The Change (Unbounded) (12 page)

Cort came toward us. “Stella’s waiting for us at her house. She thinks if this place is compromised, the warehouse probably is, too. She’s calling Laurence and our security guys to give ’em a heads up.” He bent down to check the pulse of one of the downed men before continuing on.

Why would Stella’s place be safe? But almost without trying, I understood. She was married to a mortal and would always take extra precautions. Unlike us, her husband didn’t have infinite lives.

Dimitri was struggling to sit up despite his wound and already looked stronger. By contrast, I didn’t think I could make it to the car on my own two feet. “You don’t have any more of that curequick, do you?” I asked Cort.

He grinned. “That bad?”

“I’m not accustomed to getting shot.”

“The trick is not to get hit,” Ritter said.

I glared at him.

“You have to be careful with this stuff.” Cort handed me a bottle. “It’s addictive. Even for Unbounded.”

So now I was a druggie? That explained a lot. “How addictive?”

“Stronger than caffeine. I can’t figure out exactly what causes it. Dimitri’s going to do some tests when he gets a chance. I may understand connections on an atomic level, but I’m still basically a scientist, not a medical doctor.”

“Your talent is to see stuff at an atomic level?”

“Understanding the connections and interactions between atoms is the important thing, not just seeing them.” He gave me a bland smile. “Anyway, with what you’ve been through, it’s okay to depend on curequick a while longer. Just don’t make it a habit.”

“I won’t.” I chugged down the liquid, feeling strength seep into me, a tiny thing at first, followed by a flood. I might even be able to get to my feet in a moment.

Cort checked the man I’d shoved into the side of the car. “This one’s alive. Should come to shortly.”

Ritter jerked his chin at one of the others. “He’s alive, too. Unfortunately. And probably most of the others.”

“Held back, did ya?” I mocked.

Cort laughed. “Hey, that’s my line.”

Ignoring us, Ritter glanced at Ava. “Cort and I’ll get Dimitri into the car. Keep an eye on these guys.” She nodded and removed a gun from her waistband. Ritter took the rifle from the fallen man in front of us and handed it to me.

I was still shaking inside, wondering if I was going to be sick, but I took the gun. Jace had taught me how to shoot both a rifle and a handgun several summers ago, and we’d gone shooting every time he came home. I’d become a good shot—but shooting a living, breathing, moving man was far different from knocking cans off a log.

Ritter and Cort hefted a white-faced Dimitri into the front passenger side of the car. He didn’t let out a sound, but I could see pain in the rigid lines of his body and in the way his arm curled around Ritter’s neck. The guy next to me moaned, and I tore my gaze away from them to watch him more closely. “He’s awake,” I called, hoping they wouldn’t tell me to shoot him.

In seconds Ritter was leaning over the man. “Wake up,” he said, slapping his face.

The man’s eyes opened and filled instantly with fear. “Please don’t kill me. Please!”

Ritter’s jaw worked as though expending great effort. “You jumped five people with eighteen armed soldiers, and you’re asking us not to kill you? Isn’t that exactly what you planned for us? A little appointment with an ax and a lot of blood?”

“Well, uh . . .”

“Can it. Look, I have a message for your people. Same as always. The Renegades are not Emporium. We do not harm people unless we’re attacked. But we’re getting sick and tired of your insistence.”

“You’re an abomination,” the man choked out. “You can’t be allowed to survive! All Unbounded must die.”

“Okay, message delivered.” With a casual blow, Ritter knocked him unconscious.

“We really should kill them,” Cort said.

My breath caught in my throat. I believed in self-defense, but these men were helpless.

Ava shook her head. “We’d be no better than they are if we did. It’s one of the things that separates us from the Emporium.”

“I know, I know,” Cort grumbled.

Ritter slapped him on the shoulder. “None of us will feel so charitable the next time we’re dodging their bullets. And there
will
be a next time. Let’s see that we’re better prepared.” I felt a little surprised that he didn’t ignore Ava and slit their throats. Instead, he took the rifle from my hands and walked toward the car, gathering the Hunters’ weapons as he went. Cort followed his example, piling firearms into the trunk. I stumbled to the car. Ava lingered next to the unconscious men, going from one to the other, placing a hand on each forehead and closing her eyes briefly. I was in too much pain to ask what she was doing, but the image stuck with me.

“We’re just leaving them there?” I asked, once more in the backseat between Cort and Ritter. I was glad they weren’t going to kill the men, but leaving them like that seemed rather unsafe—for the neighborhood, the mansion’s servants, the world in general.

Ritter shrugged. “They’ll call their people when they come to. They’re of no interest to us. If we hadn’t killed some of them, we’d call the police, but we don’t want to get caught up in that now. Let the Hunters deal with their own dead.”

“And the house? What happens to it?”

“Don’t worry.” Dimitri lay in the front seat that was reclined as far as it could go. “My friend will sell it to himself under another name, and when he comes to visit, he’ll come armed. He’d do that anyway. He lives in England and goes years without coming to the States. Decades even. This mansion represents only an infinitesimal portion of his wealth. He will have many years yet to enjoy it.”

I guess I had to start thinking in completely new terms. All the Hunters we’d fought today would shrivel and die before my body aged another year.

“How’d they find us?” Cort said.

Ritter shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ll get Stella on it. Probably they’ve got this house listed in their archives as belonging to Unbounded and check it periodically for occupancy. They could have been watching us for days.”

“Stella and I searched before we came,” Cort said. “There’s never been any Hunter activity near that house.”

“Maybe we need to dig deeper.” There was no accusation in Ava’s voice, only a grim determination.

“Would they really have killed us?” I had a hard time comprehending that so many people I didn’t know wanted me dead.

“Yes,” Ritter said shortly.

So we would have died. All of us, cut in three pieces, like Ritter’s family. Could such evil exist in the world?

“What about the families of Unbounded? Do Hunters go after them?” I was unable to hide the tremor in my voice. As an army-trained officer, Jace would be able to fight, but the rest would be helpless.

“Depends on the leader,” Cort answered. “They’ll either kill anyone connected with the Unbounded, or they might test them first. You know, shoot them and see if they heal.”

I shivered, wondering how close I’d come to exposing my family to these Hunters. What if they’d tracked us there?

Ritter’s eyes gleamed in the light of the oncoming headlights, and when he spoke, his voice was unusually gentle. “Some are no better than the Emporium, but for the most part they are bound by human laws, and wiping out a whole family is too dangerous for them.”

Unlike the Emporium, of course. What kind of mad world had I entered?

Yet already it was a part of me. I wanted to fight the Emporium and stop the Hunters from hurting us. Tom was right. I wasn’t myself. The Unbounded gene had penetrated all that I had been, moving things around, altering me, creating something quite different, perhaps similar to the way a child changes into an adult. Maybe it hadn’t been Justine’s influence that had begun to make me reach out, to search for more, to become less inhibited, more assertive. Maybe the real reason was written in my DNA. I had Changed. And despite all the horror and suffering and heartache, I knew deep down that I was glad. Glad to be different.

That scared me most of all.

Ava drove around a good while before she was satisfied that no one was following us. I couldn’t help but let my head rest against Ritter’s shoulder. It was at the right height and on my left side away from my wounded shoulder. Ritter didn’t comment on it, and for that I was grateful.

Stella’s house appeared normal on the outside, even rather small, though when she opened the double garage for us, the interior was quite deep, easily fitting our car behind two others already there.

Stella came into the garage, beautiful as ever, and I could tell by her lacy nightwear that she’d been in bed. “Laurence called from the warehouse. He and the security guys did have a run in with Hunters and were all pretty beat up but alive, thanks to your warning.”

“Good,” Ava said.

“On his way here, Laurence is taking the guys to the hospital for a few bandages since Dimitri’s in no condition to patch them. They ended up reporting the ambush to the police, though, so Laurence will probably need a new ID—especially if they killed too many Hunters.”

We were inside now, and I could see that like her garage, Stella’s house wasn’t ordinary on the inside either. No expense had been spared. Sweeping arches, crown molding, elaborate wallpaper, vaulted ceilings with ornate designs. Furniture that looked like it came from a house in a design magazine. I was too exhausted to take it all in. It was after two in the morning and would be light soon. I’d been out of that coffin little more than fourteen hours.

I stumbled and Stella steadied me. I clung to her gratefully.

“Need to see if the bullet is still in her shoulder.” Behind me Ritter’s voice showed the strain of Dimitri’s weight.

“I can do that,” Dimitri said.

“No, you can’t.” Ava locked the outside door behind us. “We know enough to take care of her. You, however, have a bullet in you for sure, and it has to come out if you want to heal fast.”

“Bronson’s prepping now,” Stella said.

“Your husband’s a doctor?” I asked.

“No, but he’s got a steady hand from years of working with electronics, and he’s good with blood.” Stella glanced at Dimitri. “Though tonight he’s a little nervous.”

“He’s taken out bullets before,” Ritter said.

“Not from the stomach.”

Dimitri gave her a pale smile. “I’ll walk him through it. Shouldn’t be bad if the bullet hasn’t shattered. If it has, a piece or two left inside won’t kill me. My body will eventually expel them.”

Since I was battling to stay conscious with my smaller wound, I had a hard time picturing Dimitri awake during a stomach operation, much less directing the extraction.

“In here, Erin.” Stella guided me into a room furnished with a twin bed with a white headboard and matching dresser. “Stay here. We’ll be right back.”

I heard the others move down the hall with Dimitri. Mentally apologizing to Stella, I drew up the blanket over my bloodied arm and let myself float into the warmth of the bed.

The next thing I knew Ritter and Stella were tugging at my shirt. When I groaned in protest, Ritter used his knife to cut the rest of it off. Dressed only in my bra and jeans, I shivered, and Stella drew the blanket over all of me but my shoulder.

Turning me onto my side, Ritter removed the sleeve he’d tied over the wound outside the mansion. Gently, he probed the area with his fingers, and agony reverberated throughout my entire body. “There’s an exit wound. Bleeding’s all but stopped. An injection of curequick and a few bandages should do the trick. I can take care of it if you want to get back to Dimitri.”

“I’ll do that. Bronson will feel better if I’m there.” Stella smoothed my hair and was gone.

Ritter cleaned and bandaged me in silence as I floated on memories of the evening. His touch was so gentle that I hardly flinched when I felt the point of the needle. Inevitably, my thoughts came to dwell on Tom. I hadn’t known that I’d said his name aloud until Ritter bent down and spoke in my face. “Forget him.”

A tear slipped from my eye and rolled to the pillow under my head. I wanted him to leave so I could cry in peace. I didn’t want anyone to see my longing, my deep hurt at Tom’s rejection. At the same time I was terrified of being alone. I kept reliving images of what the Hunters had planned for me and the others. Severed into three pieces. Ugh.

Ritter edged onto the bed, sitting close to me. His hand rested on the blanket covering my body. After several long moments of silence, he said, “Believe me, leaving your family now is better. Watching those you love die is a worse hell than what you feel now. You’ll see tomorrow with Stella and Bronson.”

My eyes came open. He was looking at me, his black eyes somber. There was more to him than I’d understood at our previous meetings. For the first time, I could see him as a man who’d probably fought to rise from his sick bed in an effort to save the woman he loved. To save his entire family. I wondered whose rings he wore on the chain around his neck.

“I’m sorry about your family,” I whispered.

His body stiffened, and his expression became impassive. “My family is not your concern.”

“I’m still sorry. No one should have to—I wish . . .” I didn’t know what I wished.

“Even if they’d lived, they would all be gone by now. Go to sleep. I’ll make sure you’re safe.” His soft voice and the pressure of his hand did make me feel safe.

I shut my eyes and obeyed.

Sometime during the night, I awoke and became aware of Ritter lying beside me, the comforting sensation of his hand draped carelessly over my bare stomach, his sleeping breath in my ear. His smell was different from Tom’s, and I fought tears as memories engulfed me. It had taken me months to trust Tom enough to get close to him. Even then I’d been wrong.

I rolled slightly so I could see Ritter, careful not to push my new wounds against his chest. He was more likeable asleep, devoid of his imperturbable day mask, his features relaxed and unstressed. Even in repose he was compelling, his features beckoning to be touched. I reached out, drew a finger down the stubble of his cheek, cupped his face with my hand. That’s all I dared. I didn’t want him to wake up and get the wrong idea.