Make the charge, Kye said, I'm right with you.
Then I'm going. I put my head down and ran. Right into a zombie, knocking him down hard, then leaping over him as I raced for the door. Kye appeared beside me, as covered in slime as I was, and reeking to high heaven. We neared the ramp, our steps lost in the pounding of the zombies coming after us.
Up the top of the ramp, the shadows moved, and the scent of humanity-of a woman-washed over me. Jessica, not Hanna. Then I felt the burn of silver and heard the soft click of a safety being disengaged.
I slid to a stop. Kye did the same, barely missing running into my back. The zombies behind us crowded close, providing a wall of flesh through which there'd be no easy escape. Not that there was anywhere to go behind them. Our only way out was the tunnel. If we could get past Jessica and whatever form of backup she'd bought with her.
She rolled out of the shadows, the gun held unwaveringly in her hands. There was a zombie at her back holding a second weapon.
"I underestimated you," she said softly, her voice cool but still holding that edge I'd noticed earlier.
"I get that a lot," I said, even as I added telepathically to Kye, the weapons are loaded with silver. "Tell me, Jessica, why are you killing the teenagers? It makes no sense, given Hanna has already paid them handsomely for their silence."
"No monetary payment ever guarantees silence one hundred percent. If any of them had opened their damn mouths about how they got the money, Hanna's game was up."
"But why would you even care? Why would you go to such lengths to protect a woman who's not exactly chummy with sanity?"
"Sane or not, she cared for me when no one else would, and for that I owe her loyalty." She gave me a twisted half-smile that was part sadness, part acceptance. "Which means I get to clean up her mistakes and keep her safe."
Then she pulled the trigger. I threw myself sideways, even as Kye hit me, making me lose my balance. He stumbled then went down, hard. There was blood on his face, blood in his hair, blood on the ramp, and something inside me went numb.
For too many seconds, I couldn't react, couldn't think. I just stared at his unmoving form and thought no, no, no.
Then movement caught my eye. The gun, aimed my way.
I twisted around and lunged for the weapon that had fallen from Kye's hand. I grabbed it and fired, all in one swift motion. Saw the woman jerk, then go limp, as the wound in her forehead began to leak blood and brain matter. I fired a second shot, shattering the wrist of the zombie holding the gun, tearing it clean from his arm.
I closed my eyes for a moment, releasing a deep, shaking breath. But the danger wasn't over yet, I realized as fingers began to dig into my flesh. I twisted around, wrenching myself free, then jumped upright and lunged forward at the rest, hitting them front on and sending them flying.
Then I turned and ran back to Kye, dropping to my knees beside him and feeling for his pulse. It was there, fast but strong, and some of the tension that had been twisting my insides relaxed a little. But only a little. The bullet had hit at an angle, smashing through his right shoulder before making a trench across the side of his head, and both wounds were bleeding profusely. If he didn't wake up, didn't change shape and stop the bleeding soon, he would die.
I pinched his earlobe as hard as I could, then said, "Kye, get up."
A zombie lunged at me, I twisted around, sweeping with my leg, knocking him off his, then pinched Kye's ear harder. "Damn it, wolf, wake up. You have to shift shape."
He didn't respond, and the fear that had been partially mollified when I realized he was still alive began to rise again. I didn't care for this man, didn't want to get involved with him, but something deep within simply didn't want to see him die, either. But then, my wolf had a bad habit of latching onto-or rather, lusting after-totally unsuitable men.
I kicked away more attacking zombies, then jumped to my feet and grabbed Kye's armpits. Jessica had obviously given her creatures final orders before I'd killed her, and I couldn't concentrate on waking Kye with the zombies continuing to attack from all angles. I needed to at least restrict their options. So I hauled him upright and began to walk backward up the ramp.
And suddenly I realized that there was someone else in the room. Someone who was alive and who breathed, and whose scent was all too familiar.
Hanna.
I shifted my grip on Kye and twisted around, the gun in one hand and my finger on the trigger. But for the second time that night, I simply wasn't fast enough.
The bullet hit with the force of a hammer, tearing into my shoulder and smashing me sideways, away from Kye and into a wall.
Pain flared, red hot and burning, and I knew then that the bullet was silver.
Then that thought died and there was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Chapter Eleven
Waking was a slow and painful process. My head throbbed so badly it made me want to throw up, but it was almost matched by the burning ache in my right shoulder. An ache that pulsed down my arm as it went numb.
Fear hit me-a fear so deep that for several seconds I struggled to breathe.
I knew that burning. Knew it all too well.
I'd been shot with silver and the bullet was still lodged in my flesh.
I forced reluctant eyelids open, needing to know where I was and what had happened while I was out of it. A white ceiling loomed high above me, meaning they'd moved me from the cavern. But that ceiling didn't actually look like one of the club ceilings, either. The cornices were too ornate, the ceiling itself too high.
Plus, the air here smelled different. It was fresher, with undertones of baking and roses rather than the club's seedier aroma of alcohol and lust.
Which didn't mean there wasn't magic here. There was, but it wasn't as strong. It was more a wisp of darkness that occasionally stained the fresher scents rather than something that overwhelmed and completely fouled.
I shifted slightly, trying to ease the ache in my hip, and realized I was laying on something cold and hard. I shifted my left fingers and touched the surface.
Metal. And unlike the table in the cavern, this one didn't smell like blood-although that aroma was in the air, if only faintly. I drew in a deeper breath, sifting through the smells in the air, finding strong hints of antiseptic swirling around the tang of old blood. This table and this room had been washed down many, many times.
As full awareness began to return, I also realized that the burning numbness in my right arm was matched-to a lesser degree-by similar sensations at both ankles and my left wrist.
I turned my head, saw the silver shackles and chains attached to my arm, and swore softly.
Behind me, someone chuckled.
"I'm glad you're awake, little werewolf," Hanna said, her voice friendly, almost conspiratorial. "I did so want you to see your death coming."
"That's another mistake in a long line of them, Hanna. Always kill a guardian when you get the chance, because we don't give you a second go."
"Well, this time the bad guy wins, not the guardian. And your blood will provide excellent fuel for my magic and potions."
Like hell it would. I twisted around, trying to see her. The movement not only caused chains to pull at my wrist and dig farther into my skin, but sent a stab of agony through the rest of my body as my shot shoulder protested the action. Sweat broke out across my forehead, and my breath hissed out through clenched teeth. It took several seconds for the tears to clear enough to see her.
Hanna was standing behind me, a tall, willowy woman who looked far older than she had in the office. Maybe it was the lack of makeup, or maybe it was the fact that her only items of clothing were a pale green ribbon tying her dark hair away from her face and the thin strand of wire around her neck. Her green eyes had a wild sort of look to them, and her skin was unnaturally shiny, as if she'd covered herself in oil of some kind.
"What have you done with Kye?"
She raised an eyebrow, green eyes cool and amused. "I'm guessing you mean the man who was with you?"
"Yes."
"Oh, he's probably bled to death by now."
Something within me wanted to curl up and die at the thought. It was weird-I might have lusted after the man, but I didn't actually like him, and yet here I was, wanting to weep for his loss. The wolf sure was strange at times.
"It's a shame, really," Hanna continued, "to waste all that good blood, but shifting three bodies would have placed too much strain on both my magic and me."
"You'll regret letting him die, Hanna."
"Oh, I'd be a little more worried about your health, if I were you."
I was worried all right, but I'd been in worse situations than this and had survived. And I had no intention of dying today, either.
Whether fate agreed with my decision was another matter entirely, but I wasn't worrying about that right now.
"Tell me, how did you and Jessica meet?"
It obviously wasn't a question she was expecting, because she looked up in surprise. "Why do you want to know?"
"Just curious." I shrugged, the action sending pain rolling across my skin.
"We grew up together," she said after a moment. "Like me, she had a gift for darker powers and was ostracized by her family because of them."
I could understand the two odd peas clinging together for safety and companionship, because in very many ways, that's what Rhoan and I had done. But why go on to become such violent murderers?
"And you looked after her when she had her accident and became paraplegic?"
"It was no accident," she said, voice a little tighter.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she said tightly, "that the rich young bastard who paralyzed her first seduced her mother before he beat them both up and drained her mother to death."
I guess that explained why she seemed to be going after the more affluent vamps rather than any old vamp. "Why didn't he kill Jessica?"
"Her back was broken-shattered-so badly that shifting couldn't heal it. She started screaming for help, and their neighbors heard and called the cops. That's the only thing that saved her."
"So you started killing vampires as revenge for what happened to her?" I shifted my head a little more, until my ear pressed against the hard stone. I didn't know if that would actually turn on the com-link's sound, but I had to at least try it. I'd left tracking on as ordered, but the Directorate wouldn't actually come running unless they realized I was in trouble. Sal might be good at guessing when that might be, but with the way fate liked playing games with me, I could place money on the fact that the one time I needed Sal to act would be the one time she didn't.
"It wasn't the only reason," Hanna said, her concentration on whatever she was crushing in a small earthen bowl rather than on me.
As concoctions went, it smelled rather nice, reminding me of forest and herbs. And that set all sorts of alarm bells ringing.
A dark sorcerer mixing up something that smelled good, when every other ounce of her magic smelled so foul? It had to be an illusion of some kind. And if that was, maybe everything else was, too.
I squinted up at the ornate ceiling, trying to see a shimmer or a wobble, or anything else that would suggest it was little more than a fancy trick rather than a reality. But it stubbornly remained looking like plain old plaster. In fact, if not for the fact that this was the domain of a dark sorcerer, I'd swear we were just in a windowless room of an ordinary house. An almost empty one, granted, because the only bits of furniture were the table on which I lay, the large metal cart she was using, and a cluttered metal shelving unit that lined the wall opposite the door.
Would a sorcerer intent on blood sacrifices do so in the middle of suburbia?
But then, why wouldn't she? An ordinary, unassuming house would be as good a hiding place for evil deeds as any dark cavern.
I looked back at Hanna, the movement rattling the chains tying me to the table and sending yet more arrows of pain rolling through me. I tried to ignore it, but that was almost as impossible as ignoring the ache in my shoulder. Or the numbness in my arm that would soon slip insidiously through the rest of my body.
I had to get out of these chains, had to rip the bullet from my flesh, before either began doing permanent damage. And as sensitive as I was to silver, it wouldn't be all that long.
Trouble was, with the silver on and in my body, I couldn't shift shape, so my only real weapons were my strength and my telepathy. Given that the chains felt strong, it was doubtful that strength would get me free. Which left telepathy. And while she had a nanowire on, those could be beaten. So I gathered my strength and hit her mentally.
This time it didn't just feel like I hit a brick wall.
This time, I hit it and bounced off it.
It left me reeling mentally and for several seconds I felt like my head was going to explode.
"Oh," said the witch, her voice somewhat smug. "I should perhaps warn you that this room has been proofed against telepathy, both via magic and electronically."
"How can you proof a room against telepathy via magic?"
Speaking hurt. In fact, the words seemed to bounce around my brain like sharp little knives. But I had to get her talking. The more I delayed her plans, the more time it gave the Directorate to find me. And I had to hope they were on the way, because it was looking less and less likely that I was going to get out of this by myself.
"Dark magic can achieve anything if you're willing to pay the price for it."
"And what have you been willing to pay, Hanna?" The pain in my head had receded a little, meaning it hurt less to speak. Which might have been a good thing if it hadn't meant the burning ache from the silver in my shoulder intensified again.
