When Wicked Craves (3 page)

He heard loud voices and scraping on the other side of the door. They were trying to break through. They wouldn’t succeed, but someone must have radioed Security Section for the override code. His asset had buried it, but she wasn’t able to completely delete it. They’d be through the door soon. And even if they weren’t, that
was the way he and Petra were going, too. His planned exit was useless if they couldn’t transform to mist.

He’d removed a small jar from the pouch, and now he opened it, revealing a noxious-smelling, bile-colored cream. “Take some,” he said, shoving it under her hand so she had no choice but to scoop some cream onto her cloth-covered fingers. “Slather it all over your eyes. That’s the way.” An inelegant job, but she’d managed even with bound wrists. “It takes a moment, but you’ll recover soon. In the meantime, stick close. And swallow this,” he added, reaching into the same pouch and pulling out a small pill that he pressed into her hand. “We’re about to do this all over again.”

“What?”
Panic laced her voice, but he didn’t have time to explain. Instead, he reached into another pouch, pulled out the second Du Yao Yan Qiu he’d created, and clutched it in one hand.

He’d launched the first one with the arrow in the theater above, releasing a temporary poison. This one he would hurl toward the guards—the same guards who were clambering through the now-open door. He waited, one hand tight on the girl, the other holding fast to the poison-filled orb, not a weapon of the shadow world, but of ancient China. With a few of his own modifications, of course.

“Take the damn thing,” he said, noticing that she stood there, holding the pill, her wrists still bound together and her expression dubious. “I’m trying to get you the hell out of here, not kill you.”

“Good point.” She lifted the pill to her lips as the flood of guards started. Two burst through first, one firing
a tranq dart that whizzed only inches from Petra’s ear.

She screamed, then dropped to the floor, chasing the pill that had rolled away, disappearing down one of the gratings through which the ashen remains of the executed were swept for processing—the very grates through which he’d intended to escape with Petra as mist.

“Dammit!”

Mentally, he echoed her cry, but there was nothing he could do now. More guards had come through, seven total before the flood stopped and they were all in the room, a heavily armed contingent of creatures—all covered from head to foot in strike-team clothing, their eyes safe behind goggles, their skin safe behind cloth, and tranq guns held tight in their hands.

Nick shifted sideways before the guards fired, dropping to the floor next to Petra at the same time he let the orb fly. It burst on the ground, the small chambers within that had been keeping the components of the poison separate rupturing with the impact, and the magic of chemistry stepping in to aid their escape.

The room filled with noxious gas, but this poison didn’t attack the skin. Instead, it formed a thick fog that made it impossible to see even a hand shoved straight in front of a face. More important, when breathed, the poison sucked the energy from the victim.

Unfortunately, since the antidote he’d tried to feed her had gone down through the floor vents, Petra succumbed to the poison as well, her low moans indicating just how hard the concoction had hit her human constitution.

Nick couldn’t see the guards, but he could hear them slowing down, stumbling. All except one—and because he still stood, Nick knew it must be a vampire. Like Nick, the vampire guard could breathe, but didn’t have to, and he’d apparently stopped at the first hint of poison, refusing to inhale the debilitating smoke. That guard alone remained a danger, and odds of one-on-one were perfectly fine with Nick, even with the baggage he was now hauling in the form of the lethargic girl.

Moving as silently as possible, Nick lifted Petra, then eased toward the door … and slammed right into the hard body of the vampire guard who, being a credit to the vampire community, had wisely moved to that exact location.

The vampire’s reaction was immediate: a punch to Nick’s throat that had him gasping in reflex—and inhaling the damn poison.

It didn’t matter.

Nick had designed the poison himself, as well as the antidote, and he’d taken a dose before entering the facility. He coughed, the noxious fumes burning his lungs, but his strength wasn’t sapped.

The vampire, however, wouldn’t know that, and in a calculated risk, Nick allowed himself a long, harsh cry of frustration, then sank to his knees as if the muscles in his legs were suddenly incapable of supporting him.

As he fell, the vampire wrenched Petra from his grasp, and Nick grappled among the pockets and pouches at his waist for a weapon. He didn’t want to kill the vampire—didn’t want the death of a PEC guard added to his list of crimes—but he would do what it took to get out of this mess, and with the girl.

With a stake in hand, he gathered his strength, then lurched toward the vampire—realizing suddenly that he could see the guard clearly.

The vents.

Someone in Security Section had turned on the floor vents, and the poison was being sucked out of the room with amazing swiftness, replaced with clean air that filled the lungs of the lethargic guards, their strength returning.

Dammit, dammit, dammit all to hell.

He was surrounded, and the girl—the very reason he’d undertaken this absurd mission—was held fast by the vampire.

He could escape; he could turn to mist and escape the way he’d planned to all along. As of right then, his identity was still concealed behind the body-covering suit he wore. And considering the miasma of chemical smells in the air, he doubted any of the guards even realized he was a vampire.

But he couldn’t leave without the girl. Security around her would be tightened, and she would be executed almost immediately. This was it. Now or never.

The answer had to be now. But now was impossible.

He hadn’t counted on the security cameras. Hadn’t counted on the vents.

Just as he hadn’t counted on the goddamned hematite.

In front of him, the six guards were moving legs and arms. Soon they would rise again for battle.

“Surrender,” the vampire said. “There is nowhere to go.”

He stood still, his eyes on Petra.

He had only one option, and to take it would put his friends
at risk.

He hesitated only a moment, and then he reached into his pocket and pressed a single button on his phone.

“The problem is that we don’t have any witnesses who put our guy at the second crime scene,” J’ared said, floating a few inches above the guest chair in Sara’s office. “Our guts say it’s him, but unless the investigators get us some solid dirt, we’re going to have to charge him only with the first murder, and that would really suck dragon eggs.”

Behind the desk, PEC Division 6 prosecutor Sara Constantine Dragos paced, her eyes on the desktop, but her mind on the execution. She glanced quickly at her computer screen, expecting to see the flash notification that Security Section sent following every successful termination.

There was no flash, just the brief she was working on regarding the current homicide investigation.

She leaned toward her keyboard, her fingers hovering there for a moment. There was really no reason to hesitate. As a prosecutor with the PEC, she had a perfect right to watch any execution, either in person or over the monitor.

Still … for this execution, she thought
it was best to keep her distance.

She didn’t know for certain that Nick was going to try anything. But that was only because her husband, Luke, would have Nick’s hide if the advocate put her job at risk by telling her something that she would be obligated to report to her superiors.

And a plan to interrupt an Alliance-ordered execution and flee with the condemned definitely fell on the list of things her bosses would want to know.

She tapped one finger softly on the keyboard, considering. She wasn’t worried that Luke was helping Nick out. He hadn’t given up his old ways, but he would never do anything that might harm her. About that, she was absolutely certain.

To be honest, some small part of her actually wished he was involved. Between Nick and Luke, they could design a foolproof plan and get the girl out without any risk to Sara at all.

Hard to believe she was actually fantasizing about a prison break. Her, the woman who’d been weaned on the judicial system. But this wasn’t justice in action, and the Alliance Tribunal had been a show without substance, not a courtroom in which facts were applied to the law. The idea that the Alliance could execute someone merely for being a threat made her think of the dystopian novels she’d devoured in high school. Not reality.

But months ago her reality had shifted dramatically, and she was still getting used to that.

“—and when we dance naked around the courtroom, the judge won’t even realize that all our legal arguments are crap.”

Sara jerked her head up and squinted at the poltergeist. “What?”

“Oh, so you are listening.”

She tried to run her fingers through her hair, realized it was pulled back tight into a ponytail, and shoved her hand into her pocket. “Sorry. Distracted.”

His wispy shoulders shrank, and the spectral light that created his shape shimmered a bit around the edges. “The execution. You wanna put this off until tomorrow?”

She shook her head briskly and forced her attention back to J’ared. “No. No, I’m fine.” As she spoke, her cell phone rang. She snatched it off her desk, checked the caller ID, and forced her expression to remain bland—because it was Nick’s name flashing on her phone’s tiny screen.

Panicked, she eased behind her desk, hoping she looked casual, then flipped open the phone.

Before answering, she covered the mic and mouthed, “Emily,” referring to her best friend from her days as a human in the District Attorney’s Office. She was just about to ask “Emily” what she needed, when she heard the sound coming
through the phone’s earpiece—a low, threatening voice telling someone to “get your hands away from that goddamn belt or we will drop you right here.”

She stayed silent, her heart pounding so loud she was certain J’ared would hear it, then casually pushed the mute button on her phone, afraid that the security guard who was threatening Nick would hear if J’ared spoke.

Tossing aside her hesitations, she logged into the security system and viewed the feed for the execution theater. Empty. Frowning, she pulled up the grid of all active cameras, sucking in air when she saw the feed streaming from the execution staging room.

Petra was being held by a burly security guard. Through the phone, she could hear him talking to Nick, telling him to take off the belt and drop all of his weapons. Nick, she realized, was the black-clad shape in the center of the room, now surrounded by a phalanx of guards who were pushing themselves up off the ground, clearly unsteady on their feet. Even over the monitor, she could see how tense he was, muscles prepared for flight.

So why didn’t he rush the guard, grab the girl, and go? At this point, it damn well seemed worth the risk.

The question had barely formed in her mind when her eyes settled on Petra and she realized what Nick’s problem was: hematite.

She shivered slightly, remembering the freakish sensation of being held in a vampire’s arms and being broken down into particles of mist. The vampire had held her close, and they’d transformed together. But if she’d been wearing hematite …

“Hang on, Em,” she said into the muted phone, hoping her voice sounded at least halfway normal. “I remember where I filed that phone number.”

Across from her, J’ared rose from the guest chair and started doing lazy loop-the-loops in the air, obviously getting bored. At the terminal, Sara pulled up the Plan of Execution that had been logged that morning. If the Tribunal had ordered the hematite binders, there was nothing she could do—they would have to be removed from the terminal in the security office, and by someone with Alliance clearance.

But if one of the guards had made the decision himself …

She scrolled through the pages, finally finding the serial number of the cuffs, and the entry by Transport Officer
Taaj Miran, who’d justified the binders since “her touch is transformative, and the binders ensure an additional measure of safety.”

She copied the serial number, then logged into the resource program. All prosecutors had access to restraints that could be used during interviews and in the field. Put the restraints on potentially dangerous suspects, take them off potentially cooperative ones as a show of good faith. All part of the game.

This wasn’t a game, though. This was her career. But more important, this was Nick, a friend, and one of Luke’s best friends. And Petra, who had control and a respect for the curse that bound her, and yet she’d been unjustly condemned for crimes she had not yet committed.

Once upon a time, Sara had believed in black and white, but more and more she was seeing the world in shades of gray. And before she could talk herself out of it, she began to search the database for the release code to Petra’s specific binders.

It was all she had the ability to do.

She hoped it would be enough. For that matter, she hoped she could do it in time.