Night Unbound (39 page)

The explosion that followed hurt Zach's sensitive ears and left them ringing for a few seconds. Bodies and body parts flew. The gate blew open and broke apart.

Zach and the others ducked as pieces of metal embedded themselves like bullets in the trees around them. Then they raced forward, David in the lead, to confront their enemies.

From the corner of his eye, Zach saw Chris's network battalion surge forward in their armored vehicles.

Shouts rang out.

Mercenaries opened fire.

The front of the main building exploded into chucks of granite and glass.

David never slowed, just plowed right through it.

Zach followed, running in front of Lisette to take the brunt of the shrapnel as they dove inside.

More explosions rocked the building, sending dust and debris raining down upon them.

How the hell many grenades had Chris given Seth?

A quick survey revealed two main hallways off of which other, smaller hallways branched. Mercenaries poured into them all as Zach stopped to take stock, Lisette bumping into him.

Marcus joined them.

Wielding deadly katanas, David cut through the mercenaries on the right before they could get off more than a handful of shots. Marcus dove into the hallway on the left, his short swords Jackson-Pollocking the white walls with blood and gore.

Take the basement,
Seth said in Zach's head.

Gunfire erupted directly behind him. Spinning around, Zach found Lisette peppering a dozen or so mercenariess outside the entrance with bullets from her Glock 18's.

Zach jerked as a mercenary bullet struck his arm.

Lisette did the same.
Okay,
she spoke in his head.
I'm liking the new suit better. It actually stopped that bullet
.

The mercenaries all fell. They must not have been wearing body armor while they trained. Either that or they hadn't been training and had only had time to grab their weapons.

To the basement,
Zach told her.

Together they burst through a stairwell door and faced more mercenaries running up the stairs. Lisette's Glocks barked out bullets while Zach's daggers and throwing stars found purchase in soft throats. Bodies fell, cluttering the landing below them.

Zach heard more boots scaling the stairs. Grasping the railing, he leapt over it and plunged into a dozen or so men bearing automatic weapons, sweeping them down to the basement level and slamming them up against the door through which more tried to pour.

His blades flashed. Bodies piled up against the door.

Once all had been dispatched, he looked up in time to see Lisette jump over the railing.

Grinning, he caught her in his arms.

“Hi, handsome,” she said from behind her mask, a smile in her voice.

The suits work,
Étienne said in their heads.
At least the thicker parts do. I was just hit with a dart, but it couldn't penetrate the armor.

“Good to know,” Lisette said as Zach set her on her feet.

Bending down, he grasped the dead mercenaries by their shirts and tossed them up onto the stairs, away from the door.

The door burst open.

Bullets slammed into him.

Zach didn't even draw his knives. He just lunged forward and started snapping necks.

Mercenaries dropped like limp rag dolls. Others retreated down the hallway and into another, firing while they ducked out of sight.

Behind Zach, Lisette grunted.

He spun around, saw her sinking to the floor, and swiftly caught her up against him.

“Lisette?”

She moaned.

Panic threatened.
Not again!

Kneeling, Zach searched for a dart and instead found a bullet hole in her mask just above her left eyebrow.

 

 

“Lisette!”

Jerking, Lisette opened her eyes. “What?” Pain streaked through her head. “Ahh!”

Zach batted her hand away when she tried to raise it. “Lie still.” He pressed a large palm to her forehead. The pain eased, replaced by soothing heat.

She waited for him to withdraw his touch, but he didn't. “What—”

“Quiet,” he ordered. “Brain damage is harder to heal.”

Brain damage?

Oh. Right. One of the bullets had caught her in the head.

She saw a mercenary peek around the corner several yards away. Raising her Glock, she fired.

One less mercenary.

For good measure, she continued firing into the wall behind which he had hidden, a line of bullet holes opening in the Sheetrock as screams erupted in the unseen hallway.

She smiled grimly.
That's right, assholes. Bullets go through walls.

Zach shook his head and removed his hand.
I take it you're all right?

She nodded.
I'm good.

He took her hand and kissed her gloved fingers.
Then let's go see what they're hiding down here
. Rising, he pulled her to her feet, then bent down and picked up one of the automatic weapons the dead soldiers had dropped.
How does this thing work?

“What's happening?” a mercenary whispered.

“Shut up!” another hissed.

Hold it here and here,
Lisette said, placing his hands in the correct position.
Then point it at your target and squeeze the trigger
.

He nodded.

“Why aren't they doing anything?” someone else whispered. “Do you think we got 'em? I can't hear—”

“Shut the fuck up!” the other hissed again.

Lisette had to admit, Zach looked good holding a gun.

A grenade flew out of the hallway, hit the wall, and bounced toward them.

In a flash, Zach teleported to the grenade and launched it back the way it had come.

“Fire in the hole! Fire in the—”

Flames and things Lisette didn't study too closely shot out of the hallway. Acrid smoke followed, stinging her nose and making her cough.

She tugged off her mask.

“Leave it on,” Zach ordered.

Shaking her head, she tucked the mask in an empty holster. “It makes it too hard to breathe with the smoke.” She stepped into the hallway and took in the carnage.

“Hell,” Zach said at her shoulder. “They must have all been clustered together, ready to rush us.”

Every mercenary was down.

Beyond them, numerous closed doors lined either side of a long, narrow hallway. Each had an electronic key-code pad beside it like the vampire apartments down at network headquarters.

Zach waved a hand over one and opened the door.

Peering around his shoulder, Lisette saw a vampire manacled to the wall.

Arms stretched above his bowed head, he hung limply, knees not quite able to reach the floor. The bloodstains on the linoleum tile beneath him indicated he had been tortured. The limbs exposed by his dirty T-shirt and shorts were emaciated. The eyes that met hers, when he slowly raised his head, blazed with madness.

Zach silently ended the vampire's misery. They checked the next room and found the same. And the next. And the next. And the next.

Lisette didn't know how many they searched before they found something worse: a vampire manacled to a table with an IV in one arm, feeding him blood. A needle in the other drained him just as swiftly.

“Now we know where they're getting the virus,” Zach said, the same disgust she felt evident in his voice.

“And how they've infected so many of their soldiers.”

This vampire too had been stripped of all sanity. Torture and harsh living conditions tended to do that.

They found more of the same in the rest of the rooms and swiftly ended the vampires' suffering. When they finished, no heartbeats remained in the basement, so they returned to the ground floor.

Lisette's eyes widened as she glanced through the gaping hole in the front of the building.

Chris's men fired missiles at a tank the mercenaries had somehow managed to get moving. Another network Humvee spewed flames at vampires—willing to risk the sun in their attempts to escape Roland, Sarah, and Aidan—who stumbled out of the building that housed them.

A walkie-talkie on one of the mercenaries David had killed earlier squawked. Lisette holstered a Glock and picked it up.

“What are you doing?” Zach asked as they turned and strode down a bloody corridor, following screams and gunfire to the back of the building.

“Listening in.” She tuned it to the channel Chris had designated as the network's, so she could hear the Seconds' and network Special Ops's chatter.

They stopped at the first hallway.

Empty. Or rather empty of anyone living. There were bodies aplenty.

They checked the next. And the next.

“David has been busy,” Zach muttered.

“Where's Seth?” she wondered aloud.

Second floor,
Seth answered.

“There's a second floor?” she asked. The stairwell from which she and Zach had just emerged had only gone from this floor to the basement.

Yes. There's a hidden stairwell at the end of the hallway on the right.

An explosion outside pierced her ears.

At the end of the hallway, they did indeed find what used to be a hidden stairwell. Seth had blown the secret. Literally.

“Can you understand any of that gibberish?” Zach asked, nodding at the walkie she had clipped to her belt.

“Yes. Chris isn't happy about how long it's taking to clear the grounds. And Richart and Jenna are having a hell of a time keeping the mercenaries out of the choppers.”

She frowned. Who was backing them up?

Tracy?
she called.

Yeah?

Where are you?

With Sheldon, backing up Richart and Jenna. Why? Do you need me?

No, just making sure you're okay.

Shit! . . . Yeah, I'm fine. These guys are
really
determined! Are you okay?

I'm good. Zach's with me.

I'm really starting to love that man. Shit!

Go fight. I won't distract you anymore. Just let me know if you need me.

Ditto.

The stairwell took them to a hallway much like the others. Seth stood in it, bodies all around him.

“There's something up here,” he told them, looking around. “They seemed very determined to keep us from getting past this hallway.”

“Us?” Zach asked.

David stepped out of a narrower hallway that branched off of this one. His face and form were splattered with blood, his clothing peppered with holes. Wiping his bloody katanas on his pants, he nodded to them.

“Shit!” Dmitry, Yuri's Second, shouted over the walkie. “Yuri's down! Yuri's down!” The
rat-a-tat-tat
of gunfire sounded. “I'm pinned down! I can't—”

“Noooooo!” Stanislav shouted in the background.

Seth staggered suddenly, as if the strength had left his legs. His face lost all color.

David dropped his weapons and lunged forward to grip Seth's arms and steady him. “Seth? What is it?”

Lisette's heart began to pound.

Seth looked . . . panicked. Stricken.
Something
.

“Seth?” David prodded.

Seth met David's eyes, his own wide. “He's dead. They killed him.”

“Dmitry?”

Seth shook his head and swallowed hard. “Yuri. They took his head.”

Stunned silence gripped them.

“Yuri!”
They heard Stanislav bellow outside.

The building shook with a huge explosion. Sheetrock and dust fell from the ceiling.

More explosions followed, one after another.

Lisette threw her arms out to keep her balance.

“The armory's going! The armory's going!” someone shouted over the walkie amid static.

A final explosion that sounded like a damned A-bomb detonating, then . . .

Eerie quiet settled upon the compound.

Étienne!
Lisette called frantically.
Richart!

I'm fine,
Richart said.
Jenna, Sheldon, and Tracy are, too
.

I'm okay,
Étienne said at nearly the same moment.
But Yuri's gone. They decapitated him, Lisette, right before the armory lit up
.

Blinking back tears, she looked at Seth.

“Let go,” he ordered David.

“You can't do anything for him now other than get the bastard who started all of this,” David told him.

Lisette realized David was intentionally maintaining his hold on Seth to keep him from teleporting away and doing something rash.

The ground began to shake. Then the walls. The entire building.

She inched closer to Zach, who wrapped a protective arm around her.

“Seth,” David said, demanding eye contact. “Seth, look at me. You can't lose control. Not now. Not when we're so close to ending this.”

Cracks opened in the Sheetrock, crawling up the walls, splitting the ceiling.

A throat cleared.

Lisette's head snapped around.

Marcus stood at the opposite end of the hallway, face pale as he stared at Seth. “I think I've found what you're looking for,” he said, and pointed to his right.

Lisette hadn't realized until then that the hallway was L-shaped.

The shaking stopped.

Features tight with fury, Seth shook off David's hold and strode toward Marcus.

 

 

Zach met David's gaze.

Both breathed a sigh of relief. That had been close.

David headed after Marcus and Seth.

Zach and Lisette brought up the rear.

Marcus stopped before a wall and motioned to two creases in it. “Another hidden door. I hear heartbeats behind it. A panic room, perhaps.”

Seth waved a hand. A loud thunk, like large steel poles retreating, sounded. The door swung inward.