12. Max
12
MAX
H er eyes were wide and confused when they landed on me, but I pulled her into a hug.
She stiffened in my arms, but didn't push me away.
"I was afraid you'd been hurt. What's going on? What happened?"
She patted me awkwardly on the back, like she wasn't exactly sure what to do with my affection, and pulled away. Her eyes were dark and unfocused as she blinked, like she was in a bit of a daze.
"I'm not sure," her voice was raspier than usual, flatter almost, but I wasn't sure if it was because we'd woken her up from a much-needed rest, or because she'd been drugged. "What do you mean," an unfamiliar, worried quiver lilted her voice, the usual confidence and bossiness dissolved into something almost child-like, "has something happened? Are you alright?"
Darius took a step closer to me, crowding the poor woman. "You slept through it all?"
Her eyes narrowed, some of the concern dripping into annoyance. "Obviously. I'm old, I need rest, you know? My hearing isn't what it used to be."
Greta typically had the habit of picking up on the barest of whispers, and was usually a light sleeper, but I didn't challenge her on it or call her out in front of the guys. She'd been working a lot lately—too much. Clearly it was beginning to take a toll on her.
I swore under my breath, cursing myself for not forcing her to relax a bit earlier. She was stubborn, and I knew it would take us locking her in a room for a day or two to actually force her to rest, but still—maybe I should've done it.
"There was an attack," I said, nudging Darius with my shoulder. He kept watching her, distrust etched into every smooth line of his face. I wanted to ask Greta about him too, about the strange fugue state he'd been in tonight, but it would have to wait. "We don't know what happened," I continued, "but several patients are missing. Did you send anyone home today?"
Her face relaxed, and she opened her mouth in an exaggerated but silent, "oh."
She tilted her head, as if considering for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, I did." She blinked at me, a few times, ignoring the glares coming from the vampire. "Five, if I recall."
Five. It was the number of empty beds I'd counted. I relaxed slightly. Maybe no one was missing?
"And the blood?" Darius's voice was steel.
Greta pursed her lips. "Blood?"
Wade's chest pressed against my back, his body a shield of solid warmth. "It's a mess out there."
"Ah," she let out an odd chuckle, "a few rough procedures tonight. Was going to clean up, but needed a nap first. I'll get to it now. Apologies, if I frightened you."
"Oh, that's all?" I let the words roll over my tongue, tasting them. A shiver ran down my spine as Greta's eyes met mine again.
Greta wasn't the sort to lie, but she also wasn't the sort to ever leave a room full of patients with the evidence of their suffering strewn about the floor.
I swallowed and stepped back, nodding. "Okay."
Something's off, I shot silently to the guys.
Obviously , Darius's voice rang through my head, and when I looked up at him, his jawline was sharp enough to cut glass, his eyes like daggers as he stared, unblinking, at Greta.
I knew he didn't trust her, but I did. If she was lying to us, it was because she was trying to protect us—or she was so overworked that she had no idea what was going on.
"I just want to check on Seamus before we leave." I turned back to the nurse. "Is that alright?"
"I don't see why you need to do that," she said, her voice clipped, flat—missing the usual teasing warmth I was used to, "it's late. He's fine. Best not to disrupt him. You know how he can get."
I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry with an awareness just out of my reach. There was an inherent wrongness about this situation that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
"We'll be quick," I said, backing away from her and moving towards the hallway, "promise."
"Come back tomorrow—" her words were hurried, but still flat as she moved towards me. "Let the poor man sleep."
"I just want to see him once—I won't be on duty here today, and I just want to see him." I didn't add on that after she'd slept through everything Ellie had reported, I needed to make sure that Seamus was okay. That he wasn't harmed by whatever—or whoever—had caused a kid like Ellie to barricade herself in a closet.
"Max," Darius said my name on a low, warning growl, and I knew that, like me, he was trying and failing to understand what was off about tonight, about Greta.
But at his warning, a soft grin curved on Greta's face, her eyes widening as they focused back on me. It wasn't like her usual smile—all coy and half-chastisement, like a mother both fed up with and charmed by her children. This one was strange, hook-like, as if her muscles were moving in a way she didn't quite have control of.
"Are you okay, Greta?" I took a step closer to her, "should you maybe go lie down again? Did you take something? To help you sleep, maybe?"
If she had, that would certainly help explain some of her behavior tonight.
Her smirk thickened, spreading across her face until her eyes were lined with the familiar wrinkles. "Yes, I did." She reached for my hand, and I let her grab it. "Haven't been sleeping well, and I've been working on a new sleeping draught. Don't think I've quite got it where I need it."
That explained some of the tinniness to her voice, the strangeness to her affect. My shoulders relaxed slightly. Maybe in her half-drugged state she'd left the door open and knocked a few tables over.
"Come, Max, I'll take you down to see Seamus before I see you lot off, ease your worries. Then I can sleep off the effects of this. You'll see, I'll be good as new in a few hours." She led me back to the familiar basement door, before shooting a warning glance at Darius and Wade. "Just her though, we don't need a crowd around him. He's been especially testy tonight."
Darius and Wade both opened their mouths to argue, but I shook my head. "I'll be fine." They both stood taller, shook their heads, "go check on Ellie. I'll only be a minute or two."
I'll be fine , I sent through the link again, one of you should go explain what happened to Bishop and Charlie—someone's bound to have answered Ellie's calls by now .
Darius shot Greta another narrowed-eye glare, the tic in his jaw working overtime as he swallowed back his disagreement.
"Hovering bunch, aren't they," Greta tapped her hand over mine, a cold, bemused look in her eyes.
I gave her a tight-lipped grin and nodded her towards the basement. "You have the keys, right?"
For a second, she looked thrown, but then she patted her hips a few times and pulled out the basement key. "I do."
I followed her down the dark staircase, finding myself oddly wishing Levi were down here. I was jumpier than usual, and his cool, sardonic presence would have been welcome.
I strained my ears, but didn't hear anything. Hopefully that meant Seamus was sleeping and not going through the pain of shifting in and out of his wolf form like before.
I stopped at the bottom of the staircase, Greta's hand still gripped in mine as she waddled after me. I pressed myself against the wall, giving her more space to work with. She dangled her keys in front of me and then worked the lock.
With a soft click, she turned the knob and pulled back ushering me forward.
When I stepped into the room, there wasn't an ounce of light. My fingers hunted along the wall, searching for a switch, but my foot caught on something and I stumbled to the floor.
Greta shuffled into the room after me and closed the door behind her, the soft click echoing as she locked us in. A little overkill, but I wouldn't fuss with her about precautions, not after the night we'd had.
I conjured a few flames of hellfire in my palm again and held them up so we could see properly. They cast dark shadows across the cracks and hollows of Greta's face. Her eyes were black pools, hard and impenetrable.
When I glanced down to see what I'd tripped on, I let out a yelp. "Vincent?"
I didn't know him particularly well, but he was one of the people who often went on runs to bring supplies in. He was due back today.
With my other hand, I searched for a pulse, but I knew it was pointless. His eyes were open and vacant, his limbs contorted in a way that made it clear at least one of them was broken.
He was dead.
I swallowed a panicked sob and looked up at Greta.
She didn't seem entirely surprised by Vincent's condition. Her eyes were cold as they studied me, completely void of the warmth I was used to. "Oh dear, what happened to him? Seamus, do you think?"
"Greta—" the word stumbled from my lips, a quiet plea, as I studied her. What the fuck was going on? I crab-crawled backwards, away from Vincent, until my hands found something wet. A quick glance showed more blood.
A lot.
Too much.
Jaw clenched tight, I steeled myself and turned around. There were bodies. If I could even call them that. It looked more like raw meat, picked and devoured, limbs scattered around.
My vision blurred as I stifled another sob. I recognized a face in the pile. One of the patients—her eyes were dark and soft, staring back at me, lifeless in the macabre gore. I didn't remember her name, Lilith, maybe? She was a werewolf, a few years older than me. One of the demons we'd rescued from Headquarters.
Bile rose up my throat. Rescued, just for her to reach this violent end. Her head was removed from her body, and I noticed strips of skin were missing from her face.
In fact, skin was missing from most of the corpses that were stashed down here.
I scanned the remaining faces—all of them lifeless, all of them familiar—hoping like hell I wouldn't find Seamus's in the pile.
His chains were abandoned on the floor, the metal soaked in blood and bits of fleshy-looking things I didn't want to even think about.
But no Seamus. He wasn't here.
It had been no more than a few seconds since Greta had unlocked the door, yet it felt like a lifetime as I tried to process the situation.
The room had been locked. There were no windows. What the fuck was going on? I closed my eyes, hoping like hell I was maybe caught in some strange dream, that the awful wrongness of this whole night was just another nightmare, that I'd wake curled up next to Atlas, or Declan—hell, I'd even settle for another surprise plunge wake-up call in the lake.
Something sharp punctured the back of my neck, then my back and my left thigh. I looked down and found a small dart. I ripped it from my leg, suppressing the urge to vomit, and craned my neck, my muscles growing stiff as another series of stabs hit my body.
They're dead. They're all dead. This is wrong. Something's very, very wrong.
My words were slow, stilted, as I thought them. Everything in my body felt impossibly slow, like I was swimming in a pool full of jello. I tried to speak, to turn back to Greta, to warn her away from whoever was down here, to do—something…anything. But I couldn't.
Max? What's going on? I can feel you, but we can't make out your words.
The light flickered on, the bulb dangling above me and lighting the entire scene. I almost wished the room was bathed in darkness again. I could stomach the scene in the segments and sections my hellfire lit up. Almost. But this, all at once—it was too much .
I threw up, gagging in horror when I realized that I'd emptied my stomach on someone's corpse. Part of one, anyway.
"I didn't expect to find you so quickly," Greta's voice was like a whisper. Her face morphed into something dark as she tilted her head and bent towards me. She pulled out a syringe, then crouched down next to me, grunting, "Old crickety bones, I wish he'd saved me something better to steal, selfish prick," she plunged the syringe into my neck, her face swimming before me, "they always are." My eyes slid to hers, but even that movement felt impossible. Her face carved into a grin that made her almost completely unrecognizable to me. "Should've known it'd take all I had to put you down. Now to take care of those fucking meatheads you brought. Perhaps I'll use one of their shells next."
I couldn't pull a full breath of air in, couldn't scream, couldn't even think properly.
I'd experienced this once before. In Hell. The girl who'd tried eating mine and Eli's skin had used this poison. But she hadn't used this much, and I hadn't felt the effects this quickly.
I used all of my remaining focus and strength to push my thoughts to them. They were in danger. She wanted them. I didn't understand why or how, but Greta was the enemy.
Poison. Like in hell. Greta.
What?
Who?
I heard the boys in my head, felt their panic, but I couldn't manage a response. I'd used all of my strength on those words.
"Max?" Wade yelled my name, muffled and scared as their loud, pounding footsteps took the stairs at an alarming pace. "What the fuck's going on? Are you and Greta okay?"
Greta rolled her eyes, the gesture strange and unfamiliar on her face. This wasn't Greta.
I'd sensed that something was off with her from the moment she'd opened her door. Why hadn't I trusted my instincts?
I heard Wade ram into the door, the wood splintering and creaking at his strength.
For a moment, Greta—or the demon controlling her like a puppet—looked startled, surprised.
With quick movements, she pulled back the plunger of the syringe still poking into my neck, siphoning my blood into the small glass cylinder.
"Mine," she mumbled, her fingers manipulating the syringe in clunky movements, like she didn't quite have full control over Greta's body just yet.
I blinked, the process slow and difficult, my eyes almost refusing to reopen, whether from the paralyzed musculature due to the poison, or because I couldn't process seeing the greedy panic on Greta's face. But when my eyes finally opened again, Darius was standing there, just behind Greta, expression lethal and wild.
He'd teleported. How?
Just as Greta stuck the needle into her own chest, Darius gripped her head in his hands, his eyes cold and feral.
I tried to scream, to stop him, but my body wouldn't respond to me.
Before she could plunge my blood into her heart, he snapped her neck.
But he didn't stop there. With a sickening sound, he ripped her head from her neck, bathing the ground in even more blood.
Wade crashed through the door, brows lifting in disgust as he took in the scene before him.
"What the fuck have you done?" his voice was thunderous as he shoved Darius against the wall.
No, I tried to scream again, this time to protect Darius. The word was caught in my chest, slow and stuck like molasses .
"She's an old lady, she wasn't in her right mind." Wade gave him one more push, then abandoned him there, closing the distance between us.
His hands traced my body, looking for injuries, trying to identify the source of the problem, all while he took in the horror of the room.
I saw it settle over him, reflected in his eyes as his hands held my face.
"Fucking hell," he said, the pain in his voice cutting through my ribs like a lance.
"She was dead already," Darius muttered. He scooped me into his arms, cradling me. Like Wade, his hands and eyes roamed everywhere. "You're more powerful now," his eyes met mine, and it felt like he was convincing himself as much as me, "the venom should burn off more quickly than last time, but it looks like she used a lot."
"I don't understand." Wade grunted, his hand gripping at his hair as his focus darted between me and what was left of my favorite nurse. "Greta's been against us this whole time?"
No. No, that wasn't right.
"That wasn't Greta," Darius said. His fingers dug into my flesh as he held me to him. The fact that I could feel his grip, even if just slightly, gave me hope that he was right, that this poison was wearing off. "I think it was a shade."
I narrowed my eyes—tried to, anyway—since I couldn't formulate the question stuck on my tongue.
"They can reanimate a corpse, briefly. Legend says, if you kill them while they're possessing someone, before they can escape into a new host, they die." He glanced down at where Greta lay. For once, I was glad I couldn't move my head, that I couldn't follow his gaze with my own. His brows furrowed. "Seeing as no shadow emerged from her, I'm guessing it's true."
A sob lodged in my chest, my body unable to perform even that small feeling of release for me .
His hand caressed my cheek as his focus turned back to me. Where his eyes were filled with wild violence before, they held only softness now. "Greta was already dead. I'm sorry, Little Protector."
"A shade?" Wade asked, voice quiet as he bent over Greta. "Like from Max's cabin that day?"
Darius nodded.
A series of crashes and yells ricocheted down the hall. He spun us towards the door where Dec, Atlas, and Eli were crowding through the doorway, eyes wide with the horror of the room, all caught in the terrifying alertness that comes with being woken suddenly from a deep sleep.
They ran to me, none of them so much as taking a breath until Darius assured them that I would be fine in a few minutes—that it was the same paralysis poison some of the people found in the labs had healed from.
Charlie's calm voice sounded from above, mixed with Bishop's low grumble.
My eyes caught on Eli as he scanned the room, his expression slipping into panic once again when he didn't find what he was looking for.
"My dad?" He turned back to me, and if I were standing, I'd have been knocked to my knees from the depth of fear I saw in his eyes.
I was almost glad that I wasn't able to speak the words, to voice the grim reality into life.
Wade gripped his shoulders, squeezing softly. "He's missing."