Chapter Ten #2
‘What’s with the damn noise? There a fire?’ Callum asked. He jerked a thumb at Luca. ‘What are we to do with this one? Put him with the others?’
It was a risk, asking a question like that. One that had Kyan’s stomach tightening, even if he kept his pulse calm and his breathing steady.
The guard had a strange air about him: cool and mildly suspicious, but also a little dead in the eyes.
Kyan felt the shift as Callum approached the other Empyreal. The sheer power radiating off his friend was near ageless, intense. He kept it locked away and used his charm to make him seem like less of a threat. But it was always there.
Kyan had never seen Callum completely unleashed, not in years of training, not in years of hunts. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what would unleash him.
‘Any moment you see us, you’ll forget us immediately,’ Callum began.
His tone wasn’t just lower and smoother, it hummed with lazy power.
Only the most powerful Empyreals could Influence other Empyreals.
If this hadn’t been in their arsenal, Kyan wasn’t sure they’d have made it into this corridor.
‘We aren’t threats, and if anyone asks, no one was down here. Are there any prisoners?’
The Empyreal’s eyes had completely glazed over. ‘Yes, several.’
‘All mutated?’
‘I don’t know the extent of their procedures.’
Fuck. It was real. There was more.
‘How long do we have until someone comes to investigate?’
‘Ten minutes, maybe.’
‘If anyone tries to come in, stop them. There’s a fire in the lab.’
The Empyreal nodded.
‘Let’s go,’ Callum ordered Kyan.
Kyan tugged Luca towards the glass wall on their right. He shot a quick look through the window on the door to the left, to discover a bedroom cell attached to an examination room.
The lab entrance caused a vague sense of déjà vu: it was a glass door, clear, save for the frosted circle representing the Wake.
The same one Nicole had shown him from Lynch’s memories.
This was it.
Luca put his hand to the lock and, after a series of sparks and a flicker of numbers, the door whooshed open.
Inside, the bunker-like room had been split by glass into different sections, reminding Kyan all too much of the labs he’d been in yesterday.
Emergency lighting glowed on and off, its red pulse bathing the dimmed room’s details.
Each pod-like space seemed to be a testing area or office.
Little fridges with samples were laid out on metal tables and desks, and files and vials lined the workspaces.
Some were obviously parts of creatures: claws, wings, but all … wrong.
He couldn’t linger to figure out why. They needed something to prove what was happening here.
He just had no idea what he was looking for.
‘Luca, can you check their computers and keep the cameras off at the same time?’ Kyan asked.
‘Not for long,’ answered the Nazen, his gaze unfocused and glowing.
Callum spoke: ‘Find their oldest experiment, or something with the most security, even if it’s just a name and a few details. I want to know how and when this started.’
The Nazen reached out blindly and Kyan guided his hand to the nearest computer while he scoured the room. On the back wall there was a small, inset cabinet with a single vial of blood inside, labelled HUNTbrINGER.
Almost like a trophy.
Callum had stopped in front of it. ‘What’s your guess this is what we’re looking for?’
Kyan grabbed a pair of disposable gloves from one of the stations, the first ripping as he shoved his hand inside.
He took a clean vial and unstopped the one marked HUNTbrINGER, pouring some of the blood in, then going to put the original one back.
Hopefully no one would notice there was about an inch of it gone, but it was better than them discovering the whole thing missing.
Before Kyan could return it, Callum stopped him by gripping his arm and leaning closer to scent the blood. For a moment, there was a blankness on his friend’s face, and then his eyes darkened with shock. As if he couldn’t control the reaction, a snarl stole over his features.
‘What?’ Kyan asked, trying to scent the blood.
‘We’re going to need a Vampire to test it,’ was all Callum said.
‘Huntbringer,’ Luca said behind them, eyes flickering, ‘that’s the oldest.’
‘Time’s running out,’ Callum said.
‘Fry it,’ Kyan said of the computer. ‘It’ll set the smoke detectors off and explain the alarm.’
Luca reached out for the cables on the back and his fingers moved blindly, unclipping something like a box on the back of it, then let a whip of his power free.
A blinding stalk of electricity arced throughout the room like lightning, forking around the three of them but lashing everything else.
In doing so, the electrical glow in Luca’s eyes faded. He gripped the little box.
‘Need more energy,’ he breathed, blinking hard.
Kyan’s attention snapped up to the cameras. ‘Time to go.’
He grabbed Luca’s arm and led him back out, pocketing the vial of blood.
‘We have minutes,’ Luca said, staggering slightly.
Callum was already through the door to the cells the unseeing guard was still stationed outside.
As Kyan followed, the room’s immediate darkness heightened his vision.
The cells inside were raucous with strange noises and a blast of stomach-turning scents he couldn’t easily identify.
‘We can’t unleash these,’ Callum said as he stalked down, passing creature after creature. Monstrous, horrific things.
What logic was there to summoning the Wild Hunt with creatures like this?
‘Fifteen seconds before the cameras are back on,’ Luca warned.
‘Go. Now,’ Callum ordered.
Kyan moved.
The corridor bent to the left, so they followed it to an emergency exit.
‘Out!’ Kyan ordered, helping the Nazen through the door, just as the other burst open and the fire team flooded in.
‘What have you got up your sleeve?’ Kyan asked Callum as he took the stairs three at a time.
‘Luca, I’m going to need you to use that special little skill of yours right about now,’ Callum said. ‘The Babewyn’s bound to the building – sap the power and set it free.’
They took the spiral staircase downwards into a giant tunnel system where pipes ran along the brick.
Luca nearly pitched straight into the darkness as they reached the bottom, but as he slammed into the wall, he grabbed onto a pipe and a lash of electricity shrieked out of him so bright and intense, Kyan staggered backwards.
It ripped through Luca, making his skin glow.
The building’s electricity went out with a loud crack, the stilling vibrations of machines above winding down like the shuddering of a great beast.
An acrid burning scent followed and Kyan wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole place caught fire.
Luca buckled and Kyan hauled him up over his shoulder, hissing at the mild electrocution. Then he was running down the rest of the tunnels until they came to a fork and took the left, heading to the church.
They ran for several more minutes, now in the secret tunnel out of the Bailey until it rose to a set of steps and reached an old door. Furious, Kyan slammed his right shoulder into it, sending it splintering outwards, right into the Holy Sepulchre Church.
A priest who’d been peacefully eating a salad at the desk of the office burst up, leaves and grains flying all over his desk.
Kyan ignored him and stalked out into the church itself, scouring its pale stone columns and rich dark wood pews for more humans that might spot them.
He set a semi-conscious Luca down onto one of the seats, still clutching the little box he’d robbed, before jogging past the flags and stained-glass windows to the doors.
Glancing outside, he discovered smoke spiralling out of the Old Bailey and the sound of sirens growing louder.
‘Did it work?’ he heard Luca moan.
A great crack cleaved through the moment.
Then the stone Babewyn vaulted into the skies, high enough Kyan couldn’t track her, and disappeared.
Kyan strode back inside. ‘What the fuck was that?’
Callum laughed, his eyes bright. ‘First things first.’ He jerked a thumb at the terrified priest whose mouth was still hanging open. ‘Influence that one.’