The truck slid to a stop, voices inside raised in query. The passenger door opened and two armed soldiers jumped out. Sanders shook his head when they made a beeline for Nic. Trust a semi-naked hot chick to railroad a guy’s attention and make him forget every scrap of operational awareness.
“Hey…lady? You okay?” The first reached Nic and leaned over to shake her shoulder.
“She’s out of it, man. Check her pulse.”
The second guy stood back and looked around with wariness written in every line of his body. No way could he see the hidden wolves, but the awareness could be a problem. Nothing they couldn’t handle though. Moving as one, the wolves exploded from the undergrowth at the same moment Nic surged to her feet. She yanked the rifle out of the first soldier’s hands and slammed the butt up and into his jaw. He dropped like he’d been KO'd, and Nic spun to face the second soldier. Who had her in his sights.
“Hasta la vista, bitc—”
Sanders hit him from the side, wrapping him up in a lethal embrace as his claws punctured the guy’s ribcage. He felt the snick when the skin gave, the rush of hot blood flowing over his hands, and a muscular pulse as his claws tickled the bottom of the guy’s heart. Sanders ached with power. The wolf called to him, tempting him to shift fully but he held it and used the power to fill his muscles instead. With a bellow he twisted and wrenched. His claws came away tangled in half the human’s ribcage.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he snarled and shoved the dying man away. The body hit the ground, convulsing in its death throes. Sanders looked at the mess on his fingers and grimaced. He flicked his hand and the ribs hit the dirt with a bloody splat.
“Oh God. Barbeque ribs. I haven’t had them in forever,” Palmer said with longing, his voice rough with the wolf. He looked down the road, checking to make sure there wasn’t anything they hadn’t accounted for, like a second vehicle.
A crackle of static brought their heads up. Sanders squinted and looked through the windshield of the truck. A young human looked back at him in shock, eyes wide with fear and panic.
“Shit, there’s a third one.”
Six wolves launched into motion, all heading for the same target but none of them made it. Another, smaller figure hit the side of the truck. Metal screamed, the door wrenched clean from the side before being thrown backward to tumble end over end. Lilly snarled, her hands in a perfect part-shift as she yanked the young soldier from his seat by the radio and dragged him out of the vehicle.
Sanders made it first and slid into the gap. Wet heat penetrated his pants. Great, the kid had pissed himself. The radio sparked to life.
“Oscar four, didn’t catch your previous. Say again. Over.”
Shit, what had the human managed to get through? Sanders grabbed the radio and clicked the mic on. “Base, this is Oscar four. Sorry, we’re having a few problems with the radio here. Nothing doing here. Whole load of fuck-all and tumbleweeds. Over.”
He slid a sideways glance. The rest of the pack had taken the soldier from Lilly, more than one of them eying the new Lycan with respect and maybe a little fear. He’d never seen a new wolf control their change so soon after conversion. Damn scary stuff. Sanders was glad she was on their side.
“No problem, Oscar four. Carry on your patrol. Base out.”
“Roger that, base. See you on the flip side. Oscar four. Out.”
The stairs went down and around, until Toni wondered if she would emerge on the other side of the world. Her boots were near silent as she ran lightly down the stairs. Whatever this place was, the owners’ sure had a hard-on for being below ground.
She hooked her uninjured hand into the balustrade to swing herself around the next turn. No cameras. Surprising. The Project was anal about surveillance. Perhaps she just couldn’t see them?
She shook her head and put the thought aside. No sense in worrying about it now. If the guards were there, she’d be walking into an armed reception committee whether she went up or down.
Lined with concrete, the stairs looked newer than the sections of the base above ground but it had to have been done before she arrived a couple of years ago. She’d have noticed construction on the scale required for the stairs alone, never mind whatever else was down here.
Her steps slowed when she turned the last corner and approached the double doors at the end. Plain double doors, nothing fancy. Plastering herself to the wall, she listened for company. The rasp of her breathing filled her ears, loud enough for anyone the other side of the door—perhaps even the base above—to hear. She paused before she reached the door, her back flat against the wall, and extended her senses, human and non-human. Tried to feel what was on the other side, to pick up the slightest scuff of a boot, the jiggle of equipment…even the faint smell of gun oil.
Nothing.
Body coiled for action, she spread her hand flat against the surface of the door and pushed. No shouts, no gunshots. In a rush, she shoved the door the rest of the way open and slipped through. The doors to the elevator were next to her and a corridor stretched out in front. It was concrete like the stairs, lined either side with doors. Offices? Storage? She trotted along, trying to keep her steps light and skirted to one side in case someone came around the corner ahead. Quite what she planned to do if that happened, she didn’t know, but it felt better to hug the wall as she scooted along, trying the handles on the doors.
The first door was locked, but the second opened to reveal an empty office, the desk and shelves covered in a thick layer of dust. Same with the third and fourth. The fifth looked to be some kind of staff room. Her frown deepened. Neglect lay thick the dust. What had this place been used for? The depth and construction would indicate a bomb fallout shelter. Perhaps an operational center back from the Cold War, to be used in case of a world nuclear war?
Heavy footsteps and a deep male chuckle warned her a couple of seconds before a group of soldiers turned the corner up ahead. Heart speeding up, she slid into one of the empty offices.
Flat against the wall behind the door, she listened while the group headed toward the stairs and lift. Another deep chuckle reached her ears as ribald comments were thrown back and forth. Nothing interesting, just the usual male crap.
She held position for a few seconds after she heard the doors slide shut. When the mechanism whirred, she opened the door a crack. Once that elevator was in motion, it was a one way trip to the hangar. She hadn’t seen any other levels on the way down and in her experience, elevators and stairs operated in tandem. With this being the Project though, a level accessible by elevator alone wouldn’t surprise her.
No, she reassured herself and slipped out into the main corridor. Foster’s scent was strong here. They’d wheeled him this way. She followed her nose, noting the Lycan’s scent got stronger and more feral the farther she went.
A mark on the floor caught her attention so she knelt, rubbed her fingertip over it and lifted her hand to sniff. She recoiled with a grimace. Sweat with a hint of silver nitrate. The sweat wasn’t so bad, but the silver made everything in her want to turn inside out. Project doctors used the stuff, knowing it burned but not caring. She’d never seen anyone push the stuff out through their skin like Foster though. Is this what they’d done in the hospital?
Turning yet another corner, she found a second set of double doors in front of her. Shit, this place was a damn rabbit hole, and her name sure as hell wasn’t Alice. She approached the doors with the same caution she’d approach a downed soldier in the field. One never knew if those on the ground had a grenade or mine hidden underneath. There were two small windows around head height. She slid along the wall, eyes level with the nearest before twisting to take a look.
“Shit…”
Like the hangar above, the room contained row upon row of cages. But this time the occupants weren’t sleeping. Most dripped with blood, and the guy in the cage opposite stared right at her, the white column of his spine visible through the ruined mass of his throat. She shivered at the expression on the corpse’s face. Easy to see he’d died in agony.
No guards in sight.
Toni pushed the door open and slipped into the room. The smell of blood, terror and fouler things washed over her. Low level moaning covered her movements as she shut the door and sidled behind the nearest cage. The occupant, a Lycan, was curled into a small ball in the corner. He was shivering and nak*d, blood ran from vicious claw marks across his back and shoulders to pool under his body. Even her presence didn’t rouse him.
She scooted behind the rows, making sure to stay out of the main walkways, her disgust and sympathy mounting with each step. Working her way along, she checked the cages for Foster, but each revealed a fresh horror.
More Lycans with horrific wounds, but these weren’t like the ones above ground—the ones who watched her with suspicion and threw themselves against the bars to get at her. Instead, sensing someone outside the cage, some tried to scoot away and hide under whatever they could. Others were too far gone to care, staring at things she couldn’t see.
She scooted around the edge of the last cage, noting another corpse. Sprawled on his back, his ice blond hair stained scarlet, his black eyes staring up at the ceiling. The air left her lungs in a rush, recognition rushing through her.
“No…” She dropped to her knees next to the cage.
Gavin Hurst. Lieutenant. Damn good soldier. But he hadn’t been Lycan, he’d been a Blood. One of hers.
“Fuckers!” she snarled and slammed her hands into the bars, denting them. She’d been told Hurst had bought the farm on mission. They’d lied to her. Taken one of her men and…what? What had they done to him? She looked down, concentrating on the state of the body rather than its identity.
Vicious slashes had opened him from sternum to pelvis, his guts exposed to the air like pale, pink sausages. The blood on the floor was still warm. His heart could only have stopped beating a few seconds before she found him. The residual energy—the fanciful might call it his life force—wrapped around her before it faded from his body. She watched the black of his eyes fade.
“Holy shit.”
She sat back on her heels, dumbfounded. He’d been a Blood the first time she’d met him so she’d never known what color Hurst’s eyes were. Blue. A beautiful clear, light blue. They turned back to human after death. She’d never seen another Blood die. Oh, she knew that they could die, had even seen them fall, but she’d never seen the bodies. They were always reclaimed by the labs for tests. That is unless they’d taken the one way trip into the desert, then no one saw them again.
A door opened on the other side of the room, blasting a brief burst of male laughter and a howl from beyond it. Toni’s head snapped up and she moved in that direction, ignoring the caged prisoners for now. She couldn’t help them until she knew what was going on. And whatever it was, answers, and Foster, were through those doors.
Chapter Ten
Darce hit sand and knew he was in trouble. Trying to force the fog of sedatives from his brain, he rolled to his feet with a roar. Talons exploded through the skin of his fingertips as he dropped into a defensive crouch, swiping at the air around him with part-shifted hands. Anything to keep the bastards away from him.