by Bec McMaster
"No!" Ingrid grabbed his arm, a growl erupting from her throat. "No."
"We don't have a choice," he snapped. "You saw her. She won't hesitate. Malloryn was right; she's lethal. And if we try to take her down without harming her, then she'll kill us." His voice tightened. "She'll kill you, Ingrid. I saw it in her eyes. And I can't allow that."
Ingrid's heart raced, as her thoughts started shifting. Becoming one with the wild inside her. Friend, beat the pulse of her verwulfen heart. Gemma was a friend.
"No," she said, feeling the wild bleed into her eyes, as everything sped up just a little. "I've got an idea of how to bring her out of this. Stall her."
The hallway circled the interior of the Tower. The only way down was past Gemma—or via the elevation chamber.
"Ingrid!"
"Stall her," she shot over her shoulder. Without her in the line of fire, he'd be able to focus his full attention on taking Gemma down. "And don't get hurt."
Then she was racing down the other branch of the double staircase, away from Gemma, heading for the elevation chamber.
And the one chance any of them had of getting out of this alive without having to kill Gemma.
Gunfire echoed through the hollow core of the Tower.
Obsidian stared up through the interior, his heart beating a little faster. Something was going on. People yelled, and the odd scream punctuated the air, followed by another burst of gunfire.
He pushed his palm against his forehead, his other wrist forced to rise thanks to the cuffs, as he heard that static buzzing in his ears.
Gemma was up there.
And someone was firing his frequencies.
"What the hell is going on?" Charlie whispered, stepping forward into the circle of light that fell through a nearby window and looking up. He unholstered his pistol as lights began ticking through the elevation chamber box. Level six. Level five. Level four.... Someone was coming down.
"We need to get up there," Obsidian rasped.
The other man shot him a smoky look. "The last place I'm taking you is anywhere near the queen."
"You don't understand," he snarled, pushing his finger against his forehead hard enough to make his skull ache. "Someone's firing the frequencies. I'll bet my life the Chameleon is up there. And so is Gemma."
Charlie stared at him.
"If she dies," he promised softly, "there's not a damned thing in this world that can stop me from killing you."
Charlie glanced at the descending elevation chamber, and then swore under his breath. "I'll go. You're staying here." He gestured toward a nearby door, fumbling with the keys to the handcuffs. "I'm going to chain you to that door. I strongly suggest you don't—"
Obsidian moved like lightning, slamming his elbow up under Charlie's chin.
Charlie's head snapped back, and he hit the floor hard.
Obsidian knelt on his chest in a single fluid motion and grabbed him by the throat. "Don't get up."
He helped himself to the keys, unlocking his right cuff.
Charlie blinked beneath him, and then grabbed Obsidian's wrist. A swivel of his hips, and his legs locked around Obsidian's waist. They crashed to the floor.
Flung apart with a grunt and a pair of punches.
The keys went sliding across the marble, and he still wore the cuff on his left wrist.
Stubborn bloody bastard.
He rolled to his feet as Charlie drove a boot at his face. Obsidian slapped it aside, feinting forward and slamming a punch to Charlie's ribs. A clenched fist smashed into the side of his face, making his ears ring. Charlie ducked under his retaliating blow, and the pair of them broke apart, facing each other with feet spread.
The young man could move.
"You've been training with Gemma," he noted.
Charlie glared at him and spat blood as he brought his fists up. He stepped between Obsidian and the elevation chamber. "Like I said, you're not going anywhere."
It was a shame. He almost liked the young man.
Obsidian feinted to the left, then ducked under the next wide-flung punch, his fingers locking around Charlie's wrist. He twisted, hooking Charlie's arm over his back, and then with a thrust of his thighs, he rolled Charlie over his shoulder and slammed his back to the floor.
Two quick movements, and suddenly Charlie was lying flat on his stomach, one of the cuffs slapped around his wrist. Obsidian twisted the loop of chain around Charlie's other wrist, pinning them behind the young man, and kicked the keys toward himself with his boot.
A flick of the wrist, and he was free.
He snapped the second cuff around Charlie's wrist.
"Shit," the young man swore. He squirmed, his arms tied behind him. "Bloody hell."
"You did better than expected," Obsidian said. "Gemma likes you. She wouldn't want me to hurt you."
"Where the hell do you think you're going?"
"To find Gemma. If someone's shooting at people, she'll be in the midst of it."
The elevation chamber pinged just as he reached the doors and began to slide open.
Ingrid staggered out, blood splashed across her shirt and her eyes wild.
A dash of quick footsteps alerted him.
An arm wrapped around his throat, yanking him back against a bigger body. Charlie got him in a chokehold, no sign of the cuffs.
"Sorry," Charlie gasped. "But I can't let you near the queen."
Obsidian hammered his head back and felt a sharp crack as the back of his head smashed into Charlie's nose. The young man fell back, but one of the cuffs was snapped around Obsidian's right wrist, binding the pair of them together.
"Guess you ain't going anywhere without me," Charlie said.
"How did you—?"
Charlie rubbed at his bleeding nose. "I'm the best thief in the business. You didn't think a set of cuffs was going to hold me?"
Fine. Obsidian stepped forward as Charlie danced lightly on his feet—
"We don't have time for this."
A boot swept his legs out from under him. Obsidian twisted like a cat as he went down, but there was no stopping the fall. He hit the marble and rolled, flinging his hands up to protect his throat as Ingrid pressed her boot there.
He gripped the boot, his breath rushing through him, and thought about it.
"I don't know what's going on, but I need you up there." Her eyes were pure bronze, given over entirely to the wolf within. "It's Gemma. Gemma's the Chameleon. And you're my only chance of stopping her without having to put a bullet in her head."
Gemma.
A chill ran through him.
A stillness.
"How?"
He sat up abruptly as Ingrid stepped back, all the heat in his body seeming to retreat.
"What?" Charlie groaned as he rolled to his side. She'd taken him down too.
"I'll explain in the elevation chamber," she snapped, hauling Obsidian to his feet. "Something's come over her—her eyes are so blank it looks like there's nobody inside, and Isabella said she wasn't the Chameleon, Gemma was, and Malloryn's down—"
"The neural implant," he whispered.
But when had—?
Of course. When the baroness and Gemma were assaulted. Gemma had escaped, but it had been almost twenty-four hours she'd been missing for. Long enough for the doctor to implant the neural implant if they were prepared, and her CV levels were high enough to heal any sign of the swift surgery.
They'd all thought she'd escaped, but had she?
Or had Ghost deliberately let her go?
Rage burned through him like a combustion engine stoked high.
"What neural implant?" Charlie demanded. He hadn't been in the original briefing.
"Keys?" Ingrid snapped, and Charlie unlocked the pair of them from their cuffs.
"There's a device implanted in her brain," Obsidian said as Ingrid stabbed the buttons to the throne room floor. "Gemma's still in there, but it's overriding her control of her body. She'll do things she'd never want to do, hurt people she'd never want to hur
t."
She wouldn't be able to stop herself.
He knew the feeling far too well.
"How do we stop her?" Ingrid smelled like panic. "She's going after the queen. Byrnes is trying to slow her down, but if he can't lock her out of the throne room.... If she gets inside.... We have to stop her from killing the queen. He'll have to stop her."
The fucking elevation chamber wasn't moving fast enough. He paced the small cage, knowing what she was saying. The only way to stop Gemma was to kill her. "Leave Gemma to me."
"She'll try and kill you."
A hollow sensation echoed around his heart. "I know."
Because he'd been there once himself, on the inside looking out as his body pulled the trigger, no matter how much he screamed inside....
It was all starting to come back to him. All the things he’d never wanted to remember.
A sudden concussive force slammed the elevation chamber from side to side. Obsidian staggered into Charlie, then pushed away from the walls as the chamber stabilized. They weren't moving.
"What was that?" Ingrid demanded.
"Explosion." He looked up through the roof.
"She's taken out the power grid to the elevation chamber," Charlie said, stabbing buttons and trying to work the lever. "She knows we're coming. We're not moving."
"We're trapped in here," Ingrid snarled.
A second explosion rocked them.
He could hear a winch squealing as if the weight of the chamber strained the pulley system above them. They had to be close to the top. The explosion sounded like it had come from barely fifty feet away.
Screams.
Someone yelling.
"Damn it!" Ingrid tried to push her fingers through the double doors. A thin gap of light splayed through. Muscle flexed beneath her sleeves, but the doors held firm.
"Locking mechanism's in place," Charlie said, prying open the electrical panel that operated the door and surveying the wires inside. "Give me a minute or two."
No time for this.
Obsidian looked up.
Punching a hole through one of the brass panels on the ceiling, he hooked his hands on either sides of the hole, then curled his body and slammed his heels up through the roof. Brass rivets popped and strained. He kicked again. Light shone through.
"Or we could do that," Charlie muttered below him.
"Follow me," Obsidian called, and hooked his legs up through the opening he'd created before curling his body up after him.
The throne room doors were blown off their hinges, smoke pouring through them.
"Caleb!" Ingrid slid to the side of her fallen husband, trying to discover where he was bleeding. Byrnes gritted his teeth and clapped a hand against his side, dark blood staining his fingers.
"Couldn't take her down," Byrnes gasped. "She was trying to kill me."
And Byrnes had been trying to merely incapacitate her.
"I need you to get one of those electric stunners the guards use," Obsidian told Charlie and Ingrid, because the last thing he needed was someone else getting in the way. "I'll stop her from reaching the queen, but I need the stunner to destroy the neural implant's hold on her."
A dozen guards in blue and gold were hovered around the queen on the dais. Blue blood lords and their ladies screamed and scrambled to get out of the way as Gemma advanced, scattering like a flock of rampaging peacocks.
But Gemma herself moved like a lethal vision, bending to roll a handful of her smoke bombs across the floor toward the line of Coldrush Guards that remained the last line of defense for the precarious human queen.
"Ready," shouted a Coldrush lieutenant as the line of his guards knelt and locked their rifles upon Gemma. "Aim—"
She'd never survive.
Obsidian was sprinting before he knew it, fists pumping at his sides.
She stared to turn toward him, pistols coming up, but he smashed into her.
"Fire!" someone bellowed.
They slammed into the marble floors, sliding into the brass circle where blue blood duels were fought. Bullets spat past them, whining through the air.
Then the bombs exploded, and suddenly the air was thick and roiling with black smoke as the chemical elements inside them mixed. Several of the guards started coughing and spluttering.
"I can't see her!" someone yelled.
"Get the queen out!"
"Did you miss me?" Obsidian asked her, as Gemma stared up at him for one breathless second.
He urged her to see him.
To know him.
But there was nothing but blankness in her expression, and suddenly he realized how she must have felt all those years ago, to see the man she loved betray her.
Crouching low, he gestured for her to come at him. If she was focused on him, the she couldn't hurt anyone else.
A vicious leg swept toward him, smashing into his jaw.
Then Gemma was upon him in a single leap, her thighs locking around his face and throat. Slamming her fists down upon his head, she threw her body weight to the side, but he leaned back into it, spinning her through the air instead.
An elbow rammed into his ear.
Obsidian squatted and slammed her back onto the floor, trying to pin her with his body weight. He thrust his arm across her throat to try and choke her out. If he could make her black out, he'd have a chance to secure her without injuring her. Gemma gasped, momentarily winded. Those thick, dark lashes blinked once. Twice. Blood flooded her face, mottling her skin.
"Go to sleep, sweetheart," he whispered. "You've got to go to sleep so we can get this thing out of you."
She smashed the flat of her palm into his elbow, and his arm slipped.
Then it was like holding a writhing, spitting cat that knew he'd almost taken her down. Gemma fought to kill now, holding nothing back, and it was all he could do not to hurt her.
"Don't shoot!" Ingrid yelled nearby. "Get me one of your stunners!"
Every move he made was countered. A thumb gouged toward his eye, and the second he flinched back, her legs were swiveling and locking around his waist. They rolled, and he threw his weight across her, so they rolled again.
A shadow blurred over her shoulder as they flipped.
Then something smashed down over her shoulder. He felt the arm give as it popped from its socket. Gemma screamed.
Obsidian flipped her onto her stomach, forcing her other arm up behind her beck. Ingrid knelt on her, holding the long pole of a stunner with its loop of wire around the end.
They got the loop of the shocker around Gemma's throat as she kicked and thrashed. He didn't dare let go of her as Ingrid stepped back and gripped the end of the stunner.
"Shock her!"
Ingrid's eyes narrowed, and he saw her realize he understood he'd be hit with the current too.
"Do it."
The first lance of electricity sparked through him, slamming into his elbow as if a lead pipe had hit him there, and then arcing through his gut and throat. Obsidian's heels drummed on the ground, a scream vibrating in his throat as current poured through him.
He lost control of his entire body.
Lost his grip on Gemma.
Pain vanished instantly, as if it was finally, blessedly over.
Obsidian collapsed on the ground. He'd somehow landed face-first, and slumped there, gasping and dribbling on the floor. Every nerve in his body shook, and the world around him swam.
"Gem—"
He could sense people crowding in. Sense skirts swishing past him, and shoes.
"Where the hell is Malloryn?" one of the dukes on the council demanded.
There'd been files on all of them.
Photographs of their faces printed and pinned to the wall so all the dhampir would know their faces.
Lynch. The Duke of Bleight.
"I don't know. He tried to stop her." Ingrid.
"Arrest her!" The Coldrush Guards swarmed past him to the still figure lying on the floor of the throne room, motionless.
No.
Obsidian managed to find strength from somewhere, and pushed to his hands and knees.
They slapped cuffs on her. Hauled her upright, where she screamed as her shoulder popped again, and then slumped in their arms unconscious.
"Lynch." Byrnes snagged the duke's arm. "It wasn't her. There's some kind of neural implant in her head that made her do this. You can't let them hurt her."
The duke's implacable gray gaze swept across Obsidian, then raked over Gemma as if he saw everything in a single moment. "I'll take charge."
He strode after her, and Byrnes breathed a sigh of relief.
Someone knelt at Obsidian's side, helping to steady him. Charlie. "Well. Guess you weren't the one we needed to watch."
"I need to be there," Obsidian gasped, struggling to stand, "when she wakes."
Charlie sighed and slipped under his shoulder. "You shouldn't be going anywhere."
"Lynch has got it in hand," Byrnes said, still looking somewhat shocked. He crossed to his wife's side and examined the blood on the back of her shirt.
"No. You don't understand." He grabbed Charlie's wrist. "Gemma loves you all, especially Malloryn. If he's dead...."
If she’d killed him....
"This will destroy her."
Chapter 25
Adele Hamilton— No. Adele Cavill, she had to remember, fled along the hallway, her fists full of skirts, and her sister at her side.
"This way," she snapped to Hattie.
Round and round they went, clambering down the enormous double staircase that circled the hollow interior of the Ivory Tower.
She didn't know what was going on. Hattie had been having a minor attack of hysteria in the powder room when an explosion rippled through the tower. But Adele hadn't been part of this court for so many years without learning when to run, and the one thing in this world she loved was her younger sister.
She had to get Hattie safely out of here.
"Adele!" Hattie gasped, staggering into a wall. "I don't think... I can run... anymore."
Each breath Adele took strained her own corset until it felt like her ribs were trapped in a vise. She'd barely recovered from her assault on the day of her first wedding attempt. Adele collapsed against her younger sister's side, grabbing her by the wrist. Hattie's cheeks were flushed with exertion.
