35. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

I started to run to my friend but Connor stopped me. He didn’t look as stressed as I felt: he trusted Sidnee to be okay. I trusted Sidnee all day long – it was the men with the guns I was worried about.

‘Who are you and what are you doing out here in the nude?’ one of the men yelled. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t tell which one spoke.

Sidnee hurriedly tried to cover herself with her hands as best she could. ‘I’m naked because of a shitty prank.’ She stifled a sob. ‘Some bastards stole my clothes. Can anyone see them?’ Her voice was small and wavering. She should have got an academy award.

‘We’re asking the questions.’ The man’s voice was sharp.

She flinched. ‘We were all going skinny dipping but the others got out, took my clothes and ran off. My phone was in my jeans. Can you call for help for me? I’m freezing.’ She shivered hard for effect, which was a sneaky trick because I knew she rarely felt the cold.

The guns wavered; at a gesture from the one who’d yelled out, they were pointed away from Sidnee towards the ground.

My friend looked around nervously like a naked young woman would do and pointed to the nearest boat. ‘I’m going to check there for my clothes. They have to be stashed somewhere.’

The man nodded and she climbed aboard the fishing boat. Sidnee was shapely and gorgeous, so she had their complete attention. Idiots. Her clothes weren’t on the boat because I was still holding them. I hoped she’d use the time to slip back into the water and get to safety.

Once she was on board, the men lost interest: she was some local yokel with bad judgement and they weren’t there for locals. It wasn’t even an issue that she’d seen them walking around with weapons: after all, being visibly armed in Alaska wasn’t unusual when there were bears and wolves to think about.

The men relaxed and walked casually towards the warehouse; their rifles slung over their shoulders. Unfortunately for us, the jig was just up. Once they looked inside, they would declare war and we’d only brought our supernat selves and one knife to a gunfight. We needed to do something, fast.

Connor gestured for us to move behind the men. As long as we were silent the fog and the darkness would hide us, but even with vamp speed I doubted we could take any of them down before the rest turned on us.

Connor grabbed the first man. Putting his hand over the guy’s mouth, he snapped his neck and laid him down carefully on the gravel. I took the next one and silently choked him until he passed out. We were down to five. I knew we wanted to interrogate the leader so we needed him to be the last man standing – and breathing – but he was in the middle of the others.

Fluffy thought faster than we did. He ran ahead silently then stood in the one spot where weak light almost hit the ground. He yipped then limped forward once the men had noticed him.

‘Hey, it’s a dog.’

‘He’s hurt.’

‘He’s wearing a collar. Shouldn’t we try to phone his owner?’ It seemed that even evil henchmen liked dogs.

‘Ignore it. We have a mission,’ the leader snapped.

‘I like dogs more than I like you,’ another man muttered mutinously.

‘Shut up, Humphrey, before Grayson shoots you.’

Fluffy’s distraction was helpful but not quite enough. As they moved past my dog, the leader looked around then stiffened and swore when he noticed that two of his men were missing. With a sharp command, the troops were back to being fully armed and alert as they stood back-to-back and searched the foggy darkness for us.

Nuts. There was no way we could get to them before they opened fire. I motioned to Connor that we should back away; I was out of ideas and, by the frustrated look on Connor’s face, so was he. Fluffy was locked into his fake limp until we made a move, though no one was looking at him as he faded into the darkness. He was also making a strategic retreat: smart dog.

We were all on Team Sneak Away, except we’d forgotten the trickiest member of our team, Shadow. He must have slipped free from Harry because suddenly he was slinking past my leg. I tried to grab him but, like his name, he was mist, fog – and he was hunting .

I shivered as smoky colour lifted from his silvery fur and melted the cute harness right off him. He raced along the ground, enveloped two of the men and they went down screaming, as acid-like smoke consumed them. The other soldiers looked on in horror, as did I. Memories of the beast from beyond the barrier besieged me, and I fought for a moment to get back to the here and now.

When I looked at my lynx, unlike the beast he still retained his golden eyes. For the billionth time I wondered what my sweet boy really was. I didn’t want him to be a killer; I wanted him to remain an innocent kitten, not become a murderous, deadly beast. This was our fight and it wasn’t a supernatural one because the men were human.

Nevertheless, this was our chance and we rushed the remaining soldiers – but I tripped on an uneven patch of ground and the sound of me stomping on the gravel had them whirling around. Fucksticks!

Connor killed his target and Fluffy knocked another man down, but the leader had his gun aimed right at me. I tried to step aside at vamp speed as it boomed but I hadn’t fully regained my balance. Connor stepped in front of me and the bullet went through his side.

As the blood seemed to spray in slow motion, my heart stopped and terror filled me. I wanted to throw up but I rushed to his side instead. He’d taken a bullet for me. My God, he’d taken a bullet for me!

Connor didn’t even hesitate before reaching out to the man closest to him, the one Fluffy had knocked down. He opened his mouth wide, latched on to his neck and started to drink. Fluffy was wrestling with the leader, holding on to the man’s wrist so he couldn’t aim his gun at me again. As Connor drank to heal himself, I gathered myself and leapt into the fray.

I tore the gun away from the leader’s grip but it was on a strap around his neck, so when I yanked it he went over backwards and pulled me down with him so that he, Fluffy and I were tangled in a pile of limbs and guns.

I threw a few hard punches, expecting him to defend himself and scramble backwards, but he let them land then moved towards me. He straddled me and pressed his rifle against my throat. Fluffy bit him on the ass and tried to pull him away, but although the guy yelled he didn’t let up the pressure on my windpipe.

Shadow padded over and hissed but his smoky coat was back. He didn’t have a lot of energy left after he’d deployed his shadow, so he probably couldn’t use it to kill again.

I realised I was trying to take in panicked breaths like a human – but I wasn’t a human. I was very not human. I met the man’s eyes, reached into the cold part of my brain and shoved my will at him. ‘Stop!’ He froze. ‘Lift your gun away from my throat.’ Captured by my mesmerising magic, he did so.

Connor prowled forward, death in his eyes. ‘Connor, stop! We need answers!’ I yelled before he could rip the leader’s head off. He stopped and ground his teeth.

The man was panting and blood was pouring from his mouth. My few punches had been solid and I reckoned I’d cracked a rib that had punctured one of his lungs. I had no time to be sympathetic, though, because we needed answers.

I held onto his eyes. ‘What are you doing here with the supernats?

‘We are experimenting with some new drugs that will control you filthy supernats. We need more of you to experiment on because you keep dying on us. We were told to take more subjects from the academy because no one would report it.’

Connor barked, ‘Who are you working for?’

‘Answer him!’ I ordered when the man didn’t reply.

‘I’m MIB. We’re working for a secret black-ops group that doesn’t have a name – at least, not one I know.’

Connor and I looked at each other grimly. ‘And what’s your objective here?’ I asked.

‘I told you. We’re taking some of the supernat recruits from the academy for experimentation. We especially want the vamp.’ His eyes remained on mine even as he hacked and coughed up more blood. Panic filled his eyes; he needed medical attention or he’d die – and he knew it.

‘You can’t have her,’ Connor snarled. With a lightning-fast movement, he reached out and snapped the man’s neck with an audible crunch.

Sidnee ran over. ‘Are you okay? I couldn’t get to you because they’d have seen me.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m glad you stayed safe.’ I handed over her clothes. ‘We’re fine, but we’ve got a lot of bodies to deal with. What should we do?

Connor looked at Sidnee. ‘You feel like another swim?’ he asked.

She swallowed, and when she spoke her voice was unnaturally high. ‘You want me to get rid of the bodies?’

‘Is that possible? Won’t they float up eventually?’ I asked. We’d had the cold-water survival class but no class on what happened when someone dumped a body – or several.

Sidnee smiled and this time she showed her shark teeth; she was on the edge of going mer. ‘Not if I put them in the Alaska current. They won’t surface until they hit the Aleutians, and by then they won’t surface at all.’

I shivered slightly at the change in my friend, though not enough for her to notice.

‘You two drag them down to the water,’ Sidnee said. ‘I’ll reappropriate a net and pull them out with me.’

‘Reappropriate?’ I asked.

She winked. ‘That’s law-enforcement speak for steal.’

I looked at the pile of bodies then back to my slender friend. ‘That’s a lot of weight,’ I said dubiously.

‘I’m a mermaid,’ she replied flatly.

I knew what she was but I didn’t know the true extent of her abilities because we’d never talked about stuff like that. Perhaps we should … later. ‘Okay.’

‘What about the guns?’ Her black eyes grabbed the tiniest bit of light from the weak street lamp and flashed.

Connor shrugged. ‘We’ll throw them in with the bodies.’

With George and Harry’s help, we spent the next half hour dragging bodies and guns to the water. Not one soldier was left alive, and I found that hard. Clearly it had been them or us and I understood that choice intellectually, but emotionally I was struggling.

I decided to think about it later, much later when we were safe. Mer-Sidnee, Connor and George seemed perfectly fine with the body count, although Harry was looking a bit green. I was sure that Sidnee would also be green later when she was in her human form again.

We waited inside the warehouse while she did her thing. I sat cross-legged next to Danny with an exhausted Shadow collapsed in my lap, hoping Daniel would wake up soon; by now, he had to have been out for close to four hours.

He came round about thirty minutes later. He was disorientated and I had to explain a couple of times where we were and what was going on. ‘Where are Margi and Eben?’ he asked.

‘We sent them back to the academy. Why?’

Looking grim, Danny shook his head. ‘We need to get to Margi! She isn’t safe.’ He staggered to his feet. ‘The person who stuck me with the damned needle was Eben.’

Fuck.