Chosen by Fate (3 page)

Luckily for both of them, Caleb had come prepared.

He looked at Riley. The man might be a little chattier than Caleb liked, but he’d had no problem taking Caleb’s lead on the current mission. He was smart and he was a clean shot. That’s all that mattered right now. “Mahone’s in bad shape. We need to get in there fast. I’m hoping the vamp will teleport as soon as he knows he has company, but I need you and your team to cover me in case he decides to stick around. Are your shooters set up around the perimeter of the room?”

“They’ve all checked in and are in the crawl space with their weapons ready.”

“Obviously your bullets won’t kill him, but along with the Hyperion gas, they may buy me enough time to get to Mahone and extract him.”

“How long does it take for the Hyperion to immobilize a vampire?”

The Hyperion was something Caleb had developed toward the end of the War. The government hadn’t known about it, and he’d only used it a few times before peace had been declared. The testing he’d conducted had been limited, but he felt fairly confident it would work.

At this point, he figured his odds of getting out with Mahone were only slightly below average. “Usually about sixty seconds, but that’s with a vamp who’s been weakened by the effects of the vampire vaccine. From the looks of this one, he’s had pure blood recently. Still, he might not be at full strength.”

“If the vamp’s immobilized by the Hyperion, how do we keep him contained while we take him in?”

“We don’t. That’s not what we’re here for. Our sole objective is to rescue Mahone.”

Riley nodded, but looked troubled. “You said he’s doing bad . . .”

Caleb tried to keep his expression blank. “Doing bad” was an understatement. Mahone probably had less than five minutes of life left in his broken body. “Just get me to him. I’ll take care of it from there. You ready?”

Riley communicated with his men, then nodded. “It’s a go.”

Slipping the small gas pellet from his pocket, Caleb held it up. “Remember, you have to stay back. Help me hold back the vamp, then get your men out. You’re maintaining the perimeter, not going in. This gas immobilizes vamps and weres, but it does far worse to humans once enough of it is absorbed in the bloodstream.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve built up a resistance. It’s not extensive, but it’ll give me the five minutes I need. If we don’t make it out, it’ll take two hours for the gas to dissipate. Don’t come into the room until that much time has passed. Understood?”

Riley nodded and held out his hand. O’Flare shook it, then strode to the door that would lead him from the roof to the room below. He moved quietly, his breathing low and shallow, his gun held at the ready with the gas pellet in his other hand. He’d activate it as soon as he got close enough that it could work its magic on the vampire.

When he entered the room, he immediately saw Mahone. Even the radar’s enhanced imaging hadn’t prepared him. The vampire wasn’t touching him, but Mahone’s facial features were contorted in agony, his body writhing and jerking even as he remained silent. Fuck, Caleb thought when he saw the blood seeping out of Mahone’s eyes and ears.

“Hey, vamp.” He shouted at the same time he threw the pellet, which would emit a toxic but invisible gas. The vampire whirled around, his eyes flashing red the instant he saw Caleb. The vampire bared his fangs and came at him, his feet gliding above the ground. Caleb fired a round directly at his chest, causing him to fall back. At the same time, Riley and his men fired, as well. As the vamp jerked with the impact of the bullets, O’Flare ran for Mahone. He reached up and felt his pulse.

It was barely there. Caleb felt the man’s life literally bleeding out of him.

Laying his hands on Mahone’s bloody chest, Caleb closed his eyes. Bullets still fired around him, some coming too damn close. Damn it, Riley’s men had to get out before the gas reached them in the crawl space. “Get out!” he yelled.

“The vampire teleported,” Riley shouted. “We’re clear.”

With a sigh of relief, Caleb willed his consciousness into a trance and called to his ancestors for their healing help. He saw them in the colors that swirled behind his eyelids and felt their presence in the heat that immediately suffused his body. Their voices chanted, low and soothing, directing him to keep one hand directly over Mahone’s heart and the other over his eyes. Caleb willed the healing heat building within his body to transfer to Mahone. As it did, he took some of Mahone’s pain into himself.

He felt his own heartbeat slow.

His limbs weakened.

His body began to shake with the effort of remaining upright, and he forced even breaths, sensing he needed to maintain contact far longer than he ever had.

Come on, come on, he urged himself. Hang in there.

The dizziness came next. Then the nausea. He could feel his lungs filling with the gas that swirled around them and knew his time was running out.

His body jerked as he coughed, and the movement threatened to pull his hands away from Mahone.

They had to get out of there, but if he disconnected too soon, it would all be for nothing. Mahone would die. Hell, Caleb would probably die, as well, too weak from the healing to get out on his own.

But then he felt Mahone’s chest rising strongly and his pulse beating regularly, and he knew the healing had worked. The heat slowly left his body, and the voices of his ancestors faded. Caleb whispered his thanks, then opened his eyes. Swiftly, he reached up and unhooked Mahone’s chains from the manacles around his wrists. Mahone groaned and slumped over just as Caleb caught him and threw him fireman-style over his shoulder.

Caleb staggered a few steps before he turned, intending to carry Mahone to the doorway. Halfway there, his knees buckled. He lost his grip on Mahone, and the man slipped and rolled a couple of feet away. Grunting, Caleb fell on all fours, his head hanging, his lungs seizing up.

He’d waited too long. They were both going to die in this warehouse, just like the FBI scientists who’d discovered the vamp antidote only to be killed because of it. He looked up, eyes watering, searching the room, thankful that Team Blue had obeyed his orders even as he regretted the fact no one was going to be able to help him.

But then he saw her. Wraith. Running toward him. He tried to open his mouth. To yell at her to stop.

His heart squeezed. Damn her for putting herself at such risk. He didn’t know how the gas would affect a wraith. Since it worked so well on vamps, immortality had nothing to do with the effects. But he couldn’t make a sound, and Wraith kept coming. She knelt beside him and pulled him up. She was yelling something, and he tried to make it out.

“. . . have to walk! I need to get Mahone. Can you walk, O’Flare?”

She was glancing frantically between him and Mahone, the indecision on her face readily apparent. She couldn’t carry them both out of there before the gas ended them.

“Leave me . . .” he tried to say, but again no sound came out. It didn’t matter. Wraith understood.

She grabbed him by his shirt and shook him, hanging on when he began to slide, practically keeping him on his feet. “No fucking way, O’Flare. I didn’t survive Korea just to come back and lose you in the States. Stay on your feet and move. You’re walking out of here. Got it?”

The vehemence in her voice roused him enough to nod. She released him, and although he swayed on his feet, he didn’t fall. Quickly, she grabbed Mahone, carrying him in the same lift O’Flare had used. Then, amazingly, she positioned herself next to him and ordered, “Lean against me if you need to. Start walking. Now.”

Caleb walked. He didn’t know how he did it, but he managed to put one foot in front of the other. At one point, he did have to lean on her, and he sensed how it slowed her down, but she didn’t move away. She stayed with him.

Until they made it out into the open air. He heard shouts and the sound of stomping feet just as he collapsed.

When he came to, he was being loaded into an ambulance. Riley’s face hovered above him. “Mahone?” Caleb rasped out.

“Still alive,” Riley said. “But I don’t know if he’s going to stay that way.”

From the worried expression on the man’s face, Caleb knew his own chance of survival was also in question.

“Wraith?” he asked, grabbing on to the man’s shirt when he didn’t answer. “What about the wraith?”

Riley shook his head. “I don’t know. She passed out, same as you. No pulse, remember? No breath. No way to tell if she’s alive or dead. They took her in another cab. Your guess is as good as mine.”

F
irst it had been vamps and weres. Then felines and mages. Then finally wraiths and shape-shifters. One by one, the Otherborn had been discovered by humans. Over the next five years, they’d run the gamut of emotions together: fear and exhilaration, hope and despair, suspicion and hostility.

And then, just when the fighting had ended and Mahone had taken a breath, amazed that he’d managed to survive it all, he’d been visited by a Goddess with plans to annihilate every living creature on earth. Even more surprising, she’d apparently believed that
he
, Kyle Mahone, generic human, FBI grunt, and allaround fuck-up at heart, held the key to stopping her.

By the look on her face right now, she no longer did.

Even as Mahone stared at the Goddess Essenia, sensation and thoughts numbed by drugs immediately flared to life. White-hot pain made him jerk and gasp, while at the same time his mind, his soul, his being—whatever the hell one chose to label his life force—greedily latched on to the feelings that had never been so crystal clear with purpose. He felt the zing of blood pumping through his veins, the crackle of neurons firing in his brain, and the powerful beat of his heart thudding in his chest cavity. Every cell inside him shouted. He lived. He breathed. He existed. At the same time, he was consumed by a heady, life-altering knowledge, one granted to him by the being who’d appeared in his room.

He lived, but only because she permitted it.

He lived, but only because she had the power to sustain life or end it.

He knew she wanted to end it.

Despite everything he and the Para-Ops team had done in the past two months to fulfill the bargain he’d struck with her, he sensed her resolve. Her disappointment. In him. In all of her children.

Growling at the knowledge, he forced his eyes to remain open. He stared despite the light that surrounded her, so intense that most were blind to it unless she chose to reveal herself. Yet again, he was stunned by the power of her visage, one so beautiful and so frightening it made him think of Medusa, the creature with snakes for hair and the ability to turn any man who looked directly at her into stone.

Her soft, melodious laugh drifted toward him. The sound was ethereal. Soothing. Mahone actually felt his wounds healing. Pain ebbed, replaced by a pleasure so intense it made his body shudder in near orgasmic pulses. He threw back his head and groaned, his body arching off the bed so that only his skull and heels made contact with the mattress.

“Medusa was but a myth, Human. Yet another boogeyman created by your kind to fulfill its need for darkness and violence.” Essenia drifted closer to him and waved her hand over his body. The riotous sensations quivering through his muscles ceased until he once more lay in the bed, the sweat on his brow and the dull, medicated pain of his wounds a blessing. “Your wounds are just another manifestation of the inability of my offspring to exist in peace. No matter how I try, no matter the chances I’ve granted, it is always the same.”

Gut clenching with the effort it cost him, Mahone forced himself to sit up. “The team . . .” he gasped. “We accomplished our first mission. We proved humans and Otherborn can work together.”

The being shook her head. “Even your statement highlights the chasm between my children. And your mission? One small victory drowned by a sea of greed and violence. Look what happened to you in the process. Your success cannot make up for centuries of deception and violence.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Mahone reasoned desperately. “The prophecy doesn’t speak of the whole world, nor the whole nation. Only of six. The ability of six, each from different races, to unite with one purpose. To act as one for the greater good of all.”

“Something they have not yet been able to achieve,” she reminded him. “With respect to the dharmire and his mate? I never doubted they would unite. The others?” She laughed again, but this time the sound was rife with rancor. “Give it up, Mahone. They are too caught up in their own agendas. Their own pain.”

Mahone automatically thought of the two Para-Ops team members who posed the greatest challenge, but plowed ahead anyway. “They can come together. They will.”

“Wraith? Dex? You don’t know the darkness inside them, Mahone. Even with the information your men have collected, you have only the barest hint of a clue. No, you made a mistake when you chose them.”

“Wraith has proven herself. She’s put herself in danger time and again. To help others. O’Flare. Me.”

She shook off his arguments with a wave of her hand. “I think it’s best we stop playing this game and start over. Humanity has proven itself unworthy of the gifts I have bestowed upon it. I have come to a decision, but I will make your end painless. You, who have endeavored to serve me, will—”

Enraged, Mahone pulled at the tubes and needles piercing his skin, immediately causing several machines next to the bed to beep in alarm. He stood, swayed on his feet, then steadied himself with one arm braced against the bed. Breathing hard and fighting the nausea that twisted in his gut, he nonetheless forced himself to walk closer to the glowing, celestial being. “It’s not your decision to make,” he rasped. “You are bound by the agreement we made. I have done what you asked of me, and so must you. You—”