Outbreak: A Nightshades Novel

by Melissa F. Olson

  “He’ll show up,” Alex said, trying to sound confident.

  Lindy was watching him. Should we send someone to the FBI building to check on them?

  Alex shielded his eyes from the mist and looked across the street to the harbor and Lake Michigan, thinking it over. They only had eight people, and five were humans. They just couldn’t afford to split their resources if Hector somehow figured out where they were. “We’ll give him ten more minutes,” Alex decided. “Hopefully they just fell behind on modifying the weapons.” If Palmer didn’t get there soon, he’d send half his people ahead to the water crib to start setting up the generator and electric lights. Shades could see easier in the darkness than humans could, and he didn’t want the human members of the team to be at a disadvantage.

  “How many people do you think he’ll bring?” Faraday asked Lindy. The rest of them had discussed it on the way there.

  “Enough to show us that he’s powerful and well connected, but not so many that he seems like he’s afraid of me,” she said patiently. “I would guess five minimum, ten at the most.”

  Just then Gil’s blue Camry careened into the lot, and Alex’s shoulders slumped with relief. “That’s him.”

  But it was immediately obvious that something was wrong. Alex couldn’t see much through the misty, tinted windows, but as the car screeched to a stop a few feet away he noticed a big smear of red on the driver’s handle. It was still wet, and thick enough that the mist hadn’t cleared it.

  Alex put up a hand to stop the others and approached the door slowly, one hand on his sidearm. “Palmer?” he yelled.

  The driver’s door opened, and Noelle half-fell, half-staggered out. Reagan and Sloane immediately turned away, holding their breath. Even Lindy flinched, her jaw tightening.

  Because Noelle was drenched in blood.

  She was also weeping, and mascara had run down her face into the collar of her T-shirt. She didn’t even have a jacket. Alex and Chase ran forward at the same moment. “Nell!” Chase cried, helping her to her feet. “What happened? Where are you hurt?”

  “They—they killed Palmer,” she sobbed. “It’s his blood.” She leaned into Chase as though she were no longer able to stay upright without help. He wrapped his arms around her.

  “She’s bleeding,” Sloane remarked. He and Reagan had taken a couple of steps away. Lindy stayed where she was, but she looked distracted.

  Noelle blinked in surprise. “Oh. My arm . . .”

  Alex looked at Hadley, but she was already running for the new first aid kit they’d put in the SUV. “They came to the lab,” Noelle said to Chase, half-babbling, “and-and-they made me use Lindy’s bracelet to get your location. I don’t know how they even knew about me; I’m not in the BPI . . .”

  Over her shoulder, Alex and Chase exchanged a horrified look. Chase must have told Hector. Chase obviously hadn’t realized this was part of Hector’s questioning, because in that moment he looked like he’d been run over by a semi.

  Hadley and Faraday started wrapping Noelle’s arm with gauze, and Lindy opened the trunk of Gil’s car, exposing a very heavy-looking bag inside. Alex went to help her, but she lifted it out like it was a package of toilet paper. “This is really bad,” she said to him.

  Her voice was low, but not low enough. “Of course this is bad!” Noelle practically screamed, turning to face Lindy. “They killed Palmer!”

  “You don’t understand.” Lindy sounded calm, but she was unzipping the bag and hurriedly passing out weapons to a bewildered-looking Ruiz, Hadley, and Faraday. “How long ago was this?”

  Noelle blinked, and Alex could see her trying to get it together. “Maybe forty minutes?”

  Lindy checked her watch. “What is it?” Alex asked her.

  “Sunset,” she said grimly. “The sun sets in ten minutes. If they know where we are—”

  “We need to get to the boats,” Alex finished. “Okay, everybody grab your—”

  There was a quiet crack, and the overhead light on the far end of the parking lot flickered out. Everyone went still, and at the other end of the rectangular parking lot, there was another crack and another light disappeared. The next two cracks were almost simultaneous, and the next closest rows of lights were gone.

  They were surrounded.

  Chapter 25

  THE HUMANS FROZE WITH shock, and Lindy knew this was the point: a dramatic darkening to scare everyone. Mind games. Classic Hector.

  She yelled loud enough to break them out of it. “Hey!” Everyone looked over. “They’ll have blocked the exits, they’re gonna kill the lights,” she said in as low a voice as would carry to them. “Faraday, Chase, you need to move the cars together right now. Make as much light as possible.”

  The two men nodded and immediately took off. They’d parked their vehicles a few rows away to be less conspicuous. Meanwhile, Lindy finished handing out the guns. There was one extra set, which she gave to Noelle. “Get in the Camry,” she ordered, wishing they had a vehicle with bullet-resistant glass. “Reagan, stay with her and lock the doors.” Noelle did as she said, but the younger shade began to protest. Lindy overrode her. “You promised if I let you come you would listen to me. Protect Noelle.”

  Reagan’s mouth snapped shut. She looked unhappy, but she climbed in after the human engineer. A second later the door cracked open and something dropped onto the pavement: Noelle’s bloody shirt. Reagan didn’t want it in the closed space, where it would force her to vamp out. Lindy approved.

  Faraday pulled his Lexus sedan in line with the pickup, moving forward until the sedan’s nose touched the truck’s grill. Chase did the same with the rental SUV and the Camry, so there was a narrow corridor between the two sets of vehicles. All the drivers turned the headlights and interior lights on just as the last streetlights in the lot exploded into darkness.

  The vehicles formed an oasis of light that looked ghostly in the mist. “Shit, shit, shit,” Hadley was muttering, checking her rifle. “Five rounds each,” she announced.

  “There are more clips or magazines or whatever in the bottom of the bag,” Lindy said absently. She was scanning the darkness.

  Faraday and Chase were back, and everyone instinctively moved into the long aisle created by the cluster of cars.

  “Run for the boats?” Alex said to Lindy. They’d have to cross the road, not to mention half a parking lot of open space, to get to it.

  She shook her head. We’d never make it. But they had to do something. Even with the cars as partial cover, they were in serious trouble. If Hector had a bunch of shades and they all decide to rush them at once . . .

  “How do you want to play this?” Alex asked. He sounded calm, but she could hear his pulse racing, along with everyone else’s.

  Stay there. I’ll see if I can Gordian knot this thing before it gets bad.

  Without waiting for a response, Lindy climbed on top of the Camry. It was slippery from the rain, but she was wearing rubber-soled hiking boots and had a thousand years of supernatural balance behind her. She reached the roof and looked out into the darkness, though it was hard to see or smell anything through the misting rain. There were shapes moving at the edges of the lot, for sure.

  Too many shapes. Way more than ten. Lindy didn’t take the time to count, but she would estimate upward of thirty. Fuck, Hector had been recruiting. Probably just for this.

  Alex, I think he turned enough new shades to make a herd. It’s like the outbreak I told you about.

  Without waiting for his reaction, she opened her arms wide. “Hector!” she shouted, legitimately furious. “Are you so afraid to face me that you resort to stupid theatrics?”

  There was no answer. Then a distinctive pop broke the silence, followed by a little whistling sound, and Lindy took a dart right in the chest.

  She looked down and saw one of Hector’s little methamphetamine vials. Goddammit.

  Lindy jumped down from the Camry, landing in the middle of their safe zone—okay, it wasn’t actually safe,
but it was the only cover they were likely to get. She plucked the dart from the top layer of Kevlar and tossed it to the ground.

  “You okay?” Alex called. Lindy nodded. She, Sloane, and Reagan were all wearing three layers of bulletproof vests—another one of Noelle’s ideas. The theory was that the Kevlar would slow down the needle, which wouldn’t be able to embed itself properly, and the methamphetamine liquid would release harmlessly between the vests. Good to see it worked.

  “Boss!” Hadley screamed. She and Faraday were positioned at one end of the corridor. “They’re coming!”

  Faraday and Hadley both fired, but Lindy knew her brother well enough to whirl around and race for the other end, pulling the push daggers from underneath the bottom of her vests. Ruiz and Chase, who were stationed at this gap, saw her coming and instinctively flattened themselves against the cars, which is how they avoided the shade diving toward them. Lindy clashed straight into the stranger—a female—and their opposing momentums made them land just past the edge of the cars.

  “I didn’t even see her!” Lindy heard Chase exclaim, but Lindy was already using one push dagger to slice across the girl’s throat and one to disembowel her.

  “Jesus,” Ruiz said from only a few feet away. The female let out a gurgling snarl and swiped at Lindy’s midsection with a short sword. Lindy ducked back, pulling her blades free, and the female struggled to get up. She was too weak to heal fast enough, and Lindy felt a swell of pity. This one was even younger than Reagan.

  Chase shot her in the arm with the dart gun. The female blinked a few times, and then all her muscles relaxed as the meth took her.

  There was a lot of shooting at the other end, and then Chase and Ruiz were yelling back and forth over the gunfire. When the next shade attempted to leap over the cars and land in between them, Chase was aiming low while Ruiz was aiming high. She felt a jolt of relief. Ruiz had seen shade attacks before, he had known they would jump.

  Then Lindy couldn’t keep an eye on them any longer, because of course the young female was just the first. The next shade was already barreling toward her through the dark rain.

  He was bigger, and older, and Lindy could hear actual chain mail clicking from his neck down into his pants. Hector knew what weapons she favored. Lindy tried to swipe a blade just below his jaw line, but the man dodged, bringing up a gun that Lindy easily kicked out of his hand. He grunted in annoyance and reached into his back belt, coming out with a brutal-looking knife that had been welded to a set of brass knuckles so it couldn’t easily be knocked away.

  Lindy put her best “scared little girl” expression on her face and took an uncertain step backward. Alex. Get ready to shoot this guy in the face when I duck. The chain mail guy grinned and advanced on her, past the edges of the car and into the safe zone. He swiped the knife at her neck, and Lindy threw herself to the pavement like she was starting a backflip. From the other end of their base, Alex’s rifle fired, and the dart hit the chain mail guy in the cheek almost the moment Lindy heard the sound. Holy shit. Noelle was good.

  Then there were no more shades coming toward her end of the safe zone, which alarmed her. Lindy took one second to stop and look around. At the other end, Faraday and Hadley seemed to have fallen into a good rhythm of alternating shooting and reloading as shades ran toward them in groups of two or three. Chase, Ruiz, and Alex were protecting both sides, where the cars touched. But where was Sloane? Lindy looked toward the Camry, of course—he wouldn’t go far from Reagan during a fight. She spotted him on the other side of the Camry, fighting two shades who had succeeded in breaking one of the car’s windows. Sloane seemed to be holding his own, though, using an actual sword. He hadn’t had that before—must have taken it off someone.

  Lindy wished she could talk into their heads.

  Behind her, Alex cried out, and she whirled around to see a slender male shade, this one also with chain mail, pushing a blade deep into the muscle of Alex’s shoulder as Alex struggled to get his sidearm up. Lindy was instantly there with her blades, scissoring them against the back of the guy’s neck, severing his spinal cord. His head flopped forward, and she kicked the body aside.

  Alex looked pale, and he wasn’t lifting that arm. She bent forward and kissed him, hoping the shot of saliva would be enough. She broke the contact only to snap an arm out and slice the throat of the next approaching shade, a male that Alex shot with his dart gun. “Thanks,” he panted. He glanced around too. “We can’t hold them off for long, not like this.”

  She had to turn to bat aside a running shade, taking two more darts in her vest, but in his head she said, I know. There are too many of them. This was her fault—she had counted on Hector’s arrogance, his pride. She should have remembered his desire for an army.

  And that’s what they were. As she glanced toward Hadley and Faraday, she could see that the shades were coordinating, running toward the side that was most vulnerable—the one with the humans.

  Hector was directing all of them. Lindy had never had more than four or five different fledglings at one time, because it had been hard to keep them straight in her head. Now Hector was trying to direct all these minds at once? No wonder he was crazy.

  Still, in order to control these people he had to have a better vantage point. Somewhere high.

  She kissed Alex again, a quick peck. “Hold them off, I’m going after Hector.”

  He protested, of course, but the sun had set, and she was long gone before he finished the words.

  Chapter 26

  THERE WAS REALLY ONLY one place high enough to see everything: the corner of the harbor building across the street. It was a little far even for shade eyesight, but the headlights would be spotlighting a relatively small amount of space, like being in the balcony of a theatrical performance. It was probably giving Hector quite a thrill.

  Lindy ran through the encroaching shades like a bowling ball through pins, doing as much quick damage as she could with her push daggers and a few kicks. She sped across the street, holstered her blades, and leapt on top of the shed right next to the building. A few running steps and she jumped for the building, punching her hands into the siding to pull herself up.

  Hector was right where she’d expected, peering over the building’s edge with great concentration.

  Lindy paused. This seemed too easy.

  “You left them vulnerable,” Hector called without turning around. His voice was strained, his concentration divided. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

  Lindy ignored the comment and barreled toward her brother, who spun around with a dart gun in hand. Lindy ducked it—his weapons were slower than Noelle’s—and tackled him at the waist. He went down with a strangled cry.

  And then he hit her, a perfect punch to her face that shattered her cheekbone and cracked her jaw.

  It had been a long time since Lindy had fought someone as old or as strong as her, and Hector was both. She had healed many injuries, but a shattered bone was probably the worst. The fragments of her cheekbone immediately began trying to knit together, which was excruciating.

  It was also distracting, which had been his plan. He stood up. “Oh, Lindy,” he sighed. “When will you learn that hitting things isn’t the answer?”

  Probably when you stop being so hittable, she thought, but it hurt too much to speak just yet. She snaked out a leg and toppled him, reaching for one of her push daggers. They grappled for a moment, but Lindy got his arm locked behind his back. “Call them off,” she said through her teeth, trying to ignore the pain. “Now.”

  His eyes filled with glee. “That’s your plan? Torture me until I stop picking on your little human friends? Come on, Sieglinde. You’re the next best thing to a goddess. Surely you can aim higher than fucking some government drone.”

  Lindy sliced across his throat, just to get his attention. Blood sprayed, and he couldn’t speak for a moment while it healed, which in itself was a relief.

  She used the quiet time to repeat herself, ignoring the pain in h
er face. “Call. Them. Off.”

  Hector winced, and when he could speak, he said, “As you wish, sister.”

  That brought her up short, as she realized she couldn’t stand up and check for herself without letting go of him. Hector saw her predicament and laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “You’ll know in a moment. They’re all on their way here.”

  * * *

  Back in the safe zone, Alex McKenna had run out of methamphetamine darts and was hitting a shade with the butt of his rifle, trying to get her to release Chase’s arm from her teeth. He pounded on her forehead, but she seemed to only bite down harder. “Somebody shoot her!” he screamed.

  Faraday spun around to shoot, but at that exact moment the female shade simply released Chase, who fell back against Alex. The parking lot was slippery with rain, and the two men went down in a tangle. By the time Alex disengaged and stood up, the first thing he saw was Ruiz, standing still, looking confused. There was no one attacking him.

  Alex glanced to the other end, where Hadley was tying a tourniquet around Faraday’s lower leg. “One of them crawled under the cars,” she called by way of explanation. “What’s happening? Why’d they stop?”

  “I don’t—” he began, but then Alex did know.

  The massive vampire attack hadn’t been for him or his people. Hector didn’t really give a shit about a handful of humans. All he cared about was revenge on his sister.

  This whole thing had been a trap for her.

  “Get your stuff!” he shouted. “Lindy went after Hector; they’re going to kill her!”

  Ruiz and Hadley looked scuffed and breathless, but unharmed. They reloaded their guns and trotted toward Alex. Chase started to move toward him too, but Alex held up a hand. The bite wound looked bad. Alex didn’t think any major arteries had been severed, but he could still bleed out without medical attention. “Faraday, get him a tourniquet too!” he called, and the state cop nodded and motioned for Chase to come over.

  “Sloane!”