Department 57: Bloody Crystal (23 page)

They downed a couple of guards before they found the stairs. They were through a pair of double doors. The origins of this place were obvious, the thick cement floors, the breeze blocks stacked and roughly mortared to make rooms. The floor looked to contain offices and storerooms, but Rhodri didn’t think they’d find anything interesting here. Not unless they had a bunker-style basement, and their scans hadn’t shown anything like that. Not that it ruled out the possibility entirely.

They ran up the stairs, crouching, only too aware of the blind spot at the top. Someone shot down at them from the top floor, but by hugging the outer wall, they gave their attacker hard targets. Then Rhodri got a lucky blast with his psi and stunned the man long enough for them to get into the next floor.

People were waiting there. Of course they were. But Kai and Rhodri had faced this kind of situation before, and they wanted to live to do it again. They only needed to give each other one-word commands and two more fell. Rhodri took no joy in his ability to take opponents down efficiently. Just part of his job. He didn’t trust anyone who found pleasure in more than a good job well done. If he had stronger psi, he’d have taken them down that way, but telepathy was about his limit. That and flashing, but he wasn’t sure that was psi, since only vampires could do it.

The occasional sound of gunfire and shouts marked where Bryn and Dom were making their steady way through the ground floor. They’d scan it effectively, take what hard drives they could get without slowing themselves down too much, and carry on. Kai and Rhodri swept their head cameras around the room for the team at the office to study more closely and ensure there were no booby traps or staff left to wreak havoc. The vehicles would arrive soon for prisoners. But Rhodri could sense the presence of Talents here, like a hum in the air.

They’d find more once they’d taken the jamming devices out.

This floor had narrower passageways and more rooms. The first few contained hospital beds, empty ones. The Talents, the merchandise that they’d contained had probably been moved to another facility. Or maybe Wilkinson’s people weren’t as clever as they used to be. His heart warmed at that thought. A victory, and he knew just how he wanted to celebrate it.

He contacted Bryn.
“Anything?”

“A ton of shit. It all looks routine and normal for a warehouse, which makes me think there’s more here. Still searching and scanning. You?”

“There are Talents up here.”

The sound of gunfire and crashes outside the building told him the main team was entering the premises. Thank fuck. That meant the Department had winged Talents in the air, preventing any attempt at escape, in case they had a helicopter up there. They’d have the building ringed by now.

The official reports would have this down as a drug operation, but Cristos would need to make it right in certain quarters. Not that Rhodri cared right now. If taking Wilkinson down meant he had to spend the rest of his life on the run, he’d do it.

The next door. He motioned to Kai, who nodded, his usually friendly expression completely gone now, replaced by a stern determination. Kai went in high, Rhodri low.

If he hadn’t steeled himself, the sight would have made him vomit. A Talent for sure, and when he forced his reeling mind into obedience, he detected a shape-shifter sigil. The guy lay on a table, one arm strapped to a separate, smaller table. What was left of his arm, that was. Someone had flayed it and opened it up, pinning the flesh to the board underneath, making it excruciatingly painful and almost impossible to heal. Even Talents had a limit to the amount of regeneration they could do.

While Kai watched, Rhodri forced himself to contact the Talent, whose mind had degenerated into wordless shrieks of agony. He pulled out the pins holding the vivisected arm to the table one by one, but regretfully left the arm strapped down. This man couldn’t think straight, and he’d probably damage himself. At least the arm could begin to heal, though God knew if the man would ever recover mentally. He was naked, a sheet draped over his hips, but Rhodri couldn’t detect any more damage. And of course he’d be shot full of Cephalox, preventing him from shape-shifting. “Hey, buddy, we’re the good guys. Someone will pick you up and take you to a proper hospital soon. Hang in there.” The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out, only a soundless scream.

They passed to the next room. The same. This time Kai did his best to make the person comfortable while Rhodri stood guard. But by the time Kai had loosened the Talent’s bonds, Rhodri realized what Wilkinson was doing here. “He’s trying to slow us down. He’s putting some of the worst here to give him a chance.”

“To do what?”

“Let’s find out.”

Although every instinct they had screamed at them to help the Talents they found in the next rooms, they left them alone, answering the pleas for help with, “Hold on. Someone’s coming to care for you. It won’t be long now.” They left the doors open so those Talents capable of communicating could tell each other what was happening and find some solace in company. Most Talents were so used to sharing their thoughts that isolation was an agonizing form of torture. He and Kai couldn’t do much, but they could give them that part back.

The atmosphere filled with chatter as they moved on, some anguished, some relieved, but they didn’t bother Kai or Rhodri, who kept their minds fixed on their course—to locate and take out Geoffrey Wilkinson, any way they could, preferably alive.

Or at least, that was the order. But Talents were rarely good at following orders to the letter. After seeing the occupants of those rooms, Rhodri was in no mood to follow orders. Merely wipe the scum off the face of the earth. And he’d bet Kai felt the same, although he didn’t ask.

Weapons at the ready—mental and physical—they went through the rooms, sensing the presence of Wilkinson advancing and retreating. He had to be moving, and maybe he had some secret ways of getting in and out of the building. That wouldn’t help him now.

Toward the end of the second hallway, they felt the signature stronger. Rhodri glanced at a grim-faced Kai.
“Is he leading us on? Has he duplicated his signature?”

“It’s him. If he had an identical twin, they wouldn’t share the signature. I have it too. Have faith, my friend. We have him.”

Rhodri wished he could feel as certain, but he did have faith. The man was running, which was enough to tell them something. And he didn’t know they had his psi. The only other possibility was that Esti had betrayed them. Recent events had shaken his belief that he really knew Esti, least of all that she’d been working for Wilkinson since he “recruited” her after the events of the year before. She hadn’t told anyone, hadn’t appeared any different.

Closer still. He glanced at Kai, who nodded.
“This is it.”

Another bleak room, but this time with two people in it. Esti, lying unconscious on the floor, and a man strapped to yet another gurney. This one was worse than any of the others Rhodri had seen, bad though they were. His arms were fastened, one hand twisted and useless, the other pinned down—literally. He wore underwear but nothing else. His legs were banded, but it didn’t matter, because they were a bloody mess. Someone had sliced them up a treat, and then roughly cauterized the wounds.

The man turned his head, his eyes an aching void of agony and pain. “Help me.” His voice, thready and hoarse, evidence of hours of screaming. Nobody could bear pain like that for long. He’d have gone mad eventually. Kai circled the gurney until he reached Esti. He bent, not taking his attention from the man, and felt her pulse. “She’s alive,” he said.

“We can use this. He doesn’t know we know,”
Rhodri said.

“Okay. But be fucking careful.”

“What did they do to you?”

Tears shimmered in the man’s blue eyes. He had the sigil of a dragon in his mind, beautifully done. “Everything. They let me shape-shift and then cut off my wings. They—they plundered my mind. Raped it. I don’t think I can take anymore. I don’t know what I told them. In the end I said yes to everything.”

“Tell us about the staff here.”

“Please unfasten me.”

Rhodri lowered his weapon and glanced at Kai, who nodded. He took a step forward, but not too far. “We need to know, fast. We don’t have many people here, so we might have to cut and run. How many people are here?”

The man blinked. “A lot,” he said. “This is one of their main places. We’ve been here a long time. Get me out of here, please. I’ll do anything.”

Rhodri sent a message to Bryn.
“Not many people. It’s a holding pen. Watch for transport arriving to take people away.”

“I want to get out of here fast. Our vehicles are arriving soon. But we take the bastard.”

“Too right.”

He leaned over to loosen the bonds on the man.
“He’s masquerading as a patient. Do we go along with it?”

“Yes, but don’t take any chances.”

“Received and understood.”

He wrenched the padlocks free from the bands that fastened the man down, although he doubted it was needed. He probably had some kind of trick mechanism in case they hadn’t bought his story. “They’ll take you to hospital.”

“I think he’d be better taken directly to the Department,” Kai said. “We have the best equipment there.”

Clever, to make it appear that they were taking him right into the center of their operations. “We have that new antidote for Cephalox.” He had no idea he could lie so well or make it up as he went along like that. “Best if we give him that and let him heal himself.”

“I don’t believe it. Really?” The man tried to lift himself up on one elbow but sank back against the bloodstained sheets with a groan. “I can’t.”

Esti groaned, and Kai turned her attention to her. Then he paused and took a step back.

“Wait. Scan.”

Chapter Seventeen

Rhodri didn’t understand what Kai meant until he tried another scan. He located Esti’s psi signature, then the man on the bed—Wilkinson. No, wait. Fuck. Three, the third so close to the man on the bed that he hadn’t spotted it right away.

Then everything happened at once. Someone rolled out from under the sheet-draped gurney, firing as he went, a firearm in each hand, like something out of the Wild West. He rolled across the room until he got to Esti, then grabbed her, pushed her in front of him. The muscles on his arm bulged where he held her, so tightly she wouldn’t be able to breathe well. He stared at them, dark eyes fierce, a frown creasing his forehead.

He slid back until he had the wall behind him and held one of his weapons to Esti’s head. Then he glanced down at her, back at them, and smiled. “Your choice, gentlemen. You can’t take me out, and Esti’s still under. She can’t help you. You try anything, and I’ll kill her. Simple as that.” A lock of black hair fell over his forehead, and he flicked it back with a toss of his head. This was the basic Wilkinson, the not-metamorphed one, and this, Rhodri realized, was his quarry, the man he’d been chasing for years. All his incarnations had been variations on his true form, sometimes larger, softer, other times skinnier, but always this man had been at the center of the transformations.

Rhodri didn’t have a clear shot. Neither did Kai, but they had Wilkinson pinned.

Slowly Kai got to his feet, but Wilkinson lifted Esti’s still-unconscious body to cover his body and head.

Wilkinson pulled a remote from his pocket and thumbed a button. Before they could react, the sound of metallic clangs echoed through the hallway outside. Fuck. It had been a trap. Wilkinson had isolated them. There was no hope of help. They were on their own.

Wilkinson’s psi probably equaled theirs, maybe surpassed it. They only had a few options, and Rhodri rapidly went through them.
“Distract him, Kai. Do something but don’t get hurt.”

“Easy peasy,”
came Kai’s satirical response. Kai kicked the gurney, sending it spinning across the room. It landed with a crash against the far wall, and the man on it screamed, high-pitched, horrible, more like a wounded animal than a human being. A shot hammered through the room, landing in a spot just above Wilkinson’s head. Chips of concrete splintered, sending a cascade of powder and rubble onto Wilkinson. He shook his head, presumably to clear his vision.

That was Rhodri’s chance. He leaped across the room, lengthening his fangs, and slammed into Wilkinson, sinking deep into the big vein in his neck. He could smell Esti’s light perfume and her shampoo, mixed with Wilkinson’s heavier aftershave. Then nothing but the intoxicating scent of fresh blood.

He wanted to kill this man, destroy everything he was, everything he stood for. Red mist obscured his vision, and the blood flooded into his system, forcing power and heat through him.

Dimly he became aware of the lack of gunfire. He’d pull away the minute Kai shot Wilkinson. He couldn’t draw from a dead man. That might destroy him, but that was the only imperative he remembered. All he could think of was what this man had done to his friends, and what Wilkinson had tried to do to the woman he loved. As the hot, life-giving liquid poured through him, he rejoiced. Vampires had always taken this way, to absorb their worst enemies, to destroy them completely. He’d leave a husk, nothing.

Blood hummed through his system, buzzed in his ears, sent him higher than any drug, any alcohol could ever do.

Hands on his shoulders, pulling at him, but he resisted. Stronger, harder, then another pair, but he still resisted.

Then he couldn’t resist. Numbness seeped through him, sending him into a state of temporary paralysis. The man on the gurney had fallen silent, unconscious or dead.

Then he heard her voice in his head, clear and sharp.
“Stop it, Rhodri. Pull away, my love. If you die, I die, and so does our baby. Pull away now!”

He lay on his back and stared up at the cracked and dirty ceiling.

* * *

“What the fuck happened?”

Kai growled. “I’d say you got carried away, but I don’t think it’s that. His last chance, his last bid for victory. Thank God he failed. You were supposed to kill him. Then you know what happens.”