She watched the car with her fourth eyes while her second eyes watched all around her for obstacles or more security patrols. The weird colors her second eyes saw washed out to white every time lightning flashed. She hated running while using her second eyes. The shifted color spectrums made her feel like she was living a nightmare. If she did not run fast enough, the nightmare would be real.

  A few military vehicles felt their way carefully along the streets through the deluge. Visibility was limited to only a few feet by the driving rain. She had to stop, panting at the side of the road, hidden by a hedge in what appeared to be someone’s front yard. Sirens mounted on the corner street light poles screamed about her invasion of the base.

  She sobbed for breath as vehicles with big knobby tires crept slowly down the road, search lights shining all around. She had to wait until they were out of sight, or she would be caught, but every moment felt like forever. Seconds could make the difference.

  She couldn’t save them, though, if she were caught. She panted, trying to catch her breath as the big cars rolled by.

  Go faster, go faster. Please go faster.

  As they finally rounded the corner, she burst from hiding and ran again, fighting to ignore the pain in her leg that made her want to limp. She couldn’t limp. She had to run faster.

  For a while, she didn’t see any more foot patrols. Apparently, even soldiers didn’t like to be out in a thunderstorm if they had any choice in the matter. Or maybe they still thought she was hiding in the little patch of woods. She didn’t have enough eyes to check.

  Her fourth eyes watched her friends.

  Pete and the others arrived at the medical center in the middle of the base. They jumped out of the police car into the rain and ran for the medical center’s back door, sirens blaring in the parking lot. The Fae prince met them there.

  “Colonel,” Sergeant Giovanni said and saluted properly, ignoring the pouring rain as if unaware it was there.

  The prince gave her a crisp acknowledgment of the salute and drew his sidearm. “Why did you order the base alarm to sound?”

  Sergeant Giovanni looked confused. “We thought you did that, sir.”

  Colonel Bennet’s lips tightened. “Liliana.”

  “She got out of the car at the gate just like she said she would,” Pete told him.

  “Of course she did.” Colonel Bennet put his wrist phone up to a sensor, and it popped open a door in the back of the huge medical complex. “Detective, this is a military matter. It might be best if you stayed behind.”

  Detective Jackson snorted and drew her pistol from a holster under her jacket. “Not a chance.”

  “She knows about Others, sir,” Pete told him.

  Colonel Bennet shrugged. “Well, then. Welcome to the party. Don’t shoot any of my people, or I’ll shoot you.”

  Detective Jackson shrugged. “That’s fair.”

  As her friends started down the long corridor with caution, a loud roar and crash made the direction of the danger obvious.

  What caused the crash?

  Liliana’s fourth vision re-focused. The sprite stood on a table by a window, grabbing things off high shelves and throwing them at the lion.

  Andrew Periclum lifted a massive centrifuge and hurled it at the sprite.

  Siobhan jumped aside in time, but the heavy piece of equipment caught her sword, knocking it out of her hand and through the window out onto the medical center lawn. The broken window let in the rain, the wind, and the sound of blaring sirens.

  Now, the little sprite had no weapon but her wits.

  She rolled under a table to avoid flying glass and debris and dodged through the two-sided cabinets to another bench.

  The lion roared and ripped thousand-pound stone-topped tables loose from their bolts in the floor, shoving them aside. Glassware and chemicals atop them added to the chemical soup on the floor.

  Liliana ran toward them from too far away. She hurdled a few chain-link fences as she passed the middle school where Pete’s beloved worked and Janice’s children learned. In the distance, from too far away, she heard the window break as the centrifuge flew through it.

  Less than a minute after she saw it in her visions.

  She had to run faster.

  Would Pete, Detective Jackson, Colonel Bennet, and Sergeant Giovanni arrive soon enough to save Siobhan?

  Her fourth vision shifted again.

  In that moment, her vision passed from the overbright visions of the future into the sharper certainty of the present.

  She had no more time. Everything she saw was happening as she saw it.

  Her friends ran into the room where the sprite fought the lion.

  The spilled chemicals in the big room had filled it with acrid fog. It made the newcomers cough and struggle to make sense of the trashed lab and the life-or-death battle inside.

  Siobhan dodged between the legs of a table on the other side of the lab by the big window as the massive lion-kin tried to catch her with his claws, then tore the solid wood table itself apart to get to her.

  They made it in time. Siobhan’s still alive!

  Tumbled furniture, broken lab equipment, and a chaotic, intermittently smoking and bubbling mix of random chemicals filled the once-orderly lab. Driving rain from the spring storm diluted the chemicals into rapidly growing puddles by the large, broken window. The wind whipped and swirled through the chemical fog.

  “Freeze!” Detective Jackson shouted, pointing her gun at the big lion-kin.

  Periclum turned to face them with a snarl, sword up in a guard position.

  Siobhan took advantage of his distraction to do a flying tackle with all her weight into the back of the lion’s knee. It would have been an effective attack if she had had a little more weight to throw.

  As it was, the lion man merely staggered. His clawed hand grabbed the collar of her leather jacket and lifted her up, as if showing Siobhan to her friends.

  “OY! Let go of me, you big ball of clatty fur!” The sprite twisted and struck out wildly but couldn’t get free. Blood ran down her face from a claw scratch on her forehead.

  The point of the lion’s sword came to rest in the center of her back. Siobhan stopped struggling. Her lips flattened in an expression of irritation.

  “Put your guns down or the little bitch dies.” The wind whipped the lion’s mane, and rain driven through the window soaked him and Siobhan both. Thunder rumbled after another flash lit the clouds behind him.

  Pete, who had a knife in each hand, sheathed them and raised his empty hands. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

  Detective Jackson said calmly, “You might as well put her down and give up. There’s no place to go.” Her gun stayed trained on Periclum’s head through the blowing chemical fog.

  The lion laughed, showing a whole lot of pointy teeth. “You don’t scare me, little human. I could eat you for a snack.” He licked his lips.

  “She’s right,” the Fae colonel backed up the detective. “This is over. Drop the sword, or I will drop you where you stand.” His gun with the wide barrel never wavered.

  Liliana had no doubt that whatever weapon Colonel Bennet had would be effective against the were-lion. She was afraid that the unseelie prince wouldn’t care if that gun killed both lion and sprite. A seelie Fae sprite was probably not someone he felt responsible to protect.

  The spider seer raced across the front of the neatly landscaped grounds of the medical center, ballet slippers squelching through mud. Seconds after she ran past the center, four armed men ran out of the main entrance.

  In the lab, Sergeant Giovanni followed her commanding officer’s lead and kept her gun up.

  “Don’t think I’m bluffing, Colonel,” growled the lion. “I will kill this irritating little bug.”

  “Regardless of what you do,” Colonel Bennet answered, “you’re done here.”

  The lion-kin seemed to consider his options for a moment. No one had a clear shot at him with the sprite held up in front of him like a shield and overturned granite tables blocking a shot at his legs.

  The colonel jerked his chin at Sergeant Giovanni, widened his eyes, and tilted his head.

  She nodded, as if that had been a clearly spoken order.

  They edged in opposite directions around the sides of the room. In a few more steps, they would each have a shot. The lion couldn’t protect both his flanks at once.

  Detective Jackson talked to the lion-kin. “You’re not in a good position here. Just put her down, place the weapon on the floor, and no one has to get hurt.”

  Pete edged closer, empty hands held out, carefully not blocking Detective Jackson’s shot.

  “Stop now, all of you, or she’s dead!” the lion growled. He dug the sword tip into the back of Siobhan’s leather jacket. It pushed her forward and arched her back enough to change her facial expression from anger to pain. Only the thick leather kept the sword from piercing her.

  Pete froze in place, but saw the Fae prince and Sergeant Giovanni still creeping closer along each wall. “Colonel, please!” he begged.

  The prince’s jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared in anger, but he stopped creeping closer to the lion.

  Sergeant Giovanni stopped when the colonel did.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Pete said softly to Siobhan. “Don’t worry.”

  Siobhan rolled her eyes, despite the pinch of pain around her lips. “I hate being the damn hostage.”

  At the obvious standoff, Doctor Nudd came in from around the doorjamb. “He killed soldiers from your SET unit,” he told the colonel, voice shaking with rage. “The first two died slowly over a period of days. After that, when he saw the first signs of toxic reactions to his nanites, he got the widow spiders to eat the soldiers to hide the evidence. Their acid venom destroyed the nanites completely. It wasn’t just six soldiers either. Ten are dead. He shot and buried some in the forest and the last two are dying.”

  “You knew.” Nudd held up the folder, shaking the proof at Periclum like a weapon. Everyone else was frozen, but Nudd walked down the center of the room in front of the big lion, crunching broken glass under his shoes. “You knew the nanites were deadly, and you just kept doing it anyway!” Nudd set the folder down with shaking hands on a wrecked work bench. “I don’t think I can save the last two.” He rubbed his hand through his messy hair. “When you realized one batch was killing your subjects, you just changed the nanites slightly and went right on. You put them in Lieutenant Runningwolf less than an hour ago, and I don’t even know if I can save him.” He pointed a shaky finger at the big werelion. “You are no doctor. You sicken me.”

  Periclum eased the pressure on the tip of his sword against Siobhan’s back, as if forgetting that he held her. “That’s rich, you telling me I’m not a doctor. I use science, not hand wavey mumbo jumbo to heal. You’re nothing but a witch doctor pretending to do medicine.”

  While they yelled at each other, Liliana kept running. She was almost there. She might make it.

  “Stop where you are, ma’am, or we’ll shoot!” a soldier shouted behind her.

  No, no, no.

  She couldn’t stop now.

  Bullets splashed a trail by her feet as she ran around the corner of the sprawling complex. She could see the centrifuge on the wet lawn by the broken window a half block away. She didn’t think it was possible to run even faster as her breath sobbed through her lips and burned her lungs, but she tried.

  Lightning flashed, blindingly white, followed rapidly by a bone-shaking crack of thunder.

  While they were blinded by the lightning, the lion-kin hurled Siobhan past Nudd and jumped out the window, shifting to full lion form in mid-air.

  Pete leapt up to catch the hurtling sprite. The force of impact slammed into his chest and smashed him and Siobhan back against a wall of shelves. The wolf-kin curled protectively around the small woman.

  Periclum ran into the storm on four feet, leaving his sword behind.

  Liliana saw the huge lion with the tattered remains of a lab coat flapping like a cape disappear into the gray of the rain, but she ignored him, sprinting all out for the window he just escaped through.

  The soldiers pursuing her rounded the corner.

  Inside the room, Pete uncurled from around Siobhan. “Are you okay?” The shelving units they’d slammed into tottered. Shelves collapsed forward, broke completely, or tilted. Cardboard boxes and plastic storage containers slid, some crashing to the ground around them.

  The sprite ran her hand through her soggy red hair, wiped blood that was dripping into her eye, then climbed to her feet. “Right as rain. You seem to have a habit of saving me from hairy beasts.” She grinned down at Pete and offered him a hand up. “And how are you feeling this fine day?”

  “Like I got hit by a flung fairy?” Pete smiled up at her and rubbed his chest in obvious pain where her small body slammed into him.

  After sidestepping a falling box, she slugged him in the shoulder. “Keep up the name callin’, and you’ll be back in the doghouse.”

  “Sergeant, get the SET squad mobilized immediately,” Colonel Bennet ordered. “Find Periclum, and either take him in, or take him down. He doesn’t leave this base.” Colonel Bennet winced. “And turn off the damn base alarm.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sergeant Giovanni punched buttons on her wrist phone and spoke into it rapidly.

  “I’d sure like to know what exactly was going on here,” Detective Jackson said.

  The Colonel gave her a hard glare.

  Jackson raised her hands in a placating gesture. “When you’ve got a few minutes to spare, of course, whatever isn’t too classified.”

  Liliana made it to the window just as the soldiers chasing her opened fire again.

  A bullet slammed the spider-kin sideways as she jumped.

  Liliana landed badly in the lab as Pete struggled to his feet, groaning, one hand in Siobhan’s and the other braced on the damaged shelf behind him.

  The spider-kin staggered to her feet, holding her bleeding side just above her hip where the bullet hit.

  “NO!” the spider seer shouted at Pete as he stood. She ignored her wounds, stumbled across the broken glass and caustic chemicals, leapt over the broken tables, and dodged under the colonel’s long arm as he reached for her.

  She stepped on Pete’s bent knee, making him yelp, then leapt and caught the open-topped box marked “ELEMENTAL METALS” as it fell from the top shelf. The glass containers inside rattled together.

  As Pete had curled protectively around Siobhan, Liliana curled around that box, praying she could cushion the landing with her body.

  “Oof.” The wind exploded out of her as she landed on her back on the ground, the big box cradled carefully. Pain shot through her injured side, but that didn’t matter. Thick glass bottles clacked hard against each other when she hit. She tensed every muscle, waiting to be immolated in chemical flame.

  Nothing happened.

  She risked a quick look. Two of the bottles had chips and spiderweb cracks, but they were all intact. She closed all her eyes and dropped her soaking head back on the chemical-covered floor littered with glass shards.

  I made it.

  For a while, she just lay there, panting for breath and shivering in a slowly spreading puddle of her blood. Not only did her side hurt, but her thigh felt like it had been seared with a hot fireplace poker. Or three.

  After a few seconds of silence aside from her own labored panting, she cracked one human eye. Everyone stared down at her, looked at each other, then back down at her.

  She was too tired and sore and cold for the staring to even make her uncomfortable. Or maybe it didn’t matter as much being stared at when her friends were the ones doing it.

  “Stand down,” Colonel Bennet ordered when the men who shot Liliana reached the window. “Sergeant Giovanni and I have the situation under control. And turn off that damn siren!”

  Doctor Nudd stepped forward and took the box out of the exhausted spider-kin’s hands. “Oh my,” he said. “Good thing that didn’t fall and break in here. If the elemental sodium had come in contact with the water and acid on the floor, it would have set fire to the entire lab.”

  Pete peered at the labels on the bottles. “Actually, once ignited, the phosphorous, potassium, and magnesium powder would probably have blown this entire section of the building up. What idiot stored these together?” He grinned down at the spider-kin and extended a hand. “Glad you could join us, Lilly.”

  Chapter 18

  Blankets, Hot Cocoa, And Murder

  Liliana sat on one end of an examination table in a small room and sipped hot cocoa, her injuries clean and bandaged. The shrapnel had been removed from her thigh. The bullet had passed through the skin and muscle just above her hip relatively cleanly. The wound would heal in a few days. She was nearly buried under blankets that had been warmed in a special oven. Her wet clothes had been replaced with borrowed military fatigues that were several sizes too large.

  Pete and Doctor Nudd fussed over her at least as much as they fussed over Siobhan, who sat next to her on the examination table, similarly dressed in dry but ill-fitting clothes and covered in warm blankets. The little Fae had a few minor cuts, including a deep claw scratch on her forehead. A white band held the gauze pad over the taped wound, pushing her red hair straight up on the top like a woodpecker’s crest.

  Doctor Nudd had been in and out, caring for them and for Lieutenant Runningwolf. Nudd’s healing gift seemed to be helping the badger recover from the toxic nanites still circulating in his system. He’d only gotten half of the nanites in his system before Doctor Nudd had removed the needle from his arm. Nudd had little hope for the others who had been infected. While he had no idea how to get them out, his talent directly mitigated the nanites’ toxic effects, in Runningwolf at least.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22