There wasn't a place in the room that even remotely resembled a control panel to Evalle.
Casper caught the small shake of her head as Sar said, "Much as I've enjoyed having guests, it's time to feed my guardians. I just have to decide who gets the woman. They like females."
Evalle curled her fists, preparing for battle, when Casper asked Sar, "So how is it everyone else died and you lived? I'm having a hard time believing you escaped Svart Trolls--the most dangerous black ops mercenary trolls in existence--on your own. Death is their only acceptable reason for failure."
Sar puffed up his scrawny chest, all pompous now in spite of his drawn-out sigh. "My parents hid me, my sister and brother, which saved us from the attack, but I inherited my father's skills and managed to escape. It was fortunate that I was the sole surviving Dalfour, as I have proven to be the most gifted and carry on our legacy of making the impossible a reality. Creating new and powerful races who serve only me."
If Evalle couldn't find a way to open the shields in the parlor, she needed to know how to stop the monsters. Taking her lead from Casper, she played to Sar's ego. "Your guardians are impressive. How'd you make them, and why?"
"As if I'm going to tell you any of my secrets? Why? To protect me when I make that Noirre coven pay for what they did to my family. They'll never get through my guardians ... once I figure out how you got past them. Time to put you in the pit." Sar lifted his hands, and Evalle searched for anything to say to stop him.
"If you can control them."
That made Sar pause. He put his hands down and said, "Of course I can."
"How do you communicate orders to them?"
Sar smiled, not as easily tricked as she would have liked.
This was going nowhere.
Maybe if she took Sar hostage and dragged him back to the parlor she could force him to bring his monsters under control. That might have a snowball's chance in hell of working if she was facing a demon, but she had her doubts about forcing a sorcerer to do anything.
Casper nodded at the bloody creature now lunging at Sar, bouncing off the end of its chain, with hate in its creepy human eyes, and pointed out, "Your training doesn't seem to be working."
Sar seemed oblivious to the way his guardian was trying to reach him, focused completely on him with deadly intent. "Everything takes time and you're imposing on mine. I'll say good-bye now."
He was a ballsy bastard. Still grabbing at any way to stall him, she asked, "Think telling us good-bye is going to work? VIPER has an attack team closing in on this place."
"What's VIPER?" The first sign of worry crossed Sar's face.
He really was a recluse to not know about VIPER. "VIPER is an army of people like us, some who are even more powerful," Evalle said, wishing her threat about a team on the way hadn't been a bluff.
Tzader came into her head. What have you got, Evalle?
We found Sar and he made these creatures, but he's an insane Dalfour sorcerer.
A Dalfour? Ah, hell. Quinn's hitting the minds of these things in short blasts but we're losing ground and Trey's hurt. I told our pilot to call for backup if we weren't out of here in twenty minutes. He should be calling now but the closest team is fifteen minutes away. You can't wait. Dalfours were serious head cases. Get out of there now!
Not without Tzader, Quinn and Trey.
Seeing the first crack in Sar's confidence, Evalle tried once again to reason with Sar. "You're out of moves, Sar. Call off your monsters and let's talk before VIPER gets here."
"I don't think so. I have a better idea." As if directing a command, Sar pointed a finger at the counter between them. A panel slid aside and the control center Evalle had been looking for appeared, complete with a monitor showing a video of the fight in the parlor. "I'll send all my guardians to the parlor and if your people win, I'll go quietly with you. If my guardians win, you get a chance to fight them. But I should mention that I keep my pets hungry."
Well, crud. He was calling her and Casper's bluff and putting them on the spot to prove they could stop him.
When Sar moved his hand to touch the button, Evalle threw a blast of kinetic energy at the panel, preventing his hand from reaching it.
No backlash from the kinetics down here. Excellent. It must have been the metal panels in the parlor. A high-tech alloy maybe.
Sar looked surprised, and amused, then whipped his hands back and forth, sending dark blue bottles of liquid off the counter and flying at Evalle and Casper.
She used her free hand to throw up a shield of energy. The liquid splashed against her shield, sizzling like acid as it slid down.
The sorcerer pointed at Casper, and the cowboy lifted off the ground then flew backwards. Casper roared in mid-air and flickered with the image of his highland warrior counterpart. Lightning sparked off his body. When he hit a tall cabinet filled with more blue bottles of liquid, the electrical energy shooting off his spirit image struck the cabinet and it exploded into a ball of fire.
Casper shifted into a shadow as fire from the cabinet climbed the wall of the lab.
Sar froze, staring at the flames, terror overshadowing the crazy haze in his eyes. If the bastard's story about his family and their deaths was true, fire had to be his worst fear.
Evalle didn't waste her opportunity to reach that panel. She had to release the kinetic energy she was using to shield the control panel from Sar to redirect her power.
His shocked gaze cleared a second too soon.
Just as she threw a kinetic hit of energy to shove him back from the controls, Sar slapped the silver button, laughing ... but lost his smile when he flew backwards into the arms of his chained guardian.
The creature grabbed the sorcerer in its curled claws and bit off the top half of Sar's head.
His eyes remained wide open with horror.
Casper had resumed human form and slammed the heavy steel door to the hallway shut, then threw the deadbolt. Good thing, since two seconds later the creatures Sar had released from their cells screamed and pounded on the door to the lab. They were either hungry, as he'd said, or they wanted their own bite of Sar. She couldn't blame them.
Evalle hoped those things couldn't reach Tzader, Quinn and Trey, but she and Casper had only one way out now.
Up.
Smoke filled the room and burned her eyes. Casper appeared next to her, weapons in hand. "Can you open the shields on the parlor?"
"I can't find anything marked on this panel. I'm afraid I'll send those things to the parlor." She choked on her next smoke-filled breath and started coughing.
"Sure as hell can't escape through that hallway. Let's go upstairs and find a way out, then we'll figure out how to help Tzader and the others."
These half-human creatures would be burned alive.
She had a moment of regret over the little orange-eyed guy with the bat wings, but she had a team to save. Besides, that little creature might be just as dangerous as the rest of these. Though some voice deep inside her argued that everything deserved a chance.
Using her power to form a shield between the two of them and the chained monster, she and Casper rushed up two flights of stairs to the door on the top level. Fire nipped at their heels and sucked the oxygen from the room. At the upstairs door, Evalle rushed inside a room with a wall of monitors. Smoke clouded the images, but she could make out the hallway between the parlor and the lab. She got a glimpse of Sar's creatures attacking one another just before the picture turned completely gray. Images on the monitors fuzzed and one by one they went blank. Was the fire racing through the building, destroying wires?
Searching the room, she found a wall plate with a series of numbered buttons marked House Shields.
Casper said, "How the hell do we make sense of that without knowing which rooms the numbers correspond to?"
"We can't. I need to warn Tzader." Evalle lifted her hand, letting Casper know she was reaching out telepathically.
She said, We're out of the lab and it's on fire. Can Tre
y run?
Tzader answered, Yes. He's got a shoulder wound.
Get ready to run the minute I start pushing buttons to release metal shields, because all the creatures are loose. I have no way to make sure I don't let them into the parlor.
Do it.
She started flipping buttons.
The floor beneath her rocked with an explosion.
Casper grabbed her arm. "Got to go or we'll be fried."
She flipped the last lever and raced out behind Casper through several doors until they found an outside terrace thirty feet off the ground.
Evalle turned to Casper. "Can you get down as a shadow?"
"Sure, but what about you? That's a helluva drop." "Just go. I'll get down."
She ignored the wave of nausea she always felt from being that far off the ground.
Once Casper disappeared, she climbed up on the ledge and jumped, landing with her hands out, ready for attack.
Casper appeared next to her. "Come on, sunshine."
Tzader yelled in her head, We're out.
Evalle had started running toward the front of the house and almost stumbled with relief. Great. We are too. You've got to stop those monsters from getting loose. The two you faced weren't the worst of Sar's creatures.
We're on it.
She and Casper raced around the corner of the house to find Tzader and Quinn on the front lawn using their kinetic powers to destroy the front of the manor as a last-resort attempt to stop the creatures advancing toward them. A truckload of bricks and beams crashed down on the howling monsters. Apparently with the sorcerer dead, and his magic gone from the house, the creatures became more vulnerable.
She hated seeing any living thing destroyed, except demons, but Sar's creatures had been created for nothing but cold blooded murder.
Black smoke boiled out from the bottom of the house, leaking through breaks in the brick piles.
Fire was overtaking what remained of the old mansion.
Evalle ran up to Tzader as he and Quinn lowered their arms. She looked over at Trey who sat on the ground, holding his shoulder that was bleeding from where it had been gouged. But he gave her a nod that he was fine.
Quinn squatted down next to Trey, rubbing his head, but didn't appear seriously harmed.
Tzader's face showed the strain of what they'd been through. "What happened with Sar?"
Evalle told him everything, finishing with, "I don't think there's a threat to national security."
"No, we dodged a bullet with this one."
Their helicopter pilot called over to Tzader who walked toward the chopper that sat in perfect view, now that a fifty foot section of the wrought iron fence had been flattened for access. Casper followed Tzader to where another helicopter full of VIPER agents was just touching down.
Relieved to see her team safe, Evalle turned to look at the beautiful old home, now a pile of ruins.
A movement at the bottom of the rubble caught her attention.
Something small crawled out through an opening where the base of the porch met the house. She started to point it out to the others, but they were physically spent. She could handle one of Sar's creatures weakened by the fire and out here where she knew her kinetics worked just fine. Walking toward the house to determine what was trying to escape, she grimaced at the heat rolling off the burning pile.
Easing closer, she realized the little thing dragging itself away from the fire-engulfed structure had bat-like wings. The two-foot tall creature had survived?
She reminded herself that Sar's goal had been to create dangerous killing machines, but when this creature raised terrified orange eyes to meet hers, her conscience argued that this one had been marked as a failure.
Intense heat baking her skin forced her to wait as the creature put his head down and kept crawling toward her.
When it was within a few feet, she squatted down, ready to react at any hint of danger, but all she felt coming off the little critter was fear. Her empathic flashes were stronger and more frequent when her emotions were stirred up, like right now.
Sometimes you had to trust your gut.
One of the men yelled, "Something's escaping!"
That's when the little creature looked up, eyes rounding in terror. It started shaking.
Footsteps pounded toward her from behind. Evalle stood up and swung around, putting herself between the little creature and the VIPER agents.
One of the agents she didn't recognize lifted his hands to attack but halted, face in shock when he saw Evalle obviously standing between him and the creature. He yelled, "Get that crazy Alterant out of the way!"
Evalle put her hands on her hips. "Touch this little guy and I'll hurt you."
The critter crawled into her peripheral vision and tucked up close to her legs, then did the most amazing thing.
He hooked his arm around her leg and looked up at her as if she was an angel there to save him.
She was no angel, but he was safe next to her. Tzader came charging up with Quinn, but Tzader was the one who said, "Have you lost your mind? That ... that gargoyle looking thing could kill you."
It was a good description, really. He--if this critter was a he--did look like a gargoyle.
She could feel the poor thing against her leg, trembling hard as a leaf in a hurricane. Then he patted her leg, as if trying to convey that he was no threat. Crossing her arms, she shook her head. "He's not going to hurt me."
Quinn argued, "Based upon what evidence, considering the things we just fought in that place?"
"Just because the rest of them were killing machines doesn't mean he is. His door had a notation that marked him as food because he failed a kill test. I don't think Sar would have destroyed him if he had any hope of being dangerous."
There was only one way to convince everyone not to kill this poor thing.
Taking a breath she hoped wouldn't be her last considering the smoke that floated from his snout, Evalle reached down and hoisted the heavy little critter up into her arms.
Tzader and Quinn both shouted, "Don't!" and now stared at her as if she needed to be put in a straight jacket.
The gargoyle had tucked his wings around his body, but when she picked him up he lifted his head to watch her with worried eyes the whole time. He smelled sooty and stinky, but what could you expect from something that had been kept locked in a hole and climbed out of a fire? He'd clean up just fine.
She smiled at him, but her words were for Tzader and Quinn. "He just needs some TLC."
That set off Quinn. "Oh, good Goddess, you have to be joking. It has probably never been out of a cage. You don't know what it will do."
At that moment, her little critter smiled, exposing two small fangs.
She knew in her heart she was right to protect him. "I had never been outside of a cage until I was eighteen, and the Beladors didn't know what I would do when that Druid brought me in."
One look at Quinn and Tzader's faces and she knew they both understood what she was saying. A lot of people would have destroyed her if they'd known she was an Alterant from the beginning. "I'm keeping him."
The pair of growling sighs that followed told her she'd won the battle. She didn't know if this little gargoyle creature could comprehend what she was saying, but he understood when someone would not hurt him and dropped his head down on her shoulder with a gurgle of what sounded to her like happiness.
Tzader shifted around and waved off the team then turned back to Evalle. "There's no way the pilots will let you on the helicopter with that."
"Great news, because there's no way I'm climbing back on either one of those freaking machines." She grinned as Quinn muttered something and flipped open his cell phone, no doubt calling a driver for her.
For once, she'd let Quinn spoil her with a driver and car because she had to get her new baby home in as calm and gentle a way as possible. She felt four fingers patting her shoulder, content. "We're going to have to come up with a name for you, little guy. Something suitable
for a phoenix that fought its way out of the flames of hell."
SHERRILYN KENYON is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several series, including the Bureau of American Defense novels Born to Be BAD, BAD Attitude, Phantom in the Night, Whispered Lies, and Silent Truth, and the enticing new Belador series, including Blood Trinity and Alterant. Both series are available from Pocket Books. There are more than twenty-five million copies of Sherrilyn's books in print in over thirty countries. She lives with her family near Nashville, Tennessee. Visit her website at www.SherrilynKenyon.com.
DIANNA LOVE is the RITA Award--winning, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Phantom in the Night, Whispered Lies, Silent Truth, Blood Trinity, and Alterant. She is a national speaker who started thinking up stories while working more than one hundred feet in the air, creating unusual marketing projects for Fortune 500 companies. When not plotting out her latest action-adventure, she travels the country on a motorcycle to meet fans and research new locations. She and her husband live near Atlanta, Georgia. Visit her website at www.AuthorDiannaLove.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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