Chapter 16
sixteen
The Heathen
The security alarm goes off the moment Angel puts his fist through the window of the good doctor’s house. He curses and quickly punches out the rest of the glass. Just as he finishes, there’s a loud pop inside the house, and something whistles by my head so close I can feel it.
“Get down,” yells Father Salvatore as Saint drags me and Mercy to the ground at the same instant. “Shots fired!”
“Fucking hell, that was close,” I say through panting breaths, my adrenaline charging through me like a herd of bulls down the streets of Madrid.
“Why is it always you?” Saint demands. “Aren’t you supposed to have the luck of the Irish or some shit?”
“Must have worn off when they moved to America,” I mutter, grimacing at the thought of all the stories I’ve heard about Mom’s childhood.
Angel sits with his back to the wall under the window, but after a minute, he turns and eases up over the sill.
Another bullet shrieks past, and Father Salvatore curses under his breath and motions for us to move to the other side of the porch.
Mercy and Saint start to army crawl, but I can’t because one of my arms is fucked.
Seeing my predicament, the father nods at Angel and then crawls towards me.
Angel crawls to the next window and shatters it just as Dante reaches me.
Together, we crab walk to join the others as the next gunshot sounds.
My heart lurches the way it always does, and I check on Angel, who’s fine. The bastard really does have an angel looking over his shoulder. A bullet would probably slide off him like he’s fucking Teflon.
“Angel,” Mercy hisses. “This way.”
He eases down the wall, then looks left and right before standing and squeezing off a round into the house. A loud yell of surprise answers, and I wait for the sound of a body falling, but instead, there’s footsteps, then silence.
“Shit,” Saint says. “What now? We can’t go into a shoot-out with guns blazing when we only have two.”
“Can’t wait him out,” I say, taking out my Glock. “He’ll probably have called the guards by now, and there’s a hell of a lot more of them than us.”
“They didn’t carry guns,” Father Salvatore says.
“Doesn’t mean they don’t have ‘em,” I reason.
A spray of bullets peppers the lawn where we were not five minutes ago, and my heart fucking stops. We would have been shrapnel if we hadn’t moved. Mercy’s eyes widen too, and I know she’s thinking the same thing.
Angel, however, uses the barrage to estimate where it’s coming from, and as soon as it’s over, he fires again.
This time, his shot is met with cursing, then another short burst of return fire.
Angel scoots towards the porch, probably thinking the guy won’t shoot there again since he’s already covered that area.
There’s a long silence, but over the ringing in my ears from all the shots, I hear footsteps inside. We back against the wall under the windows, and for a few minutes, we just wait.
“What now?” I ask, looking to Father Salvatore.
A distant bang reaches us, but it takes way too long for us to realize what it is.
Not until we see a figure running toward the main building, hunched against the wind.
Angel curses and swings around, but it’s an odd angle and the guy is already further away than would be ideal for a pistol.
I steady my gun and take aim anyway. I squeeze off a shot, but between the wind and the way the guy is weaving and the distance, I don’t even come close.
Dad took us hunting as kids, and I can handle a gun, but I’m nowhere near a sharpshooter, even with a rifle.
Guns were never my weapon of choice. I’d rather stab a bitch with my switchblade.
“That’s the doctor,” Mercy says. “I think he lives here alone, but we should be careful going in anyway.”
Angel goes in first, and I cover him. Like Mercy said, no one else is home. We quickly ransack the place, but we don’t find anything useful. It’s just a house, though we do confiscate the laptop.
“Guess we’re going back into the asylum after all,” Saint grumbles, staring out the window toward the back of the hulking building backed by more trees.
Blood pumps through me, my head pounding at the thought of the pandemonium about to ensue.
But more than that, I picture Eternity. I’ve imagined her so many times, in every scenario, but new ones materialize in my brain every time I think I’ve exhausted the possibilities.
Now I see her pale and vacant like that ghostly figure in the rocking chair, locked in a padded room in a straitjacket.
She was way too wild and defiant to make it easy on them.
That will have been to her detriment in a place like this.
They probably just killed her, or lobotomized her so she won’t even know me when I come to get her.
I imagine opening the door to her cell, imagine her snarling at me with a wild look in her eyes, fear instead of recognition.
Four years is a long fucking time. They could have broken her until she doesn’t want to leave, until she thinks I’m there to hurt her instead of rescue her, and she fights me when I try to take her out.
“I’m fucking ready,” I say grimly.
“Let me get in touch with Nathaniel first,” Father Salvatore says. “They’ll be expecting us. We need to know what we’re walking into.”
Fifteen minutes later, we’re slipping through the back doors of the building.
“Cutting all power in three… two… one,” Nate says through the speaker on the priest’s phone.
“Let’s move,” Father Salvatore says. “They’ll have the backup generator on standby.”
We race down the hall as the lights blink off, plunging the place into darkness except for the dim grey light seeping through the windows. Alarms start blaring, red lights blinking. They must be on a battery system.
“She’s not on the basement level,” Mercy says. “First floor is offices and cafeteria and common rooms. We need to find the stairs and go up.”
“Wait,” I say, skidding to a stop, my brain having caught up with the words that flashed by a second ago. I backtrack and try the door, finding it locked.
“What are you doing?” Mercy hisses.
“Nate,” I bark, leaning over Father Salvatore’s shoulder. “Can you unlock the doors?”
“Which doors?” Nate asks into his headset, eyes straight ahead toward the screen and fingers flying.
“All of them.”
“Copy that,” he says, like a total nerd.
“Keep going,” I call to the others. “I’ll catch up.”
Father Salvatore orders Saint to stay with me, then continues on with Mercy and Angel.
Realizing the door is an old-fashioned lock, I spare a bullet for the knob and duck inside.
The room is empty, and Saint uses his phone flashlight to cast around until I find what I need.
I lift the old-fashioned microphone and test it. It crackles to life.
“All patients are to evacuate your rooms immediately,” I say into the device, holding the button down. “The doors are unlocked. Repeat, the doors are unlocked. Please evacuate your rooms and make your way to the nearest exit in an orderly manner.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Saint demands when I release the switch drop the mic back into its cradle.
I give him a maniacal grin. “Just having a little fun.”
“You mean creating chaos?” he asks.
“If she’s here, this will bring her out,” I say. “A hell of a lot faster than checking every room in the place. They’ll have the locks reengaged way before we can finish that task.”
Saint gives a grudging nod. “Not too shabby for a heathen.”
We stand there for a second, my face stretched into a grin and his etched with some unreadable expression. Our gazes catch, hold, and my pulse thumps.
Then we hear footsteps in the hall, breaking the spell.
We push out of the door, into the chaos.
It’s more than I expected. The entire hallway is suddenly teaming with kids in khaki, some of them running and screaming, others crying, a few huddling against the walls, covering their ears to block out the sound of the alarms. No one seems to know what’s going on, which makes getting lost in the melee much easier, despite wearing regular clothes instead of the bland uniforms of the residents.
I jump in like it’s a fucking mosh pit, whooping and cheering, pumping a fist as I gallop through the crowd, reveling in the madness.
Mid-leap, I catch a glimpse of Walker Delacroix in the crowd, but when I land, I search for him and can’t find him in the havoc I’ve created.
But then I catch sight of a taller guy with dark hair grabbing another guy by the hair, and though he’s turned away, I’m sure it’s him.
“Walker,” I call, but my voice is swallowed by the din.
A tall blond boy crashes into me, nearly knocking me to the floor, where I’d definitely be trampled.
I shove him back, sending a knife of pain rippling along my cut.
With a screech of joy, the guy hurls himself into the wall, bounces off, and crashes into another kid, who shoves him back.
Undeterred, he goes zigzagging down the corridor, laughing maniacally and joining the pandemonium.
Okay, so maybe releasing a bunch of mental patients wasn’t my best idea, but hey, at least some of them are having fun.
I open one door, then another, but all I find are empty rooms. I throw open the next one, bellowing my sister’s name.
I swear I hear someone call my name back, but when I look around, I can’t find a familiar face.
I’ve lost Saint in the crowd, and everyone else is just a sea of bland colorlessness.
The lights flicker on a moment, and the volume in the hall increases before we’re plunged into murky darkness and it reaches a fever pitch.
They blink back on, and I spot the guy I thought was Walker, but this time, I see his face—Julian Sincero. My blood runs cold.
He isn’t the one who tried to take me, who took Mercy off campus, but he’s close enough. Nate said it was his brother.