26. Lucian
LUCIAN
Sophie's voice is still ringing through my ear when I catch Cantu's scent under the cordite and blood, and I head toward his location.
The plant has become a hunting ground shaped exactly as she promised it would be.
Kian's wolves hold the east corridor, driving mercenaries back from the cages Kurtis' bears are peeling open.
Prisoners spill out into arms that traveled a miles to free them, a thin wolf woman with a child clamped to her chest, an old bear shifter who can barely stand, a boy no older than the one who took fire weeks ago.
Hector's teams have the exits sealed. The buyers who came to purchase the end of my world are on their faces on the concrete, a foot on their backs, holding them down..
I move past it to find my target and make the only smart choice available to them.
Cantu's found the loading dock, a duffel already over his shoulder, moving toward the dark mouth of the rail spur with the unhurried economy of someone who planned exits like we expected.
He hears me coming, I roar as I cross the concrete, and instead of running faster, he stops, and turns, and stares me down with cold gray eyes that hold no fear at all. Only hunger, a smirk like he's won.
"So." His voice carries, thin and steady over the chaos behind us.
"There you are. I've spent years assembling fragments, Mr. Ashcroft.
Payroll anomalies, a birth certificate that shouldn't exist, a photograph, badly lit, that no one would believe.
" He sets the duffel down without breaking my gaze.
"And here you stand as one animal, one that I've chased for so long.
Do you have any idea what you're worth? Not you in particular, your kind.
Your marrow, your blood. The thing that lets a man become that and back again like Jekyll and Hyde.
I always knew you were real. I just needed someone to prove it to me.
Your accountant already destroyed it, I imagine.
Clever girl, but it doesn't matter, because now, guess what, I have you.
A live specimen is worth more than any database. "
I shift myself back, half human, half lion to speak.
"You never once bothered to learn who we were as people.
What we do." I take a step, and he holds his ground, which is either courage or the specific madness of a man who's never once believed the world could refuse him.
"You built an entire empire out of experimenting on us like diamonds deep in the earth.
And you're about to find out what the ground does when it decides it's done being mined. "
"Threats." Cantu's hand moves, and I see a weapon come up out of his coat, it's not a rifle, it's the only weapon that's been damaging my kind for the last two years. "I don't deal in threats. I deal in acquisition."
He fires as I shift. The round takes me and gold pours over me.
It burns wrong, chemical-like, something that sears deeper than a bullet has before.
He came prepared for me. Years of study, and his tool is for me.
The pain floods my foreleg and I stumble.
Cantu advances toward me, firing again, driving me back, cornering me like his people did to Sophie.
I stop giving him the retreat he's aiming for and cut hard against it between two dead conveyor lines where his weapon's sighting can't follow me fast enough.
The next round goes wide, sparking off steel.
I rise out of the black at an angle he didn't plan for, and the cold leaves his eyes, something human flooding to replace it. Fear.
He gets one more shot off. It grazes my flank, another line of that chemical fire, and then I'm on him, and the weapon spins away, and Lincoln Cantu learns in a heartbeat that the proof he's chased was never his to own.
I don't drag it out, because drawing it out would make me something closer to what he is. The Collector, the man who turned families into pets, experiments, dies under the creature he's tried to cage, and the cold heart stops beating in the center of the ruin he was lured into.
I stand over him, sides heaving, the chemical burn eating through me, and everything seems to silence.
Hector's voice travels from the corridor mouth: "Luke. Down. It's down."
He crosses to me at a careful distance, rifle lowered, reading my half-shifted shape.
Behind him the fight has collapsed into aftermath, his teams zip-tying the surviving commanders, Helena among them, her temple still crusted from the warehouse, her hands bound and her eyes murderous and beaten.
The buyers are accounted for. The mercenaries who could run, ran. The cages are empty, our kind are free.
Kian emerges from the east corridor with blood down one sleeve. Behind him, wolves are moving the freed prisoners toward the outside in pairs, supporting the ones who can't walk alone. Kurtis stands at the loading-bay doors directing his bears between them and the remaining gunfire.
"All accounted for?" I ask.
"Everyone we found," Kian says. "Medics are waiting beyond the fence. Nobody gets left in this place."
Kurtis catches my eye and gives one hard nod. For weeks we've been arriving after trucks had gone, after houses were empty, after families had disappeared. Tonight, for once, the doors opened in the other direction.
I don't celebrate. I can't, not yet, I need to know she's still alive. Until I've put my eyes on her, victory is just a word.
"Sophie." I'm already moving, past Cantu, past Hector, toward the hardened vault. "She said the database is dead. She did her part. I need…"
"Go. I've got the floor. Go find her."
I go, bleeding and afraid. I find her in the network vault, filthy, exhausted, and standing on her own two feet, already heading toward me.
"You're bleeding," she says, and her voice breaks on it.
"You're alive," I answer, and pull her into me, and finally, finally, believe we made it.