Chapter Ten
Ten
“That’s disappointing.” Tayler’s voice echoed in the small room through a high speaker, pulling both Renee’s and Mikail’s attention to the ring of windows high above them. Mikail’s tattered wings lifted, and the angry mer whistled long and sharp, sending a chill through Renee.
“I was so hoping that would work,” the woman added as she mockingly held up a USB and tucked it down her cleavage. “The footage I have will be enough. Congratulations, Renee. You get to survive. Maybe they will let you plan the prison garden.”
“If you think I’m letting you—” Renee started, and then she jerked at the sudden sensation of pressure between her ears.
Mikail dropped, his wings clenched about himself as he writhed.
It was the sonic cannon, and Renee spun, hand outstretched. “No!” she cried, falling to her knees before him. “Mikail, where’s the key? Where’s the door card!”
Fingers searching, she pulled it from around his neck. Frantic, Renee lurched to the door. A deep thrumming whispered at the bottom of her hearing, and Mikail’s whistles ceased. It was killing him, and she ran the key card before Tayler could change the code.
“Open, damn it!” she shouted, then spun to the contorting Neighbor when it finally did. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” she whispered, throat raw as she grabbed him awkwardly by the shoulders and dragged him into the hall.
He was lighter than she would have expected, and still his wing got stuck halfway through. Renee exclaimed in frustration, bent double as she grabbed his knees and fell backward to drag him clear of the threshold and into the hall. Mikail clenched in on himself, almost in a ball as she fumbled to close the door—until finally it shut and the pressure on her ears vanished.
“Mikail?” Renee scanned the hallway, tensing at a faint, sporadic popping. Gunfire? “Mikail? I need you to get up. She’s just going to come down here and hit you again with that portable cannon.”
But Mikail didn’t move, and she wondered if it was too late.
“Mikail?” She touched his shoulder, jerking away when the huge mer shuddered, his eyes opening, nictitated until they found her bending over him. “We have to go,” she said, and he whistled, pulling out from under her touch. “We have to find August.”
Breath rasping, Mikail got his knees under him and slowly stood. He staggered into a ragged walk, his wings clamped around himself as he went deeper into the facility.
“This way. I saw them take him this way.” Renee tugged at his wing, gasping when he flung out a hand, almost hitting her. “August,” she said, whistling his name. “Mikail, we have to find August!”
But Mikail ignored her, hobbling down the hall following nothing Renee could sense. She licked her lips in worry, glancing behind her at the occasional pops. Walking away from gunfire seemed like a prudent thing to do, but she didn’t know where Mikail was going.
Until he stopped before a door, his eyes golden in pain as he yanked the key card from around Renee’s neck and ran it over an entry pad.
“August?” she called into the brightly lit lab, her gaze drawn to a gasp of fear. Tayler.
“You!” Renee shouted as the woman scrambled for something in a drawer.
Mikail bolted forward, flinging his arm across the counters to clear them as he vaulted over them like a mad thing. Wings spread, he bore down on Tayler, shoving a desk aside as if it was cardboard. Tayler shrieked, a handgun suddenly in her shaking grip.
“Don’t touch me!” the woman screamed, and then Renee jumped when the gun went off.
Mikail rocked back with the impact. Blood and tissue popped from his shoulder, and yet he came forward, picking the woman up by the neck and giving her a shake before slamming her up against the wall.
I’ve seen this before, Renee thought. “Mikail, wait!” Gut tight, Renee came forward as the woman’s heels pattered against the wall in a weird staccato. The angry mer held her high, his eyes inches from hers as he whistled. Tayler dropped the gun to dig at the long red fingers around her neck, her face turning an ugly blue as she choked.
It was all too familiar, and Renee felt an unwanted surge of sympathy. “Drop her!” she demanded, then danced back to evade Tayler’s swinging foot. “She will be held accountable. I promise. Drop her!”
Spittle drooled from Dr. Tayler, and one eye began to close. Her hands fluttered and fell, and still Mikail pressed tighter, his whistles and clicks never ceasing. Renee tugged at his arm, her own anger rising as she recognized Han’s and Raphael’s names amid Mikail’s whistles.
“Mikail,” Renee said, her tone hard and unyielding with an abiding rage. “Give her to Noel.” She whistle-clicked the Neighbor’s name. “You owe me your life!” she shouted. “Give her to me so I can give her to Noel!” Her lip curled, hating what she was doing. “Mikail, drop her! She’s mine!” Mikail turned to her, his grip never easing. “I want to give her to Noel,” she added. “You owe me.”
Wings high, Mikail opened his hand and Tayler fell into a gasping, huddled lump.
Renee danced back, eyes on the woman as Tayler held her neck and coughed, bringing the air into her lungs with huge, ragged breaths. Clearly Mikail knew more English than they thought. “Thank you,” she said, doing her best to whistle-click it. “Are you okay?”
Mikail was holding his shoulder. The bullet had gone clear through, the small caliber probably doing little lasting damage.
“I can’t breathe,” Tayler gasped, eyes watering as she peered up at them. “The bastard crushed my larynx.”
Renee grabbed a thick-walled beaker. “I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, then swung it at the woman, grunting with the effort. Mikail started in surprise as it hit Tayler square on the side of her head and she crumbled. “Ow.” Renee dropped the beaker, hand stinging.
Mikail bent low, shifting Tayler’s head from side to side before looking up at Renee, his wing knuckles high in inquiry.
“I don’t want to listen to her all the way back to Noel. She’s still alive.” Warming in embarrassment, Renee pulled Tayler’s shirt out from her body, feeling squeamish as she plucked the USB drive from behind the woman’s bra. “My car might still be out front,” she added, and Mikail eyed her warily as she stuffed the USB in her jeans pocket. “We have to find August first.”
Mikail echoed August’s name, his battered wings rising even higher. Going still, he seemed to listen. Slowly his eyes nictitated, and Renee’s pulse quickened.
“Can you feel him?” she said, and Mikail’s eyes opened. “Where is he? Is he okay?”
Without even a click, Mikail grabbed Tayler by the foot and began dragging her to the hall, clearly uncaring when the woman’s arm snagged and her head hit the corner of a counter.
“Is it August?” Renee followed, agitated at Mikail’s erratic pace: forward a few yards, then pause, forward a few more, then pause. Renee wasn’t sure if he was having difficulty walking or if he was trying to find his way.
“August!” Renee called as the sound of gunfire rattled in the distance. “Oh, God. No,” she whispered, then pushed past Mikail, running for the front office. Someone was here. It couldn’t be Jackson. There hadn’t been enough time.
Mikail trailed behind, his pace slow as he dragged Tayler by one foot.
The sound of men shouting became more obvious, and her gut was in a sickening knot as Renee scrambled through the hole in the wall that August had made. “August!” she called again, racing past the silent machines, focused on reaching the front offices.
Shocked, she slid to a halt at the open door. Men in thick combat gear crouched beside a busted window, firing into the parking lot. Will’s rental was riddled with bullets. Behind it, a huge chopper sat, blades a fast, noisy whirl. An ambulance was pulled to the front door, but no one was in it. The doors to the back were open, and Jackson’s men were using it for cover as they fired on the chopper.
“August!” she shouted, seeing him on the ground before Monroe. The lieutenant general was using him as cover, the man’s sporadic shots from his pistol keeping everyone where they were. No one heard her, intent on the firefight. “August!” she shouted again, but he didn’t move.
“We’ve downed the pilot, sir,” one of the soldiers said as he listened to the radio. “If Monroe doesn’t know how to fly, we have him.”
“He knows how to fly,” Jackson said grimly. “Is there a back door out of this place?”
“Jackson?” she called, and the man spun, his obvious relief at seeing her shifting to alarm when a red shadow brushed past her.
“Mikail, no!” she shouted as the angry mer reached for the shocked man. Mikail’s eyes were gold in pain and his wings high in threat. “It’s Jackson! Jackson!”
“Hold!” Jackson shouted as men spun, their rifles coming to bear. But someone moved, and Mikail backhanded him, sending the kid spinning into the wall, where he slumped, out cold. “I said ho—”
Jackson’s words cut off as Mikail lashed a foot out and pinned him to the floor. Shouts and cries rose, angry and demanding as the mer stood on Jackson’s chest and pulled his arm up, almost out of its socket.
“Hold!” Jackson exclaimed, excruciating pain coloring his voice as Mikail whistled and clicked, clearly angry. “I said hold!”
“Mikail!” Renee ducked under a wildly flailing wing and threw herself on top of Jackson, trying to cover him before some idiot shot the two of them. “Stop! It’s Jackson. He’s with me. He’s with me! Let him go!” Jackson gasped, his face red and tension making cords in his neck, and desperation tightened Renee’s gut as she pushed on Mikail’s arm. “He’s not with Monroe,” she shouted. “He’s trying to stop him. Will you look out the window?”
Like he knows the word window , she thought, but her breath came easier when the angry mer glared at the men pointing their rifles at him, and then the chopper past the open door and empty ambulance.
Clicking like a mad thing, Mikail dropped Jackson’s arm and stepped away.
Jackson groaned, his right arm floppy as he shoved Renee off and rolled to sit with his back to the wall. “God bless it!” he swore, slowly moving his arm to make sure it was still attached. “Renee, you need to teach your friends some manners.”
“I think it’s the uniform,” Renee said, torn between giving him a hug and a slap. He was here. How had he gotten here so fast?
Jackson finally looked up, blinking in surprise. “What happened to your hair?”
She touched the hacked strands, and an utterly stupid feeling of hurt and loss filled her. “Tayler” was all she said, and Jackson’s eyes widened in horror as he took in the lab coat and figured it out. “Say hi to Mikail, will you? He’s a little shaky on telling us apart, and I think he assumed that you’re with Monroe.”
Jackson’s gaze lifted to where Mikail whistled and clicked, his wings spread in threat as he stood with one foot on the doctor, effectively preventing anyone from reaching her. Half the men had returned to firing out the window, but half were still pointing their guns at him.
“Say hi? Are you serious? He almost tore my arm out!”
“Talk to him, Jackson,” she said, and the man went silent as he took in Mikail’s burnt wings and scarred body. Chest rising and falling in an unheard sigh, Jackson held his arm out. It was the wrong arm, but seeing as he couldn’t grip anything with his right, it was the best he could do.
Mikail clicked at him in derision. He made no move to meet Jackson’s hand with his own, but his wings lowered.
“Yeah…” Jackson rolled to his feet. “I love you, too.” His eyes dropped to Tayler under Mikail’s foot when she groaned. She was still out, and the medic clearly wanted to get to her. “Renee, you think maybe you could…” Jackson prompted, and Renee lifted her chin.
“No,” she said, remembering how the woman had left her to die, not once, but twice. “No, I don’t think I can.”
“Sir?” one of the men said. “He’s gained the chopper.”
Jackson gave Mikail a dark look, then went to the window. “Does he still have August?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then keep him on the ground,” Jackson said, clearly ticked. “I don’t care if you have to break our ride home. August does not leave with him. Is that understood? If he slips our jurisdiction, we will never get either of them back.”
Desperate, Renee pushed to a window, her ears ringing from the gunfire. “You left the chopper empty?” she said in disbelief, and Jackson yanked her clear.
“No, I did not.” Grim, he handed her a pair of earplugs. “Do we have a back door out of this place yet? I need reconnaissance!”
And then Jackson jumped when Mikail eased himself to the window, looking every bit like he belonged to the military as he stood with his back to the wall and snuck a quick glance out before leaning back into safety.
Jackson’s jaw clenched when the chopper’s whine went up in pitch. “I am not going to lose him!” the man shouted. “Mikail, can you translocate me into the chopper?”
“Dude!” Renee exclaimed. “For one, he can’t understand you. And two, he is too far from the embassy to draw on communal sparks to do it. And three, they can’t snap to anywhere they haven’t physically been before or can’t see.”
“I am not going to lose August!” Jackson exclaimed, but Renee didn’t know how they were going to stop Monroe.
Until she jerked at a sudden idea. “But he might be able to physically throw me that far.”
“Wait. What?” Jackson pulled his gaze back from the chopper.
“Mikail, can you throw me to the chopper?” Renee said, breathless. “Like how August said he won the ring championship?”
“I thought you said he couldn’t understand English?” Jackson stared at her as she frantically scanned the floor, grabbing a couple of warm casings. Around her, men shouted and shot their rifles, but she was concise with a desperate need, artificially calm. August. She could not lose him.
“August,” she said as she set the casing down, fingers trembling. “Renee,” she said as she set down another. “Mikail,” she said as she touched her chest, picked up the second casing, and tossed it at the first. With a ping, the two casings rolled into a shaft of sun making it through the front door.
“Renee…” Jackson whispered, his brow furrowed in heartache. “He doesn’t understand.”
“It’s lifting!” someone shouted, and Renee ran to the open door, breathless.
“August!” she shouted, then spun to Mikail. “Throw me to August!” she cried, desperate.
And then she yelped when Jackson jerked her back.
“If anyone is being thrown, it’s me,” he said, a quick hand rising to make sure his helmet was on tight.
Mikail whistled, grabbed Jackson by the waist, and strode out the door.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Renee screamed, throat going raw as she watched as the second-most important man in her life was thrown to the first. She jerked, hand going to her mouth when Jackson hit the ground and rolled—right under the rising chopper.
“Please,” she whispered when Jackson swung himself into it, and then “Yes!” when the chopper’s perfect rise faltered and it dropped, falling four feet back to earth and sliding across the pavement in a harsh scrape until it stopped.
“We got him!” someone yelled, and then the building emptied as Jackson’s team poured out, running to secure the area.
Renee gripped the broken window, breathless. “I think we got him,” she whispered, beaming a great smile at Mikail. Taking his battered and raw hands in hers, she jumped up and down, adrenaline pounding through her. “We got him!” Her gaze went to Tayler, the woman now sitting up with a hand to her head. A man in uniform stood over her, and she had been cuffed.
“Renee?” came a crackling summons over the radio. “Say something to August. He’s freaking out. He thinks Tayler killed you.”
Renee lurched to the radio, confusion debilitating until she figured it out. “I’m okay, August! Mikail and I are okay!” She released the toggle, tears welling at August’s frantic, broken English. Mikail listened, clearly not recognizing his voice, and Renee was suddenly torn between running out to see him and making sure Tayler didn’t get away. “You are in so much trouble,” she said to the woman as she practically danced to the door, and the woman spit at her.
Not caring, Renee took Mikail’s hand and drew him slowly out into the sun. “August,” she said when he balked, and the mer clicked his wing knuckles together high overhead, clearly afraid of the open skies. But his wings twitched when he saw August, his motions slow as he slipped from the chopper. Staggering, Mikail almost fell, whistle-clicking to bring August’s head up. Clearly elated, August pushed past Jackson and raced across the pavement.
Renee beamed, supporting Mikail as August closed the distance. They had Monroe and Tayler and Gorman. Mikail was safe, and she was probably not going to go to jail. Probably.
It’s over, she thought as she laughed, delighted when August’s wings enfolded them both, smothering her in a pleasant scent of cloves and rock dust as the two mers whistled a confusing duet.
But as she turned to look at Tayler, the woman’s head down as she was led out in handcuffs, Renee’s joy faltered and her anger burned anew. It didn’t feel over.