In the Blood (Metahuman Files Book 4)

by Hailey Turner

  You’re safe now, Mercedes promised, gently derailing his thoughts before they could make his panic attack worse. I promise, you’re safe. So is Dvorkin.

  Sean wanted to believe her, he honestly did, but the second they moved him onto a stretcher, the pain came roaring back with a vengeance. Sean arched weakly upward, body throbbing as every nerve remembered what was really happening in his body. Gracie’s power had eased enough of his pain to give him a clarity of thought that Sean wanted to run from. Because he’d watched—he hadn’t done a damn thing when Cillian—

  Too late, he thought.

  He should have tried harder, should’ve done something different—

  Mercedes’ voice whispered through his mind, untangling the ugly twists of self-recriminations that threatened to drown him as the ceiling and lights flashed overhead as they moved. It’s not your fault.

  You don’t know that.

  Telepathy was different than speaking, and Cillian wasn’t here to take out Sean’s failure to remain quiet on Alexei.

  That’s right. Cillian is gone and you’re safe.

  He used to think that safety was found in Alexei’s arms, but after what they’d gone through, Sean doubted Alexei would ever want to see him again. Who would want to be with someone who had watched them be tortured, been complicit in said torture? It might not have been his hand harming Alexei, but it had been his actions and decisions that had spurred Cillian on.

  “It’s against regulations for you to be here, ma’am,” he heard someone say. “He’s your son.”

  “Exactly. He’s my son. If you think I’m walking out of this OR while Sean is on the table, then I hate to disappoint you, because you will have to drag me out of here in handcuffs if you want me gone. Now prep the regen tank while I scrub up.”

  Gentle fingers stroked his hair back in a way Sean remembered from childhood. It was enough for him to open his eye and blink painfully up at the face of his mother haloed by the operating room’s bright lights. She looked pale-faced and furious, mouth pressed into a thin white line, but as soon as she saw he was looking at her, Naomi smiled.

  “This nice young lady right over here is going to put you to sleep, honey. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  Sean wanted to tell her no, to tell her to help Alexei first, but he never felt the slide of the needle in his arm or the cannula that was slipped under his nose, mindful of his bruised and swollen mouth, pouring blackness through his veins and mind.

  Jamie rammed the butt of his rifle into the face of a Sons of Adam fighter hard enough to crack his jaw and split skin. The man, who’d been wielding a knife and stabbing people indiscriminately as they ran, went down hard. Jamie put a bullet in the guy’s chest and kept moving. He had the Parkman Bandstand in his sights, but the space around it was empty. The absence of any security personnel or even campaign figures worried him. Hell, he didn’t even see anyone from the press running around. Jamie needed more eyes than he had on the surrounding area.

  “Tank, I need—”

  Jamie cut himself off as Tessa appeared out of thin air beside him, along with her partner, and the entirety of Delta Team. Corporal Noah Bailey nodded at Jamie. Delta Team’s captain was a former Marine he had excellent working relations with.

  “Get everyone calmed down, Petra,” Noah said.

  Claudia Wilkinson, code named Petra and Delta Team’s empath, pressed a hand to the side of her head, scowling. “I need some cover. There’s a lot of people I need to influence.”

  Jamie pointed in the direction of the bandstand. “We put protections up for the senator around the bandstand. You should be safe enough inside it. Echo?”

  “On it,” Tessa replied, taking Claudia by the arm and teleporting away with her.

  “Should’ve asked her to put one of us on a roof for overwatch,” Noah said.

  “I have Icarus covering us in the air. Can you try to locate the senator for me?” Jamie asked.

  “Give me a couple of seconds.”

  Noah disappeared in a blur, racing away at a speed no one could catch. Jamie let him search the area in favor of moving farther into the crowd. “Tank, I need that update.”

  “Not seeing anyone with suicide vests. It’s been hard to scan everyone in general, but the crowd seems to be calming down now,” Donovan reported over comms.

  “Delta Team is on the field.”

  “That explains it.”

  An empath could control and influence emotions, though they couldn’t read thoughts. Still, their power was almost as tightly legislated as telepaths. Jamie had seen what an empath could do, the way they could ruin a person’s life with just a simple, emotional suggestion that ate away at them. Nikolaas Jansen had built an entire business off his power, partnering with the Pavluhkins to destroy lives. Jamie didn’t know how many people Claudia could calm down at once, but Jamie hoped it was enough to help bring the crowd under control.

  Noah skidded to a stop near Jamie, the wind of his passage blowing across everyone. “Senator isn’t on the field.”

  “Goddamn it,” Jamie said as he switched out of the encrypted comms being used by their teams in the field to call out on his private line. The connection was picked up after only one ring. “Where are you?”

  “We’re being escorted to police headquarters,” Richard replied, sounding more than a little breathless. His father’s words came out short and clipped, a sure sign he was trying to stay calm in the face of danger. In the back of his mind, Jamie wondered if his father finally understood just how wrong his decision to go forward with the campaign rally had been.

  Jamie immediately opened an uplink with headquarters and drew his father into his call. “I need the senator’s location. Trace him through my line.”

  “Yes, sir,” an agent back at headquarters said. “Relaying you his location now.”

  It only took a few moments, but during that time, the rest of Delta Team and Gamma Team scattered. There were still Sons of Adam fighters in the crowd and on the street, to say nothing of Declan’s people if they were around. It was one thing to fight against a radicalized civilian who played at being a soldier than someone who’d actually been one.

  And Jamie couldn’t ignore that this entire mess could be exactly what Stanislav wanted.

  A secondary blue dot appeared on his HUD, situated not far from Jamie’s tagged location on the Boston map.

  “I want eyes on the route the senator is taking. Every side street, every building, needs to be watched. Be prepared for anything,” Jamie stressed as he changed course and headed back toward Tremont Street.

  Donovan jogged over to Jamie’s position a few seconds later. “Do you need backup?”

  Jamie couldn’t justify removing his entire team from the field just to save his family. Too much was at stake to do what he wanted to do instead of what needed to be done. Jamie knew the inevitable investigation into this mess—who knew what when before all the dying happened—would run up perilously close to the MDF’s covert operations. The entirety of Alpha Team couldn’t be seen favoring one small group of people over everyone else even when that’s exactly what Jamie wanted to order.

  But he didn’t.

  “Stay here and keep searching for those bombs. We need to clear this area first. That’s priority number one for the teams,” Jamie said.

  Donovan nodded. “Will do.”

  Jamie ran for Tremont Street and the handful of police vehicles and campaign SUVs still parked there. The MRAP hadn’t made it down to Jamie’s position, so most of the cars didn’t have any stray bullet holes in them and the tires were intact. The riot police gathered at the south edge of the park was a big enough group that Jamie figured they would soon start forming a police kettle around the barricaded rally area to keep people contained. They saw him coming and several moved aside, unhooking the metal barriers to give him room to run through.

  “Icarus, I need a pickup,” Jamie said as he got clear of Boston Common proper.

  “On my way,”
Annabelle replied.

  Katie’s mental voice slipped smoothly into his mind, pulling everyone on the field into a wide mental link. Apollo.

  Did you get Cillian? Jamie asked.

  Reaper is dealing with him. Base won’t be happy with the results.

  Jamie smiled viciously behind his mask, glad no one could see him. Good.

  What isn’t good is what Cillian has planned. There are three suicide bombers in the vicinity. I don’t know who they are because he told his people not to tell him who the volunteers were.

  So far I’m not seeing anyone carrying suicide vests, Donovan said.

  Because they’re carrying Splice and micro-explosives in their stomachs like drug mules.

  Oh, that’s disgusting, Madison said. And messy.

  Easier to get the stuff through security. Won’t be found in a pat down and scanners can’t legally penetrate the body without a warrant first, Trevor added.

  Viper, I want you to start scanning every last person in the vicinity of Boston Common. I want those suicide bombers found, Jamie ordered.

  With no Telepathy Warrant in place, they would be breaking the law by doing that, but Jamie didn’t see how they had any other choice. This was a matter of life or death, and Jamie didn’t care what the courts would say about their decision to invade everyone’s mental privacy.

  Reaper is just about finished. I’ll update you as soon as I can, Katie said.

  The mental link faded away, and with it, everyone else’s minds.

  Annabelle dropped down out of the sky beside him, hovering a few feet off the ground as he turned his back to her.

  “Ain’t goin’ to be pretty if those people blow,” Annabelle said as she wrapped her hands around the straps on his tactical vest at the shoulders.

  Micro-explosives were engineered to be just as devastating as a larger bomb. They were strictly for military use, which meant Declan was definitely supplying the Sons of Adam with weapons they would otherwise be unable to easily get without paying a small fortune on the black market.

  “I know. Which is why we need to hurry up and find them,” Jamie said, trying not to let his frustration at the situation get to him.

  “Hold on tight. We’re goin’ for a ride.”

  Annabelle launched them into the sky, the earth falling away from their feet. The feeling of weightlessness was strange as Annabelle flew them through the air. Her anti-gravity power made it easy for her to haul around her teammates as if they weighed nothing. In situations like this, Jamie was thankful for that.

  The streets and buildings of Boston streaked past as Annabelle flew over the city, following the map on her HUD that would take them to Jamie’s family. The caravan with their police escort was traveling south on Tremont Street. Jamie caught sight of it moments later.

  “Apollo to base, give the senator’s security a heads-up we’re dropping in. Need them to slow down enough to take us on,” Jamie said.

  “Copy that,” an agent replied.

  Boston was one of the oldest cities in America, beset early by climate change and an eroding shoreline. The seawall barriers helped regulate rising seawater around the Boston waterfront to stave off flooding while the underground streets and subway had been sealed off before the turn of the century. While it never had to worry about earthquakes like cities on the West Coast, most of the high-rises were restricted to the financial district. Tremont Street running south was bracketed by hundreds of low-level apartment buildings with red-bricked façades and bare trees lining the pavement.

  Annabelle angled them down low at high speed, the convoy carrying his family slowing to a halt. Jamie got his feet on the ground right as a door on the middle SUV opened up. Annabelle didn’t immediately fly away after she let him go, hovering in the air above the height of the SUV to watch his six.

  The head of his father’s private security team, Keith Murray, got out, gun in hand. The ex-Army Ranger knew Jamie’s classified identity and had no problem ceding command to him. “Got a spot in here for you, sir.”

  Jamie never got the chance to reply.

  The sound of Annabelle unexpectedly crashing to the ground behind him coincided with Jamie’s stomach lurching as his entire body became less to his senses—less strong, less quick, less durable. Jamie took a step back and brought up his weapon as Annabelle staggered back to her feet, shaking her head hard.

  “Apollo to all teams. Be advised, the enemy is fielding a metahuman with a nullification power,” Jamie said.

  “Fuck,” Trevor swore heatedly over the line.

  A metahuman with a nullification power was a living Faraday cage, capable of canceling out other metahumans’ power within a certain range. The null power could be targeted, affecting only certain areas or people. The last time they’d dealt with that power was last year when Everly had infiltrated the MDF and nearly got the drop on everyone.

  “Apollo, we got eyes on the enemy coming from behind and ahead to cut you off,” Nazari said sharply over comms. “Get clear, now!”

  The warning had come too late; Jamie’s instincts in the field were rarely wrong. If Stanislav had seen their future, then there was no escaping what was about to happen. At least, not in the way the director wanted. The predictable route would be to get in the SUV and drive, hoping to outrun the enemy, surrounded by their small escort.

  Instead, Jamie chose a different way.

  “Everyone out!” Jamie yelled, motioning for Murray to exit the SUV. “Let’s go! Move, people!”

  The two SUVs carrying his family and security threw open their doors and everyone inside got out. Some of the Secret Service protested the action, but his family’s private security literally removed them from the vehicles by force.

  “Apartment buildin’?” Annabelle asked.

  “Read my mind. Apollo to base, I’m going to need an air evac. Tell whoever is flying the combat jet to hold position directly over our location and have shields up in case of any anti-aircraft missiles,” Jamie snapped as Richard finally clambered out of the SUV.

  Annabelle double-timed it around the other side, taking charge of Charlotte and Leah. “Think they actually brought some?”

  “Wouldn’t put anything past them right now. Who knows what kind of weapons Declan skimmed off delivery invoices.”

  “Aerial support is being rerouted,” Nazari reported.

  The apartment building had a café in the retail space on the street. Jamie could see people hunkered down inside, recording what was happening outside. Jamie would have ordered someone to go in and tell everyone to find cover, but vehicles skidded into the intersections at either end of the block, none of them friendly.

  “Everyone, get inside!” Jamie yelled as he brought up his weapon.

  He aimed down the street and started to fire while Annabelle put her back to his and aimed in the other direction. Several security personnel stayed behind to join them. Their small group provided what cover fire they could as Jamie’s family was hustled into the apartment building by way of breaking and entering. With the entrance locked, Murray shot out the control panel before pushing open the sliding door.

  It only took seconds for everyone to make it inside, but that was long enough for the enemy to make it to their position. With the null power still active, and theirs suppressed, Jamie and Annabelle would have to rely in their training over their powers.

  Jamie unclipped a hand grenade from his belt, activating the small cylinder. He threw it at the nearest SUV before sprinting into the apartment building. The resulting explosion was enough of a threat to buy them precious time.

  Murray had herded Jamie’s family into the stairwell while several of his people and most of the police escort remained scattered in the small lobby, seeking cover in out-of-the-way spots. Several of the police were talking into their work comms, calling for backup that Jamie knew wouldn’t get there in time.

  “They’ll hold the line,” Murray said.

  Neither of them mentioned that doing so was most likely
a death sentence. Annabelle jerked her head at the stairwell door. “I’ll take point.”

  “Go,” Jamie said. “Careful on the roof. There might be snipers.”

  “I’ll wait for the jet to deploy its shields before I let anyone out.”

  The apartment building couldn’t hold the weight of the combat jet, but it was maneuverable enough that it could hold position close to the roof exit and activate its personal shield. He trusted her to make the call on when it would be safe to move his family.

  Annabelle slipped through the entrance into the stairwell. Murray stayed put, the veteran giving Jamie a look that he recognized all too well from the stubborn members of his team—which was all of them.

  “I’ll keep you company on rearguard,” Murray said.

  The older man wasn’t wearing tactical body armor, but he knew his way around a fight. With his team split up, Jamie wasn’t going to turn down the backup.

  “Appreciate it,” Jamie replied.

  Some part of Jamie wanted to ask Katie to find the metahuman with the null power, but Katie had a more important job at the moment. It didn’t matter that the mind of a metahuman was easier to find in a crowd than a normal human’s. Katie needed to find the suicide bombers before they killed themselves and took too many others with them.

  It was up to Jamie to keep his family safe.

  By funneling them through the apartment building, Jamie knew he was putting other innocent civilians at risk. But they needed to get off the ground and out of the box Stanislav had managed to erect around their position.

  Be unpredictable, Jamie thought as he and Murray pounded up the stairs.

  Problem was, Jamie didn’t know what decisions he was making on the fly were ones Stanislav hadn’t seen. He had no way of knowing what future he was running toward. He could only hope it wasn’t one that Stanislav wanted.

  The sound of gunfire in the lobby urged them on faster. Jamie made it halfway up the stairs on the second floor before he rocked to a halt. Murray managed to make it to the next landing before he realized Jamie wasn’t with him. The older man paused, turning to look down at him.