Born to Darkness (69 page)

He kept his eyes open this time, staring at the blasting cap he’d rigged against the wall, even as he worked to free Goatee from his jacket.

And he let it all heat.

Hotter. And hotter. And …

And his little bomb went off, not with a pop, but with a boom and a spray of plaster and chunks of concrete.

Shane used Goatee’s jacket as a makeshift hot-mitt as he grabbed the SIG Sauer and dove for the hole in the wall.

Bach couldn’t find Nika.

She’d been caught in the swirling chaos of nightmares and fear that was a side effect of the sedative she’d been given.

He could hear her—as if from a distance—calling to him. And it was breaking his heart that he couldn’t reach her. But in truth, he was afraid of that total lack of control.

He was managing—somehow—to cling to the periphery of her mind, and thus escape most of the numbing and confusion-creating sensation. But of course he wouldn’t find her there. He didn’t stand a chance of finding her unless he let go.

Charlie—good man—had gotten him back to the van and was giving him regular reports both from Analysis and from the team that had entered the building.

“Power and scanners still aren’t out,” he told Bach in a loud clear voice. “Jackie reports they’ve made it past the guards in the lobby, but their elevators have been stopped, which they expected. The stairs are impenetrable, so they’re continuing up to the fortieth floor via the elevator shafts.”

Using that route meant it would take them much too long to get there.

Bach knew that, any minute, Nika was going to be put on a private service elevator and taken down to the basement, where she’d be spirited out via tunnel.

So he took his fear and he swallowed it.

And he dove, headfirst into the maelstrom, calling Nika’s name.

The man with the scar had forgotten completely about Anna, as Mac hit him again with a wave of her power.

As he shuffled closer and closer, she saw what she’d done to him, and she worked it, overtime, to hide her revulsion and her fear.

It couldn’t just be sex that he wanted from her—it had to be more. It had to be powerful—it had to dominate everything he wanted and needed in his nasty little world. And he had to believe—completely—that whatever he was feeling, she was feeling it, too.

So Mac closed her eyes and thought of Shane—of the way her heart warmed when he smiled at her, at the comfort she felt with his arms around her, of the pleasure she got just from his presence in the room …

She loved him. God help her, she truly
loved
him. And she opened her eyes and made herself believe that this was Shane coming toward her, wearing some hideous Halloween mask.

And the man smiled back at her—at least she thought it was a smile.

If this didn’t work? It was really going to suck.

Shane’s aim had never been so true.

He’d always been good at clearing a room filled with bad guys. He had a solid sixth sense when it came to anticipating movement and eliminating the threat.

But today he hadn’t wasted a single bullet as he rolled across the security control room and secured the door.

He’d taken the entire room in, in a single glance—the computers that ran the banks of scanners, the power source and backup generators, the rows of monitors showing not just video from the halls and public areas, but from the rooms where the prisoners were held, as well.

Which was why he didn’t hesitate to drill each of the five men in that room with five perfect head shots. There was no question. They knew exactly what the Brite Group was, and what they did there.

So Shane ended them, without blinking.

He could see from the monitors that a small crowd had gathered outside of the ladies’ room door—and from the looks of things, the big behemoth with the shaved head was in charge. The man looked formidable and may actually have had muscle beneath his layers of body fat. But like most rent-a-cops, he was all about the appearance and the swagger. He apparently hadn’t done the math and put together the proximity of the bathroom to the security control room until he heard the telltale gunfire.

Now he’d stomped over and was glaring up into the camera that was positioned outside of the control room’s locked door.

Shane scanned the other monitors, searching for Mac, Anna, and Nika, but there were too many rows of video screens, and the pictures flashed and changed constantly, dizzyingly.

So he focused on the scanners as he pulled the remaining C4 from his pocket—but then realized he didn’t need it. With his new power to heat metal, he could simply fry the wires in all of the computer motherboards.

He let loose a blast and the astringent smell of melting electrical circuits quickly filled the air, even as he considered the best way to take out the power supply.

For that, he
did
use his remaining C4, strategically placed, although—damn—his second blasting cap had been blown to hell back in the bathroom. Still, with his ability to super-heat metal he could rig something makeshift, unless …

He took cover and focused and …

Nothing.

Although, one by one, the monitors were starting to flicker and go out, as their wiring overheated.

It was then, right before the picture vanished with a pop, that Shane saw her.

Mac. Strapped to a hospital bed and looking up at a misshapen man who approached her, his intention clear since he held himself in one hand, and a deadly looking blade in the other.

But the monitor went dark, even as Shane leapt toward the controls. “No! God damn it,
no
!
Mac!
”

But all of the computers were smoking now and the last of the monitors flickered and went out.

It was then that the C4 exploded, throwing Shane up and back. As the power went out and the electrical outlets in the room sparked and flared, he hit the wall with a crash.

The glint of the knife that the scar-faced man was holding in his right hand was Mac’s first clue that this wasn’t going down the way she’d hoped and planned.

Still, maybe it was a security thing for him, so she sent him another blast of love and sincerity.

“Baby, please,” she said. “I know you’re not supposed to, but I wish you’d free my hands, my arms, because I just want to hold you.”

It was then that he laughed, and he stabbed the blade of his knife, hard, into the bed between her legs, so that it quivered there. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” he asked in that horribly odd voice. “You think I don’t know that you’re mind-controlling me?”

“But I’m not,” she said, except her voice sounded breathless—and not in a
wow, I can’t wait til you fuck me
way. “Baby, I’m not …”

“FYI,” he said, as the lights around them flickered and then went out. “It doesn’t work for me unless you scream.” The emergency lights came on, casting the room in an even more artificial glow, and revealed the fact that the scar-faced man was smiling. It was awful. “Or bleed.”

Shane was back on his feet immediately as the emergency lighting system clicked on, bathing the smoke-filled room in a dim bluish light.

He could hear the shouts of the Organization’s security guards in the hallway, but fuck that. Mac was in peril, and he was going after her.

He used Goatee’s jacket to shield his hands as he picked up the handgun, and he opened the door.

The behemoth was still standing right there, his surprise at seeing Shane written all over his ugly face. He raised his sidearm, and if he’d been any faster, Shane would have been dead. As it was, he just had time to send out a blast of heat, which made the man drop his weapon. In fact, most of them did, but a few got some shots off, even as Shane took out as many as he could before they ran away.

He felt the slap of a bullet graze his shoulder before he slammed the door shut again, and the thing was so fucking hot it practically cauterized the wound even as it made it.

Which, unfortunately, didn’t mean it didn’t bleed. It just didn’t bleed as much.

So much for being bulletproof.

Still, he had to get to Mac. But how? Apparently his metal-heating talent didn’t work outside of the room he was in—or all the guards would have already dropped their hardware before he’d hit the hallway.

Okay. Think. Or shit—experiment. What else could he do?

There was something called dematerialization, which would allow someone with that power to walk through walls. He could feel Mac—she wasn’t that far away. Please, God, he just wanted to get to her, to help her. But again, he had to focus. And picture the floor plan in his mind. It would be a problem to walk through a wall and find himself in an elevator shaft.

He’d start out relatively easy and try to move back into the bathroom.

Shane took a deep breath and started to walk—and slammed, hard, face-first into the wall.

Son
-of-a-bitch. Add dematerializing to the no-can-do list with bulletproof. And color him a moron for not checking first with, oh, say, his hand? But Jesus, he just wanted to get to Mac …

The smoke was getting thick, so Shane went back through the hole he’d made, into the bathroom where Goatee was still on the floor.

Maybe he could do that telepathic thing that Nika had done with Bach—leaping into his body and pushing his conscious mind aside. Possession, they’d called it.

Maybe he could possess Goatee, and walk himself out of here as a prisoner. Except, if he was going to possess someone else, why not go big?

Shane remembered the very brief audio report he’d accessed that detailed what Nika had said she’d done to leap into Dr. Bach’s head. She’d used her anger to channel her power, and had focused on reaching out to Bach.

As far as recipes went, it was pretty vague. But if there was one thing Shane had plenty of right now—it was anger. So he closed his eyes and he pictured Mac.

And he pictured the man who’d been closing in on her with that knife.