The Shade Chronicles | Book 2 | Predator

by Bradley, T. K.

  No. Bob intends to take the variant as well, effectively ending his human life. I fall to my knees, tears spilling down my cheeks. “Bob, no. You don’t get it. Your humanity is important. Hell, my humanity is important and it’s nearly nonexistent. Don’t just throw it away!” I slam my palm once more on the door, with less force this time. The fight is draining out of me, desperation taking over. “Just give Kenzo a little more time. He can isolate what protects Ellis from the sun. He can save us all.”

  Bob breathes slowly, evenly, on the other side of the door. For a moment I think maybe I’ve gotten through to him, but then he turns and begins to walk away. “Please stay here where you’ll be safe.”

  “No! Bob! Come back, I—” My words are cut off by the sound of a bolt being drawn back. Trey’s door is opened, and together, the three of them disappear down the hallway into the facility.

  Our whole predicament can be summed up in one word. “Shit.”

  “Yes,” Mom says. “Shit.”

  I sit there on that floor for what feels like forever, waiting silently for the inevitable. When nothing happens, I find myself half wondering if they’ve kept going, down the hall and straight out the front door, but it’s daytime outside, so I know in their current state that they’re at the very least trapped within these walls until sundown.

  “Maybe I got through to them,” I whisper, reluctant to cut into the lingering silence. “Maybe they won’t hurt anyone.” Neither my mom nor Ellis has anything to say to that.

  Deep down I know how unlikely it is. Like, a snowball’s chance in hell kind of unlikely. But I cling to that hope with all I’ve got—even as the doubt and regret are gnawing at my insides.

  The first scream is almost like a surprised gasp, but it’s cut off quickly. Too quickly…

  There’s a shout, followed by a loud bang, perhaps the sound of one of their bolt weapons firing.

  And then the screaming begins in earnest, long and drawn out, guttural, with an underlying wet slap and gurgle.

  I’m not sure if I want it to end of not.

  “We have to do something,” I say in a panic, but again, Mom and Ellis are speechless. I shriek, “We have to stop them!”

  When they remain silent, I realize that I’m on my own. It’s like a slap in the face. I feel cold. I rise up, using the door as support. My knees are knocking, and I close my shaking hands into tight fists. I can feel my claws digging into my palms, and I welcome the bracing pain.

  With a growl, I slam my fist forward into the door. The pain of it travels up my arm, all the way to my shoulder and down my spine. I grit my teeth and propel my first forward again. And again.

  A sob escapes my lips, but it’s not from the pain. This is a sound of all my helplessness, hopelessness, depression, and desperation, all compressed into one tiny sound. Deep, deep down below that is rage. A pure red haze of outrage.

  For everything that’s been done to me, to everything I have been denied. The looks on the faces of the people I killed, my mother’s pleas when she was dying in that closet, Jose’s eyes as he asked me to kill him. I take all of the unfairness in this fucked-up world, and I channel it straight through my fist and into that door.

  What had started off as a sob is slowly building. From a pitiful whine, it morphs into a growl, a gravelly texture in my throat and over my tongue. Its pitch rises into an undulating scream of frustration and anger.

  “Fucking open, you fucking door!”

  The steel door creaks, its hinges bending. And still, my mom and Ellis remain silent. They are nothing more than witnesses to my complete meltdown, but on the plus side, I can no longer hear the screams and sobs of the dead and dying over my own slamming fists.

  At some point, I transition from fists to claws. The tips of my claws disappear into the metal door, driving them into my fingertips as well. The pain is sharp, crisp, and I accept it gratefully.

  I’m wary of giving in to any part of my beast—even if it is for the greater good. It’s a fine line between human and monster, prey and predator. It wouldn’t take much for me to cross over that line, and there would be no coming back from that. And so, I think of Kenzo. He’s out there, unprotected. His heart is like a drumbeat, calling to me to war. He needs me.

  No matter the pain—or maybe to spite the pain itself—I continue on, thrashing and tearing at the thick door. When I finally pause, I’m nearly halfway through the thick panel, but I stopped because I heard something, a new sound.

  “Ellis?” a soft voice says.

  “Sydney, you shouldn’t be here,” Ellis says, an edge to his voice. “You need to run… hide…”

  “Run where? Hide where? Nowhere is safe. Not with those monsters loose… I have nowhere else to go.”

  The smell of blood teases my senses. She’s injured. Or maybe the blood isn’t hers…

  She doesn’t hesitate to pull back the bolt on Ellis’s door. “You need to stop them,” she whispers.

  I hear the door swing open, but he hesitates. I can put together the scene in my head as clearly as if I were staring at it with my own eyes. Sydney, a beautiful girl by her own rights, and now add to that the scent of fresh blood. She’s trusting, she’s unarmed in any way that matters. She might as well be laying herself out on a dinner table and handing Ellis a fork.

  I understand his hesitation all too well. I know the temptation that sings to him, croons about how delicious her blood would taste, how simple it would be to just reach out and pluck her. Humans are weak, even more when they’re hurt. Right now, Ellis is keeping a leash on his beast, but only barely.

  “Sydney, you need to let me out,” I tell her, and when she doesn’t answer, I give the mangled door a bang, my knuckles and fingers aching.

  “Ellis…?” she says, hinting for his advice.

  He manages to choke out, “Do it.” He’s likely holding his breath.

  The latch of my door is finally pulled back, but when she goes to swing the door open, it catches. The hinges are bent, damaged. She gives the door a harder tug, but nothing happens. I put my own shoulder to the door and push, and with a mighty squeal, it gives. Sydney staggers back, but when she makes eye contact with me, her retreat is much more intentional. There is blood on her hands, smeared onto her clothes, tear tracks staining her cheeks. Her eyes are wide, and her limbs are shaking.

  She’s scared of me. But it’s not me she needs to be scared of.

  Ellis may not look like a monster, not entirely. His eyes are black, but that’s the only indication that he’s anything other than human. It’s too easy to trust him. Meanwhile, I’ve had practice in restraint. Ellis is attracted to her on more than one level, and the tug-of-war with his freedom to choose is wearing a little thin. In this moment, I’m more human than Ellis is.

  I turn toward his open cell door. Sydney likely can’t even see him clearly, the shadows so deep, it’s near perfect darkness. She can’t see the look in his eyes as he angles his head up. It’s pure anguish.

  “Help me,” he whimpers.

  Without breaking eye contact with him, I tell Sydney, “Go into my cell and pull the door closed.”

  “What? Why? I can’t do that, I would be trapped.”

  “You’re already trapped.”

  My words hang in the air, and a cold certainty trickles down my spine. She must sense the warning in my voice, because she scurries into the room without another word of complaint. It’s a struggle to close it in its warped shape, but finally, the door clicks closed. It takes the edge off her scent, and Ellis’s shoulder sag in relief.

  I don’t need to lock the door on the poor girl. She doesn’t need to be locked in the cell as I was. Out of sight, out of mind. While it’s impossible to expect Ellis to stop thinking about the allure entirely, at least now he can find the strength to tear himself away.

  His eyes flick over to the closed door, and he raises his voice for her frail human ears to hear him. “Have they reached the lab?”

  “Not yet. They seem to be going r
oom to room…” Her voice trails off. She doesn’t need to clarify what they’re checking for.

  “We need to go,” I say simply. We don’t need directions. We’ll be able to find Trey and Kelly without any problem. Even if we couldn’t follow their scents like a homing beacon, we could likely just follow the sound of shots and screams.

  I turn to dash up the stairs, but my mom stops me. “I can help!” she calls.

  Ellis and I don’t have time to waste on a debate about where her loyalties lie. Out of all of us, she was the one who chose to be this monster. There’s no way she would turn down the variant strain; the only question is if she would kill for it.

  “Shit,” I mutter. Is Trey dangerous? Yes. Could we use the extra set of hands? Absolutely. Can I trust her to watch my back?

  I give Ellis a sharp nod, and he quickly pulls back the latch on Mom’s door. I’m going with my gut on this one. I only hope I live to regret any mistakes I’ve made in this life, and that this isn’t one of them.

  The three of us take the three stairs to the hallway in a single leap, and I lower into a lope. The narrow hallways make this difficult. I remember my initial assessment of them being used as a bottleneck, forcing intruders to attack single file. Wow, if that isn’t feeling a little prophetic right about now. I hope it wasn’t foreshadowing my impending death.

  The halls are silent, though. Too silent, in fact. There’s evidence of struggle everywhere I turn; smashed-in doors, overturned furniture in the rooms, and yes, blood. There’s arterial spray on the walls, pools of it on the floor, quickly congealing, smears of it dragged across the floor, out the door, and down the hallway. I stare down at one elderly man whose joints look so swollen with arthritis that I imagine he couldn’t even manage to pull a trigger. He wasn’t a threat, but still, Trey showed him no mercy.

  As I quickly scan the gore in one room, and then the next, there’s one thing I’m noticing all too starkly. There aren’t nearly enough bodies for the amount of blood; the math just isn’t adding up.

  “What have they done with the bodies?” I ask, my eyes following the smear of blood, but to be honest, I’m not really sure I want an answer.

  “Maybe they’re not dead?” my mom says. “Maybe someone took them to be treated by their doctor, maybe? Or Kenzo?” There isn’t much hope in her voice, and I can’t blame her for being skeptical of her own positive thinking.

  Ellis says what we’re all thinking. “If they’re dead, the bodies were likely a snack, or maybe they’re in the cooler to keep them from going rotten, to keep for later. And if they’re alive… then they’re collateral.”

  “Oh god.” The thought of all those lives, snipped from this world so easily, with a clip of claws, it’s sickening. And the worst part is that Kenzo would absolutely give Trey anything if it meant saving even one of them. “We need to hurry.”

  I don’t need to tell them that. Ellis is already angling himself down the hall in the direction of the lab. We take a sharp right, then left, past blood spatter, both red and black. “One of them is injured,” Ellis says, stopping just long enough to dab a finger into the black droplet. “Kelly,” he confirms with a sniff.

  A distant shout brings my attention forward. “Kenzo.” His name is half whisper, half prayer. Please let him be all right.

  Ellis is on the move, and I’m straight on his heels. My mom growls behind me. “Get behind me,” she snaps.

  She’s my mother, she will always be my mother, and I imagine a part of her will always want to protect me. The only problem with that is I am way past saving at this point. I have traveled to Hell and back, and this is the only chance to be redeemed. If Kenzo doesn’t live through this ordeal, then I don’t want to either.

  There’s no point in stealth. Even if we were creeping forward on the tips of our claws, there’s no silencing the beat of our hearts. My breath comes out in deep rasping breaths, panic pulling me down beneath the surface of rational thought.

  The lab is directly ahead. There’s a whole wall of windows giving us a front-row seat to the drama inside. Kelly is leaning up against the right window, her black blood trailing down toward the floor. She’s slumped but still on her feet. She’s not a threat to me.

  My eyes slide over to Kenzo. He’s unharmed but his eyes are wide with terror. Bob has one of the bolt weapons trained on Kenzo, but he’s not watching him. Instead, both of them are looking over at Trey.

  There are bodies littering the floor. The corpse of their leader, Deb, is in a twisted heap, her body turned one way, her head another. Her unseeing eyes are staring at me, her scarred flesh now slack in death. Even as awful as she’s treated us, I feel a stab of sympathy. Is this whose blood is on Sydney’s hands?

  Trey isn’t paying any attention to the bodies in his wake. Instead, all of his attention is on General Howell. Howell’s hands are raised in a position of surrender, but there is nothing submissive about the look in his eyes. He is pissed right the hell off.

  Even through the glass, I can hear him bargaining for his life; no begging from the general, which I guess is kind of brave, or whatever. He likely knows that begging is useless. But Trey is a smart man—or greedy, at least.

  “You need me,” Howell says. “I have resources, contacts, across the whole continent—hell, the world! You’re going to need to know where to go for food, for shelter. I can give that to you.”

  Ellis, my mom, and I are all frozen at the end of the hall, waiting to see what Trey does. There’s no way we could get there in time, no matter our heightened senses, our increased speed and reflexes. Nothing can stop him from whatever he plans to do.

  Kelly looks over her shoulder at us, through the blood-streaked glass. She looks tired. Not just that, though; she looks defeated. Regretful. Bob turns to follow her gaze. He meets my eyes straight on, no hesitation. His hand tightens on the grip of the bolt gun, and he raises it to aim at Kenzo’s chest.

  Kenzo goes rigid, his eyes darting back and forth between the gun and Trey. I can’t stop myself from taking a step forward, and Ellis snaps a hand out to grip my arm. It brings Kenzo’s attention to me.

  His eyes widen even farther. “Run, Lori!” he shouts. “Ellis, please, get her out!” We don’t move, however. All three of us stay rooted to our spots, without a single thought of running from this fight. Even if we had somewhere to go, it’s just not in me to leave Kenzo behind. It’s not in Ellis to leave Trey to his machinations, and my mom? Well, I’m still not sure if she’s here out of greed or maternal loyalty, but I’d like to think she’s here to watch my back.

  When he sees that I have no intention of leaving, his face crumples in grief. He knows me better than most. We’ve been through so much together—years of government servitude, a failed attempt at a relationship. If I had taken Kenzo up on his proposal instead of abandoning the compound with Brent and my dad, would any of this have happened? Would Brent still be alive? Dad?

  There’s too much room for regret in this life.

  Trey now turns to look at us, slowly, like the predator he is. He winks and blows me a kiss, then turns back to Howell.

  Trey’s muscles tense a split second before he swings his arm. I know it’s coming, but I don’t look away. Howell knows it’s coming too; I can tell by the look in his eye. Even if I couldn’t hear him, there’s no mistaking the way his lips form his final word. “Please.”

  One swipe of Trey’s arm, that’s all it takes to draw the claw across Howell’s neck. It’s too smooth, too easy, like his fresh is nothing more than protein paste.

  Howell stands there, stunned, for a second. As blood sprays and gushes from his ruined throat, time pauses like a held breath. Even though Howell has always stood as a symbol for my ruined childhood, I find no joy in watching his downfall. Did he have it coming? Probably. But even my monster turns away in disgust.

  He closes his eyes just before his knees give up trying to hold him upright. Before Howell’s body even touches the floor, Ellis is moving. He brushes past me, nearly
a blur in my peripheral vision as I lock eyes with Kenzo. His skin is sallow, his eyes haunted. He’s just seen his own future and we both know it. I can’t protect him.

  Ellis, however, seems determined to give it his best shot.

  Howell finally completes his fall to the floor, the hollow thud of an empty human shell, his life spilling from the gash in his neck. His final breath passes his lips like a grace note to an otherwise insignificant life.

  And then there was one. One human, one bargaining chip.

  Only Kenzo remains in the lab with Trey, Kelly, and Bob.

  In the end, it’s the coppery scent of blood that spurs me to action. I’m finally unstuck, my muscles tensing and coiling, preparing for action. I run down the hall, my toe claws gripping for traction. Ellis bursts through the door ahead of me, and I’m hot on his heels. I can hear my mom at my back.

  The problem is that we’re not the only ones on the move.

  Kelly weakly raises her head to watch our entrance to the lab, but Trey is no longer where he was, standing over Howell’s body. He’s already across the no-longer-sterile lab, hand clamped around Kenzo’s neck.

  The sound forced from my throat is a perfect mirror of the choking sound he makes.

  And just like that, we all stop where we are, once again locked in a stalemate.

  22

  Kenzo

  I don’t even know how to react anymore, what to feel, what to do.

  My adrenaline stores have long since run dry, leaving me shaky and nauseated. The room reeks of copper and urine, a nostril-searing combination, and I’m not sure if it’s coming from me or Howell.

  Shit. Howell.

  I don’t mean to look at him, but my eyes keep darting over there, sneaking peeks, no matter how much I try to avoid it.

  And now, with Trey’s grip locked around my throat, I don’t have a choice about looking. My head is angled straight in that direction and turning away would likely cut me.