Something far more frightening than the dress-up vampire at her feet.
She resisted, pushed it away with her mind, and sensed it shudder, break up, at her shove.
“I just want to tell you something.” A hiss in her brain, this time. Nothing normal about it.
She finally noticed Nate was gone, and Giles was beside her, pulling the gun from Larson's holster, hidden beneath the cheap satin cape. A real gun. No more tranquilizers.
Giles checked the magazine, his movements cool, efficient. “Looks like Larson wasn't the only person Greenway called.”
Chapter Five
“That felt a bit like you.” Giles pulled her a little closer to the cover of the car.
“What?” She stared at him, then looked away again, trying to see if she could pick up where Nate had gone.
“When you push all that power out, you make my head feel funny.” He rubbed his forehead. “Makes me dizzy.”
“And what just happened, it felt the same?” It wasn't a nice thought. That had been creepy.
“The brush of power feels the same, but with you, it's light and almost energizing. This was darker, like it wanted to suck me dry.”
She kept silent, wondering who was out there. She was the one who should be stalking them, though, not Nate.
“Like Nate would go for that.” Giles wasn't looking at her, his eyes searching the night. “Like I would, for that matter.”
She was struck by how much better he looked now than when she’d first seen him. His eyes weren’t as sunken, his skin not as pale. He was shivering though. So was she, she finally noticed. She leaned forward, unclipped Larson's cape and handed it to Giles. He raised an eyebrow.
“You need it more than me, Giles. Don't be an asshole.” She kept her hand out, and he took it, pulled it around his shoulders, his teeth gritted as if taking it caused him pain.
Somewhere, out beyond the dim lights of the parking lot, she felt another pulse of power, and her skin went cold. “Nate.”
And then it came again, reaching, like a hungry black mist, tendrils touching her face, her arms.
Kel stood—to crouch was unthinkable—and Giles rose with her.
“Pretty.”
Kel's head snapped up. A man hovered between her and the building, his feet at shoulder height. He was short and thin, but muscular, like a jockey. He had brown hair with a wave in it—so, so normal, until you looked into his eyes.
She recoiled at what she saw there. That intense focus. She recognized it. Only too well. It looked back at her, sometimes, from the tiny mirror in her cell.
“You're Greenway's little pet.” He watched her with unblinking interest, made her shiver with his intensity. “I was a little worried, but now I've seen you, I realize Greenway just wants into your pants.” He laughed, the sound both delighted and chillingly cold. “Well, that's a relief. Here I thought I'd be up against some stiff competition.”
She slammed everything she had at him, shoving her power to the max and sending him straight into the brick wall above the doors.
He made contact. Hard contact. Dropped to the ground.
The sound of gunfire beside her was loud enough to make her ears ring, and she jerked. Giles had barely lowered the gun when she was off, calling Nate's name.
“Start the car,” she yelled back to Giles. Then focused her attention ahead. “Nate.” She did not care of the target she made. “Nate. Where are you?”
“Here.” His voice was weak, and at the sound of it, she almost tripped with relief. She found him just out of reach of the lights, struggling to stand.
“What did he do?” She offered him a hand, searching his face in the darkness for injuries.
“Must have lifted a branch or piece of wood behind me while I was watching him, hit me on the back of the head.” He gripped her outstretched hand and she helped pull him to his feet. Already his voice was stronger as his body fixed the damage, and something in her relaxed a little.
“Giles should have the car started.” She started tugging him.
“The gunfire?” Nate refused to move, his arm a steel bar keeping her in place.
“Giles took care of him.”
He gave a nod, and let her pull him towards the building at last.
They needed to get moving, before more members of Greenway's little army arrived.
o0o
Nate was liking the car. It was quiet, powerful muscle, taking the corners so sweetly, it was as if a hand was holding it down from above.
The road winding tight and fast through the trees was a surprise. He had no memory of his trip to the facility. He'd been drugged, completely out of it. He'd had no idea they were in the middle of nowhere, halfway up a hill surrounded by forest.
It made him furious that even the scent of the pine had not been allowed inside.
A town had to be close, though, unless the orderlies had been planning on partying away Halloween along with the squirrels and bunnies in the wood.
He glanced into the rearview mirror. Nothing behind them. Yet.
Giles was lying across the back seat, so still he could have been asleep, although Nate doubted it. Kel sat beside him, shoulders hunched with tension, staring out the window as if expecting something to come at them any second.
It set him on edge.
He glanced across at her, and saw her lips were moving, like an incantation or something. “What?” He forced his eyes back on the road and when he turned to look at her again, she was giving him all her attention.
That spooky, full-on, don't-mess-with-me look.
“I just want to tell you something,” she said, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose up. His knuckles went white on the steering wheel.
She turned her head suddenly, a whip of a movement, towards the passenger window, and with a terrible, reverberating pop, the glass blew outwards.
She hit the seat belt release, and for a split-second he looked into her eyes, saw the cold death in them, then she lifted her arms and seemed to be sucked out into the night.
“Shi-it.”
Giles flew forward as Nate stood on the brakes, felt the stabilizers and the braking system work double time to keep them from snaking like a fish on a hook.
“You didn't get a hint of that?” Nate hauled at the hand brake, and Giles was already out by the time he opened his door.
“Not a damn thing.”
They both stood still, trying to hear over the tick of the engine as it came to terms with a sudden stop.
“Kel!”
Giles gave Nate a look as he shouted out, but what the hell, anyone out there knew they were here. Squealing tires will do that.
Shards of auto glass glinted red in the light thrown off by the rear lights. Somewhere a little further back down the road, someone stepped on a piece, and it crunched beneath their shoe.
Without speaking, without even a look, he and Giles ducked down, moving to the front of the car, and then made for the side of the road.
Just a couple of hours earlier, he wouldn't have thought they could do it without him half-carrying Giles.
But Giles was with him all the way, and then leaning in, close to his ear. “They're blocking, but they can't keep it up for too long. I'm getting thought-flashes.”
He went silent, and Nate waited it out, heard the faint rustle of someone moving a couple of steps away, on the other side of the tree.
Giles held up four fingers. Then pointed to their location.
“Kel?” Nate mouthed.
Giles shook his head, and a cold burn flared to life in Nate's gut.
What the hell was going on?
Chapter Six
What was wrong with her?
Kel crouched on a high branch, one hand out for balance against the massive tree trunk, and tried to think through the numbing cold and the confusion.
She'd heard it again in the car. That sentence, over and over. And Nate had asked…she shivered as she remembered the horror in his eyes as she'd trie
d to explain, but the moment she spoke it, loud and clear, it was as if the fear-induced fuzziness those words seemed to strike in her had vanished, and in its place was the cold certainty of attack, of a trap just ahead.
She could feel dark power reaching out from the trees, malevolent and tinged with desperation, and she'd gone after it without thought. Without a moment's hesitation. Gone after to kill. Eliminate.
What was wrong with her?
Because even as she'd thrown herself at the threat, ripping through the air faster and stronger than she ever had before, the feeling had vanished.
Making her doubt it had ever been there to begin with.
A twig snapped just below her tree, and she tensed. They were quiet, only one mistake had given them away. And then she sensed it.
The same prying, dark touch as before.
She closed her eyes for a moment in relief. She'd take danger over madness, any day. She had felt something earlier.
It felt the same as it had back at the facility, but the man who'd confronted her there was dead. She thought of Giles' steady hand and knew that to be true. So, others. Greenway had to have a supply of them.
He must have mobilized his crew before he'd arrived at the facility. They were here to round her, Nate and Giles up and take them back to hell.
'I just want to tell you something.'
The thought sprang into her head, and she couldn't help lifting a hand to her temple.
It was coming from the man below. Pouring out with his noxious darkness. Trying to force her to react. To reveal herself.
She looked around for a weapon and wondered what Greenway wanted to make her do. What this was all for.
There was a thick stick, a little longer than her arm, caught in the foliage of the branch she was crouched on. She worked her way towards it, and got a good grip. Whatever the trigger was, she wasn't playing. Greenway had gotten it wrong.
It came again, insidious and frightening, and she took a deep breath and dropped out of the tree, free falling towards the man below.
They could take her back over her dead body.
Or his.
She slammed into him, using the branch across his back and shoulders, and he let out a sharp, eerie cry before he crumpled like a dry autumn leaf. She held herself off the ground only at the very last second. It took more energy than she'd bargained for, because of the speed of her drop, but she managed to land without a sound next to the body she'd brought down.
There was no light out here. The stars and a fingernail moon provided the only illumination, and she couldn't see his face. His body was thick-set, strong without any sign of softness. She shivered as she remembered the wisps of black, reaching for her.
Though she would swear he wasn't one of the orderlies, he was strangely familiar. And he was dead.
The sound of footsteps running in her direction made her leap up into the tree again, this time just above the body, in the dense foliage of the lower branches.
“Rennie?” A low whisper, a woman, who was little more than an outline to Kel. She bent over the body. “Shit.” She stood still, and Kel had the sense she was communicating with her colleagues.
There was something familiar about her, too.
Had she met them? While Greenway played with her mind?
The woman turned sharply towards the left, and another shadow seemed to flow towards her.
“Any sign?” The rough, low voice made her heart lurch with fear, and she knew she was afraid of this man she couldn't see, would have sworn she'd never met.
She started to shiver, cold and nerves wracking her body, and she lifted herself off the branch an inch into the air, so it wouldn't shake. She could feel her energy draining from the effort.
The woman turned in her direction and Kel's heart hammered in her chest. “Where's Tom?”
“Gone after the army boys.”
“She never killed anyone we asked her to in training.” From the sound of her voice, the woman had turned back to the body on the ground, and Kel's panic eased a little.
“Guess when her own life's in danger, Greenway's pet does have claws after all.” There was something gleeful in his tone.
“The trigger doesn't work. It makes her come after us, not come to us.”
“Then use it knowing she'll be attacking, not making nice.” He stepped away, his shadow separating from the woman's. “Not that she ever did. She fought Greenway every step of the fucking way. Her resistance level was too high for us to ever trust her in a live op, but he wouldn't listen.”
“He thought her talents would be useful. More useful that the other failures.” The woman toed the body on the ground. “Guess he was right.”
Kel had to ease herself back onto the branch. Before she came crashing down. There were others?
The woman looked sharply in her direction again. As if she'd heard that tiny scrape of her shoe on bark. And then suddenly hands grabbed her from below, threw her down.
With one last burst of energy, she landed feet first and leaped away, like a rubber ball, completely unprepared for the hard, sharp smack against her shoulder, the echoing retort of a gunshot.
She hit the forest floor on her side and slid through the leaves and dirt, trying to find some last reserve of strength. She came up with nothing. Nothing but pain.
Two faces peered down at her.
“Well, Kelli. Nice to see you.” The man was nothing but a shadow, his face in complete darkness as he leaned over her. She had never been more afraid in her life.
This man had hurt her before. Her body was screaming it at her. She tried to get her legs under her, scrabbling on the loose debris of pine needles and soil, and he put his foot on the shoulder he'd shot. Leaned his weight into it.
She couldn't help the scream that wrenched out of her, ripping her throat raw as it escaped. Lights flashed in front of her eyes and she tried to curl into herself, panting.
The woman dropped beside her, silent, and grabbed her hands. Kel saw the glint of handcuffs.
No! She would not go back.
Both of them suddenly snapped their heads up, dived away as a shot sounded, so loud, so close, Kel made herself even smaller on the ground.
Another shadow reached her, Nate's gentle hands moving her to her back. “They get you?”
“Left shoulder.” She gasped the words.
“Let's get to the car.” He lifted her as carefully as he could, and she saw someone who had to be Giles, gun in his hand again, sweeping in a slow move, left to right.
And then they were running, Nate holding her close to his chest, Giles half-turned to keep an eye on their back.
He shot twice, and she heard a cry as someone went down.
Nate reached the car, put her across the backseat. Without a word, Giles took the driver seat, and Nate crouched next to her in the footwell in the back, and they took off.
From what seemed like a long way down, she heard another shot, wasn't sure if it was Giles shooting out or someone shooting in.
And then Nate's hands where on her shoulder, and there was a heat, a searing heat, everywhere. Her shoulder was on fire. She must have made a sound, because one hand came up to brush her hair back from her forehead.
“Shh. You'll be all right.”
She didn't remember anything else.
o0o
Kel came awake with a cry.
Nate turned to the backseat, and saw her staring wildly around the car, looking like a refugee from a war camp. Dawn was just breaking, and the early light illuminated her ripped and blood-soaked t-shirt. Dirt smudged her cheek and there were twigs and pine needles in her hair.
Her eyes widened as she caught his gaze, and her hands went to her shoulder, pressed down on her skin.
“You healed me.” She rubbed the spot where that bastard's bullet had gone straight through her back and out the other side.
He hoped Giles had killed him, but didn't pretend they'd be that lucky. His anger had fueled his healing, and he didn't f
eel nearly as wiped out as he should for the damage he'd fixed.
“Thank you.” She spoke in a whisper, and closed her eyes for a moment. “I…thank you.”
“If you want to thank me, you can promise to never exit a car moving at eighty miles an hour ever again.” He jerked his thumb at the window, covered over with plastic he and Giles had rigged with tape. He thought he was over that but, no, he guessed he was still pissed off. Beside him, hands on the wheel, Giles flashed him a warning look.
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