Shattered (24 page)

I slipped my
pistol out of its holster and ejected the magazine before pulling
back the slide just like Taggart had taught me. When the slide was
locked back like that, the gun was as close to safe as you could make
it without running a cable through the barrel, but it didn't look
safe to me.

It looked like
a crouching predator, and that was exactly what I needed.

I quickly
stripped out the armor-penetrating rounds that I'd loaded into the
magazine after my last practice session. For all I knew about
ballistics the penetrators were the result of engineering voodoo that
involved a deal with the devil, but that was just fine. What I knew
for certain was that the penetrators would put a hole in a steel
plate. Other small-caliber rounds wouldn't do that, at least not if
the steel plate was very thick at all.

The penetrators
were designed to defeat bulletproof vests, but they also did a
bang-up job on hybrids who were big enough that sometimes a regular
bullet couldn't penetrate deeply enough to get the job done. I
figured they ought to do a real number on vampires too.

The replacement
rounds, standard steel-jacketed rounds, went into the empty magazine
as slick as anything. Four minutes later my backup magazines were
also reloaded with standard rounds and I was ready to start the
course.

I picked up my
gun with my right hand, thumb on the slide, and slammed the first
magazine home with my other hand. The magazine seated itself with a
click, and my weapon was a predator that was one step closer to
realizing its potential, one step closer to springing.

I hit the red
start button with my left palm, forcing the pain in my chest to the
back of my mind, and then as I brought that hand back and wrapped it
around my right hand, I thumbed the slide release and smiled as the
slide slammed home, shoving the first round into the pistol's chamber
as it went.

The first
orange plate slid into view, moving from right to left in what was
supposed to represent someone sprinting across my field of vision. A
month ago I would have been shocked at the idea of trying to hit
something moving so quickly, but that was before my fight with
Pamela, before my time sense had been changed so that I
functioned—mentally at least—at the same speed as a
hybrid.

Now the plate
seemed to slowly stroll along. It was no problem to track its line of
movement and line up the sights so that all three softly glowing dots
formed a line across the exact center of the plate. I stroked the
trigger, taking care not to tense up the rest of my hand, and was
rewarded with a jerk from the pistol as the first bullet tore
downrange.

Early on the
recoil had been intimidating, but that wasn't the case anymore. Now
the recoil was part of my process and I pulled the barrel of my
weapon back down without even thinking about it.

The first plate
was already falling, knocked free by the bullet I'd hit it with, and
my eyes were scanning for the next plate, the next simulated vampire,
and the next, and the next after that.

My first run
wasn't perfect. Even with my souped-up time sense a few of the
targets moved fast enough that I ended up rushing the shot, but I
came close that first time out. Once the course buzzed to let me know
that all of the targets had been deployed, I ejected my second spent
magazine and lowered my gun to the table in front of me.

Ten minutes
later the course was reset, my magazines were reloaded, and I ran it
again and again. The third time through I managed to knock all of the
plates down and from there on out I didn't miss a single shot.

I lost track of
time and for a while the only measure that mattered was the empty
boxes of ammo that slowly accumulated in the waste basket to my left.
I'd moved nearly a thousand rounds of ammunition out of the armory
when we'd first come back to the bunker. It had turned out to be
woefully optimistic based on my last round of target practice, but it
was feeling like it was about right for today. I'd made a significant
dent in it by the time the door to the range opened up.

I was in the
middle of another run-through, so I didn't look away from the course
until my slide locked back and the loud buzz signaled that I was
done. Even before I turned I somehow knew it was Dominic that had
come looking for me.

"I called
your phone a few minutes ago and Isaac told me that you were here."

I reached up to
pull off the ear muffs I'd been wearing and it was like surfacing
from a deep dive underwater. I was suddenly surrounded by a multitude
of sounds that were simultaneously familiar and completely alien.
That wouldn't have been bad, but the physical pain that I'd locked
away was back. I tried to send it away again, but it refused to go. I
gritted my teeth and did my best to ignore it.

"I'm
sorry, Dom. Taggart told me that you were up minding the store. I
didn't mean for you to have to take my shift as well as your own."

"Don't
worry about it, Adri. I saw Taggart earlier and he said the two of
you had a pretty rough go against Kaleb last night. I figured you
would need your sleep after something like that, but it sounds like
that's nothing compared to what happened once you woke up."

A short, bitter
laugh made its way past my lips. "It's probably all over the
bunker by now, huh?"

"Actually
no, it isn't. Everyone was all worked up about needing to go kill
some vampires in California, but then Isaac and Taggart disappeared
into the cafeteria and nobody other than me has been able to get a
word out of them since then. I know because there was a lot of
grumbling as I was walking down from the store."

"So how
did you get to be so lucky?"

It was a
snarky, witchy thing to say and I knew that Dominic deserved better
than that, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. I was hurting and some
petty, vicious part of me wanted everyone else around me to be in
just as much pain as I was.

Someone else
would have snapped back at me, but not Dominic. Not even though I
deserved at least that. Instead she simply gave me a sad smile that
said she would be hugging me right then if she thought I'd let her.

"I think
they figured you needed someone to talk to right about now, and I'm
the logical candidate since I don't really have much I can contribute
on the planning side of things."

I took a deep
breath to apologize to her and it turned into something awfully close
to a sob. "I'm sorry, Dom. I don't mean to be such an ogre, I'm
just so scared."

"It's
okay, Adri. It's just you and me here, you can cry if that's what you
need to do. I won't tell anyone."

It took
everything I had to pull myself back under control, but I did it by
pure force of will. "No, I can't be weak right now. I'll cry
later, after all of this is resolved if necessary, but right now I'm
going to be strong and do whatever needs to be done to get them back
out of there."

Dom gave me
another gentle smile. "I used to feel the same way, but at some
point I realized that life wasn't going to give me the respite that I
would need to finally break down and cry. I'd been carrying such
terrible things inside of me for so long that it felt like I couldn't
really move anymore."

"What did
you do then?"

"I decided
to take five minutes to cry and let all of the sorrow and despair
out. And then once the five minutes had passed I stood back up and
started north to come here to your country. If I hadn't taken that
time to be weak then I never would have been strong enough to do
that."

"I'd like
to do that, Dom, I really would. I'm not sure I'm as strong as you
though. If I start crying I don't think I'll be able to pull myself
back together again."

"I
understand, I had those same worries once upon a time. If you change
your mind I'll be here for you."

"Thanks,
Dom. You're pretty amazing."

"I'm no
more amazing than you, Adri. I can't imagine what you're going
through and I just want you to know that I will do whatever I can to
help free your parents and sister."

Dom pulled my
phone out of her pocket and handed it to me along with a pair of
large candy bars.

"Isaac
recorded the message so that they would have it if further analysis
was necessary. The candy bars are in case you haven't had enough to
eat yet today. I suspect you're going to need to keep your strength
up for what is headed our way."

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

I stayed in the
shooting range for a couple of minutes after Dominic left, but in the
end the lure of the chocolate she'd handed me was just too strong.
Finding out about my family's kidnapping had distracted me from the
fact that I hadn't had anything to eat for something like eighteen or
nineteen hours, but now that I had all of that brown goodness sitting
in my hand demanding I eat it, my stomach wouldn't be denied.

I would have
just eaten it in the shooting range but Taggart was emphatic about
not eating in there. Apparently it was a good way to get lead
poisoning, among other things. In the end my hunger was even stronger
than my desire not to have to speak to anyone, so I left.

Taggart and
Isaac met up with me just outside of the range and followed me back
to the kitchen where I washed up.

"Do you
want me to make you something to eat, Adri?"

"No, thank
you, Isaac. I suspect that everyone else is past ready to eat though.
Let's go back to my room and talk while the cooks get started on
dinner. Dom brought me some goodies to tide me over until the food is
ready."

Taggart didn't
look happy about that, but for once I was going to ignore what I was
supposed to be doing and just do what I wanted to do.

The guys
followed me back to my room and then we grabbed the spare chair out
of Taggart's room and all sat down.

"So what
did you come up with?"

Taggart cleared
his throat. "We called Alec a couple of minutes ago and found
out that he and his people were largely successful in their mission.
That's good because it means we can concentrate exclusively on
getting your parents out of there, but bad because his people are
likely going to spend the next few days trying to mop up what is left
of the gang that abducted his person. Between that and the losses
they took during the operation, they are going to be hard-pressed to
offer us much support."

The walk back
to my room had restored some of the numb detachment that Dominic had
come so close to breaking through, but underneath all of that icy
calm a tiny sliver of me was crushed by the fact that Alec hadn't
called me yet.

It was like
Isaac could read my mind. "Alec was a little sparse on details
when it came to what happened in the fight, but he seemed like he was
operating at less than full capacity. When we told him that your
family was missing he wanted to call you right then, but we told him
that it might be best to give you some time still."

The sliver of
weakness, the shard of humanity that I hadn't quite managed to
silence was turning cartwheels, but the rest of me knew I couldn't
get on the phone with him. Alec would destroy my composure and I
couldn't risk that, not yet.

"Thank
you, I think that's for the best. So I take it you weren't able to
come up with a way to find my family? If not, then I think I should
just go ahead and call up the vampire and arrange the trade."

Taggart cleared
his throat. "Please hear us out, Adri. I think that you should
dream walk tonight and see if your parents have any idea where they
are. It's a long shot, but it's the best we've been able to come up
with so far. Even if they don't know exactly where they are, anything
would help us localize them so we can narrow our search down. We have
a couple of ideas from there, but everything starts with whether or
not you are able to join up with them and figure out roughly where
they are."

They were
right, it was the perfect idea. Part of me wanted to say that I
couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it myself, but the rest of
me knew exactly why I hadn't come up with the idea. Going and talking
to my family was the best option for finding them, but that would
also mean saying goodbye.

No matter how
hard I might try to tell my mom and dad that I was going to come and
get them, that there wasn't any reason to start acting like there was
no hope, they would still want to say goodbye. I knew I should be
grateful that I was going to get a chance to say goodbye, but all I
could think of in that moment was that it was going to be all but
impossible to maintain my detachment in the face of a tear-filled
goodbye from the three people I loved the most in the entire world.

"Okay. If
that's where your plan starts, then I'd better go get more food
inside of me than these two candy bars. I'm going to be burning up a
lot of calories tonight."

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

Isaac and
Taggart excused themselves to go start bringing the rest of our
people up to speed, after which I wolfed down Dominic's chocolate,
stripped off my clothes and climbed into the glass-walled shower.

It felt odd to
be doing something so mundane while my parents and sister were being
held by a bunch of blood-sucking parasites, but I was a lot more
worried about going to sleep than I'd let on a few minutes earlier
with Taggart and Isaac. A shower wasn't going to magically wipe away
the fact that I'd slept for something like fifteen hours straight not
that long ago, but I needed every edge I could get.

After fifteen
minutes standing there with the warm water trickling down my body, I
started to feel some of my internal barriers start to come down. I
hadn't been hurrying, not when I knew that my dinner wasn't going to
be ready for a while still, but I shut the shower off as soon as I
realized what was going on. It didn't matter that I hadn't put
conditioner in my hair yet. I couldn't afford to fall apart.