Blood Instinct (31 page)

It was a reluctance based on not wanting Sirius to be forewarned, of not wanting to further incite Caleb in his mission.

But the vampire wasn’t going to back down.

‘If you want to save your life,’ Caleb said, ‘and the life of what’s growing inside you, I suggest you tell me what you know. And I’ll let you go with what you need.’

Sophia searched his gaze. ‘You give me your word?’

‘It’s the only way you’re going to get back out of here, Sophia.’

‘Sirius already knows what the permanent cure is,’ she said. ‘That’s what we’re going to expose. He’s kept it covered up to maintain the system that’s in place until he gets what he really wants.’

‘Kane. But why him?’

‘Because Sirius wants
more
than a permanent cure. That’s just a smokescreen. He has a master plan for immortality for humans. He wants to be able to conduct soul transferences – clone to clone. He needs Kane to find out how to do it, because Kane did it with Caitlin. He wants to create an elite human empire that eventually negates the need for the third species at all. And we have ways to expose it. We can get our hands on evidence. We have links to The Facility, where it’s all happening.’

Caleb loosened his grip before removing his hand completely, but his eyes remained locked squarely on hers.

‘And what
is
the permanent cure?’

‘You’ll give me what I need? You’ll let me go?’

‘Like you said, I’m smart, Sophia. Strategic. As much as it would make me feel better for a short while ripping you apart, there’s a time and a place for everything – and this isn’t either. Tell me what the permanent cure is.’

‘Angel tears.’

But there was no shock in Caleb’s eyes – only a look like the one she used to see her teachers give when she’d answered a question correctly.

‘Sirius has been trialling them on his army,’ she said. ‘A superhuman army.’

Caleb raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Sirius is fucking with
angel
tears? And giving them to his
army
?’

‘Yes.’

The subtle upcurling of his lips added to her discomfort. But he pulled away too soon for her to be able to read into it.

He stepped over to the fire and stared into the flames for a few moments.

‘I’ll get you what you need,’ he said. He glanced over his shoulder, his green eyes glinting from the flames. ‘But just you make sure that sister of yours comes back to me.’

K
een to make a swift exit
, Xavier braced himself, aware that the moment he was out of shot a round of bullets would soon bring the pack down.

Jask had to have known that. Kane too. But they both still had that look that said they thought they were in control regardless.

So far, it was all too easy – much too easy. And it was as unnerving as their seeming compliance.

Two soldiers led Corbin up the steps to Jask whilst Kane descended to be collected. The seemingly swift and uncomplicated exchange led him to only one conclusion: Kane had his own backup somewhere – most likely somewhere en route back to the border.

Yet nothing had shown up on the devices when they’d arrived. And the message had remained consistent in his earpiece: outside was still clear.

Kane’s backup would let him be loaded into the van. They’d probably let them get him as close to the periphery of Blackthorn as possible. But Xavier knew they
would
strike. They
had
to strike. There was no way they would give Kane up so easily – not after this long.

And there was no way Kane himself would surrender so easily after this long.

But he watched with the deepest satisfaction as the soldiers secured Kane’s wrists behind his back. The vampire’s navy gaze penetrated deep into his as he was led past, Xavier’s insides coiling in response. That gaze promised that they most definitely had unfinished business.

But Xavier was going to be the one to finish it. Kane could retain his arrogance all he wanted, but he had yet to see the backup tucked behind the walls of Lowtown, ready to infiltrate at the first sign of trouble.

He had yet to see the helicopters ready to take off and film the inevitable retaliation in the compound and the streets beyond – carefully edited footage that would give them all the defence and justification they needed to have wiped the lycans out once and for all.

Xavier looked back at Jask, whose gaze was just as steady. ‘It was a pleasure doing business with you, Jask,’ he said before casting one more wary glance at the building behind him.

Xavier turned his back on Jask and walked away. Five paces, then ten. And still Jask did absolutely nothing; said nothing.

But his pack remained poised as if waiting for Sirius’s army to make the first move. And they would – once they’d got Kane safely out of the firing line. Once they’d tranquilised him and thrown him in the back of the truck.

They’d burn the whole fucking compound to the ground.

To his irritation, he flinched as, behind him, he heard the tennis ball make first contact with the ground; the tennis ball that made contact with the ground again.

And again.

Like an irritating ticking clock.

‘A little old for ball games, aren’t you, Jask?’ Xavier called over his shoulder.

‘It’s not the ball,’ Jask called back to him. ‘It’s the vibrations. Us lycans pick up on them.’ There was a pause. ‘
And
when they stop.’

Xavier came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the green.

The sudden silence was intense.

He looked over his shoulder to see the ball had stilled in Jask’s hand. He had a look in his eyes, the hint of a smile, that chilled Xavier to his core.

It was like stepping onto the track just before the train hit, eyes wide in the headlight as it hurtled down the obvious path, however unexpected its arrival.

Xavier’s attention dropped to the nearest mound of earth.

He scanned the twenty-nine others spread amongst the army that had been positioned with their backs to them. Positioned that way, facing the lycans standing on the periphery, because they had been led,
deceived
, into retaining their misdirected focus.

A half second later, the mounds of earth split open. The lids of the wooden crates in which the crouching lycans had been hidden were cast aside, their aluminium linings, their very own Faraday cages that had blocked the army’s readings, glinting in the weak light.

Another split second later and soldiers all around him were falling, the backs of their knees sliced or stabbed. Amidst the distraction, the other twenty-five lycans ploughed forward to take down those who had been missed.

Their injuries weren’t enough to kill them but, whatever the lycans’ tools were laced with, it was potent – because of all the soldiers who fell, not one of them was getting back up again.

In no time, his army, now matched in numbers one on one, was overwhelmed. The lycans’ swiftness, their agility, their
teamwork
, was a sight to behold, unrelenting even as the army’s backup flooded into the compound.

But the lycans didn’t back down. Their energy, their determination to win, was more than war – their counterattack was personal.

Deeply personal.

And as arrows rained down from the upper windows of the abandoned hotel, taking down the soldiers who guarded him, Xavier spun on his heels to run.

Instead he came face to face with Kane.

He heard the crack of Kane’s cuffs as one of the lycans snapped them like brittle glass with the cutters.

A lycan with the letter ‘A’ a mild scar on his forehead. One of the lycans
he
had selected to kill Arana. A lycan who glowered at Xavier with the triumph of revenge radiating from his eyes.

Xavier recoiled; tripped over one of the abandoned crate lids. He scurried backwards whilst reaching into his coat for his gun, his eyes not leaving Kane as the vampire closed in on him.

But just as he aligned the barrel to shoot, the blade at his throat stilled him.

‘When are you going to
finally
take the hint?’ the female voice asked rhetorically in his ear. He felt the prick of a needle in his neck.

A female voice he knew only too well.

Caitlin Parish.

J
ask shielded
Corbin as he helped get him inside, taking him to join Zeena, to where Sorran would get them to safety.

Corbin grasped his arm, his grip tight on his sleeve. ‘They put a location chip in the phone,’ his beta said, his words slurred behind his split lip, panic emanating from behind his swollen eye. ‘They can find the bunker.’

The phone containing the footage – the footage brought back to show Jask.

Despite his heart skipping a beat, Jask shook his head. ‘It’s too deep down there,’ he declared, needing to convince himself as much as he did Corbin.

Corbin shook his head. ‘No. Supersonic. Supersonic tracker.’

The ground beneath him swung off kilter, the roof above suddenly oppressive.

‘Tuly,’ Corbin mumbled, his eyes pleading, his grip on Jask’s shirt tightening. ‘Solstice.’

A trap within a trap. They’d played the same game: the battle there a distraction while they focused more force elsewhere. A backup plan. Or a plan for eradication all along.

Jask barely blinked before he spun one hundred and eighty degrees and ploughed back down onto the green, bypassing the steps entirely.

‘The bunker,’ Jask said, skidding to a stop alongside Kane. ‘They’ve fucking double-crossed us too.’

Kane’s eyes flashed with understanding. ‘Go!’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll send more.’

Jask scanned the green, where his pack fought back dwindling numbers.

‘We’ve got it covered here,’ Kane said, shoving him back. ‘And my lot are on the way. This time
I’m
saving
your
arse. Now
go
! I’ll be right behind you.’

T
uly ambled along the corridor
, sliding her hand along the mix of metalwork and brick. She slowed as she sensed the breeze that toyed with her hair, the slight drop in temperature as if someone had left a door open somewhere down the vast array of corridors.

She stopped, her hand dropping to her side as her sensitive nose picked up the change of scent in the air. And she could feel something. Through the pads of her bare feet, she could feel the subtlest vibration of something heading in her direction.

Something approaching her at a slow and steady pace. Something large. Heavy. And from the pattern of movement she could feel, something four-legged.

Tuly held her breath and took a wary step backwards, breath that then reluctantly escaped as
it
came into view.

It stopped at the end of the corridor, its human-like eyes fixed on hers. But its body wasn’t human.

She knew with her most basic instinct exactly what it was, even though she had never seen one. Like a baby recognising another human being, she knew what she was looking at was lycan. Some kind of morphed lycan. But it didn’t seem to recognise
her
as one of its own.

It drew back its blackened lips to reveal elongated incisors, a drip of saliva hitting the floor as it lowered itself to its haunches.

Tuly took another step back, the morphed lycan taking a step forward in perfect synchrony with her retreat as if pre-empting her move.

There was a growl, the lowest rumble, at the back of its throat. Then it leapt.

H
e wasn’t moving fast enough
. Jask pelted down the tunnel but still he knew he wasn’t making up enough time.

They would have had it synchronised to perfection, of that he had no doubt. They would have turned up at the bunker at the same time as they’d arrived at the compound.

They weren’t letting his pack out of this alive. Not this time. They’d planned on wiping them all out – a plan of total annihilation.

It would take him another twenty minutes before he stood a chance of reaching the outskirts of the bunker. He was already too late. He was way too late.

Unless he significantly made up for lost time. Unless he was armed and ready when he got there.

He would lose time now but
it
would make up for it. It might only salvage a matter of minutes but those minutes could be crucial.

It had been so long though – so long since he had controlled it, since he had last willingly triggered his morphing. It usually took hours to incite, let alone to prepare himself physically and mentally.

But he didn’t have that luxury now. Forcing morphing within minutes was going to be agony, especially without the comfort of water to ease the transition. The alternative would be the equivalent of throwing himself onto hot coals and lying there burning as every nerve absorbed the pain.

But he fell to his knees regardless, his palms flat to the ground. Because the influence of the blue moon, the rage, and the lycan inside him already desperate to burst out, would help speed up the process.

Jask increased his breathing, sending himself into the deep meditative state that was needed. He focused on memories of green fields, of running free with the wind in his hair and turf beneath his bare feet. Recollections of swimming in rivers and drying out with the sun on his back.

Memories of his youth, when his alpha status first became apparent.

And Sophia. Sophia back at the bunker. Sophia who would no doubt do anything to protect their young.

His
young.

They would
not
take his young again.

He flexed his fingers against concrete as they contracted, the rapid growth of his talons breaking through beneath his nails, it feeling as though the quicks above were being torn away.

Perspiration trickled down his forehead and into his eyes, his heart rate speeding up to increase blood flow to every extremity, his head aching under the pressure.

He let out a pained groan as his limbs lengthened and strengthened, his skin stretching to accommodate.

He jolted as he felt his sternum crack; let out another groan as the spasms in his back sent a shimmer of pain down his spine, the cartilage expanding within, applying pressure on each and every vertebrae as if he were being crushed.

His jaw unhinged, his teeth lengthening as if they were being torn from his bleeding gums.

His eyes watered as they burned within their sockets, dislodging and realigning to accommodate his reforming skull.

He cried out in agony as the base of his spine finally tore through the flesh of his back, creating a tail to give him the perfect balance he was soon going to need.

Because he was almost there. He could feel it in the heat raging through his body. He could feel it in every nerve ending, in every inch of skin that itched to the point of insanity as hair – dark golden hair sensitive to breeze, to sound, to vibrations – began to mask his back, his limbs.

His morphing would soon be complete.