by Reinke, Sara
“Shoot him!” Mason roared as he fumbled with the remote control. All he needed was one telekinetic burst, goddamn it, just enough to pin Piotr down. But he didn’t know how to work the damn remote control, how to use it to turn his collar off and was afraid he’d shock the shit out of himself—or blow his own goddamn head off—in the process. “Goddamn it, shoot that son of a bitch!”
Nikolić appeared to be trying to do exactly this, but couldn’t level off his aim as Piotr and the guards waltzed violently in the doorway. Piotr uttered another of those terrifying howls and tossed the mutilated guard aside, sending him flying across the room and crashing into the bed. Moving swiftly, faster than any human should’ve rightly been able, Piotr darted out the doorway and into the hall. A series of sudden shrieks and loud crashes immediately followed.
“Jesus!” Mason blinked at Nikolić, stunned and shaken. Nikolić’s arm were both blood-smeared and lacerated, dozens of semi-circular wounds from Piotr’s teeth visible in his flesh. In places, Piotr had bitten deeply enough to peel back underlying tissue nearly to the bone. It had to hurt like hell, but Nikolić didn’t even grimace as he rose to his feet.
“Stay here, Dr. Mason,” he said in a low, menacing growl. Nodding once to indicate the poor son of a bitch on the bed, his hands clasped to the ruins of his face, he added, “See what you can do for Dmitry.”
Without meeting Mason’s gaze, he checked the clip in his chrome-plated nine millimeter, then clapped it home again and followed Piotr out the door.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Julien had dozed off after Mason left the room, but jerked in wide-eyed start at the booming report of gunfire. He wasn’t naïve enough to think it might have only been his imagination, something his mind had concocted in the dim haze between sleeping and awake, and when it sounded again—followed by the faint but distinctive sounds of people screaming—he snapped immediately, acutely to consciousness.
That was Nikolić shooting, he thought, because the son of a bitch had his Nighthawk T4s, and just like a parent might know their child’s cry even from a distance, Julien recognized the sound of those pistols anywhere.
Julien opened his mind reflexively, only to hit the proverbial brick wall the electromagnetic collar projected to block even his most fervent telepathic attempts. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, because even with the collar in place, he could sense something strange. He couldn’t probe further to see what was going on, what it might be, but there was definitely a peculiar psionic energy in the air, something strong enough to leave a slight shiver stealing along the length of his spine.
Nikolić had sent for Mason; that was why he’d had to leave. Had the son of a bitch shot him? That couldn’t be it; Julien tried to calm the sudden surge of anxiety and alarm before it even settled in. He could still hear voices shouting out—Mason’s unmistakable among them:
“Shoot him! Goddamn it, Nikolić, shoot that son of a bitch!”
What the fuck is going on? Julien frowned, shifting his weight and tucking his legs beneath him in a kneeling position. Why would Nikolić shoot someone?
And better yet: Why would Mason want him to?
With a soft grunt, he hopped up, his legs unfurling as if spring-loaded so that he landed on his feet. With his hands bound behind him, close to the floor, this left him nearly doubled over, stork-like and comical. His frown deepened and he gritted his teeth, baring his fists and giving a sudden, mighty jerk against the chains binding him. He couldn’t break them, true, or the pipe around which they’d been wrapped, but he could move them up and down with him, busting through the flimsy plaster and dry-rotted wall joists to clear himself a path. He heard the crack of splintering plaster and felt it fall around his feet in broken bits and a sudden shower of dust; he felt the chains slide up as he straightened his spine, standing upright.
More screams from the hallway, a series of thuds and crashes as if something slalomed back and forth, ramming into either side of the corridor. The door to his room flew open, banging into the far wall, and a girl ran in, screaming like a fire bell. She was barefooted, dressed in a T-shirt, panties, and nothing else, with her hand clapped to the side of her face. Her white-blonde hair was tinged in bright red streaks—blood. He could tell by the smell—thick, pungent, heady—that abruptly filled the room.
“Pomozite mi!” she shrieked in Serbian. Help me! The poor thing made it no more than two frantic strides across the threshold before a blur of movement followed, too fast to possibly be human. The electrical sensation swelled to a tingling, icy crescendo, and the girl wailed as the man chasing her reached out and seized hold of her by the hair. He yanked her backwards and off her feet, forcing her into a dip as if at the climax of a ballroom dancing set. Her cries grew louder, more anguished as he ducked his head toward her throat. Julien heard a moist squelch, like someone tearing apart a piece of raw meat along a fault line of fat, and a horrible slurping sound.
Jesus fuck me Christ, he thought as the girl’s screams grew muffled and the ferocity of her struggles began to wane. What the hell is that thing?
It was feeding from her like one of the Brethren, and it had moved with the same sort of predatory prowess and speed, but it didn’t feel like a Brethren inside of his mind and it sure as fuck didn’t smell like one. Beneath the overlapping scents of blood from at least a half-dozen different sources, Julien caught the distinctive whiff of human.
But that’s not possible, Julien thought, his eyes widening as the man raised his head and seemed to sniff the air, dog-like and peculiar. The young woman fell heavily from his arms to the floor, blood spilling out of her torn neck and framing her head in a widening circumference. When the man turned to level his gaze at Julien, his nostrils flared yet again as if drawing in Julien’s scent, and his eyes were black, red-rimmed and hungry.
Not even the juice can do this to someone, Julien thought as the man stalked toward him, crouched low to the floor, moving like an animal. He only had one arm; the sleeve of his T-shirt dangled laxly on one side. He also boasted several wounds in his chest—the gunshot variety. None of these injuries seemed to be hindering him in the slightest.
“Hey,” Julien said. “Uh…how’s it going?”
Jerking against the chains again proved useless; he could batter the wall to bits, but it wouldn’t make a difference. He couldn’t break free. He spared a quick, frantic glance toward the open doorway to his room, hoping for rescue, but none appeared to be coming.
Terrific.
With a furious cry, the man charged at Julien. With his arms still bound behind him, Julien pivoted to the side, swinging his leg up and around in a roundhouse kick. His shin connected solidly with the side of the man’s head with enough force to stop his forward momentum and send him reeling sideways, momentarily stunned. As the man floundered, trying to reclaim his footing, Julien lashed out again, kicking him hard in the back of the ankle and making him stumble all the more. Just as the man fell forward, Julien sprang up, using one leg as a piston to push himself airborne, and the other as a weapon, driving his knee into the young man’s face. He heard bones crunch at the impact, and the man crumpled to the ground. He lay shuddering, his entire body heaving with every labored breath, and Julien stepped back as far as the tether of his chains would allow him, putting as much distance between them as he could.
“Trust me, kid,” Julien said in a shaky voice. “You’re going to want to stay down.”
It was bravado talking, nothing less than complete bullshit. Without his guns, with his hands bound behind his back, he was pretty much screwed, and he knew it. He’d caught the man by surprise and taken advantage of it while he could. I doubt I’m going to get that lucky again, he thought, watching in mounting alarm as the young man began to move.
“What the hell did Nikolić give you?” Julien asked, having no doubt whatsoever that Nikolić was to blame—Nikolić and Phillip Morin, and the little top-secret side project they’d been working on together. This isn’t the bloodlust—it’s somethi
ng ten times stronger. Ten times worse.
The man groaned, groping blindly for the wall as he tried to stumble to his feet. His nose looked mashed, nearly flattened, and several of his teeth lolled at unnatural angles in his mouth, like old, forgotten tombstones in an overgrown cemetery. When he looked up, those blackened eyes locked onto Julien’s face, and with a snarl, his lips drawn back and blood-smeared, he lunged again, hand outstretched to grab Julien by the throat.
The report of the chrome-plated Nighthawk T4 as Nikolić fired from the doorway was deafening. The single shot struck the man in the side of the head, almost dead-center in his ear. It was a hollow-point, so it left no exit wound; instead, the bullet fragmented inside of the man’s skull, shrapnel and metallic shards scattering and ricocheting through the temporal and frontal lobes of his brain. Whoever he was, whatever the hell Nikolić had done to him, he was neither invulnerable nor immortal. His eyes rolled back into his head and he crashed to the floor with a heavy thud.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Julien cried, drawing Nikolić’s shell-shocked gaze. “What did you do to that guy?”
Nikolić said nothing. He looked as ashen and shaken as Julien felt as he lowered the pistol, letting it dangle impotently from his hand at his side. He also looked like he’d been on the losing side of a fisticuffs with a honey badger; his face, arms, and neck were all scratched and bitten to hell, his clothes bloodstained, his hair sticking out in wacky, wild tufts.
“You son of a bitch,” Julien snapped, his brows narrowing. He jerked against his chains, rattling them defiantly. “What did you do to him, Nikolić? What the fuck did you—”
His voice cut short in a strangled cry as Nikolić reached into his pants pocket, apparently triggering the shock collar around Julien’s neck. As the high voltage current surged through him, Julien convulsed, crumpling back down to the floor and writhing there, mewling as he jerked uncontrollably against his bonds.
“Get him down to the car,” Nikolić said as one of his guards came rushing into the room, assault rifle in hand. The man skittered to an uncertain halt, blinking stupidly between Piotr’s bloodied corpse and Julien, twitching on the ground. Nikolić turned to him, his brows furrowed. “I said get that son of a bitch down to the car! I want him out of here—now.”
* * *
Less than an hour after all hell had broken loose in the brownstone, Mason followed Nikolić out the front door and toward a black Chevy Tahoe SUV that sat idling out front. It was Mason’s first opportunity to really survey his surroundings but he didn’t have the heart to take advantage of it. His mind was still reeling, still dumbstruck and stunned by what had happened.
Back inside, as he’d leaned over a basin filled with water, mopping at the blood that had dried on his hands and arms, crusted beneath his fingernails, he’d struggled to suppress the urge to weep. Andrei had been his friend, strange enough but true, and despite his association with Nikolić, despite his past crimes, Mason knew with certainty that he’d been a good man.
“Good men go to good places in the end,” his father, Michel, had told him once, and God, he’d suffered so many losses recently, one after another; too many heartaches to count. “I find some comfort in that, if nothing else.”
These words might have comforted Michel, but they did little for his son, at least not at that moment. With a low, strangled sob, he’d clapped his wet hand to his face. He’d cried for Andrei, for his father and for Tristan—all good men he’d either lost, or nearly so. He’d wept for Julien, another good man—perhaps the best he’d ever known—and all of the sorrow and pain he’d suffered on Mason’s account. He’d wept for Edith because she didn’t deserve to be involved in that mess; she’d never done a goddamn thing to wrong anyone in her entire life. But most of all, he’d wept for himself, for all of the opportunities he’d had—and missed—in his life.
Nikolić had given him clean clothes to put on, and a winter coat. The pair of well-worn work boots he’d provided were about a half size too small, but were warm, as was the coat. Mason shoved his hands deeply into the pockets, his shoulders hunched against the dismal chill as he followed Nikolić to the truck. He could feel the remote controller Andrei had given him tucked in the hip pocket of his jeans. His shirt was untucked, the hem long enough—he hoped—to hide the telltale bulge.
They hadn’t talked about what had happened, not even in passing, but Mason thought he’d smelled a whiff of alcohol on Nikolić’s breath, like maybe he’d been more shaken up than he’d been outwardly inclined to admit, and had taken to drinking to settle his nerves. Mason couldn’t blame him for that; Christ only knew how many time he’d turned to the bottle for comfort over the last few months. In fact, a drink would have been welcomed at that moment. Something strong and on ice, with no chaser needed.
He ducked his head, climbing into the back seat on one side while Nikolić joined him from the other. One of Nikolić’s goons, big, tall, and burly, held the door for Mason and slammed it shut behind him before clambering back into the passenger side front seat. As Mason reached for his seat belt, he heard the door lock engage.
“Before we get started, Dr. Morin, I must ask you to humor me…” Nikolić said. Mason turned to him, puzzled, and frowned when he saw a wide strip of black fabric in his outstretched hand.
“What’s that?” he asked, although he had a fairly good idea.
“A blindfold. I would like you to put it on.”
“Fuck that.” The cleft between Mason’s brows deepened and he reached for the door. To his surprise, there was no door handle. There was no lock, no window controls, no arm rest—nothing. The inner console of the door had been removed, replaced with a plain, featureless sheet of black vinyl.
“I apologize for any offense, but after what happened upstairs, I feel it would be more…prudent if you remain unaware of our location,” Nikolić said mildly. Again, he offered the blindfold. This time, Mason noticed he had the remote controller for the shock collar in his free hand—and that he was pointedly toying with one of the buttons with the pad of his thumb.
“Please,” Nikolić said. “Put the blindfold on.”
Since ‘or I’ll make you’ seemed to be his unspoken inference, Mason scowled and snatched the strip of cloth away from him. Ducking his head, he wrapped it around his brow line and eyes, obscuring his gaze. He allowed himself a sliver of visibility along the bottom edge, if for the hint of light if nothing else, but otherwise, when he raised his face, he couldn’t see shit.
“What exactly did happen upstairs?” he asked. He felt the truck give a gentle lurch as the driver put it in gear, then they were on the move.
“Piotr is dead,” Nikolić said bluntly. “Your friend, Julien Davenant, killed him.”
All at once, Mason felt glad for the blindfold; it hid the fact that his eyes flew wide in surprise. “What?” he gasped. Then, recovering somewhat, he added clumsily, “He…he’s not my friend. Julien, I mean.”
“Piotr attacked the guard assigned to watch him,” Nikolić said. “Julien managed to take the guard’s gun in the struggle. He shot them both—the guard and Piotr.”
Mason had heard plenty of gunshots after Piotr had fled into the hallway. Still, he had a hard time believing that Julien had shot them both. Weren’t his hands still bound behind his back? What the hell did he use to fire the guard’s gun—his feet? he wondered with a frown, unwilling to try Nikolić’s patience by questioning his account of events aloud.
“It wasn’t just the juice, was it?” he asked instead. “What happened to Piotr, why he was acting that way. Why he killed Andrei. It wasn’t just because you gave him a bunch of juice.”
“No,” Nikolić conceded. “It wasn’t.” After a momentary pause, he had the audacity to chuckle. “You know, I respect you, Dr. Morin.”
Mason snorted. “Yeah? You have a funny way of showing it.”
“What I mean is that you could have had an easy path in life. Your father—he was very wealthy, no? He owned his o
wn business. You could have worked there with him, had a position of some authority, just like Phillip, I suspect. Any time you wanted it.”
“I didn’t want it.”
“Da, exactly,” Nikolić said. “You made your own path in life. You studied medicine. You followed your own ambitions, achieved your own goals, all on your own. Your father’s money may have helped lay the foundation, but you accomplished the rest on your own. I suspect your father was very proud of you.”
Mason didn’t answer. There was no way in hell he’d open up and share anything as personal, private, or poignant as the details of his relationship with Michel with Nikolić.
“You and I, we have much in common,” Nikolić said. “For many years, I served my uncle, relied on him. But it has always been with the intention of making my own opportunities for wealth and power. I don’t want his. I want something more, something better. Now, I am finally getting that. These past five years, I’ve been building my connections. My uncle charged me with setting up distribution for soc here, but I’ve done more. I’ve established demand for it—and it’s only growing. Exponentially, day by day, more and more I hear it. All of that money is within my grasp. There’s only ever been one obstacle in my way.”
“I told you before—I can get you the formula for the juice,” Mason said. “You want a lab to make the shit? Fine, I can give you that, too. Make as much as you want. Just let me go. Let Edith go. And Julien.”
The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He couldn’t see whether or not Nikolić reacted to this or not, if he wondered why in the hell Mason would plead on behalf of a man who supposedly hated him and his entire clan. Breath bated, he sat motionless in his seat, eyes wide behind his blindfold as he ticked off the seconds of silence that followed.
After a long moment, Nikolić spoke. “Do you know what your kind are called in my language?”
