Recombinant

by Shannon Mayer

  Casually, as if swatting a fly, Peter backhanded Victor. “Fucking idiot. You want him to change? Then we’d have three Cazadors.”

  His words rocked me. So there was another hunter. But who?

  Peter shook his head. “How the hell you came to be in charge...” From the way he trailed off, I knew my scent had reached him. He slowly turned to face me.

  I pointed a finger at him. “You, I will deal with in a moment.”

  Without another word, I strode toward Victor. His eyes fluttered open and then widened at a rapid rate. “Lea, help me, none of this was my idea. None of this was my fault.”

  “Sure. Just like you helped Calvin.” I grabbed him and lifted him up by his throat. With the other hand I sliced my stake across his belly. His whole body arched as he tried to scream around the pressure I was putting on his throat. I crushed his windpipe, then dropped him to the floor.

  “Surely you aren’t going to waste that blood?” Peter said, closing the distance between us.

  I held up the stake, pointing it at Victor. “Not if he was the last human on earth would I put my fangs in him.”

  Peter, always the calm one, nodded. “True. Some just aren’t made for this life.”

  He lashed out without warning, his fist connecting with my jaw, snapping the bone there. I fell backward, unable to stop myself as he followed me down, his mouth open wide. We slammed into the floor, him on top of me. “I’m sorry, Lea. But it is time to end this.”

  I squirmed under him, wrapping my legs around his waist and holding him tightly to me. “I agree.”

  Snapping my head forward, I smashed his nose with my forehead. He reared his head back, exposing his throat to me as blood rained down on both of us. I jabbed my head forward and bit into his neck, drinking him down in a matter of seconds.

  I felt him sigh with what almost sounded like relief.

  “Take my memories, I am done,” he whispered against my skin. Peter’s memories flickered through me, hundreds of years of them, stunning me with the magnitude of what I saw. I lay there under his body as I tried to get a handle on the flood of information. Of the flood of knowledge I could have never hoped to gain on my own. They blurred together; the distant past with the more recent. I struggled to breathe around the weight of them. Like an entire library had crashed down on me, every page demanding to be read at once.

  Peter’s final memory flitted to the forefront and I saw myself through his eyes. Pride. He was proud of me, how strong I was and how I’d honed my skills. Even though he knew it would be his death, he was happy he’d made me into a vampire.

  A part of me understood...and a simple moment of peace flowed through me.

  A pair of feet came into view, breaking the memories apart, and Stravinsky looked down at me. His pale green eyes were narrowed and partially hidden behind a pair of glasses. Glasses, what vampire wore glasses?

  One trying to impress humans.

  “Lovely to finally meet you, Lea, the infamous Cazador. But I must be going. I have things to do, and a world to change.” He blew me a kiss and walked away as I heaved Peter’s body off me. The door clicked shut as I stood. He’d had me dead to rights. Why hadn’t he killed me?

  But it only took a second for me to get my answer. As soon as I was standing, I could see that while Stravinsky was gone, two large wolves had taken his place. Wolves with hunched backs and glowing red eyes. I’d dealt with their kind once before, deep in the Ozarks.

  “Why am I not surprised,” I whispered as I backed away. Werewolves. What the hell else was hidden in this fucking place?

  CHAPTER 38

  RACHEL

  If Calvin was here, it had to be as a trap for Lea.

  If I were smart, I’d take the evidence and run. The only reasons I’d come here in the first place were to get the evidence and avenge Derrick’s death. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that Lea was in a shit-ton of trouble.

  “Get everyone out,” I told Rowland, adjusting the strap across my chest. “I have to take care of something.” I seriously hoped I wasn’t making the wrong decision. Common sense told me the information in my bag was worth more than Lea’s life, but I could never live with myself if I didn’t help her.

  Panic filled Rowland’s eyes.

  “Once everyone’s out, call for help.” I handed him my phone and gave him a tight smile. “You can give that back to me when I meet you outside.”

  He took it and nodded. “Thank you.”

  I gave his arm a shove. “Go.”

  The last she’d confirmed, Lea was on the tenth floor. I ran past the people from the cells, pausing to peek into the lab on the way. The two scientists were missing, and all the totes were gone. Besides what I had in my bag and on my phone, all the evidence had been erased.

  The stairwell was noisy with the cries and shouts of the escaping people, and I was having major second thoughts about letting them loose. I should have waited for some kind of backup to help them escape, but there was no help for that now.

  When I opened the door to the tenth floor, I heard the distant sound of shouts and banging. This was a terrible idea. How in the hell could I help a vampire? But I knew I had to try. She’d risked her life to save me. There was no way I could leave her in danger.

  A heavy copper smell hung in the air as I turned the corner into the hall, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. But the hallway looked deserted other than a large puddle on the floor against the wall. It looked like something—or someone—had been sitting in the mess, but whoever it had been wasn’t there now.

  I gripped my knife tighter as I continued down the hall toward the stairwell that would take me to the thirteenth floor. I had no desire to end up in my own puddle of blood.

  A woman in a lab coat ran around a corner ahead of me and stopped in her tracks. Taking a step backward, her eyes wide with fright, she asked, “Who are you?”

  I knew I should be concerned that she might be a threat, but if she was, she had a career in Hollywood waiting for her. Her shaking voice practically emitted waves of fear. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m only here to help.”

  “Nothing can help us now. The experiments are all loose.”

  “What experiments?” I asked, inching toward her. I had close, personal knowledge about the medical testing upstairs, but she held the key to what was going on down here.

  She shook her head, her eyes wild. “You shouldn’t be down here.” She reached for a handle on the wall, but I rushed toward her and tackled her to the ground.

  I suspected the handle was an alarm to alert security of intruders, and while we had to be long past that by now, there was no sense in letting them know exactly where I was. If there were even any security left.

  The woman tried to buck me off, but I rolled her onto her stomach and pulled her arms behind her back at enough of an angle to keep her from squirming.

  “Get off me!” she screamed.

  “I need to ask you a few questions first.”

  “You stupid fool! There’s no time for that. We need to get out of here.”

  “Then you better start giving me answers. I ran into a group of men who looked mutated, but they were like mindless zombies. What happened to them?”

  She released a bitter laugh. “You want me to explain decades of brilliant work to you in a matter of a minute. You wouldn’t understand it if you tried.”

  I jerked on her arm, eliciting a shriek of pain. “Try me. Dumb it down.”

  “Dr. Stravinsky is a genius,” she sneered. “It’s impossible.”

  Then I heard a familiar voice. “I’d start answering before she breaks your arm.”

  My head jerked up and I pushed out a breath in relief. Lea.

  CHAPTER 39

  LEA

  I locked eyes with Rachel and gave her the slightest of nods, telling her I had her back. At least until the werewolves caught up with me. I’d managed to bar a set of double doors between us. My climb to the tenth floor had been filled with the
chorus of their bodies hammering into the thick metal. A distant thud told me they hadn’t given up.

  “Take her with us,” I said. “We have to keep moving.” The only way I could see us getting out of here without risking a confrontation with the fucking werewolves would be to use the elevator shaft again. Even if it did mean facing the rat monsters climbing the walls. Those I could kill; I wasn’t so sure I could destroy the mutts without a heavy dose of silver.

  Rachel yanked the scientist, Adamson by her nametag, to her feet and dragged her behind us.

  “Did you find Calvin?” Rachel caught up to me, her blonde hair sticking to the sweat on her face.

  My jaw ticked as I fought the emotions welling up in me. “Yes, he’s gone. Victor killed him.”

  “And you gutted the bastard for it?” She phrased it as if it wasn’t really a question.

  “Yes.”

  Adamson sucked in a breath. “Victor, he was our patron. How could you kill him in cold blood?”

  I stopped in front of the elevator doors and grabbed the scientist by the arms. “Rachel, you want the answers to everything here?” Peter’s memories were a start, but he’d been brought in late in the game, as someone to deal with me if I got too close. Stravinsky hadn’t truly trusted him with information.

  Rachel looked at me, understanding dawning in her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. But...do it. She’ll only slow us down.”

  Yanking Adamson to me, I bit down on her neck, draining her of her blood and her memories. The images flooded my brain, the testing, the trials, the decisions made by Stravinsky, everything they’d planned. And worse, all the people they’d hurt. From the innocent to the depraved, the missing inmates from Rikers Island...the numbers were staggering.

  Thousands of lives lost and destroyed just so they could play god. Adamson let out a soft groan and I drew back from her, my voice cracking. “Rachel, it’s so much worse than we thought.”

  The sound of a howl echoed along the hallway, and the unmistakable racket of sets of claws scrabbling against the concrete floors followed the eerie hunting call. The slathering werewolves stopped at the far end of the hall and stared us down. Without another thought, I threw the barely alive Adamson toward them. “That won’t buy us a lot of time.”

  Slipping my knife from the sheath on my thigh, I jammed it between the doors and pried them open as the wet sounds of flesh being torn to shreds reached my ears.

  “Hurry the fuck up, Lea!” Rachel yelled at me.

  I slid my hands through the doors and pried them open. “In you go.”

  Rachel leapt right onto a cable, climbing it as if chased by the hounds of hell; which in a way she was. I glanced back at the werewolves as they lifted their muzzles to sniff at me. Their eyes blinked several times, flickering red like tiny demon lights.

  I stepped through the door and started up the elevator shaft. Partway up the cables I grabbed Rachel and pulled her onto my back. “Sorry, but I’m faster.”

  “Show-off.”

  “Wannabe,” I quipped, feeling the ridiculous urge to laugh. Laugh in the middle of a crisis? What was wrong with me?

  I swallowed the laughter as I climbed hand over hand, ignoring the clatter of the rat bastards above—they’d become a problem soon enough. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”

  “Had to,” she said. “That’s what friends do. They look out for each other.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at her as the scuttling above disappeared with a few sharp squeals. “That’s not a good sign.”

  “That we’re friends?” Rachel frowned at me.

  “No, that the monsters above us just fucked off on their own.”

  We went still. There were no werewolves below us, and no rat bastards above. In the distance was the sound of a roaring windstorm, rushing toward us. But of course, that couldn’t be, there was no such thing as an underground windstorm.

  I swung us over to the door closest to us. Second level. It was going to have to do.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel said. “This isn’t the hangar.”

  “You hear that?” I kept swinging and then grabbed the edge of the door, jamming my knife in it as fast as I could. “They’re going to burn this place to the ground with us in it.”

  “Holy fucking hell.”

  I wrenched the doors open and pushed her through as flames lit up the top of the elevator shaft. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  CHAPTER 40

  RACHEL

  Lea shoved me through the opening, but the doors slipped shut behind me, closing before Lea could come through. My heart was beating so fast, I had make myself focus on the scene I’d just jumped into. Nothing could have prepared me for what I found.

  “Calvin?”

  He lay slumped on the floor, his back propped against the wall. His entire abdomen was wrapped in something that looked like an Ace bandage. IV tubing came out of his hand, leading to a bag of blood on his lap.

  “Lea thinks you’re dead.” And if that was his blood back on the tenth floor, he certainly should have been. “How did you get here?”

  “That sick bastard wants to make me into one of those monsters.”

  “Who?”

  He grimace and covered his abdomen with his hand. “Stravinsky.”

  Shit.

  He grabbed my hand with more strength than an old man who had nearly bled out should have possessed. “Don’t let them do it.”

  “I won’t.”

  His nails dug deeper, breaking skin, and his eyes were wild. “I want a vow.”

  What the fuck was up with these people and their vows? But Lea was still on the other side of the elevator and there was no way she’d let them do that to him. “I promise.”

  His eyes sank closed and I noticed how shallow his breath was. “Calvin, just hang on. Lea’s coming.”

  “No time,” he said in a soft whisper. “There’s a paper in my pants pocket. The left one. Get it out.”

  His pants were drenched with blood, but I reached in and teased him. “Are you just an old pervert looking for a thrill?”

  His eyes twinkled. “Oh, to be fifty years younger. I’d put the moves on you, girlie.”

  I grinned. “I bet you would, old man.”

  His voice softened. “Give it to Lea.”

  “Give it to her yourself.”

  The doors opened behind me and I jerked around to see Lea burst through the opening, her clothes singed. Her eyes widened. “Calvin.” She dropped in a squat next to him.

  His eyes had a vacant stare.

  She grabbed his hand. “Calvin.”

  It was clear he wasn’t going to answer.

  “He was alive just seconds ago. I’m sorry, Lea.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes cold. “How did he get here?”

  “He wanted to...” I figured the rest was obvious. I handed the paper to her. “He said to give this to you.”

  She took the folded, bloody paper and stared at it for several seconds.

  I could see it was a letter to her, and whatever he had said had temporarily stunned her. “Lea. We have to go. Do you want to take him with us?”

  She didn’t answer, only stared into Calvin’s face.

  I hadn’t known her long, but I knew she wasn’t behaving like herself. It was evident she loved him in some capacity. She was in shock.

  “He probably came back to get you,” I said, hoping it gave her comfort. “He would want you to get out and save yourself.”

  Her upper lip curled into a sneer. “No. He wouldn’t.”

  Before I had a chance to ask for an explanation, a man in a lab coat ran out of a door down the hall. As soon as he saw us, his mouth dropped open and he turned and ran the other way.

  Lea leapt over Calvin’s body like a graceful panther. Lab Coat had only gotten a few feet before she knocked him to the ground, pinning him with a knee on his back.

  “Who are you and what do you do here?” she snarled.

&n
bsp; “Lancaster,” he said in a whiny voice. “Dr. Lancaster. I work with Stravinsky.”

  I got up and moved close enough to hear her snarl.

  “We have to get out of here,” Lancaster wheezed. “They’ve initiated the Phoenix protocol.”

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what that meant. Dammit.

  Lea grabbed a handful of his lab coat in the center of his back and hauled him to his feet. “So?”

  “We’re all going to be incinerated if we don’t get out of here. You’ll never survive the burn and you’ll never get out without me. We need to take the secret tunnel.”

  Lea cast a glance at me.

  “Then you better start giving directions,” I said. “Because it’s starting to get a little toasty in here.” I wasn’t exaggerating. The temperature must have warmed at least ten degrees in the last five minutes.

  Lancaster swallowed. “Down the hall. Then to the right.”

  But Lea remained in place, her gaze drifting back to Calvin. She didn’t want to leave him.

  “Lea. I can handle Lancaster if you want to get Calvin.”

  The lights overhead flickered three times before they blinked out. Seconds later, the eerie glow of the emergency lighting kicked in.

  Lea was still for a moment, then gave a sharp shake of her head. “No. We don’t have time.” Giving Lancaster a shove, she said, “Get moving.”

  As we started down the hall, I wondered if maybe we had a shot of escaping after all.

  CHAPTER 41

  LEA

  Lancaster led the way, jogging ahead of us. He tugged at the edges of his lab coat over and over again—a nervous tic if I ever saw one. “This way. The tunnel leads to the first floor. From there, we should be able to get topside.” He paused. “Are you one of Stravinsky’s guards?”

  Lancaster’s words were nothing to me. I’d left Calvin behind. Not once, but twice. The fire would keep him from turning into a vampire, which was what he’d wanted. But I still felt like I’d let him down, that in the end I’d failed him and our friendship.