He didn’t answer. He just held her.
Karina awoke slowly. Within her body, the pain subsided, gradually, like a receding tide, fighting for every step of its retreat.
She opened her eyes and saw Lucas’s neck. Her face was buried in it.
He was kneeling on the floor, looking up. She was wrapped in his arms.
Her voice shook. “Why are you holding me?”
Lucas turned to look at her. His face was too close to hers. “I didn’t want you to die alone on the floor.”
She said things. Stupid, stupid things. Maybe it was a dream. His eyes assured her that it wasn’t.
“Please put me down.”
He let her go slowly. Karina slid down onto her knees and sat clumsily on the floor. Her legs shook a little. She felt light, so light and cold. “Is my change over?”
“Yes,” he said.
She had survived. “I don’t feel any different.”
“The change isn’t always obvious. Something will trigger it sooner or later.” He was looking up again. She glanced up, too, and saw a monitor in the ceiling. It showed an empty hallway.
A man in dark clothes darted across the hallway, brandishing a machine gun, and hid behind the wall.
“We’re being attacked,” Lucas said. His voice was calm, almost casual.
“How is that possible?” Emily. Henry had her. If they were being attacked, her daughter would be in danger.
More people flickered past on the screen.
“The Ripper must have been an Ordinator mole,” Lucas said. “We should’ve gone to a ranch in Montana—that’s our evacuation route from that base. Instead we’re in Detroit. This building is nearly abandoned; only the bottom three floors and the top five—those are ours—are operational. The blocks in a one-mile radius around it are basically deserted. We’re sitting ducks here.”
“Why didn’t Arthur evacuate us?”
“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “The Ordinators likely blocked the exits. We landed into a trap.” His face was dark. “Our best chance is to stay here.”
No. No, she had to go and find Emily. “Why?”
“I’m at my limit. Normally I would be drugged and sleeping this off for the next two or three days until my body came to terms with my venom. I could barely hold you. Most likely Arthur has sent for reinforcements. The vault is solid and must be opened from the inside. It will take them several hours to get through the door, so it’s likely they won’t bother with us right away. By the time they get around to it, we might be reinforced. Our best bet is to stay here and wait it out. We probably die either way, but here we have more of a chance. Especially if we’re quiet.”
“You have to let me out.”
He looked at her, obviously trying to decide if she was crazy. She had to convince him she wasn’t.
“Henry has Emily,” she said. “She’s out there somewhere.” Out in an abandoned building full of people with guns and God knows what sort of weird powers.
Lucas looked at her for a long moment.
“I have to find her, Lucas. You don’t have to come with me. All I ask is that you help me open the door, because I don’t know how. I’ll find her myself.”
Lucas looked at the door. If they opened the vault, he would walk out of it a dead man. She stood before him, her eyes huge and brimming with worry. She just wanted her little girl back and she didn’t understand how far gone he was or how many enemies they would face.
Everyone dies, Lucas reflected. He’d been a selfish bastard all of his life. If he walked out of that door and died helping her find her child, at least he’d die doing something worthwhile, not cowering like a dog in the vault, waiting to be gunned down.
And she couldn’t go out there alone. She would be dead in minutes.
He sighed, rose, and stepped to the wall. Karina clenched her hands. She couldn’t read his face. He touched it and a section of it slid open, revealing a number keypad and a small speaker. His fingers played with the keys. “Cousin?” Lucas said softly.
A faint hiss of static issued from the wall, then Henry’s faint voice came through. “Lucas. Red, gray, seven, pinned.”
Lucas grimaced. “Is the little girl with you?”
“Yes. Black.”
“How bad?”
“I’ll live.”
“Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”
“That’s unwise,” Henry said.
Lucas slid the panel back in place. “He is two floors below us. He’s been shot. Emily is okay; he is keeping her under. He can’t move because it’s too dangerous and he is cloaking, which makes him harder to find, but they will locate him eventually. The moment we leave this vault, you and I must fight to survive. Remember how you tried to cut me with your knife?”
“Yes.”
“Find that woman and be her.”
He had no idea how hard she had worked on hiding that woman and how ready she was to let her out.
“Don’t move.” Lucas walked over to the vault door, punched in a combination in the small number pad, and turned the wheel in the door’s center. Something clanged inside the door. Lucas moved to stand on the side. With a soft hiss, the door swung open and Karina stared straight at a man with a gun.
“Hands up!”
She didn’t move.
The barrel of the machine gun glared at her, black and huge, like the mouth of a cannon.
“I said hands up!”
Lucas nodded at her. She raised her hands.
“Subspecies?” the man demanded.
“I’m a donor,” she said.
The man’s eyes widened. “Get up and walk to me.”
Lucas shook his head.
“I can’t,” Karina said, keeping her voice monotone. “I’m sick. I can’t walk.”
The man moved into the vault, one step at a time, careful, the gun pointing at her. He took three steps in. Lucas lunged, so quick she barely saw it. His hands closed about the man’s neck. Bones crunched, and the man sagged down on the floor, limp.
A week earlier, she would’ve screamed. Now she just got up and ran over to the body.
Lucas staggered, leaned against the wall, and pushed himself upright. He wasn’t joking. He really was at his limit.
She crouched by the body and began going through the man’s pockets. “I can do this alone.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He picked up the man’s machine gun and handed it to her. “Safety here.” He flipped a small switch. “Point and pull the trigger. Your instinct will tell you to keep clenching it. Don’t. Count to three in your head and let go of the trigger. Short bursts.”
Karina took the gun and raised it. It was heavy like a cement block. “You do realize that I can kill you with this.” She didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.
“Yes.” He turned his back to her and went out of the vault. A pair of jeans and a sweatshirt lay by the door. Lucas pulled on the clothes and started down the hallway. She followed him. He moved like a cat, soundless on bare feet.
They came to the end of the hallway. Lucas leaned against the wall, glanced around the corner, and looked at her. “Point and pull the trigger,” he whispered.
“Count to three,” she whispered back.
He nodded.
There were people at the end of that hallway. People she would have to kill. It’s them or us. Kill or be killed.
She took a deep breath, stepped into the hallway, and pulled the trigger. The gun spat thunder. Bullets ripped into four distant shadows. She thought there would be blood, but no. They just jerked and went down, screaming. She pounded the bullets into the bodies for another long breath and let go. Lucas moved next to her.
It was a test, she realized. He had to know if he could rely on her. Well, he could. She’d kill every one of them to get to Emily.
“What happened to letting go on three?”
“There were four of them,” she said. Movies and books told her she should be throwing up now, but she didn’t feel queasy. Her mouth was dry. It would probably hit her later, but now only Emily mattered. “I decided to take two extra seconds.”
Karina followed Lucas through the dark passageways as fast as she could. She was squeezing everything she had out of her exhausted body. Now that the first flush of adrenaline had worn off, fatigue set in. She didn’t walk, she dragged herself forward, shot when Lucas shot, stopped when he stopped. Only the next step mattered and she gritted her teeth and managed it again and again.
They made it to a small door. Lucas punched a code into the lock, the door snapped open, and they went through onto a concrete landing. Lucas punched the lock and the small square light in its corner turned red.
“We rest,” he said. “Two minutes.”
Karina sank down to the concrete and he sprawled next to her. The grimy floor was like heaven.
“Why are you helping me?”
His voice was a quiet growl. “Because I like you. And your little girl.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the cold concrete under her cheek. That wasn’t it. Lucas was making up for his past sins, but that wasn’t all of it, either. She knew the true answer. She could read it in his worn-out face. He wanted to save her, because he wanted her to stop flinching when she looked at him.
“Thank you,” she told him. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Time to get up.” He rose.
She cried out as he pulled her off the floor and followed him down the stairs. An odd sensation clenched her, almost like some internal spring had compressed inside her and now begged to be released. She stumbled, and it vanished.
One floor. The landing. They were midway down the next flight of stairs when the door below swung open.
An icy presence clenched her mind in a hard grip. It shut her off, trapping her. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t speak. Time slowed to a crawl.
The door kept opening, wider and wider. She saw inside it; she saw armed people pour out onto the landing. She knew she had to fire. Instead she just stood there, disconnected from her body.