In Like a Lion (26 page)

Not happening.
Jake stepped forward. The crack and whine of darts sliced through the air on every side.

Kyle brushed him back.
Just do it
. His mental voice was rough and something told Jake his brother was having trouble staying in control of the dragon.

His next words sounded a bit more human.
I’m right behind you, little brother
.

Jake growled with frustration, but he allowed Kyle to turn, sheltering them as they made their way to the door and out.

Chapter 33

Anjali stopped dead as they exited the cellblock, her chest tight with fear.

Kincaid waited at the end of the guards’ station with a chic blonde. Both held guns in their manicured hands.

The blonde pretended to clap, tapping her free hand on her wrist. “Very clever, Gareth. Tricking her into revealing her abilities on camera. My employers will be pleased.”

Anjali swallowed an inhuman growl. Jake towed her tight into the warmth of his large, solid frame.

Kincaid winced. “Shut up, Clara. I’m sorry it’s got to end this way, Jake, but you just won’t cooperate.” He shook his snowy head. “You’re exactly like your father.”

“You knew my father?” Jake’s words held only the merest thread of humanity, and Anjali knew he clung onto his human form by no more than a whisker.

“He was my first subject. And when I found out your mother had just had a cub, my plan seemed perfect. Kill the mate and a chimera will die. Just waste away. Leaving me with a child young enough to imprint and maybe the older ones as well.” He backed up as he spoke. The woman glanced at him and followed suit.

Anjali scrambled to delay whatever plan Kincaid had. “But it didn’t work that way, did it?”

The expression on Kincaid’s face was ugly. “That bitch hung on as long as she could, hiding the children all over the country. And then Jake was adopted. I couldn’t find him. Until he ended up on the streets.”

A flash signaled Jake’s change to lion form. Kincaid jumped back, slapping his palm against a button on the wall. A glass partition slid down with slicing speed. Jake lunged, hitting the barrier with the full force of his seven-hundred-plus pound body. It quivered, but held.

A loud hissing sounded above her. Anjali zeroed in on the source; a vent on the ceiling.

Kincaid waved mockingly and jammed his hands into his suit pockets as if he were settling in to watch a show.

Anjali met Jake’s golden gaze with her own, raising her sleeve to her face. “Cover your mouth and nose. It’s some sort of gas.”

He flashed back to his human body and grabbed his clothes, holding his sleeve in front of his face as he dressed, then ran his free hand over the junctions of the glass and the wall, probing for a vulnerable spot. He shook his head, voice muffled. “It’s airtight.”

A flash seared her eyes. When her vision cleared, Jake was in dragon form. “Let’s hope I really can breathe fire.”

He inhaled, pulling air into his massive lungs with a loud whoosh. Then the hiss of flame filled the corridor.

Hope surged through Anjali.

Jake blew a steady blaze at the glass. Orange flames licked in every direction, blackening the clear surface, but the barrier held firm.

Clara’s laughter rang out, high and strident over the intercom.

Anjali felt her chest tighten. Jake’s fire, while hot enough to sear flesh, couldn’t melt the tempered glass.

Jake’s vast chest expanded again. Anjali could see he planned another burst of fire, and she clutched his forelimb. “No. Stop! All you’ll do is burn our oxygen.”

Her head was beginning to feel foggy. She glanced up at the vent. “Maybe we can . . . stuff something in there?”

Jake took his shirt and reached out with a taloned claw to shove it in, but the fabric was too stiff to go into the narrow slots. He grasped the grate with his claws and ripped it free, cramming the gaping square with the shirt and the rest of his clothes. “It’s no use, the vent is too big.”

Anjali’s body started to feel heavy. She plopped down crossed-legged on the floor.

“Anjali!”

Jake’s large, alien-looking head appeared before her. Despite his strange appearance, concern almost radiated from him. She cupped his scaled cheek. “I can still see you in there.”

“Are you OK?”

She heaved a sigh and supported her head against the side of the desk. “I just need a little rest.” Her eyelids were leaden and she let them close.

He roared. The sound jolted her back to awareness.

He rammed the wall beside the barrier with a claw, punching a hole through the drywall, exposing the studs.

Kincaid’s eyes bugged with alarm. He dragged Clara away from the security wall and took off down the corridor.

Jake made short work of the wall, tearing down a stud in large chunks of treated wood.

“Come on.” He shifted back to human, grabbed her hand, and yanked her onto her feet.

Dizzy, Anjali pressed behind Jake. He guided her around the stud and punched through to the other side.

They took gulps of clean air as they emerged. Her head clear, Anjali found the button that controlled the gas and the barrier. She slammed it hard enough to bleach her knuckles. Her hand shaking at how close they’d come to dying.

The hissing stopped. A second later, the soot-blackened barrier slid up. Jake jumped onto the desk and snagged his clothes, dressing in seconds, and then started in the direction Kincaid had gone.

Anjali grabbed his arm. “Let him go, Jake.”

“You heard him.” His was a mask of pain. “He killed my parents. He’ll never leave us alone.” He took off in a ground-eating trot.

Anjali was forced to run to keep up. “At least wait for your brother.”

“If I wait, Kincaid will get away.” Jake broke into a run.

She glanced at the ceiling, appealing to God for a second then followed her mate. “I doubt it. He wants you dead as much as you want him. He’s probably gone somewhere to regroup.”

“That’s why we have to catch him before he does.”

Jake tracked Kincaid to the large training room and hesitated. Even from ten feet away. the room smelled of the rubberized mats, sweat, and bleach. The scents unleashed a powder keg of painful memories. Here, he’d been forced to exercise until his feet bled.

His whole body shook with the power of his emotions.

The older man was visible through the open door. He’d piled several weapons on a bench and was gathering more from a metal gun locker. The blonde was nowhere in sight.

Jake marshaled his control and put a hand on Anjali’s arm, guiding her to the wall.
Stay here.

Anjali opened her mouth to protest, but he kissed her swiftly, then rested his forehead on hers, his golden eyes gazing into hers.
Please
?

She nodded. He could read the fear in her, but he refused to let it soften his resolve. The lion and the dragon bayed inside him, begging for blood, for vengeance.

Jake stepped through the open door. “Where’s the woman?”

Kincaid lifted the rifle he held to his shoulder. “Dead, with any luck. I’ll just tell her bosses you killed her before I could take you down.”

“Another murder to your tally?”

“Don’t feel sorry for her. She was an amoral bitch. You should worry about yourself.” Kincaid indicated the rifle with his chin. “I’m the one with the gun after all.”

“And what about my mother? Was she an amoral bitch?” With the lion clawing just under the surface of Jake’s control, a genuine roar rumbled beneath his words.

“She was in the way, and so are you.” Kincaid’s finger readjusted on the trigger.

“What caliber you got there? You sure it’ll take me down?”

Jake forced himself to meet Kincaid’s gaze, hoping to undermine the other man’s confidence. He took a step closer, not even daring to blink. “How many times have you shot me before, while I begged you to set me free? Or just to kill me and end it?”

Kincaid’s smile was cold. “I’m not taking any chances this time. This holds enough of my drug that I won’t even have to shoot you afterward.” He tensed.

Reading the set of his shoulders, Jake hurtled forward, shoving the base of his palms together and up, ripping the rifle from Kincaid’s grasp. The older man fell back, scrambling backward on his elbows toward the other weapons.

Jake raised the rifle. His finger found the trigger.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a woman’s voice.

Jake froze.

The blonde, Clara, sidled into the room, pushing Anjali in front of her. She had a syringe in her hand, her red-nailed thumb on the plunger, the needle buried in Anjali’s side.

His mate’s mahogany gaze met his.
I’m sorry, Jake. She just appeared like the others. She’s already given me a little of the drug. I can’t change.

The blonde made a little moue. “Please excuse my late arrival. Reports of my demise were exaggerated.” She smiled. “And Gareth misspoke. It’s not bitch. It’s
witch
.” She lifted an eyebrow at Kincaid. “You showed a little more gratitude when I hid your men in plain sight.”

“My words were just for effect.” Kincaid regained his feet, shot his cuffs and brushed the dirt from his trousers, the picture of his usual urbanity.

Typical. Nothing took the bastard off his pedestal for long.

“Hmm.” Clara smirked at Jake. “I’m surprised you believed him. You may be a man, a lion, and a dragon, but Gareth Kincaid is one-hundred percent
snake
.”

Kincaid sputtered, but Clara brought Anjali closer. “Fortunately, I like that in a man.” Clara grasped Anjali tighter, twisting her hand in Anjali’s shirt collar.

Jake gritted his teeth at the rough treatment.

“Drop the gun or I’ll empty this syringe into the little woman, and there’s more than enough in here to stop her heart.”

Anjali’s face was pale, her pupils huge with fear and anger.

Jake swallowed. He had to live for her. “Kill me and she dies, too.”

Kincaid smiled. “Pregnant chimeras tend to linger until they give birth.”

Jake inhaled sharply in unison with Anjali. His gaze found her face, and he sniffed the air, searching for some hint Kincaid lied.

Kincaid smiled, clearly pleased by their reaction to his bombshell. “Only conception could have triggered her metamorphosis into a chimera.”

“You’re lying.” Anjali crossed her arms. “Conception takes longer than that.”

The older man smiled. “Not in chimeras, my dear.”

Jake gazed at Anjali. In a flash, he saw her cradling her child to her breast, the tender expression of mother’s love lighting her face. Maybe she couldn’t love him, but she would love their child. He could give her the family she’d lost.

Jake locked his gaze on Kincaid’s smooth face. “That drug will kill the baby, too.”

Kincaid shrugged. “I’m afraid my own skin is more valuable to me than the baby.”

Anjali clasped her hands over her flat abdomen, her eyes dark with entreaty.
Don’t let them hurt our baby.
She bit her lower lip.

Impotent rage simmered through him. His alter egos strained for freedom, but if the blonde pressed down on the syringe, nothing they did could save Anjali or their child.

Jake threw down the rifle. Maybe, if he delayed, his brother would come through the door.

Kincaid scooped up the weapon, lifted it, and squeezed the trigger.

Crack!
The sound of the round exploding from the barrel rang in Anjali’s ears.

“No!” The scream that tore at her throat as she saw the projectile hit and Jake fall seemed to come from somewhere else. A dull buzz filled her ears as her mind insisted on replaying the image in triplicate. A sob ripped through her. She’d been lying to herself all along. She didn’t just care about him. She hadn’t gone with him because they were being chased, or because of the mate bond.

She loved him. He was more precious to her than the air in her lungs. He was her family. For a few, amazing days she’d had a family again and she’d let her own fear keep her from accepting that.

Nothing mattered in that moment but getting to him, and saving their baby.

Beside her, the witch laughed at Jake’s defeat.

Anjali growled and slammed her elbow up into the side of Clara’s head, landing a solid blow on the blonde’s pale temple.

The woman’s laughter cut off abruptly. She slumped to the mats, unconscious.

Anjali snatched one of the handguns on the bench, cocked it, and fired in one motion. The gun roared. The ejected casing flew back at her, whizzing past her ear close enough to feel the heat. The scent of gunpowder filled her nose. She could taste it in her mouth.

Kincaid glanced up from where he stood over Jake’s limp body. Then his gaze darted to the spreading stain on his own chest, and came back up, eyes and mouth rounded in surprise. “No, no. no.”

Anjali glared at him, shaking with reaction, hand burning from where her skin had gotten caught in the slide. “You’re not raising
my
baby.”

He slid sideways onto the padded mat with a thump, but she didn’t spare him a second thought.

“Jake!” She rushed to him and knelt by his body, hoping to see those blue, blue or topaz eyes looking into her face. He didn’t move, eyelashes dark smudges against his pale skin. She fought to inhale, but the air had turned to broken glass, and each breath hurt. This couldn’t be happening. He was so vital, so strong. The ceiling seemed to advance, threatening to crush her.

She panted, dredging a shred of calm from the panic and slid his heavy shoulders into her lap. His head lolled as she moved him. Inky hair clung to his cheek, and she pushed it back, rubbing the back of her knuckles against his freshly shaved beard. The skin of his cheek was still warm and pliant. Her mind struggled to imagine a world without him.

“Damnit, Jake, don’t you dare be dead. I can’t lose you, too.” She tore at the edges of his black shirt, not caring as buttons popped free and pattered to the mat. The large dart lay on his muscled chest, the bright red pompom on the end obscuring his wound. A flick of her hand sent the lethal projectile flying. She didn’t bother to note where it landed, instead searching the broad smooth skin for the puncture. Nothing.