Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Mr. Davies,” Nichols said again, talking over Grayson. “Your attitude has no place here, and you are about to regret breaking
into my facility.”
Reece finally raised his gaze from Grayson to Nichols. “That’s not a lie,” he said, with the calm of a first distant roll
of thunder. “So I guess you actually believe that.”
“I assure you,” Nichols started, “our security is uniquely ready to handle—”
“What were you going to do to Evan, Dr. Nichols?”
Reece’s question hadn’t been loud, but there was an edge of ice to it that somehow dropped the temperature in the room even
lower. The alarm on the floor above was suddenly louder in the moment of silence that followed.
“Why isn’t security here?” one of the scientists whispered.
Grayson pulled against his restraints. “Reece—”
“Shh,” Reece said, putting a finger to his lips, his gaze still fixed on Nichols. “Not now, baby. It’s my turn to handle things.”
Nichols made a choked noise of surprise. “You’ve been having a romantic liaison with a corrupted empath?” he hissed at Grayson.
Grayson opened his mouth.
“The bigger problem is that you kidnapped a corrupted empath’s romantic liaison,” Reece said, speaking first. “And I found him in chains.”
The words echoed around the room, the thunder no longer a distant threat but directly overhead as Reece’s empathically fueled
anger vibrated underneath his words.
Then Reece took a step into the lab. “I asked you what you were planning for Evan, Dr. Nichols.”
“Where is security?” Nichols hissed at his scientists, who were already backing up.
Reece took another step forward. “Those are some pretty nasty-looking tools on that tray.”
“We need security—”
“Were you going to use any of that on him?”
The syringe and vial clattered to the floor as Nichols snatched up a scalpel from the tray. “Stay back,” he demanded, brandishing
it at Reece. “Security is on their way, and they’re ready for you—”
“You mean these guys?”
As Reece gestured around him, more people were already flowing into the room. Three, now seven, now ten, some in lab coats
and some in fatigues, all of them wearing identical expressions of menace trained on Nichols.
“My first thralls,” Reece said as the newcomers advanced, parting around him like a river around a rock and fanning out to
flank him. “Go big or go home, as they say.”
He shrugged. “I can admit I’ve made a bad decision or two in my day. But I’m making only good decisions tonight.”
Nichols’s eyes widened. And then he was lunging not for Reece but for Grayson on the table, scalpel brandished like a sword.
Reece’s thralls were faster. Screams erupted as four of them surged at Nichols, wrestling him back before the scalpel made
contact and dragging him away from Grayson. As the screams rose in pitch, Grayson heard Reece over the din.
“Get Evan free and maul the rest of them. Bring Nichols to me.”
The roars of the thralls joined the unceasing upstairs alarm and fresh screams. Grayson yanked uselessly against his cuffs. “Reece—”
In the edge of his vision, he caught Reece and Nichols. Reece’s hand was on Nichols’s face as his expression transformed from
terror to wide-eyed devotion, and then thralled soldiers and scientists were blocking Grayson’s view.
“Here’s what you’re going to do for me,” he heard Reece say somewhere in the chaos as the thralls spread out around the exam
table. “You’re going to take that tray of yours into the next room and lock yourself in. And then anything you’ve ever done
to another empath, or their siblings, and especially anything you were planning to do to Evan, you’re going to do to yourself instead. Sound fair?”
Jesus. “Reece,” Grayson tried as a new thrall popped up on his right, key in hand. “Reece—”
Nichols voice came with an unrecognizable bright eagerness. “Yes, sir, Mr. Davies.”
On Grayson’s left, beyond the thralls, a body hit the metal cabinet with a dull clang. Then, under the clamor around him,
he caught that same sound of wheels on smooth flooring as Nichols grabbed the edge of the tray, pushing it like a shopping
cart and practically skipping with glee out the still-open door at Grayson’s feet.
A petite woman in a blood-splattered white lab coat was now unlocking the cuff on Grayson’s wrist. Reece appeared next to
her. “Get him free,” he said to the woman. “And make sure he gets out safe.”
Reece began to turn.
“Wait,” Grayson said as his right wrist came free and the petite woman passed the key to a thrall on his left side. “Don’t
go.”
“You don’t want me here,” Reece said, not turning around or looking back at him. “You always knew it was only a matter of time before I became a monster. That time has thoroughly arrived.”
There was a wet squishy sound somewhere behind Grayson, and a new scream. The cuff on his left wrist came loose. He sat up,
pulling the IV line out of his arm. “I’m coming with you.”
“Evan, no,” Reece snapped. “You don’t want—”
“I do want,” Grayson said. “You think you can rescue me out of a nightmare and then I’m gonna let you leave?”
“You can find your way out, I promise. Just follow the trail of breadcrumbs I left in my wake,” Reece said bitingly. “And
by breadcrumbs, I mean bodies.”
The cuffs on Grayson’s ankles popped free. “I’m coming with you,” Grayson said again. “Wherever you go now. We’re staying
together.”
Reece stood for a moment with his back to Grayson, hands balled into fists. “Son of a bitch,” he finally muttered. He then
turned around. “Okay. Together. But I’m handling things.”
Grayson slid off the table and onto his feet. “I can handle myself—” He swayed, blinking hard against the black dots threatening
his vision, aware of the goose bumps all over his skin. “Never mind. That’s a damn lie. This is your show. Just find me some
clothes.”
From an underground level, they stumbled up the stairs together. Reece should have fucking glowed, the way his empathy was
crackling like lightning along his skin.
He could feel fear and fury throughout the facility like dots on a radar. “Ten people on this floor, maybe twenty more still
up top.”
Grayson was obviously still woozy, clinging to the railing for support as his bare feet climbed stair after stair. It was
enough to make Reece want to head back down and make Nichols suffer more.
But getting Grayson warm, and the absolute hell out of here, was more important. “He needs clothes,” Reece snapped at one of the thralls. “And we need an exit.”
“Barracks,” one of the men in fatigues said eagerly. He was one of the first pair Reece had thralled, after he’d driven the
truck through the fence and two men had come running to investigate. “Follow me and Croft.”
They pushed open the door at the landing.
“Freeze—” a voice started.
One of the thralls in a lab coat threw himself ahead of Reece, snarling like a rabid dog. He smacked into the security guard
in the hall, and the two of them went crashing to the ground.
“This way!” Croft led them away from the fight, down a hall and through another door into a large room lined with bunk beds
every few feet on either side.
“Finally, some heat,” Grayson muttered.