Chapter 57
River
There were more of them than we’d expected.
Even with their personnel spread far and wide across the facilities, the organization still had more than enough manpower to trap us in that building.
The alarms were still blaring throughout the corridors, and thundering boots in the distance told me more armed muscle was marching up the stairs to meet us.
Which wasn’t ideal, considering we already had our hands full with the guards in this room.
Laurie backed up slowly, stiff with tension, until she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me.
I felt the rapid flutter of her heartbeat, her ragged breathing as she clutched the gun tightly in front of her.
Her aura radiated outwards in overlapping waves, fury in one pulse, fear in the next.
I did my best to soothe that tide, but my own aura was going haywire too.
We were completely surrounded, and the circle of guards closed in tighter as more poured in behind them, guns trained unwaveringly at the both of us.
My muscles coiled tight, ready to spring, every instinct roaring to fight, but Laurie’s presence kept me rooted in place.
If I so much as blinked, they’d open fire—and if I went down, Laurie would be going down with me.
I held myself rigid instead, my breath coming shallow and strained, heart thumping wildly as I raked my brain for a way out of this new predicament.
A way out that didn’t end with both of us riddled with bullet holes.
I scanned the room slowly, taking stock of our surroundings.
I counted twenty guards in total, all of them armed and alert, circling us like wolves.
The one right in front of us raised his gun and aimed the barrel directly at Laurie. “Nowhere to run.” His eyes narrowed at her own gun, still held aloft with shaky hands. “I suggest you put that down.”
“I suggest you go to hell,” she muttered through gritted teeth, unrelenting with her snippy commentary, even at gunpoint.
“Put the gun down!” the guy barked back. His eyes were cold, ruthless. He was only human but the weapon in his hands made him a deadly threat. “The director wants you alive, but that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you if I have to.”
Laurie’s hands trembled, fingers tight on the trigger. She didn’t move, didn’t lower the muzzle, furious defiance flickering dangerously in her expression.
“Laurie,” I murmured. “I think you should do what he says.” It killed me to say it, but the look in his eyes said he meant every word of his threat. The organization wanted her alive, but they clearly didn’t specify in what condition they expected her to be delivered.
Laurie, however, did not put the gun down. She didn’t fire it either. She did something much worse. Her lips thinned to a hard, harsh line and her eyes zeroed in on the guard, flashing with fire. Then she lifted her hand and pressed the barrel directly against her own head.
The guard faltered, his face slackening momentarily in shock. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You know I’m valuable to them,” Laurie snarled back, voice unwavering despite the tremor in her hands. “Your boss wants me alive, right? You can’t afford to lose me. So, here’s the deal: You let River and me walk out of here right now, or I make myself permanently useless to you.”
My blood ran cold, dread clawing cold fingers up my spine at the implications of the words she spat. “Laurie…”
“Trust me.” Laurie’s voice was icy steel, her resolve evident in the fierce set of her jaw. Her eyes never left the fuming guard. “They won’t risk losing their precious experiment.”
It was extreme, horrifying actually—but she was right, and for a heartbeat, I thought she had them. The guard sneered, baring blunt teeth, but he lowered his gun. But from the corner of my eye I caught movement, and whipped around just in time to see another guard lunge forward.
I raised my claws, ready to raze him to the ground, but froze in place when he lifted his own weapon. That second barrel was aimed directly at my forehead.
I dropped my arms, slowed my breathing to a crawl, and the guy inched forward.
The deadly muzzle pressed cold and unsettling against my skin.
Had it been any ordinary gun, I wouldn’t have batted an eye; I would have crushed the insignificant hunk of metal with my bare hands.
But that was no ordinary gun—that was a weapon designed to kill monsters. Designed to kill people like me.
“If you try anything stupid, your creepy girlfriend goes down with you,” the first guard hissed somewhere behind me, taunting Laurie. “Are you willing to risk that?”
“Creepy?!” I cut in with a gasp, if only to shield her from the direct terror of that threat.
She said nothing, and I held myself dead still, assessing her expression from the corner of my eye.
Laurie looked stricken, finally beat, fingers slipping from the trigger in agonizingly slow increments.
I could feel the anguish radiating off her in violent waves as she lowered the weapon.
I wanted to scream at her to run, to fight, but there was nowhere to run to, and fighting was impossible now.
Then rough hands seized my shoulders, dragging me backward, and one of the guards pressed a sharp, serrated blade against my throat.
It wasn’t any more comforting than a gun to my head, and I realized with a sickening lurch that the cruel, curved weapon was lined with rows of vampire teeth.
My pulse fluttered against those jagged points, flesh prickling as dozens of needle-like fangs nicked ever so lightly against my neck.
The first guard turned triumphantly to Laurie. “Behave,” he sneered, “or she’s dead.”
I gritted my teeth, hissed the words out. “Go fuck yourself.”
Laurie’s eyes darted from me to the guard and back again, and I could see her mind working overtime to orchestrate a new plan, racing to identify the few options we had left. Her fingers around the gun grew limp, teetering on the brink of defeat, when a sudden commotion erupted outside.
Shouts, scuffling, then gunfire ripped through the hallway.
Heads turned sharply toward the door, just in time to see the wave of swirling shadows pouring in.
Darkness billowed through the boardroom, blotting out the fluorescent lights overhead.
The guards cried out in a clash of alarmed exclamations, blinded and disoriented as that impossible darkness filled the room.
A familiar, dry voice rang out from within the swirling shadows. “Hands off our oracle, asshole.”
Dylan emerged from her shadows like the ghost of goth girls past, dark tendrils twisting around her head.
Behind her, the rest of my motley crew arrived on the scene, all of them bloody and in various stages of disarray, but ready to dish out another ass-kicking if the moment called for it. Which it certainly did.
Maxine clenched her dainty fists and whaled on the first guy in her line of sight, while Jordan and Sky protected her back, both of them baring vicious fangs, ripping and tearing through jugulars before any of the guards knew what hit them.
Hunter was in front of me in a flash, dark eyes flashing as she hissed a command to the guy behind me. “Drop it.” The blade clattered to the floor and I dropped to my knees, rolling away while she coiled back a fist and decked him flat in the face.
I dove for Laurie, tackling her to the ground as bullets began to fly.
The guard from earlier, the talkative one, made a desperate lunge at us, but I vaulted to my feet and met him head-on, drawing my cutlasses from my back and slicing a streaking red X across his chest. The blades cut through his armor like a knife through butter, and he went down with a choked cry of agony.
Laurie stumbled to her feet beside me, hanging onto my arm while weapons clashed and clattered around us.
“Elevator—now!” I shouted over the din, and pushed her ahead of me as we weaved through battling bodies.
Laurie squawked a warning over her shoulder, and I parried another attack from a whirling, wicked blade.
Steel clanged violently, ringing through my ears as I swept the attacker aside.
Then I gripped Laurie’s hand and hauled her onward, dodging and weaving through the fray. “Keep moving!”
With a bit of assistance from Amara, who zipped by in a blur of motion and took out three raging guards at once, we managed to make it to the hallway, spilling out of the boardroom and racing for the elevator at the end.
The stairs we’d climbed earlier were a no-go; more guards were rushing up from downstairs.
Our only option was to keep running, to book it for the elevator and get Laurie to the bottom floor before anyone could come after us.
I had to get her out. I had to get her home.
We almost made it, we were almost there—when a sharp, burning pain flared through my upper arm. I gasped, stumbled, and dropped one cutlass, and blood seeped between my fingers when I pressed a hand to the fresh bullet wound.
“River!” Laurie shrieked. She stumbled to a halt, grabbing at my shoulder. “You’re hurt—”
“I’m okay,” I gritted out, forcing myself upright as guards closed in behind us. “Just keep moving!”
We raced for the metal doors as bullets whizzed by. I shielded Laurie as best I could, screaming out a curse through clenched teeth when another shot found its mark in my calf. Behind us, the rest of the Leyore women were converging, tackling our pursuers before they could land another shot.
We reached the elevator. I slammed my palm against the call button and turned frantic, wild eyes on Laurie. “You’re taking this down and you’re getting the fuck out of here.”
The doors slid open beside us, but Laurie froze on the threshold.
Her face was a blank mask, mouth creased downward in a vengeful curve.
Her fingers tightened around her gun, and my heart seized in my chest. I knew what that look meant.
I knew exactly what she planned to do before she’d even opened her mouth.
I gripped her forearm. “Laurie, no—”
“Let me protect you for once, River.” She reached for my face and cupped a gentle, tender hand to my cheek. “Let me do this for you. For all of you.”
She gave me no time to speak, no time to demand she pick another plan.
I’d barely parted my lips before she was grabbing my collar and yanking me down into a fierce parting kiss.
I clutched her closer, crushed her in my grasp despite the pain radiating hot and blinding up my arm.
I wanted to hold on forever, keep her safe, never let her go. Not ever again.
But another bullet sliced past us, shattering the mirror inside the elevator, and I snapped around to face the attacker.
I lifted my remaining cutlass and sent it spinning through the air at the guard who’d fired at us.
The blade lodged in the center of his forehead, and a trickle of blood split down over his eyes.
He dropped to the floor, dead in an instant.
In that brief moment of distraction, Laurie had stepped backward into the elevator, and when I turned to reach for her, I saw the pained, glassy sheen in her eyes.
“Laurie, don’t—!”
The doors closed swiftly between us, and her anguished gaze locked on mine until the last possible moment, until the sliding steel clamped shut. The light above the elevator flickered on, blinking arrows illuminating the direction she was moving: Straight to the very top.