Night Whispers: ShadowLands, Book 1 (13 page)

It was dead of night right now. She’d have to face Shadows once she left here, unless they got out after morning. She both wanted the guards to hurry and willed them to take their time.

She went around and around the problem in her mind, discarding one scenario after another, until the dilemma made her almost dizzy with its complexity. She frowned and raised her hand to her forehead, surprised to find it remarkably heavy.

Problems! Damn, but she had a lot of them.

“They’re coming.”

Jules turned toward Erik. “What?” Her voice sounded tinny. She cleared her throat. “What?”

“They’re coming. The guards.”

She tried to focus. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Trust me. You have seventy-five seconds before they’re at the door. Approximately.”

A very precise estimate, but she supposed he must have heard the guards coming and going enough over the last year that he could time it perfectly. “How long was I sleeping?”

“It’s nearing midnight. A while.”

How had she lost track of time like that? How had hours zoomed by? More importantly… “How can you tell the time?”

“You live in a windowless room for a long time, you develop a sense about these things,” he answered, all zen mysterious. “And perhaps more accurately, since the doctors were going to reassess Carrie at midnight, I figure this is her escort right now.”

She wouldn’t kick herself for dozing. She needed all of her strength.

“Thirty seconds.”

A gasp brought her focus back to her in a rush. “Are they coming for me?” Carrie asked. Her voice was roughened by sleep.

“It’s not you they’ll be taking.” Jules shifted. “Relax.”

“What if this doesn’t work? We’re just assuming…”

“Carrie, hush.” Erik’s tone was firm enough that even Jules froze. “This is our only chance to get you out before they kill you, understand?”

Jules winced.
Harsh, Erik.

A sigh came from the darkness. “Yes.”

“Then be quiet now.”

Carrie subsided.

“Jules, listen—take the female doctor out first, if you can. Use the male as a hostage. The guards give him more deference.”

As Erik finished speaking, Jules heard the heavy fall of footsteps approaching. A loud click resonated. The lock turned in the doorknob. As the door opened, the dim light of an old-fashioned flashlight swept inside. She saw a flash of steel from a cage before she drew upon every acting skill in her arsenal and did her best to recreate the appearance of a seizure victim.

Her mom had finally OD’d on crack and alcohol one night and had a similar seizure, so it wasn’t like she had nothing to go on. She made sure that her arms and legs flopping against the ground created enough noise for the guards to hear. Beneath her slitted lids, she caught the light illuminating her body as she arched her back.

One man swore. “Damn, wonder how long she’s been doing that for. Hurry, Fletcher, open her cage. We got to get her to the doctors.”

Booted footsteps came closer, and she kept up her act as keys jingled and the cage door was scraped open. She was hoisted into a pair of muscular arms.
Pee-yew.
Bile rose. She might actually go into a seizure from the unwashed scent of this man. Did bad guys not like bathing anymore?

Don’t bind my hands. Don’t bind my hands.

She had a second of panic that her plan to appear helpless and sick hadn’t worked when the guy carrying her slowed. She peeked under her eyelashes. The other man’s light flashed over the cage to her left. She caught a glimpse of brown skin before the bulk skittered back in a move belying its size. Erik. A low growl came from him, and the man with the flashlight banged on the bars as they passed by. “Quiet down, freak.”

“They ought to have let us beat the fucker more.”

“You won’t hear a complaint from me. Poor Tucker and Schmidt. The bastards didn’t have a chance.”

“Animals need a firm hand. They thought the collar and the little they feed him would be enough to keep him under control. Guess they were wrong.”

A flash of rage ran through her. No human deserved to be put in a cage, starved and humiliated. How could she be surprised that Erik was a changed man, listening to what he’d had to deal with?

Focus, Jules.
She lay limp, calming her heart and breathing down further as the guards left the room, shutting the door firmly behind them. The one who wasn’t holding her stayed to lock the door. “Come get me after you dump her with the docs. I’ll be in the lounge.”

“You wanna be humiliated at poker again?”

“You’re the one who’s gonna be humiliated.”

The chest of the man holding her rumbled. “Dream on.”

She made a slight choking noise and started her faux seizures up again in the hopes that these yahoos would continue on getting her where she needed to go. Sure enough, the man started walking away from his buddy. He shifted her weight in his arms and held her tighter. She counted his steps as he walked down the hallway, the better to find her way back. Right, left, right. She quieted her act down, but not enough that the man would be lulled out of his false sense of security.

There was a cool rush of air over her skin as another set of doors banged open. She was taken through them and unceremoniously dumped on a cold metal table.

“I told you to bring the girl, Fletcher,” came a woman’s cold voice. Bug eyes, Jules thought with a flash of distaste. “We need to terminate her. She’s riling up the male.”

“This one was seizing. You said to bring her to you if we noticed anything weird,” Fletcher said. “I can go get the girl too, if you want.”

“Only one out of a cage at a time. These creatures are unpredictable.”

These creatures can hear, jackass.
But she supposed no one cared about that.

“Leave her,” the woman spoke. “And get Robbins in here.” The sound of retreating footsteps came to Jules as the man left the room. She slit her eyes open a bit to find the woman washing her hands in the industrial-sized sink. No one else was in the room. Perfect.

She shut her eyes at the same moment the woman twisted the water off. Waited, laying deathly still as the shuffle of her footsteps came closer.

With each step, her heartbeat pounded. This was it. Could she do it?

She’d talked a good game to Erik, but the truth of the matter was she’d never in her life killed another human. Her gang had been more about drugs and thefts, not homicides. She knew some of her girls had killed in the process, and she was still haunted by her indirect participation in those deaths.

The Shadows were different. She slaughtered them when and where it was necessary, because otherwise they would eat her. Eat or be eaten.

But there was no way out of this, especially when she had to take advantage of this opportunity.
This is self-defense too
, she thought.
Eat or be eaten.

You’re not just killing another woman. You’re killing a woman who’s purposefully hurting, turning and killing other people. Who cut you off from James. Who put you in a cage. Who put your mentor in a cage. Who put a kid in a cage.

When she could feel the puff of air against her cheek, she knew the woman had leaned down to examine her. Estimating from that single puff where her head, and therefore her neck, must be, Jules breathed in deep.

Inhale.
Self.

Exhale.
Defense.

Her hands were moving before her eyes even opened, rushing up with her blade. The metal extended to a deadly point as it arched through the air. As she opened her eyes, she watched the thin metal pierce the female’s jugular.

Stunned amazement lit up the woman’s pale gray eyes. They blinked at her, once, twice, and she collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Jules sat up and swung her legs over the gurney, hopping off and steadying herself against its side. She knelt next to the woman crumpled on the ground. The doctor was panting, her stare wide-eyed and fixed on Jules. Her chest was working as she attempted to gather the energy to scream, but her face was almost paralyzed in its stillness as her muscles reacted to the poison that covered the blade. Overkill, once again.

“There is a deadly poison pouring into your system right now. I have the antidote,” she lied quietly. “But for me to give it to you, I want you to answer a question for me. I don’t know what you all are doing here, but I want to know if you have done anything to me.”

It took some effort, but the woman mouthed a no.

“Did you do any testing or anything on me when you had me strapped to the table earlier?”

Her no was more frantic this time, and she shook her head as well, adamant.

Jules didn’t know if she could believe her, but she had already threatened her with death. If that didn’t get a person to tell the truth, she didn’t know what did. “Is there anyone else here other than the four of you?”

Another negative.

She got to her feet and strode to the gleaming stainless-steel counter. No wonder the group had taken over this building in the university. She was no expert, but it looked to her like the science department had gotten a big chunk of the budget of the school, with row after row of shiny equipment. The lights were brilliant, which meant they’d either jury-rigged the electricity in this building alone, or it was on expensive solar-powered energy.

The fluorescent light gleamed on her poor broken collar laying on a metal tray. She touched it fleetingly, unwilling to mourn. Her clear plastic earpiece had been discarded next to it. Shrugging, she picked it up and put it on. As long as the battery lasted, if James spoke to her, she would be able to hear him.

Weapons, she needed weapons. She had her blade, but suddenly that no longer seemed like enough. She’d arm herself with an arsenal if she could.

Surveying the room, she came up at a loss. Syringes were the obvious choice, but she had no idea what the vials upon vials in the cupboards were filled with. The cable tie restraints she was more familiar with—those went into her pockets.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the doctor go into a convulsion before laying still.
Bad guy. No different from a Shadow.

Swallowing her distaste for the task, she bent and patted down the deceased scientist, almost crowing with relief when she found a gun tucked into a holster beneath the woman’s coat. The thing was loaded too. Switching the safety off, she made her wobbly way to the door and listened. Her breath caught.

The woman had told the guard to grab Robbins. So it made sense that someone would be…

Ah-ha. There. The footsteps were approaching briskly. Holding her gun at the ready, she moved behind the thick door and waited. The knob twisted and it swung inward, concealing her. A man’s irritated voice called out, “Gayle?”

A tall, thin, balding man came into view, wearing the same white lab coat as the female. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew instinctively this was the same guy who had stripped her collar away.

He walked in so he stood in front of the open door. From this position, he wouldn’t see his colleague on the floor. When he took a few steps forward and no guard followed him in, Jules eased the door shut, praising God that the hinges were well-oiled. Silent as a cat, she crept up behind him as he rounded the table.

“Gayle? Fletcher said you—”

His voice cut off, and she knew he had seen the body on the ground. She moved quickly, pressing the barrel of the gun against the back of his neck. “Keep quiet and put your hands in the air. You give me any trouble, and I will put you down as quickly as I did your friend.”

He wasted no time raising his hands. “What did you do to her?”

“Don’t you worry about that.”

“I hope she’s not dead. Have you any idea of what kind of brain that woman had? Why, we could have used her for a while longer.”

Robbins sounded about as put out as if Jules had taken his favorite toy at the playground and hammered it against the concrete. She refused to feel sympathy for the dead woman, but holy crap, good taste demanded a little pasted-on sorrow for the death of a coworker. “Get up against the wall.”

Once again, he didn’t try to resist her. The sense of self-preservation was strong in this one. “I saved you when they brought you in. Gayle would have terminated you,” he said grimly.

She shoved his coat aside. “You should have listened to her, then, huh?”

“I saved you because I’m certain I could make something great out of you. The guards told me about your fighting ability. Join us, and I can turn you into a god.”

She found a gun in a holster identical to the downed scientist and a high quality switchblade strapped to his ankle. She happily appropriated them both, though it would have been nicer to have her own weapons back. “What are you, some kind of comic book villain? I kinda like being a human,
pendejo
. Looks like you treat your gods rough.”

“Who, the male? He is merely temperamental. He cannot grasp our vision, our plan.”

Jules slipped the cable ties from her pocket. “Why don’t you tell me what your plan is.”

He let out a huffy breath. “Why bother. You won’t appreciate it either.”