Текст книги "Trammel "

Автор книги: Anah Crow

Соавторы: Dianne Fox
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“If you don’t come out, I’ll kill you again myself.”

“I’ll be fine.” Noah gave him a wry smile. “If I can’t kill me, who’s gonna do it? Get me in and give me some cover, okay?”

“All right.” Lindsay could do that. “We’ll get you on the next bus that comes in for gas.”

They’d already tracked two busses that had pulled in at the same gas station. That would give them an opportunity for Noah to slip on board as a stowaway.

“I’ll get you in there and stay with you to make sure nothing goes wrong.” That would keep Lindsay from going crazy with worry that he was sacrificing Noah to save Dane and would end up losing both.

He’d never dreamed he’d be in that kind of position. “We’ll follow the bus, get as close as we can. Zoey and Ylli can handle the security system from outside to help smooth your way once you’re in.”

“And you can stand around and look cute,” Noah said to Kristan. “Or try. Practice.” She threw a stone at him and he rolled to his feet, laughing.

She got up as well, brushing dirt and grass from her jeans. “Just for that, you can drive.”

“Everything’s going to be fine.” Noah came over to Lindsay.

He had said the same thing last night. Lindsay wanted to believe him. Needed to believe him.

He caught Noah’s hand and raised it to his mouth to kiss the soft, new skin of Noah’s palm. “Yes. I’m going to make sure of it.”

Noah kept telling Lindsay it would all be okay because he was desperate to believe it himself. Hope wasn’t something he was very good at. In the past, he’d been adamant that he’d simply used up all his hope waiting for his magic. But with the second life Lindsay had given him, he’d had such things restored to him, as though he’d been refreshed.

He and Lindsay were alone in the front of the passenger van they’d rented through one of Patches’s friends. The thing would seat fifteen and yet Ylli, Kristan and Zoey were holed up in the back. Noah guessed it was an attempt to give him some time with Lindsay. It was endearing, really. Kristan, at least, wasn’t usually that subtle, even if it was a very small value of subtle.

As he pulled into the truck stop where the busses were known to refuel, Noah was scraping all the optimism he could find out of the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t fear of Moore or Lourdes. It was fear of failing. He couldn’t let Lindsay down.

“If Ylli’s friends are right, we won’t be waiting long,” Noah said, partly to remind himself that he wouldn’t have long to spend worrying before he had to simply act.

Lindsay’s fingers crept up Noah’s thigh. Before it got into salacious territory, he flipped it palm-up.

“Let’s get ready.”

Noah parked the van as far from the lights as he could, but left it running. Kristan would come take his place when he got out. He tucked his hand into Lindsay’s and held on.

“So, what’s my illusion this time?” He managed to come up with a smile for Lindsay.

“Any preferences?” Lindsay smiled back at him, but it looked strained. “I take requests.”

“Just don’t distract me.” Noah squeezed Lindsay’s hand. “Which leaves out the naked pictures of you.

Anything that works for you. A piece of jewelry or a watch, something that won’t look too odd from the outside if I see it or fiddle with it before I remember not to do that.”

Lindsay looked down at their hands and turned Noah’s so that it lay palm up in his. His expression was a study in concentration, as though he were searching for something under Noah’s skin. His fingers were frigid and pale against Noah’s dark skin when he laid them over the inside of Noah’s wrist.

“You made me a garden of them once.” Lindsay revealed a red-gold rose on Noah’s wrist, like a tattoo, but made of his magic. Noah remembered his mother’s garden, alight with magic on the blooms, and the fire roses he’d brought to the empty gym where Lindsay let him touch his magic without fear.

“I’ll plant you a real garden of them someday,” he promised.

He unbuckled his seatbelt to turn and cup Lindsay’s sweet face in both hands. Lindsay’s lips were cool and soft when they kissed. He hardly registered the sound of the van door sliding open as the others got out. Lindsay wasn’t just the reason he was going in; Lindsay was his reason to come out alive.

“I think we scared them off,” Lindsay whispered. He didn’t give Noah a chance to answer before he was wriggling out of his seatbelt and sliding across to kiss him again.

Whatever the reason, Noah didn’t care. He slipped one arm around Lindsay, holding him close and kissing him like he could somehow imprint on Lindsay the promise that he would be back. He knew Lindsay would blame himself for anything going wrong, and that was the last thing Lindsay needed.

“The bus is here,” someone outside murmured. Slowly, Lindsay pulled back.

“Let’s get this done.” Noah kissed him one more time, a soft kiss on the mouth. “I’ll trade off with one of the passengers. Make sure the driver opens the door.”

He got out of the van and checked that he had nothing on him, no cash, nothing that could identify him, no crumpled receipts in the bottoms of his pockets. Nothing but the tattoo that was visible to him and no one else.

“I’ll go ahead,” he said as Lindsay got out of the van. “See if you can see through me and speak to me for sure.”

“Remember not to answer me out loud.” It was Lindsay’s voice whispering in his ear, but it was no more real than the rose on his wrist.

“I won’t forget. ”

Noah had no idea if Lindsay heard him or not, but all that mattered was that Lindsay could keep track of things. He looked over his shoulder one more time. Lindsay would ensure he wasn’t seen, Ylli would grab whoever came off the bus, and all he had to do was board, liberate some poor sod, and let the rest happen. He wasn’t good at the last part, but he’d manage.

“I’m with you. You’re good to go.”

The door of the bus opened and a guard stepped out, walking over to the pump. The door stayed open.

Noah took the steps all at once, and slipped past the oblivious driver. It was eerie, like a dream, to be walking around invisible to everyone. The passengers were all quiet, mostly sleeping, some staring blankly out the windows. Noah knew what stoned looked like, and that was it. There was a passenger three rows back who seemed about his height and weight; better yet, the guy was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that he had pulled up so it was hard to see his face.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Noah muttered. The man stank of sweat and cigarettes, and he lolled limply as Noah stripped the sweatshirt off of him. Noah tugged it on and got the man’s arm around his neck, heaving him to his feet.

To Noah’s surprise, the man half-woke but didn’t get belligerent. Mumbling cheerfully, he let Noah walk him to the steps. The two guards sitting next to the steps didn’t look up from their respective smart phones; Lindsay’s illusion was working. From the flicker and glow of the screens, Noah guessed that one was playing a game and the other was reading.

“So, what’s your name?” It was worth a try, and Noah had no idea if they’d bothered to take names and keep a headcount.

The slurred reply sounded something like “Alex King”. Noah would take it. If he pretended to be as heavily influenced as this guy, he could have gotten away with “King Kong”.

Noah let Ylli pull the man off the bus, then went and took his place. It was hard to feign the boneless sag and dull reaction of someone drugged when adrenaline was flooding his brain, but Noah made himself relax. He focused on the rose on his right wrist, on the glow of it and the shading of the petals.

When the guard who had been pumping gas got back on and took his seat behind the driver, Noah’s heart tried to climb up his throat. He couldn’t risk any kind of reaction, couldn’t screw this up for everyone because he got a case of nerves. The mental exercises from his childhood were familiar enough that he drew on them to keep his mind busy while a guard from the back—one he hadn’t seen—started a slow walk up the aisle.

The bus rumbled and lurched, and pulled away from the pumps, heading back onto the highway.

Noah’s seatmate sat up a little, but Noah couldn’t see what caused it. The downside to having his face obscured was giving up his vision.

“Relax there, buddy,” the guard said reassuringly. “Not much farther to go.”

When his seatmate settled down, Noah realized he’d been holding his breath. Not much farther to go.

Out the window, their destination looked like any other industrial park lined in grass and trees to make it seem less imposing. A curving two-lane road took them past parking lots and buildings that would have been at home on a university campus.

The bus pulled to a stop in front of one of the lower buildings, one with a single row of parking spaces out front. Instead of cars, there were people standing in the parking spaces, some with white lab coats and others who looked similar to the men from Wildwood that Lindsay had called—

“Hounds. Be careful, Noah.”

No chance he was going to be anything but careful. The guards were coming up the aisle, waking passengers. Every once in a while, Noah heard a sharp hiss, like something from a compression canister. As he stumbled to his feet in response to a cuff from a guard, he caught a glimpse of what made the noise. It looked like a small can of pepper spray, but whatever came out couldn’t be smelled on the air. Where the person was sprayed, their skin went white like frostbite and they jerked like it was painful.

Noah wasn’t sticking around to see more. It was effective, he had to give them that. Maybe it was like cold water to the face. He hoped that was all it was.

Off the bus and on his feet, Noah felt a great pressure bearing down on him, the weight of magic.

Elementalists were always more inclined to feel magic, even to see it. The air was thick with it, like he was swimming in honey. It was thicker here than it had been where he’d found Ylli and Zoey. It clung and flowed around him, drawn in by his power and Lindsay’s.

A wild sound like a hyena’s hacking laugh coming from a human throat startled Noah, and he stumbled back into a cluster of other passengers, trying to stay close so he wouldn’t be singled out. Without warning, one, then two of the Hounds came at him, dropping from two legs to four, bodies and faces becoming more feral with every bound. He could see it in their mad eyes. They know.

The scientists and guards were shouting, scrambling and scattering, trying to restore order. Someone screamed and the jumpy man who had been Noah’s seatmate bolted from the group. The motion must have triggered some primal animal instinct in the Hounds because they changed course and more of them broke free to join the chase.

It was over in moments. Noah didn’t count more than seven strides before the Hounds took him down, no more than two heartbeats before the screaming stopped. Armed men in uniform flooded the parking lot.

Some surrounded the new arrivals, including Noah, and herded them away as the rest attempted to bring the Hounds to heel. The howls from the Hounds sounded like the baying of hunting dogs.

Noah looked back in time to see one break away from the scrum and come barreling at him. There was a light in its eyes that said more than language that it knew the truth of what he was, and he bit back his magic with every scrap of discipline he could muster. It leapt and would have cleared the guards except for the tasers that struck it, one after the other. Writhing, it hit the ground only feet away, and Noah could see the blood that covered its forelegs to the elbows and its long, feral face to the hairline. The sound of its teeth snapping and its claws raking asphalt was chilling.

Noah crammed down his gut reaction and turned away, following the guards as all the passengers were shuffled through a pair of gray doors set in the side of the building. He didn’t want to let emotion get the better of him, for his own sake and for Lindsay’s. He was fine. “I’m fine. ”

He kept telling himself that as they were led into what looked like the room where he’d taken the written exam for his driver’s license. The last thing he needed was for his magic to betray him now.

There were white-coated scientists with clipboards that held forms to be filled out by the “applicants”, everything down to salary expectations. He watched the others, docile and obedient, and realized quickly that they didn’t give a damn what you put down. They did like you to sign on the dotted line. Alex King was happy to do that for them.

It all felt like a slippery slope, as much as Noah tried to keep his mind on the goal, telling himself that the deeper he fell, the closer he was to winning. That kept him calm through losing his clothes in return for a hospital gown and having his head shaved.

“Saves us from having to pick up clippers, ” he noted dryly, for Lindsay’s sake. He was weighed and prodded, and he was just starting to feel calm when a pair of technicians in vanilla jumpers came in with a tray of syringes.

Vaccinations?

“I’m going to guess it’s not tetanus shots in those. ”

“No. Not tetanus.” Lindsay’s voice was flat the way it got when they were talking about something he didn’t like. The injection felt like fire going in and Lindsay hissed inside Noah’s head. “Nothing changes, does it? But you’re going to be all right, Noah. I promise.”

The technicians went past him, working their way back. Noah turned his attention to the first men to get their shots and watched one of them swaying.

“Yeah. I thought so. I think our broadcast is about to be disrupted. ” The room started spinning slowly. Noah turned his attention inward, closing his eyes to shut out the blurred room, and called up what heat he could muster. “Metabolism is just another kind of combustion, right?”

“I’ll be with you all the way.” Lindsay felt miles away, but the words were something Noah could cling to as he fought to hold on to consciousness.

The world turned into a stuttering slide show as Noah slipped in and out of consciousness. There were hands on him, and he was cold with something steel under his bare back. He was in a barn. No. Something huge and chilled, but he could hear animals. The rattle of metal on metal was a cage door being slammed shut. He was still moving, and they were talking.

They left him and, with nothing to hold on to, he slipped into the dark. A howl brought him back up and he had the sudden impression of being in a dog pound.

Hounds.

Now, with his body limp and out of his control, he panicked. This can’t happen. They were back and he fought down his fear. Hands were on him, his legs and shoulders. He was hefted up and tumbled into a metal box. They were talking about him, but the words didn’t make sense. To him. They would make sense to Lindsay.

Hybrid. Balancing strains. Inscribed cell cultures. Noah let himself fade until he was only a ghost in the back of his own mind, so Lindsay could listen. They were putting something in him, cutting and

stitching, like he was a doll. When the door closed, he could feel that same fire again, creeping out from that point.

“Help me. ” Noah needed to wake up. He needed something to burn away the poison leaking into his veins. “Don’t let me sleep. ” He needed to make sure they weren’t already doing something to him.

“I’ve got you.” Lindsay’s cool fingers were on his forehead, except that they weren’t, and Noah could feel the pull of his magic being drawn up inside him. The heat of it flowed under his skin, pushing back the chill of the medication.

Nothing was as terrifying as being helpless in the face of something awful. He was ashamed of not being stronger. Without knowing how, he was aware that Lindsay had been through this in some way. He could survive—Lindsay had.

“I’m sorry this happened to you .” Anything else he might have felt was lost the next moment.

Fever kept Noah from sinking into unconsciousness, but it distorted his perception until he felt as though he had been locked in the cage for days on end. The thought that he had been surrendered to the pound like a dog nagged him and became confused with the reality that his father had sent him to Cyrus.

He knew Lindsay was with him and imagined Lindsay standing outside his cage, looking in.

Finally, even if his mind couldn’t focus, his body acted, and he drifted into consciousness to find broken tubing clenched in his right hand and cool liquid pooling on his skin.

I’m awake.

His magic felt like a limb that had fallen asleep—only when pain came did he realize the magic working through his veins was his, but not in his control. Lindsay held it for him, separated him from it by some illusion he couldn’t understand, and kept it burning through his blood. The world grew clearer by the moment, like dawn had come.

Opening his eyes, he found that he could see—he had only imagined that the lights were out. There was the rattle of a gurney and voices drew close, so he turned his back to the cage door and hid the broken IV lines under him. His body was burning off the sedative, and he could flex his muscles now, enough that he thought he could stand.

I can do this. He reached out for his magic and touched it. As Lindsay let it go, it flowed back into him and sang in his veins like hundreds of tiny flames. He hadn’t known what having it truly absent—not merely parted from his will by Lindsay’s illusions—felt like, and he regretted all the times he’d wished for it to be gone.

Adrenaline brought the rest of Noah’s senses back. “Let me go. ” He itched under his skin with fire and fear. It was a struggle to stay helpless. He could see the others when he dared look, all of them limp and unaware of what they’d consented to become.

“Soon.” Lindsay’s voice was soothing, soft and cool like a touch. “Zoey is working on the cages—

she’s going to release the locks to let you out. Watch for the lights, then go.”

“I keep thinking I hear him . ” Noah shifted to press his feet against one wall, flexing his legs to work the drugs out of the large muscles. “If there’s anything you want saved from here other than him, tell me now. ” His outrage was deeper than his morals, it went down to his bones, down to everything written in his genes. When he let it loose, there wouldn’t be anything left of what distressed him.

“Just the two of you.”

“Soon. ” Noah wanted to go home.

When the lights went down, Noah felt the door of his cage give way, and he grabbed it as he rolled out. He was on the second tier, so it wasn’t far to the floor; as soon as his toes touched, he let go and crumpled to the ground. He felt leaden, his limbs refused to answer him, and he grasped at his magic to burn off the remaining drugs.

He had to move. Primal urgency forced him up to hands and knees. A cage door smashed him in the head as the man inside thrashed about. Pain and adrenaline fueled his magic and his head cleared enough that he could drag himself to his feet. Yelps and howls of creatures tasting freedom echoed through the room as the lights came up again.

Noah took a few unsteady steps and tripped over a body. Of course. Everyone around him would be as drugged as he had been.

“Come on.” Forcing his limbs to obey, he tried to turn the man over. His hands slid on cold, sweat-slick skin. “Wake up. We have to get out of here.” Noah flipped him over and stared down into empty, clouded eyes.

“Noah, move.”

Even as Lindsay’s frantic voice filled his head, something sent him sprawling. Someone stepped on him, a knee caught him in the side as he tried to get up. He staggered to his feet, slipped in something slick, and caught himself on the grating of another cage before he went down again.

“Noah. Do something. Now.”

His feet were sliding in blood. Half a corpse dangled from the top of the cages. Noah turned to see a huge Hound feeding on the man he’d tried to help.

He couldn’t parse Lindsay’s orders but his magic understood. It rose up in him and washed him clean with fire. Not content with purifying his blood, the fire rolled out to cleanse his skin, then boiled outward.

When Noah finally stood steady, there was nothing but ash on the floor at his feet.

Anarchy churned around him, howls and screams rising until Noah felt them through the concrete.

Where natural creatures needed a reason to kill, hunger or self-defense, Moore’s Hounds had been bred to hunt mage-flesh, to chase and to slaughter mercilessly. Freshly created, without inhibition, they turned on each other. The terrified staff, in fleeing, marked themselves as prey.

Creatures passed above him, hunting each other from one row of cages to another in a fatal game of tag. Noah had no idea where to find Dane, but he was sure Dane simply wouldn’t fit in the cage he’d been in. He picked a direction and ran.

At an aisle that cut across the rows, he stopped to flame a furred beast off of a screaming, struggling man. It was impossible to remain indifferent to the slaughter. The place had become an abattoir. A quick look around told him he was no closer to finding Dane than before. Everything looked the same—rows and rows of cages now open and spilling their half-mad contents into the aisles.

A shadow flickered in the corner of Noah’s eye and he threw himself aside to avoid being tackled from behind by the man he’d just saved. Suddenly, he was aware of more than one set of eyes on him. He’d drawn attention to himself with the kill and now, with his back to the cages, he was being stalked. The man who had seemed so human while fighting for his life was wild-eyed, and the teeth he bared were long and jagged.

“There’s no saving any of them. They’re gone . ” Lindsay’s voice rose up in the back of his head.

It was hard for Noah to override his natural instinct to protect his own kind. But once he did, he wasn’t afraid anymore. Just sad. A wave of fire rolled out and swept away everything around him.

Through the fire that cleaned the aisle ahead of him, Noah saw what had eluded him before. He’d gone the wrong way, his body automatically trying to go back the way it had been brought in. But this way there were computers and workstations, and other cages. Different cages. Once he had Dane, he could sweep the whole lab clean. He followed his fire, his bare feet seared by the heat held in the concrete floor.

Chapter Fifteen

Without his magic, Dane had been left to rely on his body and he was surprised to find out how efficient it was. The break Lourdes had given him had allowed him to become as close to perfectly functional as he could be without his magic. While he couldn’t hear Jonas’s heartbeat, the man’s breathing—and his humming—came through loud and clear. Sure, it was classical music, Baroque even, but Dane still wanted to ring Jonas’s head off the bars half the day.

When Jonas was quiet, the techs’ and scientists’ conversations were audible. Dane was slowly piecing things together and receiving a crash course in magical genetic engineering. Moore was using some hodgepodge of runes and cells and science so she could inject the essence of being a Hound into her victims. They had to have the potential for magic first, but the treatment would cause a full manifestation.

They were bringing in another batch of “recruits”, as Greer called them. Dane had no idea how Moore was finding them, had no idea that magic still ran so plentifully in the blood of mundane humans. It made his skin crawl to see the limp bodies loaded into cages and primed for treatment. Not all of them survived the preparation and the treatment brought fatalities as well.

Dane had seen the failures when they were rolled past on gurneys, on the way to autopsy. One had died of “uncontrolled growth-plate expansion”. That was what Greer had said. To Dane, it looked like the man’s bones had exploded out of his flesh in all directions. Another spawned half a head from the neck and a leg from the middle of the back. Some were so deformed—even to the point of being puddles of flesh in buckets—that Dane couldn’t work out what had gone wrong.

Every day, he watched for any sign of a flaw in the routine around him, something he could exploit and get free that way. Someone would come for him but he wouldn’t be Cyrus’s first priority. If he wanted out soon, he’d have to do it himself. All he’d managed to determine was that the locks on the cages were electronic, controlled from the consoles in the lab area, and no one made mistakes.

His own cage was locked with bolts and padlocks, maybe even with magic; Jonas’s cage looked the same. Moore wasn’t trusting their containment to the main system; she’d learned from his escape with Lindsay months ago in New York. He was certain it would take more than one cooperative person to unlock his cage—Lindsay couldn’t just ensorcel a single low-level tech into opening it up.

“How are we today?” Greer came in and headed straight for him, looking positively sunny. She always came by, sometimes more than once a day. “Sorry I missed dinner last night.” It was surreal, the way she spoke to him like he was a roommate or a friend.

“You didn’t miss much.” Dane talked to exercise his mind more than anything else. Jonas hadn’t been a good conversationalist before his brain was scrambled, he was worse now. “Chicken again.”

“I know.” Greer gave him a sad look. “Beef shipment next week.” She was about to say something else when a gray-faced soldier came racing in like there were Hounds behind him.

Dane wanted to hear, but she stepped away and the soldier whispered in her ear. It had to be bad; she went as white as her coat. She sent the soldier away with a gesture and hurried off to confer with her colleagues. He leaned against the front of his cage and watched.

“Problems?” he asked, when her panicked scurrying brought her close enough that he didn’t have to raise his voice.

“One of you has terrible manners,” Greer snapped. There were tasers and sedative guns racked on the wall nearby. She clipped a small taser to her belt. Dane stifled his laugh so he wouldn’t tempt her to use it on him. He’d seen her in a mood before. Working for Moore suited the flip side of her personality.

“That’s definitely Jonas,” he said solemnly. “My kids would never misbehave.”

“We’ll see about that.” Greer’s look was purely venomous, and Dane missed having his fangs to bare.

“You should be hoping they might,” she added. “When we get a stable cultivar, we’ll put the primary stock in storage.” She left him with that and headed down the aisles of cages, off to whatever crisis was distracting her from work.

Dane tested the cage again. Every day, he felt weaker. He didn’t know what storage meant, but it was going to be worse than this. If he thought for a second that Moore would buy it, he’d take Jonas’s old place in order to get out, but there was no way he could mean it enough to pass any test she’d give. Lourdes might lie for him, but Moore wouldn’t be satisfied with her word alone, not if she’d taken Jonas away.

Snarling with frustration, he pushed off of the front bars hard enough to bang his head on the back ones.

“Let it go.” Jonas was slumped against the near side of his cage, staring at the back wall. “At least they might put us to sleep after this. I can’t sleep.”

“You sleep all the time,” Dane reminded him. Jonas looked fine on the outside, but he wasn’t right in the head. Some magic healed the spirit as well as the body. Neither of them was that fortunate.

“Sleep tires me out. I’m always running.”

“Well, go to sleep in your sleep,” Dane said reasonably. Being cruel to Jonas wasn’t fun anymore.

Moore fucking ruined everything. “Close your eyes and dream about sleep.” If Jonas slept, he’d be quiet, and Dane could eavesdrop.

There was a rumble as gurneys came in the wrong door. Dane shuffled forward on his knees to see.

Bodies. Mature Hounds in uniform. The trainers didn’t put uniforms on them until they were reliable.

Had the others tried an assault on the place and failed? There weren’t that many bodies. Dane’s heart beat so hard he was afraid it was going to damage itself. It slowed as the gurneys came closer, and his fear turned to malicious glee.

The Hounds didn’t look human anymore, most of them. Their bloodied bodies were half-feral, and many of them showed the marks of teeth and claws. Bad manners indeed. Now he understood.

Had to be Jonas’s fault, though. He hadn’t been here long enough for “his” Hounds to be in uniform.

Besides, from the complaints he heard, “his” were even more trouble than the ones they’d made from Jonas’s magic. It was comforting to know he was ruining Moore’s plans by proxy, if he couldn’t do it himself.

He saw Greer returning and amused himself by making up dialogue for her and the others as they ran about in a panic. Good thing for them Moore wasn’t here.

Dane grew bored and Greer wasn’t coming over to entertain him, which was disappointing. He closed his eyes, but something fluttered—dark and light and dark and light—and he sat up to look.

Everyone was frozen in the moment, then the lights went out again. All through the vast space, there was a single clang made up of more small sounds than Dane could count. But he knew what it was. Every cage unlocking. Every one but his and Jonas’s cages, of course. Before he could inhale to laugh, there was chaos.

The lights came back on in time for Dane to watch a half-feral Hound launch itself into the middle of the lab area. It was clumsy, still learning its new body, but even its flailing was impressive as its claws sliced through plastic and steel and cables as easily as if they were movie props.

“Hey, Jonas. Look.”

The staff were brutally outnumbered—Moore never planned for failure. As their tasers failed to stop the Hounds, panic set in and they tried to flee. Jonas perked up for the first time, squawking at the sight of a Hound gutting a technician and spraying a pristine row of white computers with blood. Nothing amused Jonas like a good bit of gore.

Dane caught a glimpse of Greer through the chaos, walking toward the near exit at a sedate pace, head high. Smart girl. The Hounds didn’t give a damn about her since she wasn’t running or fighting; they were all instinct and she had nothing they were programmed to hunt. Good. If she was alive now, he could kill her later, personally. Her and the weather mage.