Licensed To Thrill

by Gemma Brocato

  We started the long descent to the tunnel that we’d use to jog to the central pier. I checked the time, knowing our window to stop him was getting narrower. Our rapid steps clattered loudly. Given Viktor’s head start on us, I was certain we wouldn’t run into him or any of his goons. Speed was more important than stealth.

  On top of the stale stench of the river, I noted a steady dripping flow of water as we sped along.

  “Jamie, is it normal to have water leaking in somewhere?” I hissed over my shoulder.

  “This tunnel is waterproof. We just inspected it two weeks ago. No leaks.”

  The engineer surprised me with his ability to keep up with our jogging pace. His heart wasn’t even thudding heavily yet.

  Damnation! “If that dripping water isn’t a leak, that means someone’s opened a valve somewhere.”

  “There is a pressure-relieving valve at the base of every piston that controls the movement of the gates,” Jamie said. “If any of those is open, that section of the structure will flood.”

  One more damn thing to look for, in addition to death-inducing chemicals and a maniac who would be king.

  As we splashed through the growing puddles of dank river water dotting the floor, the giddy after-effect of an adrenaline surge swept through me. Knowing I was so close to catching the rat-bastard was making me reckless.

  Lucien tapped my shoulder. “Jayne, take it easy.”

  His touch slowed my pace and grounded me.

  “We’re so bloody close,” I replied, urgency rising as steadily as the tide.

  We had less than thirty minutes to find and eliminate the threat to London’s central district.

  Sudden clanging, like metal striking metal, rang through the tunnel that branched off to the right ahead of us.

  Baxter panted. “Did you hear that?”

  “There’s a narrow access hatch in that general direction.” Jamie waved his hand wildly.

  Urgency crept along my skin like massive hairy spiders. My fangs burst through my gums in anticipation of the kill. Lucien and I sped up to supernatural speed, leaving the mortals in our wake.

  We careened under ductwork just as bullets struck the concrete overhead.

  I dropped into a baseball-style slide on my left hip, pistol clutched in my right hand, and returned fire.

  “Active shooter!” Lucien’s voice boomed in my ear as he informed the troops that we’d engaged the enemy. “I count three guns fired.”

  Concrete chipped from the floor near my head as another bullet plowed into the ground.

  “Bloody hell! Better make that four,” I shouted back, not caring if Viktor’s men knew my location. I was out for blood.

  Lucien unloaded his clip in the general direction of where the shots had been fired. A scream rent the air. Good. One down, but we were on a mission to quadruple that number.

  I commando-crawled along the wall, taking advantage of the cover the conduits and pipes provided. Just ahead, a flurry of activity drew my attention. Two overlarge goons lugged a sizable black crate across the floor.

  I keyed my mic. “Bax, where the hell did they get in?”

  “Jamie thinks they snuck in through an unused access port.”

  I didn’t have time to spare a thought about the lax security that would allow four or five suspicious characters to invade such a hard target. How did the police assigned to the Barrier not see them coming? It was as if they were invisible.

  One of the goons whipped out his pistol and we exchanged fire.

  Sharp, stinging pain bloomed on my arm. I grunted. I’d been hit.

  “Jayne!” Lucien’s voice held concern laced with underlaying panic.

  “I’m fine. It’s just a graze.” I ignored the pain and fired five fast shots.

  Another scream was followed by the solid thunk of a heavy body hitting the ground. The playing field was a bit more level now.

  A frightening chuckle burst out from ahead on the right. “Jayne Bond? Is that you, my old friend?”

  Old friend, my arse. “Give up, Viktor. You’re surrounded. You don’t have a prayer of releasing whatever poison you have.”

  “Are you sure about that, dear? You veren’t right the last time we met, either. You said I couldn’t kill you and your friends. You vere the last vampire standing. Maybe you vill be this time, too.”

  The smug edge on his words made the hair on my nape stand straight up.

  Fuck! Could we be too late?

  “You won’t get away with this, Koszlov. You’ll never win.”

  I clenched my jaw at his bark of laughter. “Ah, lovely Jayne. With a little help from my friends, I believe I vill, in fact, vin.”

  “You don’t have friends, Viktor. You’re a wanker.”

  “Let’s go, men,” Viktor ordered in his mother tongue. I guess he’d forgotten I understood and spoke Russian as fluently as he did. “We won’t worry about them. My little cocktail will take care of them. Even the vampire.”

  What did he mean by that?

  Blood soaked my sleeve. I scuttled backward as another flurry of bullets peppered the space around me. Bax and Jamie skidded to a halt just beyond the curve of the tunnel, out of harm’s way. Booted feet beat a retreat ahead of us. Whatever Viktor had come to do, he’d already accomplished it and was making a hasty exit.

  “Lucien, find out if there has been a breach in any of the access hatches.” I gripped Jamie’s coat and dragged him over to where I pointed at the corridor branching off to the right. “What’s in that tunnel?”

  Jamie’s hands shook, making it difficult for him to search the schematic.

  Frustrated, I laid my palm on his shoulder and mentally urged him to calm the fuck down.

  He sucked in a heavy breath, blew out a stinky gust of air, and scrolled through page after page of drawing until he reached the one he sought.

  “Oh, fuck me!” He raised frightened eyes to mine. “There’s a discharge pipe used in case of flooding in the access hatch. It drains directly into the river.”

  If Viktor had already planted the chems in that pipe, we were up shit creek, and the paddle was floating off downstream.

  The constant drip from the pressure-relieving valve had escalated to a gush and ominously echoed in the section we occupied. Water rose over our ankles now as we slogged forward. The tunnel was rapidly flooding, which could impede our ability to reach the chems before they deployed.

  Koszlov’s goons had left the empty crate directly beneath the stairs leading up to the hydraulics section that operated the barrier. The door swung drunkenly open. The contents of the crate had been removed, most likely to the pipe Jamie pointed out.

  Confused concern swamped me. “It’s so small.” I spread my hands, measuring the length of the crate.

  “What were you expecting?” Lucien crouched next to the case.

  “Barrels, or fifty-gallon drums.” I laid my hands on my thighs and shoved to my feet. “Whatever he’s dispensing must be highly concentrated. Like he knows it wouldn’t take a ton to poison the world into submission.”

  Once he’d provided this display and maybe a few others, he’d be poised to make his demands on the governments of the world. Koszlov was mere steps away from his goal of world domination.

  And somehow, we were fifty paces behind him.

  “Jamie, stay here. We’ll go investigate.” I jerked my head toward the steps.

  Grimly, both my co-workers nodded.

  “Lead the way,” Lucien said.

  More splashing came from both directions as the rest of our military escort that had cleared their area joined us. Lucien and I advanced up the stairs. A fast glance confirmed that Jamie couldn’t follow orders any better than I. He’d joined us. Probably best, though. Water splashed over the first step leading to the hydraulics section. My rich and crimson blood dripped into the swirling mass, turning it muddy pink.

  I paused and swung a gaze toward the captain. “Spread out. Find the source of the leak and get the bloody river stoppe
d from coming in. But don’t evacuate the water in this tunnel until it’s cleared for contaminates. We can’t take the chance he’s created a redundant system.”

  The commander nodded and scrambled to issue curt orders to his troops.

  Bax stood at the bottom of the step, looking useless. What a wanker. Really, the second I saw T in person, I was going to demand I be released from this assignment.

  “Probie!” When he jerked his eyes to my face, I yelled, “Don’t just sit there looking like Billy No-Mates. We need you here.” I snapped my fingers and pointed to the landing where Lucien, Jamie, and I stood.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled as he climbed up to join us.

  I swiveled my attention to Jamie, who had his head and shoulders inside the overflow pipe.

  “Bollocks!” He ducked out of the opening and scrubbed his face. “I can see something about 4 meters in. I’ll need an acetylene torch to cut through the steel pipe.”

  “Solo, report!” T’s voice boomed over my earbud. Clearing my throat, I ignored her.

  “How long will it take?” Lucien jammed his hands on his hips.

  Jamie scratched his head. “I reckon thirty minutes to get a blowtorch here, another fifteen to cut our way through.”

  Bax leaned over the railing and stared down, eyes flaring wide. “We may not have forty-five minutes. The water is coming in faster now.”

  He was right. It was above the fifth step, halfway to the grid platform where we stood. I spun round to study the pipe. It was at least two feet in diameter, possibly bigger. Not big enough for a man to wriggle through. But I was no man. Narrower frame, athletic, and after the ease with which I spent the night in a coffin on a dare, not stressed by small spaces.

  “I’ll crawl through and retrieve whatever Viktor left.” The back of my throat itched, and I coughed to clear the irritation.

  “Solo!” T’s voice was more insistent.

  I jabbed the button on my comm link. “I’m busy saving the world at the moment, T.”

  “Cut the smart remarks and tell me what the bloody hell is going on.”

  Oh, the woman’s voice could have frozen Earth’s molten magma center. I swallowed hard, trying to calm the insistent scratch, and rubbed my neck.

  Baxter answered for me. “We’ve exchanged shots with Viktor, but he’s escaped. Bond was hit, but the injury is minor. Fortunately, we’ve located the package with the poison, but it’s in an unreachable space and we’re debating the best way to access it.”

  I popped my head into the pipe, shining my torch along the snug metal passageway. A haze of powder, or maybe vapor, filled the air, motes dancing in the powerful beam of light.

  I coughed again, trying to ease the tickle in my throat. “Looks like we can cut it out with a blowtorch.”

  I dropped back out of the opening.

  “Don’t do that,” T ordered. “Our VIS hackers have intercepted a message from Rapa Nui. It appears the chems are activated by water, but also highly combustible. Using any type of heat could ignite a vapor cloud, as deadly as polluting the Thames.”

  “Jayne, are you okay? Your lips are blue.” Lucien’s face hovered over mine, concern changing the normally dark hue of his eyes to inky black.

  “There’s something already in the air. Don’t you feel it?” I swung a wild glance from Lucien to Bax.

  Neither appeared to be affected by whatever choked me. I dug inside my T-shirt and hauled out the necklace Drax had provided me at the commencement of the mission. Using my thumbnail, I flicked open the tidy little frame and activated the rebreather. I clamped it between my teeth, and pulled in a cautious breath.

  No more annoying tickle. Viktor, the devious scum, had corrupted the interior of the barrier with something that affected vampires more than mortals. I needed to shed some bulk to assure I’d fit through the pipe. I started dropping my equipment. The holster, my Kevlar vest, the knife strapped to my belt, even the belt itself.

  Using the rebreather was going to make conversing difficult. Hmm, breathe or talk?

  I signaled to Lucien to boost me up into the pipe. I’d squirm through and retrieve Viktor’s deadly package.

  He shook his head, as though resigned to my foolishness. He slid a backpack off his broad shoulders and unzipped the largest of three compartments. He produced a length of yellow nylon rope.

  “There’s no way for you to turn around once you’re in. I’ll tie this around your ankle so we can haul you out.”

  “Good thinking,” I mumbled with a mouth filled with tech equipment and thrust out my leg.

  While Lucien fastened one end around my boot, knotting it tight, I dabbed at the blood still welling from the bullet graze on my upper arm. Pain grumbled through my body. Bloody nuisance that the gash hadn’t healed yet. The edges looked shriveled and blackened, not the healthy pink skin I’d have thought it would be by now, but I had no time for a bandage.

  Baxter gripped my left arm and scowled. “T, we need to know what the chances are there’s colloidal silver in Koszlov’s concoction. It’s affecting Jayne.“

  I jerked up my head to stare at the guppy. I blinked hard and realized my eyes were gritty and burning along with my skin and lungs. Bax was right.

  I spat out the rebreather and keyed my mic. “T, tell Drax that Viktor isn’t just releasing a poison for humans. He is out to kill vamps as well.” There could be no other explanation.

  “On it,” Drax’s voice boomed in my ear.

  Of course, he’d been monitoring our comm lines. The ancient vamp had rocked his job for a zillion years.

  I pointed at Jamie’s goggles and wheezed. “I need those.“

  Jamie looked at me as if I was insane. He shook his head.

  “Give them to her,“ Baxter shouted.

  Jamie’s hardhat clattered to the floor, and he tugged the goggles over his head. With a nervous look, he extended them to me on one finger like he was afraid my reaction was infectious. “Uh, your eyes are bleeding.”

  I scrubbed a hand on my cheeks. Black-red tears stained my fingertip.

  Blinking hard, I snatched the protective eyewear. “Thanks.”

  My vision had hazed with a muddy red fog from the effects of the poisoned air. My eyes burned like a witch at the stake. I flipped my cap away and dragged the goggle’s elastic strap over my head. The relief was immediate. For protective eyewear they were huge, but helpful.

  Lucien’s eyes narrowed on me. “Jayne, I don’t think you should be going in that pipe.”

  “I’m the only one who will fit. Given the combustible nature of the toxin, we have no other option,” I wheezed.

  “Jayne…” The concern in his gaze moved me.

  Firming my resolve, I shook my head and replaced my rebreather. We didn’t have time for this conversation. We were racing the clock and, as of now, the clock was winning.

  T’s voice came through my earpiece hollowly, filled with an emotion I couldn’t identify. “Jayne, don’t take unnecessary risks. We can find a different way.“

  Ignoring her, I laid my palm over Lucien’s chest. He gave my hand a squeeze, then turned me toward the opening.

  I flattened my hand on the ductwork and popped my head inside the grated pipe, then looked at Lucian and lifted my leg, requesting a boost.

  He seized my foot and tossed me into the hollow tube that was as narrow, if not more so than, any coffin I’d ever been in.

  My muscles screamed in agony with each movement. My flesh burned like I’d been exposed to the sun for too long. Whatever was in the toxin that Viktor released was definitely a vampire’s worst nightmare.

  “Jayne, be careful in there.” Lucien’s voice threaded into my ear.

  Again, I ignored him as I crept forward, forced to commando crawl on my belly. Each inch forward felt like I’d crawled miles.

  The tunnel was dark and hot. Pushing the torch ahead, I aimed the beam toward the goal—a box less than twenty feet away.

  Given my physical condition, the journey would take
a lifetime. I continued to inch forward, all the while listening to Baxter’s encouraging words through the comms. Surprisingly, his voice seemed to be a steady rock for me. If this was what it meant to be a mentor, then we were going to rock that shit.

  Despite the goggles, my eyes continued to burn, and now every inch of exposed skin was on fire. It was definitely something with silver in it. Not much could lay a vampire low, but this was a sure-fire method. I worried about Lucien and the others behind me, breathing in the toxic cloud. But none of them seemed affected the way I was. Over the comm, I heard the commander of the military unit announce the barrier had been cleared and the boom was fully in place. If I didn’t succeed, at least redundancies were in place to minimize the toll on the citizens of London.

  But I couldn’t afford to fail.

  I redoubled my efforts to crawl forward. The haze in the tunnel increased the closer I got to the box resting by the grate.

  The gash from the bullet wound snagged on an exposed rivet. Excruciating pain, rivaling the size of the Grand Canyon, screamed through my arm. I groaned deeply and dropped my head to the steel ductwork. Fighting tears, I tried to breathe through the agony the best I could with the rebreather. But it wasn’t easy. Whimpers built in my throat.

  “Hey!’ Lucien’s panicked voice pulled me from the urge to give up. “Come back now!”

  I know my whimpers didn’t help Lucien’s distress. I hadn’t realized how much he cared. I closed my eyes and counted to three, then jerked my sleeve free of the snag.

  “Gah!” I couldn’t suppress my groan.

  “Jayne!“ This time Baxter called my name. “That’s it. We’re pulling you out.”

  I sucked in a deep breath through my rebreather, then spat it out. “Don’t you fucking dare. I’m not giving up the ghost. Neither should you.”

  My lungs burned in addition to my eyes, but I continued my extra slow crawl forward. I was within three feet of my destination. Now two.

  I wound my hand around the edges of the box. With as much power as I could muster I tried to drag it toward me.

  “Got it!” I felt a yank on the rope tied to my ankle. They were pulling me back. But on my backward progress, my tactical pants snagged on the same corroded rivet that had gouged my arm.