by Lara Adrian
“Claire,” he said softly, words intended for her ears alone. “There is so much I want to apologize to you for—”
“Please, don’t.” She glanced up at him in the darkness, gave him a faint shake of her head. There was no condemnation in her voice, no raw hurt. Only quiet resignation. “Do you really think I’m looking for you to tell me you’re sorry? I’m not, Andreas, not anymore. Especially not right now. When this is all over tonight, then you can say whatever you need to say to me.”
She worried that he was walking into his death, and maybe he was. He blew out a slow breath, amazed as always by the strength that she carried inside her. He caressed her for only the briefest second, memorizing the velvet texture of her warm, honeyed skin. “I’ve always loved you, Claire. You know that, don’t you?”
She pressed her fingers tenderly against his lips. “Don’t you dare pretend this is good-bye,” she whispered fiercely. “Damn you, Andre, don’t you dare.”
Reichen kissed the soft pads of her fingertips, then hooked his arm around the small of her spine and brought her up against him. Hunger seared him, blood and desire inflamed together, twin needs that centered on the woman who felt so right in his embrace.
“You’re mine, Claire,” he growled into her mouth as he kissed her, long and deep. All around them, the warriors were preparing to fan out and begin their search of the outlying forest. Reichen took a step away from Claire, feeling the gap of space like a sudden gust of chill air. “I have to go now.”
“I know,” she said softly. “But you’ll come back to me, right? This time, promise me, Andre … you will come back to me.”
He cast a quick glance into the dark woods, his senses prickling with the knowledge of a hard battle soon to come. He looked back to Claire and drank in the sight of her. His beautiful, extraordinary Claire. After tonight, she would be free of Roth for good. Reichen would make certain of that. After tonight, Claire would be safe, no matter what he had to do to ensure it.
“I have to go,” he said again.
Her gaze was imploring, a blade twisting below his sternum. “Andre…promise me?”
“Stay safe, Claire. I love you.”
He fell in beside Tegan and the other warriors and didn’t look back.
Claire stood there for a long moment, watching numbly as the forest swallowed up Andreas and the other warriors. She’d kept up her brave front longer than she thought she could, but now that he was gone, her spine felt less solid, her legs a bit unsteady beneath her. She started when a hand touched down lightly on her shoulder.
“Hey.” It was Dylan, her expression soft, sympathetic. “Come on back to the Rover, Claire. It’s warmer inside. Rio and I will keep you company until this is over.”
She let herself be led around to the waiting vehicle, realizing belatedly that Renata had joined the warriors as well. Inside the Range Rover, Rio was on two-way tactical communication with each member of the mission, including Andreas. The connection to him, even electronically, gave her a small degree of comfort. At least she could hear his voice from time to time, and know that he was still with her. Still alive.
She refused to consider the many terrible ways this night could end. Instead she clung to the remembered warmth of Andreas’s embrace, his passionate kiss, his loving words.
He had to come back to her.
He had to survive.
As she held those thoughts close to her like a shield, Tegan’s deep voice came over the receiver mounted to the Rover’s dashboard.
“Fuck, I think we’ve got something out here.” There was a rustle of movement in the background, the sound of boots traipsing carefully over dried leaves. The warrior dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Oh, hell yeah … we got something, all right. Dilapidated barn roughly four hundred and fifty yards northeast of the Rover.”
“Copy” came Brock’s bass growl. “Moving in now.”
Claire exchanged an anxious look with Dylan as more warriors reported that they were circling over to the location Tegan had given.
“Couple of Minions posted outside of it armed with semiautos,” Tegan added. “Reichen and I are moving in on them. Everyone else bring up the rear.”
Not a few seconds later, gunfire exploded from out of the distant woods.
CHAPTER
Twenty-nine
Wilhelm Roth turned away from the old barn’s hidden closed-circuit cameras after the Order had mowed down the handful of Minions posted as guards at the ground-level entrance of the lab. The Minions were expendable, nothing more than an obstacle for appearance sake. After all, the Order might be suspicious if he and Dragos had rolled out a red carpet to welcome them. Let them think they had to expend some effort for their prize. Lull them into believing they were actually the ones in control, when their arrival had been anticipated—indeed, encouraged—all along.
Now that they had all gained entrance to the underground facility, it would be only minutes before the group of warriors and Andreas Reichen found their way down the bunker’s earthen catacombs to the heart of Dragos’s headquarters. A few minutes more than that before they realized the trap they’d entered and understood there could be no escape.
Just a matter of minutes before Roth had the distinct pleasure of killing them all in one fell swoop.
He smiled with genuine glee as he motioned to the half-dozen Gen One assassins gathered with him in the control room.
“Two of you come with me,” he said, not caring which of Dragos’s homegrown, highly trained killers accompanied him since they were all born and bred to deal in death. “The rest of you head up to guard the entrance. Make sure no one gets in or out.”
As four of them moved to carry out his command, Wilhelm Roth walked out of the control room to await his moment of triumph over Andreas Reichen and his doomed companions.
Tegan and Nikolai were the first ones down the dank, dark tunnel that had been carved deep into the earth and fortified by concrete and carbide steel supports. A few seconds after they’d descended, Niko came back up and signaled an all-clear to Brock, Kade, and Reichen. Hunter and Renata stayed on watch outside, covering the search party’s exit.
Once they’d removed the Minion guards from the entrance, Reichen and the others had moved into the old barn, which, they soon realized, wasn’t so old after all. Nothing about the hidden bunker was as it seemed on the outside.
At the other end of the sloping tunnel, easily some several hundred feet below, the bunker expanded and spread out as wide and long as a gymnasium. Fluorescent lights washed the place out in a pale white glow, illuminating cafeteria-style tables and chairs that had been stacked neatly against one wall. A hinged door with a round window at eye level appeared to open into some sort of kitchen and service area, also empty and evidently closed for business although the odors of recently cooked food still hung cloyingly in the air.
“Guess who’s coming to dinner,” Kade drawled under his breath.
Brock scowled as he nodded. “Humans.”
“Minions,” Tegan corrected with a snarl as he sniffed derisively. “Helluva lot of them, too. Dragos keeps plenty of staff down here.”
Nikolai grunted. “Yeah, but for what?”
“Let’s find out,” Tegan said, motioning the group forward with him as he moved through the empty space to the corridor that let out on the other side.
They crept soundlessly past multiple spoking hallways and door after door of vacant dormitory-type rooms with basic twin cots, shared toilets, and a decided lack of personal touches.
“Jesus,” Kade whispered. “How many Minions does one twisted bastard need at his beck and call, anyway?”
“Enough to man a very expansive clinical endeavor,” Reichen said, pausing in front of a pair of steel doors that he’d pushed open a crack in order to peer inside.
Beyond the doors was a massive laboratory with half-emptied cabinets and gaping file drawers, clumsily cleared work spaces, and a polished floor littered with pieces of equipment broken i
n what appeared to have been a hasty evacuation. The warriors entered cautiously, taking note of what little assets remained. There were a handful of toppled microscopes and cracked slides, and sundry other items that looked like they’d once starred in a chemist’s wet dream.
“Check this out,” Kade called from the far side of the lab. He indicated a lidded stainless steel drum that looked like a giant pressure cooker. “Now, what the hell do you suppose this thing does?”
Reichen and Tegan walked over with Brock and Nikolai, glancing inside the large cylinder as Kade popped the seals on the top and opened the lid. It was no longer plugged in, so the temperature inside had warmed considerably from the deep freeze maintained while the unit was operable, and the contents had all been removed. Still, there was no mistaking the machine’s purpose.
“It’s a cryo container,” Reichen said.
Tegan nodded grimly. He jerked his chin toward another nearby room, where a skewed fleet of clear Plexiglas boxes like one might expect to see in the maternity wing of a human hospital had been parked haphazardly along the far wall. “Incubators. Jesus Christ. Dragos is running a fucking breeding factory down here.”
“Or was,” Nikolai said. “He obviously cleared out in a hurry.”
“Maybe he knew we were coming,” Brock suggested. “Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m starting to get a real bad vibe.”
Kade gave his buddy an affirming look. “I don’t like it, either. Getting in was too easy. This could be some kind of trap.”
“All the rats do seem to have fled this ship,” Nikolai added. “Maybe they were on to something. Dragos wouldn’t leave a facility like this vulnerable to attack unless it was deliberate. I’d bet my left nut that he’s long gone from here, and took everything of value with him.”
“Dragos may be gone,” Reichen said, “but Wilhelm Roth is in here somewhere, and I mean to find the son of a bitch.” Anger spiked as he dismissed his own sense of unease to focus on a more immediate, crucial goal. “Turn back, if you want. I won’t begrudge any of you for it. But I’m going to push on.”
Tegan’s green eyes glittered dangerously. “Too many unanswered questions down here to turn back without covering every square inch of this hellhole. Fuck you very much, if you think we’re gonna let you do this on your own, Reichen.”
Reichen held that verdant stare and knew a deep appreciation for the kinship he’d formed with this warrior. With all of the Order, in fact. The rest of the warriors didn’t hesitate to nod their agreement with Tegan, or to fall in beside Reichen and him as they headed deeper into the empty facility.
Just when Dragos’s secret operation seemed it couldn’t get any more disturbing, Reichen caught his first glimpse of a long wing of prison cells, just as Claire had described from her dreamwalk with Roth. Except none of them contained captive Breedmates, a fact that gave little comfort when it was obvious from the condition of the cells that they’d only recently been evacuated.
“Holy hell,” Niko murmured as the group of them strode into the area to see them up close. “There’s got to be fifty cages here. If these were occupied with imprisoned females, what has Dragos done with them all?”
“Moved them, no doubt,” Tegan said. “Possibly to the same place he relocated all of his staff and equipment, although he might be splitting up his assets now that he’s been forced to leave this location in a hurry.”
“That is one sick fuck,” Brock remarked as he peered inside one of the cells and ran his big hand over his skull-trimmed head.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Kade had walked over to a heavily bolted door perhaps a bit too conveniently unlocked now. He stepped into the room on the other side and blew out a low whistle. “What. The. Fuck.”
Reichen and the others followed him inside. A shocked and prolonged silence fell over each of the Breed males, from the youngest of the group to the centuries-old Gen One whom Reichen had never once seen rattled beyond words.
For within the space on the other side of that door was a broad platform raised slightly off the floor. And on that platform was a large, pivotable chair rigged with heavy restraints built for an individual of immense size and strength. Ankle braces as thick as a woman’s thigh. Shackles for powerful wrists that must have supported hands big enough to crack an average human’s skull like a walnut.
“This is where he’s been keeping the Ancient,” Tegan said, the first of them able to form words. “Holy shit. He’s had the Ancient under his control all this time.”
“How?” Nikolai asked, then glanced down near their feet and exhaled a sober curse. “Ultraviolet light bars. Check the floor. The ceiling, too. The entire perimeter of this platform is circled by an array of UV light fixtures. When they’re activated, the UV bars would contain the Ancient inside better than the strongest, thickest kind of metal.”
The words were barely out of Niko’s mouth before a sudden, odd hum rent the air around them. Intense light exploded from all directions, so bright and hot, Reichen and the others had no choice but to cover their eyes with updrawn arms. He smelled the acrid taint of singed skin. At first, he worried that his pyro had awakened from out of nowhere. Then he realized this was something even worse.
Reichen squinted beyond the piercing blast of light, upward, toward a glassed-in viewing area he hadn’t noticed above the Ancient’s holding cell until that very moment.
Inside that viewing area stood Wilhelm Roth, grinning with smug satisfaction as Reichen, Tegan, and the rest of the warriors who’d come with them were hemmed in tight by the lethal vertical beams of ultraviolet light that surrounded them on all sides. Roth motioned to a pair of big males—black-clad, hard-eyed, and bristling with automatic weapons. Both males bore thick black polymer collars around their necks, their shaved heads and bare throats covered in Gen One glyphs, every massive, muscled inch of them seething deadly purpose. The two assassins exited both sides of the viewing area to twin landings at the top of a double flight of stairs.
They took aim on Reichen and the others trapped inside the UV light cage, then opened fire.
CHAPTER
Thirty
Claire’s heart slammed against her sternum at the sudden cacophony of gunfire that erupted over the comm device on the Rover’s dashboard. She’d been tensely monitoring the team’s progress inside Dragos’s lair along with Dylan and Rio, fear twisting like a serpent in her stomach with each step Andreas and the others took deeper into the horrible place.
Now her fear shot up her throat, exploding out of her in a scream as the sounds of ripping bullets, shouts, and chaos filled the vehicle.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, her blood freezing in her veins. “Oh, my God! No!”
She made a frantic lunge for the door handle beside her in the backseat, but Rio pivoted around from in front of her and clamped his hand down on her shoulder, keeping her in place.
“Stay, Claire. You can’t do anything to help them,” he said, his Spanish accent rolling, dark-fringed eyes grave. He hissed a curse as more gunfire cracked over the receiver.
Then, another disaster, this time from the ground level post near the barn’s entrance, where Renata and the male called Hunter were stationed.
Renata’s voice came into the vehicle in a breathless rush. “Ah, shit. We’ve got company. Four guards coming into view right now outside the old barn… Fuck, I think they’re Gen Ones—”
Blam! Blam! Blam!
More bullets began to fly, the racket cutting Renata off and echoing from out of the forest like thunderclaps.
“Oh, Jesus,” Dylan whispered from her seat beside her mate in the front of the SUV as the Order came under attack both inside Dragos’s lair and outside on ground level. “Rio… what should we do?”
“Stay here, both of you,” he ordered them grimly, pulling a nasty-looking pistol out of its holster on his belt and loading the chamber. He threw open the driver-side door and leapt out. “Stay in the Rover and keep it running in case things go any further south a
nd you need to haul ass out of here. I’m going in.”
The Gen One assassins rained down a hail of bullets on Reichen and the warriors caught within the UV prison below. Returning their fire wasn’t easy. The light bars were blinding and searingly hot, offering little room to dodge the incoming rounds while the warriors volleyed back shots with their own weapons.
From his periphery, Reichen saw Tegan take a bullet to the shoulder. Another grazed Nikolai in the thigh, knocking him on his ass for a second before he locked and loaded a second pistol and squeezed off several semiautomatic rounds. And up above, secure behind the bulletproof Plexiglas that shielded him from the fray, Wilhelm Roth was still watching, still gloating. Smiling, as though it were all merely entertainment and he’d already won this war.
Reichen’s fury churned on a swift, hard boil.
Already the pyro was rising up inside him; he felt the living heat ripple over his skin, watched with nonchalant acceptance as the bullets that should have punctured his body instead fell away the instant they met the field of psychic energy that enveloped him.
“Get behind me!” he shouted to Tegan and the others, spreading his arms wide to create an even wider field of protection. “Not too close,” he warned. “The heat will deflect the bullets, but it also kills.”
The warriors moved in as tight as was prudent, using Reichen’s body like a shield as they continued to strike back at their attackers, who had the advantage of unrestricted movement and seemingly endless firepower.
Reichen’s vision began to warp before his eyes. His pyro was building faster now, burning hotter than ever as he glared up at Roth. He let his rage expand, coaxed the flames to swell even bigger from within him. He summoned every ounce of fire at his command, letting it tumble and roil in his gut, willing it to strengthen as he held it down well past the point of pain. Past even the point of sanity.
Some threadbare shred of instinct told him that he was courting disaster, but he shoved reason aside and stoked the flames brighter. Tasting the need for vengeance—for a final, bloody justice—like potent liquor on his tongue.
