by Vyne, Amanda
Tag felt the big-ass smile start to spread over his face as her fingers flew over the keys, and tiny cropped stills from frame after frame of the video footage were assembled together until a full distorted image of the other side of the room appeared.
Vin moved in closer from his position behind the chair to squint at the image. “There’s nothing useful there. I can barely make out the shape of a body.”
Raife propped himself against the edge of the adjacent couch and folded his arms over his chest with a frown. “She’s not done yet.”
“I put together some imaging software to try to smooth out the image and fill in the missing parts.” As she typed, the image came into focus, one grouping of pixels at a time. Damn she was lethal with her programming skills. He was glad as hell they’d recruited her for their team.
As the picture became clearer, Tag felt his humor begin to drain away. “Isn’t that…”
Katya hit a final series of keys, and she zoomed into the face of the man that appeared to be holding open some kind of irregular hole in the wall. He could just make out the back of a woman ducking through. It was the man with the familiar black hair and eyes that kept his attention.
Dropping back against the chair, she reached up and gripped the hand Raife laid on her shoulder. “Yeah. It’s Gideon.”
Forestor paced silently away to look out the window.
“Gideon is the leak,” Vin mused. “He’s Elemental, right? He’s got the ability to walk through walls?”
“Yeah, it’s fucking eerie as hell. He touches something, and it just disappears. Hell, he can disappear.” Tag shivered at the memory of seeing the man in action. “I trusted that bastard.” And very few people could pull one over on a Drachon.
“I trusted him too,” Raife rumbled darkly as he stroked his hand over Katya’s hair. “Kat trusted him.”
“That explains how he was able to follow me. He could have been in the same room.” Vin turned to move from the room. “I need to contact my resource. Warn him.”
“Vin, wait.” Kahn finally spoke up. He’d been unusually quiet. “We have a bigger problem. Your mother says Britony left with a man named Gideon several minutes ago.”
Tag immediately reached for Brit, feeling his brother following a similar path, but there was only emptiness. She was just—gone.
“Fuck!” Tag didn’t think, couldn’t think. He sped from the room and into the hall, using short bursts of speed to get back to his office. He didn’t pause to use his bio-codes; he just crushed the steel door in and rushed to the system that housed his security feeds. He drew up her lab, going back thirty minutes. He rushed through the feeds until she stepped into the hall with that fucking dead man walking. Keying in the code for the security feed outside her lab, he backed it up and watched it twice. Nothing.
“Where is she?”
Tag ignored his brother and pulled up feed after feed until the multitude of screens were sectioned off into nearly a hundred images displaying those few minutes after she left her lab. None of which showed Gideon or his doc. They just disappeared.
“How is that possible?” Vin growled.
Tag stepped back from the screen and rubbed his hands over his buzzed head. This wasn’t possible. He couldn’t lose her now. Why would that fucker want her anyway? Did he work for the Triumvirate? That would give Tag time. The Triumvirate didn’t want her dead. He would fucking find her no matter what it took.
His breath sawed through him, and it felt like he couldn’t get enough air. Darkness ate at the edges of his vision. A hole opened up in his chest, and it felt like it was sucking him into it, hollowing him out. Losing his brother was nothing like this. This would kill him, and he’d gladly go.
“Tag.” His brother’s voice cut through the blackness and tethered him, pulling him back. He blinked, and Vin’s face swam in front of his.
“We can’t lose her.”
Vin bracketed Tag’s face with his hands, his eyes searching. “We won’t, but you’ve got to stay with me.”
Tag swallowed and nodded. “Okay.” Grateful for the solid feel of his brother standing with him, inside him. They were each half of a whole. Where he was weak, Vin was strong. Together they could do this. His brother dropped a hand to his neck and pulled him in until their foreheads touched.
“Okay,” Vin echoed on a shaky breath. Then he drew back and stilled, his gaze searching Tag’s face. “The tracking bracelet. Is it still on?”
Tag turned back to his computer to see he had a room full of people who had gotten to see his fucking breakdown. Standing next to them, his dad was holding his mom against his chest, and she was crying. Brim looked geared for battle. Raife and Katya were off to one side, and Kel stood in her uniform, her shirt hanging out. She looked like hell, and her mate hovered behind her with a distinct look of disapproval.
“I came soon as Raife told me. What can I do?” She angled her chin up. “The doc’s one of us, no matter that she sometimes creeps me out.”
Tag leaned over his keyboard and activated the doc’s tracking bracelet. He’d been trying to figure out how to get one permanently attached to her without her knowing. So far he’d come up with nothing. Maybe he’d get her to agree if he put diamonds or some such shit on it. A sense of relief assailed him as the blinking dot lit up on the screen. It was green.
“She’s alive.” It was programmed to display a different color if there was no pulse. He tried to reach for her again and growled when he found only emptiness. It left his dragon edgy and wanting to rip into something.
“She’s probably unconscious,” Vin said from beside him.
Kel frowned at the map and stepped forward. “That’s Hunter’s Point. Down by the old shipyard. I’ve been down there on a couple of blood-ring raids. I can take you there.”
Tag turned to meet his brother’s gaze. “Let’s go get our mate.”
* * * *
“Goddamn it, Meghann, how many times do we have to tell you we’re not going to hurt you?” The muffled voices drew Brit from the dim recesses of her consciousness. She opened her eyes and blinked the ceiling into view. Where was she? Pushing up from the mattress, she focused on the look of boredom on her sister’s face. Meghann was leaning with her back against the wall by the door. One hand hovered over the knob flickering with a blue light.
“Baby, please tell me you’re okay.” Before Brit could even process that her sister was actually in the room with her, Tag’s worried voice blasted through her mind.
Looking at her sister’s pursed lips as she heated up the knob of the door while she hummed, Brit felt a sense of the surreal. “I’m fine. I’m with Meghann.”
“Good. I’m glad your sister is with you.” Vin’s voice rumbled through her. “Try to find out where you are in the building, love. We’re just outside, but we need to know where you are.”
“Hurt me?” Meghann laughed. “As if.” Her red hair was cropped around her head to barely reach her pointy chin, and her brown eyes glowed with satisfaction. She lifted her hand, and the blue glow hissed into flame. “I just like to fuck with the assholes.”
Meghann pushed away from the wall and strode over to drop down on the bed next to Brit. She looked older, but she had that same rebellious attitude. Her eyes softened, darkened, and she put a hand on Brit’s arm. “It’s good to see you, sis.”
Brit sat up, her head still aching. What had Gideon done to her? “I’ve been looking for you, Meggie. I thought you were dead.”
A strange darkness hovered just beyond her sister’s brown eyes, shimmering; it parted enough for Brit to get a sense of terrible pain and fury that had her mentally jerking back from the intensity. Meghann stood and paced back to open the door. “Close enough.”
A man stomped into the room, holding his blistered hand aloft. He cast Meghann a murderous look. She ignored him and leaned a shoulder against the wall. “So the meat puppet over here tells me you’re mated to a couple of dragons. Seriously, B? One wasn’t enough?” A smile teas
ed the corner of her lips. “That must be all kinds of fun.”
“Where are we?” Brit looked around. The room was white with a bare slit of a window high over the bed. There was a desk built into the wall on one side, and next to the steel door was a toilet and sink. Out in the open.
“My best guess? Some kind of abandoned military prison near Hunter’s Point.” The man at the sink spun around in shock. Meghann only rolled her eyes. “Please. As if your little freak show’s magic trick could keep me under for long. I was awake five minutes after we left the lab.”
“I’m in some kind of confinement cell. Main floor or higher.” Brit eased her legs over the edge of the bed as she conveyed the information to Vin and Tag. She was still wearing her lab coat, and she smoothed her hands down wrinkled edges. “Why am I here?”
“We need your help, Dr. Mahoney.” The man flexed his hand and winced. Brit could see his blisters were bursting and recessing as he healed. A Guardian? She couldn’t pick up any ill intent from him, just determination and weariness. She glanced back at her sister thoughtfully as she realized where she likely was.
“Let me guess, you’re Rebels? You removed several women from the Triumvirate facility in Death Valley, my sister included.”
The man sighed. “Follow me, if you will.”
Just outside the door there was some kind of locker room with a bench and rows of lockers. There were more rooms like Brit’s, the doors ajar. Obviously empty.
“A holding unit, so to speak,” he said when he noticed her looking. “We process any new people we acquire here before moving them to more permanent quarters.”
Brit communicated what she saw to Tag and Vin as the man led her through a control room. She could just make out a person behind the tinted glass. A door buzzed, and the man pulled it open and ushered them down a long hall. “We’ve got people in every Triumvirate lab in the US. Most of the testing is ineffective, and when the genetic manipulation is successful, the gene is inactive. However, about two months ago, one of our plants in a lab in New England noticed something strange about those who were successfully manipulated. In the same strand there also existed a strange genetic anomaly, an unknown gene. We haven’t been able to tell what it controls, but we fear it may be the key to successfully activating the blood magic.”
Brit’s heart was pounding. He stopped outside a heavy steel door and turned to face her. “We can’t allow that to happen, so we started a full-scale evacuation of every person bearing that genetic marker.” He motioned to a camera on the ceiling, and the locks on the door buzzed. He shouldered the heavy door open and motioned her ahead. “Thus far we have collected one hundred and six people. All female.”
Brit gasped as she walked onto some kind of catwalk high above a commons area. There were several women sitting at tables and in random groupings of mismatched furniture. It was a cellblock, two rows of cells, all the barred doors opened flat against the walls.
“Baby, what’s going on? Talk to me, doc.”
“Are these women being imprisoned here?” Brit snapped, fury burning in the pit of her stomach.
“They are not mistreated, but it’s safer if they remain here. We cannot allow them to fall into the hands of the Triumvirate.”
“Goddamn it, Brit. What the fuck is going on? You feel like you’re about to blow a gasket.”
Brit eyed the catwalk around the top of the cellblock. A man was stationed every twenty feet or so, carefully watching the women below. Each had a large weapon strapped across his back and a handgun on his hip. “So you felt that because you didn’t want the Triumvirate to get to them first, you were justified in incarcerating them here?”
“They have people like me and Katya held inside,” Brit told them, anger making her quiver. “Over a hundred of them. They’re heavily guarded.”
“You and Katya?” Vin’s voice broke in. “What have you discovered that you haven’t shared, love?”
Brit rolled her eyes as she transferred the information from her mind into his. He retreated from her for a long moment. She could feel him carefully analyzing her findings.
“You have to understand the ramification of the Triumvirate figuring this out before we do,” the man began.
Brit cut across his words. “I understand the risks; however, that still does not give you the right to treat these women like criminals.”
He looked down over the women below with a sigh. “It’s unfortunate how this has developed, but we have to do what is best for the greater good. The future of the Arcane depends on us.”
Brit was shaking, she was so furious. She’d often sympathized with the Rebels, but if this was how they planned to fight, then they were no better than the Triumvirate. She motioned to the women below. “They are the future of the Arcane, you fool.” Her voice carried, and she could feel the rousing interest of the women. To her left, two men pulled their weapons from their backs to focus on the women three stories below them.
“That is why we need you to figure out how to reverse it. It’s the only hope these women have,” he said reasonably. He shook his head as though he was speaking of his favorite sitcom being cancelled.
Brit was appalled. “Are you saying if I can’t find out how to reverse it, you will have them killed?” Her throat ached with the effort it took not to scream, and she wanted to. She burned with it.
“Take it easy, love. Breathe deep. If you roar, you may hurt some of those innocent women. The Drakes are assembling a force. If what you believe is true, those women could be mates to many of my people. We will not let them be harmed.”
Roar? She remembered Raife had explained the way Drachon could manipulate sound frequency enough to cause severe bodily damage. Brit swallowed repeatedly to ease the tension in her throat and glanced at Meghann. Her sister was watching her with narrowed eyes.
Brit projected her thoughts to Meghann. “They intend to kill all these women because of what the Triumvirate did to them.” And Brit realized it was true. The Triumvirate did this to these women, not her. Not her and not Vin.
Meghann watched her for another long moment, and then she gave a nearly imperceptible nod. She hopped up to sit on the railing, swinging her leg, but Brit could see she was tracking the movements of the guards.
Meghann shook her head and clicked her tongue at the man. “If you’d have consulted me before you decided to nab my smarty-pants sister, I would have warned you she was difficult.”
The man seemed irritated by Meghann’s antics. He flexed his hands, and Brit saw the faint flash of claws before they retreated. Definitely a Guardian, and he had little love for her sister. He smiled sadly at Brit. “Let us hope that it won’t have to come to such a point. Now if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to our lab.”
Brit cast a glance at Meghann, focusing on the bright glow of her mind. She wanted to let her sister know help was coming, but she was afraid she would project it to everyone. “The Drachon are coming. We need to protect these women until then.”
Meghann turned her head to smile at her, but the look in her eyes was calculated. “It’s been great visiting, sis, but I gotta fly.” Then she launched off the railing.
Brit ran to the edge and looked down in time to see Meghann land in a crouch. She pushed up to her feet and blew kisses to the guards on the catwalk before skipping away to jump up on a nearby sofa with two other women.
“I hate to say it, but I believe too many years in a Triumvirate research center has affected your sister’s mind.”
As Brit turned away, she wasn’t entirely sure the man was wrong. Meghann had always been impulsive and reckless, but this Meghann seemed like she flirted with the very edge. Just as they opened the door to return to the hall, warning lights began to flash. The guards drew their weapons up and trained them on the women below. The man next to her cursed. He grabbed Brit by the arm and pulled a radio off his belt.
“Do we know what the threat is, sir?”
“Triumvirate Guardians have breached the perimeter
on the south side. I’m determining the threat level now.” There was a pause, then, “I’m ordering an evacuation. Give the order to exterminate the subjects.”
Brit screamed out to Vin and Tag in her mind. “The Triumvirate Guardians are attacking, and the Rebels are going to kill the women.”
Both of them surrounded her with their strength, and she could almost taste the bitter edge of desperation. “Hang in there, baby. We’re coming to you.”
The world around her faded into shades of fire and ice. She could see the bodies of the guards leaning over the rails as flaming silhouettes. Below, the women grouped together, their confusion rising off them like mist. Clearly, through the burn of their body heat signatures, she could see the glowing essence of their minds.
“Into the cells, get out of the range of their guns.” Brit sent the words into the crowd of women. They turned and scattered before the man couldn’t even give the order to open fire.
“You won’t be allowed to destroy us!” The man growled. He released her and pulled his firearm from his hip. The fury that had been building in her chest and tearing at her throat, funneled out of her. A Drachon’s roar. The man’s eyes widened moments before she saw blood fill the whites of his eyes, purpling under his skin. It sprayed from his mouth across her face and hair as he collapsed to the ground.
Another guttural roar burst past her lips, so loud and full of fury that a part of her recoiled in horror. Immediately the sound was returned with the force of fierce thunder. Above her, the domed ceiling shattered, and men rained down with the shards of glass. Brit dropped to her knees and covered her head. The screams of women rose up, and a blast rocked the building.
Her sister! Her sister was down there. She crawled to the railing and looked into the chaos. There was an opening blown into the wall below, and the smoke was too thick to tell if the good guys were coming from the ceiling or the floor.
Bodies writhed and spun in around each other through the smoke in a macabre dance, some fighting, some fleeing, their faces eerily lit from the blue light emanating from her sister. Flames danced up her arms as she stood vigilant in front of the hole in the wall, protecting the fleeing women as they poured out into the night. Bodies of both women and men were sprawled across the ground, blood pooling out from their bodies like gruesome wings. She had never seen anything so horrific in her life.
