“This is your last warning, Litton,” Brennan said, his voice gone dead and icy. “I will let you live if you release her now.”
Litton pointed at the guard. “You. If he talks again, shoot him. No, wait. If he talks again, shoot her. Just in the leg. Something that will hurt but not kill her. Maybe her foot.”
The guard nodded, stone-faced, so Brennan couldn’t tell if Litton’s casual cruelty disgusted the man or if it was simply another day in the life of a mercenary. It didn’t matter anyway. He held a gun on Tiernan. He would die, too. The power climbed up Brennan’s spine to his skull, until he thought his bones would shatter from the sheer force of it.
Kill them, destroy them, death to any who threaten my mate, the power said, and for the first time in his lifetime it was sentient and had a voice, and it was the voice of utter destruction to these monsters who dared to harm Tiernan. It took every ounce of control Brennan possessed to keep from attacking, but the sight of that gun, aimed at Tiernan, served as a very efficient leash.
Litton kicked one of the men on the floor in the ribs. “Get up, you idiot. Go get more security people. We need help getting them downstairs. Also call Devon and tell him we need a cleanup crew here. One of his people should be able to get rid of this mess.”
The man scrambled up and ran for the door. As if Litton’s words had released Brennan’s olfactory senses, the rich, coppery smell of blood suddenly seemed to permeate the room. Instead of making him nauseous, it fed the berserker rage, and the predator inside of him woke up and smiled. He would bring death, and soon, to these men who dared to threaten his mate.
The meaning of Litton’s words suddenly broke through the haze of killing fury clouding Brennan’s mind. Devon, he’d said. So the vampire was behind all this. Brennan needed to transmit the information to Alexios, whom Alaric had said would be returning to Lucas’s Pack headquarters this evening. The thought of their conversation reminded him of his need to conceal the vial Alaric had given him. Brennan briefly tried to establish a mental pathway, but Tiernan made a horrible noise and his concentration fractured.
“Brennan, I killed him,” she moaned, and the utter despair in her voice terrified him. Someone who despaired would not fight back, and they were going to need to fight back, very soon, or Litton would have her in that mind-destroying chair.
Over my dead body, he swore to himself.
Tiernan’s eyes widened, and she doubled over, making a terrible noise that came more from her gut than her throat. Litton yelled at her to stand up, but the guard took two steps back and away f
rom her, the gun still trained on her head, as if he knew what was coming next, as did Brennan.
She cried out and then vomited, gagging until there was nothing else to heave up. Litton scrambled back and away to avoid it.
“Get her out of here as soon as the others get here,” Litton ordered the guard. “I’ll meet you at the holding pens.”
Before Brennan could say something—anything—that might stop him or even slow him down, Litton was gone, and a half dozen more guards, these heavily armed, were swarming into the room.
These men were well trained, too, no common thugs. They worked as a team, herding Brennan and Tiernan down a long corridor and then through a doorway to a set of stairs leading down. And down, and down, and down. Brennan calculated they must have been at least four stories underground by the time they came to the bottom of the stairs and the men prodded them through the doorway into another hall.
Brennan’s guards kept him separate from Tiernan, and both of them now had guns pointed at their heads. The electricity down here had not been affected by the lightning strike, apparently, since harsh fluorescent lighting flooded the corridor. He got a glimpse of Tiernan as they moved down the hall, and her face was dead white, almost a greenish gray under the lights. Shock had set in and she looked like she might pass out any minute.
He needed to find a way out, and he needed to find it quick. He hadn’t liked the sound of “holding pens” or the gleefully evil way Litton had said it. The guard behind him shoved Brennan between the shoulder blades with the barrel of his gun and cursed at him to hurry up. Brennan glanced back over his shoulder and bared his teeth at the man just for the pleasure of watching him flinch.
“Better watch this one,” the guard called out to his comrades. “He passed rational and took the crazy highway a couple of stops ago.”
Brennan started laughing, but kept moving forward as directed. The crazy highway. They had no idea.
When they arrived, it was as bad as Brennan had feared. They were cages, nothing more. Tiernan moaned again, and Brennan wanted to slash and burn and kill for her. The need to protect her sliced through him like one of his own daggers, now left lying useless on the floor above.
