Sabotaged (The Sundance Series Book 3)
Page 24
"He can't get away."
Chandra frowned at Lucas as she spoke to me. "We'll find him. For now, I think you'd better calm down."
"But I—"
Neely.
Lucas grunted and threw his head back. His jaw clenched so hard it popped and all the muscles in his neck corded and pulsed. His entire body was a clenched muscle, thighs, calves, and biceps shuddering, forepaws fisted so hard his claws dug back into his own wrists, chest billowing as if there were something angry inside him, something that wanted out. Amber eyes brightened to shined brass and rolled in their sockets as if searching for something to focus on.
The Smilodon fury, that indiscriminate berserker rage, was upon him. If it took over, he'd kill everyone—even the ones he didn't want to kill. Even me.
"I'm sorry. I'm calm now. See?" I forced a smile.
Too late.
"Don't say that. Lucas, what do I do? How can I help?"
Spike me.
That was the last thing I wanted to do. "What if I hurt you? Can't you shift to human or to your Bengal tiger?"
Not when … like this. Smilodon won't … let me. Please. Don't let me … hurt them.
He'd asked me to help with this before. To use my spiking ability to fix the connections in his brain that were severed when the Smilodon form took over. It was true, I might hurt him. But if I didn't, he'd hurt people he cared about and hate himself for it later. No way could I let that happen. I had to do something.
The warden had put me through hell, but the spiking he'd forced me to do to the shifters had given me a level of control that I wasn't able to achieve when practicing with the witches. I'd proved that when I spiked the two human guards with precision over a distance. Maybe I could use that control to keep Lucas from sliding into the rage.
Maybe I could salvage something good from what had happened to me here.
Without further hesitation, I pulled power, drawing it from Lucas, Alpha Juan, and Chandra. Their combined energy hit me like a blast from a four-hundred-degree oven and tasted like the sweetest honey. I'd need a lot to spike a prehistoric, and I'd have to be careful. I was weak, and their power was addictive.
"What's happening? Luke?" Alpha Juan paced the floor in front of the door. He was still in wolf form and picking up on Lucas's distress.
"Everyone out." Chandra pushed the witches toward the exit. "Go. You too, Neely."
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm not pulling a Rose on him."
Chandra scowled. "A what?"
"It's a Titanic referen—never mind." I pointed at Chandra. "The witches should definitely go, but you need to stay here. You too, Alpha Juan. I'm going to draw from you both."
"Don't have to tell us twice. Come on, Dot. Let's go find Earp." Dolores gripped her sister's hand and the witches shuffled to the door.
"Is someone going to tell me what's going on?" The wolf alpha loped over to us and sniffed the air surrounding the Smilodon. "He's in pain."
A roar burst out of Lucas. It was so loud my ears popped, but I didn't let it distract me. I pulled as much energy from the alphas as I could, filled myself to overflowing. I would need every drop.
"I'm almost ready." I crumpled to the floor, rested my head against his front leg. "Hold on, Lucas. I'm almost there."
"Are you all right?" Chandra asked.
"Yes. Don't let him kill anyone, okay?"
Lucas let out another roar and took a swipe at Alpha Juan, Chandra peeled out of her clothing and shifted all the way into her hyena form. She circled around Lucas and me, staying close, but out of reach.
Neely, you'd better go. I can't control it.
"No way. I won't let you sink, Lucas Blacke. I love you too much for that."
His head whipped around. His eyes stopped rolling as he calmed and focused his gaze wholly on me. His paws opened, claws retracting, muscles loosening, jaw relaxing. He said nothing, inside my head or out. But the way he looked at me, as if I was the answer to every question he had, told me that he'd heard. Told me that he felt the same way.
I was ready.
I closed my eyes and spiked into his brain using the pathway I had established when I'd saved his life by spiking my consciousness into his. This time I was a tailor, seeking to sew the part of his brain that was pure rage to the thinking part of him. My plan wasn't completely thought out, but then, there wasn't a precedent for this.
With, if not wild abandon, then at least a marked lack of restraint, I sped through Lucas's head, slowing as I reached his animal's brain. Though in reality there was only the one, I normally saw shifters as having two brains—animal and human. Lucas had three. Human, shifter, prehistoric. They were partitioned from each other, the first two closely linked, the last barely connected.
Spiking was metaphysical, which meant I didn't need to worry about brain physiology. I only needed to worry that I had enough energy to manipulate the brain the way I viewed it.
And hold onto myself in the process.
When I located the raging part of him, I wrestled it to the forefront of his consciousness. Lucas roared and jerked away from me. I felt the loss of his body heat, but I did not open my eyes, nor did I lose my focus. I worked to meld the rage with his human brain, creating a bridge between the two, all the while using every ounce of willpower I possessed not to lose myself.
"Whatever you're doing, do it faster," Alpha Juan yelled. "He's strong as hell and he's got the advantage because we don't actually want to hurt him—shit!"
The laughter of a hyena in distress rent the air.
"Hurry up, he's got Smith!"
I heard a crash, but didn't let it distract me, simply continued connecting the Smilodon's rage to the thinking side of Lucas's brain so he could bring it under control. A few crashes, wolf growls, and hyena whoops later, it was done.
Cautiously, I began the process of retracing my steps out of Lucas's head. Once I was out, I'd release the energy I'd drawn, and everything would be fine.
The first part went well. Concentrating on the path I'd followed in, I carefully backed to the edge of Lucas's brain. That's where I got stuck. I couldn't make myself release the energy I'd drawn and leave his head completely. While I held onto him, there was no pain, no second guessing myself, no fear. I didn't want to let go, I wanted more.
"Neely." This time the voice that called out to me was soft. And it wasn't Alpha Juan. "Where are you?"
"Lucas, I can't let go." I whispered the words like a secret. "It's holding me so tightly."
"The euphoria?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll hold you tighter." His arms, now human, slid around me from behind, lifted me to my feet. His lips coasted over my ear. "Let go now. It's okay, I've got you."
"Not like Rose and Jack?"
A low chuckle tickled my ear. "No, not like Rose and Jack. No matter how far gone you are, I'll always pull you out of the water, Neely. I love you."
As if those three words were the secret combination to whatever safe had my self-control locked up, I found the strength I needed. I left his head and let the energy flow away from me.
I opened my eyes.
Chandra and Alpha Juan were in animal form, hunched over and panting. Lucas was in human form. He was covered in sweat, but otherwise calm.
He smiled. "You did it. Thank you."
"You're welcome. I love you." I turned in his arms and rested my face against his bare chest. He was sweaty and smelled faintly of damp fur, but I didn't care. I turned my face up for his kiss, desperate to be held by him.
My braid had fallen out at some point and my hair was all over the place. He swept it behind my ears with unsteady hands and lowered his mouth to mine. When Lucas kissed, he did it with his entire body. It was a meeting of lips and hands and hips—and hearts.
"You're naked," I said, when we came up for air.
"Nothing gets past you." He hugged me closer. "You're covered in blood."
"Regular Sherlock Holmes you are," I replied, and he kissed me again.
"Pfft. What a dumb thing to think."
"Hey, it was a reasonable thing to think. You had no idea where I was."
"Only for a while. Uh, you were right, by the way. I put a tracker in the lock on the bracelet. Unfortunately, you went out of range pretty quickly. I'm going to have to get a stronger…" He cleared his throat. "Never mind that. We had a starting point, we had some outside help, and we had the witches, God save us."
"I love my witches."
"And they you, apparently. I don't know how you got that cantankerous woman to like you so much. She's a devious pain in the ass. I'm still ticked about Lestat's tiger T-shirt."
I started to laugh, but my breath caught. I was hurt and I had a lot of energy tumbling around inside me, looking for a way out.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Managing. Working on releasing the energy I took from all of you." I peered over at Chandra and Alpha Juan, who were still sprawled on the floor a few feet away. "Are you two okay?"
"Fine," the Austin alpha croaked. He was missing some fur on his tail and rear legs. Chandra lay on her belly, still trying to catch her breath. She waved a paw to indicate she'd heard me.
"What did you do to them?"
Lucas shrugged. "Not much."
Chandra groaned.
"Quit whining and pull yourselves together." He rolled his gaze to the doorway he'd torn apart—the one Julio and the warden had escaped through. "We still have work to do."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Garrett Harris wasn't a shifter. He didn't have speed or agility going for him, and he wasn't able to hypnotize people or spike power into their brains and kill them. But what he lacked in paranormal ability, he more than made up for with ruthless ingenuity and a powerful self-preservation instinct.
He was a rat-on-a-sinking-ship survivor. I'd seen it in his thoughts when I read him—snippets mostly, as his brain was difficult to read, a twisty-bendy rollercoaster of a thing, looping back on itself with lies and justifications and cliff-edge blind spots.
When a rat is scared, it does one of two things. It either freezes or scuttles to a safe place to hide.
Harris chose to scuttle.
"He'll be in here." I walked as fast as my broken body would allow down the corridor toward Garrett Harris's office. We'd stopped in one of the rooms and washed blood off our faces and hands as best we could, but it would take a shower or two to get it all off.
"You don't think he tried to run for it?" Lucas had shifted to Bengal tiger hybrid form and had me by the elbow, supporting my weight. He would have carried me if I'd asked him to, but I hadn't wanted to give the warden the satisfaction of seeing how much he'd hurt me. I was walking in on my own two feet.
"No. He'll go to a place where he feels he still has control." I leaned against Lucas for strength. "You're sure the children are safe?"
"I'm sure." He gently hugged me around the shoulders. "Stop worrying."
"Might as well ask me to stop breathing," I grumbled.
Lucas and I came to a halt in front of the door. I took a deep breath and tried to make my hands stop shaking. The last time I'd come through here, I'd been certain I was going to end up dead.
"You okay?"
"No." I clenched my teeth and stared at the door. "But I made a promise to some people that I would end this today and I damn sure intend to keep my word."
I pushed the door open, prepared for some form of gun violence, and I got that, but I also got a bald guard, two pissed-off witches, and a spitting, snarling fully-shifted Gila monster.
"Don't do it, bucko." Dolores stood tall, crossed her arms over her chest, and shook her head at the guard holding a gun on her. "Wouldn't be smart."
Harris stood beside his desk flanked by eight terrified guards with guns, a couple of whom I recognized from my trip through the cells this morning. One sweep over the guards' collective brains told me that they had no problem killing everyone in the room—including each other—if it meant they got out with their lives.
The warden had trained his people in his image, that was for sure.
The bald guard lay on the floor to the left of the warden's huge desk, moaning and holding his bleeding head. There were nest-like clumps of brown hair all around him.
"Why don't you try kicking my boyfriend again?" Dottie yelled. Her mouth was set in a firm line and her hands were fisted by her sides. An atmosphere of magic enveloped her like an aura.
Whoa. I'd seen Dottie happy, I'd seen Dottie pensive, but I'd never seen Dottie fierce. It was an awesome sight, in every meaning of the word. Even Lucas appeared taken aback at the change in the gentle witch.
Earp let out a series of hissing huffs and curved his tail around Dottie's leg. He looked no worse for wear for having been kicked, thank goodness.
"Yeah, nobody messes with our family." Dolores jabbed her finger toward another guard, and he covered his head with his hands and took two steps back.
"What did you do to that guy?" Lucas asked.
"A displacement spell." Dottie's voice switched to her usual sweet-as-sugar tone. "I moved his hair from his head to the floor is all."
"By the bloody roots." Dolores's eyes sparkled with schadenfreude delight. "I call it the Hair Today Gone Today spell. Dot's never cared for the name."
"Jesus wept," one of the guards whispered.
"I doubt he'd cry much over you sorry lot," she drawled.
"How in the world did you three get into so much trouble so quickly?" Lucas ran a hand through his hair. "Earp, I thought you were helping to release the shifters."
"He was. One of the guards got the jump on him and dragged him in here." Dolores sniffed. "We ran in when we heard a ruckus."
I elbowed Lucas and nodded to the warden, who was pacing frantically behind his desk. The guards appeared torn between keeping an eye on the witches and Earp, Lucas, me, and their madly pacing boss.
Lucas swept his gaze over the guards. "Put down your weapons and stand down. If you cooperate, you may get out of this alive."
Not a single guard lowered their gun. They knew what cooperate meant to them—make yourself helpless so the people in power can hurt you—and likely figured it meant the same to Lucas. Maybe it did.
"You can't stop this." The warden removed his jacket and tossed the garment into his office chair. The green khaki T-shirt he wore beneath was soaked with sweat around the neck and armpits. His gaze jumped erratically from paranormal to paranormal, always returning to me. "There are too many of us and we're backed by the sort of power that topples dictatorships and brings down governments. We will crush anyone who opposes us."
"Why?" I joined Earp, Dottie, and Dolores in the center of the room. "I know your reason why, but why would the government care? We pay our taxes, same as the rest of you."
"Governments are scared, dumb things." Lucas eased me out of the line of fire as best he could, considering we stood in the middle of an open room facing what amounted to a firing squad. "They assume that anything different is dangerous. Anything that might upset the status quo is considered subversive and must be stopped. Even in this enlightened country."
"Very good." A crazed smile broke over the warden's face. "You understand your precarious situation, Alpha Blacke. The world is a dangerous place for you. Turn yourselves in and make it easy on all of us."
"You want us to agree to roll over and die?" Lucas's brow dropped low and a humorless grin pulled at his lips. "Why did it take me so long to find you? You're obviously the stupidest man on the planet. It should have been a breeze."
The warden's smile fell away. "Selfish animal."
"Yes, you are," I said, and he jerked around to face me. "You're outnumbered and surrounded. The world is a dangerous place for you. What's your play here, Harris?"
My answer lay in the twitch of his e
ye, the way he held his gun, the herky-jerky footfalls as he paced from one end of his desk to the other. This was a man who knew he was out of options. And a man like the warden doesn't hurt himself when cornered. He strikes out at everyone else.
Lucas arrived at the same conclusion. He's going to try to kill you.
I know.
Get back. He stepped in front of me and set his shoulders. He had shifted to his Smilodon hybrid form without anyone noticing and was making himself a target.
No.
Neely, this isn't about how badass you are. This is about bullets. I can heal from a bullet wound—even silver, if I get to it fast enough. You can't.
You make a convincing argument. I took a step back and behind him.
I wanted to spike Garrett Harris dead. I could have spiked him, or some of the guards, at any point upon entering the room, but there was a problem. The moment the first person fell, they would know it was me and start firing. The witches would end up caught in the crossfire. Lucas and Earp, too.
Alpha Juan and Chandra, both in hybrid form, entered the office. The warden's gun swung toward them. Chandra pushed the witches behind her, indicating they should head to the door. She and the red wolf alpha seemed no worse for wear, and I was happy to see that Alpha Juan's missing fur had grown back.
"Lower your weapons," Lucas repeated. "We don't want to kill you."
Speak for yourself. I'd like to see them all dead.
I knew he'd heard me, but he didn't respond.
One of the guards raised her gun to shoot Dottie in the back as the witches exited the room.
I peeked out at her from behind Lucas. "You'll be dead the second you pull the trigger."
She paled.
Just to prove my point, I gave her a little nudge. She yelped and the other guards trained their guns on me. If I wasn't careful, they'd shoot. Their boss was at a breaking point and they were surrounded by paranormals. These people were terrified.
"Hold steady." Harris backed up to the wall behind the guards. He was drenched in sweat, eyes rolling around in his head like marbles.
"Put the weapons down or we will force you to put them down," Lucas said in his alpha voice. Two of the guards instantly dropped their guns.