Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“I want to go in the back,” Kane said as his fangs descended. “Besides, if this floor gets us nowhere, why waste the daylight.”
“Because I know a way to sneak down and where to go from there. Plus this is the only way I’m going to take you in and you need me.”
“The hell I need you.”
“I know this fucking place like the back of my hand, and you’re lost in there. Unless you got up out of that bed and had a wander no one noticed?”
As their stares clashed, Kane had to remind himself that the male before him was an ally who was being reasonable. Not an enemy. And in the back of his mind, he recognized that Apex, for once, was not the unhinged one.
“Where’s the wolven?” Kane asked as a way to derail the focus. His own focus, that was.
Apex looked around the scruffy acreage surrounding the hospital. “He’s here somewhere.”
Kane started marching for the heavy double doors, like they were an adversary he could punch. And when his arm was snagged in a hard grip, he bared his fangs, and kept right on going.
Apex’s voice was sharp. “We don’t want to kick the hornet’s nest right away. That’s not going to help.”
“I thought you liked to fight.” Kane yanked free and reached for one of the tarnished brass handles. “And that you—”
The door opened wide.
The white-haired wolven with the powerful body was on the far side, looking like he was already tired of saving the day. “Welcome back, Kotter.”
Kane blinked. “Who?”
“Guess you don’t watch a lot of TV in this place.”
“How the hell did you get in?” Kane flared his nostrils to test the interior scents that were wafting out into the night. “Don’t answer that, I don’t really care—”
“Open window.”
“Aren’t you a genius.”
Kane barged past the wolven—Callum, his brain supplied—and did a quick survey of what appeared to be a lobby. The open area had a high ceiling and many overturned chairs. A reception area was off to one side, running down a wall, and as he looked at the slots for folders, and places for mail, he could sense the orderly way things had once been run.
“This way,” Apex said as he headed for one of the corridors that radiated off the central core.
Kane made sure he was ready with the heavy gun, and even though his body was roaring for a fight, he recognized that he had to control himself. He wanted to start shooting already, to bring all the guards to him, to pick them off one by one or in pairs, until the blood flowed on the threadbare and dusty carpeting.
But Nadya was the point of this.
And what was wrong with his thinking that he had to remind himself of that?
On that note, he let Apex lead them into an unremarkable room, one that had peeling ceiling paint, and a broken chair, and a window that looked out over the back parking lot.
“How is this going to help us?” Kane demanded.
“That is a dumbwaiter.” Apex pointed at a square panel that was inset into the wall. “The shaft leads down into one of the drug workrooms. I know the layout, so no, you dematerializing to there isn’t an option. You’ll re-form in the middle of a table and die.”
“I’m not staying here.”
“You want that nurse dead? Fine, fuck around. Go right ahead—what the fuck is wrong with you.”
Kane couldn’t understand what the problem was. Then he glanced down at the space between their bodies. A hand and forearm that he vaguely recognized as his own were holding a gun out, the muzzle pressing into Apex’s abs. The safety was not engaged. There was a bullet ready to go. And his finger was tense on the trigger.
Off to the side, the wolven watched, one hand markedly down at his side. Kane didn’t need to see anything directly to know that there was a gun in that grip, one that was just as big as the Magnum the guy had lent out.
“Who are you?” Apex whispered. “This is not you.”
Kane retracted his weapon. Then he turned it around and offered it to Apex, handle first. After the male took it, he blinked and put his free hand to his head. “I don’t know… who I am anymore.”
“That I believe,” Callum said grimly.
* * *
Down in the clinic, the guard who Nadya had triaged last, whose thigh she had stitched up as her last bit of needlework, was feeding from a female who had been brought in from the outside. It was clear they were mated, the pair’s eyes clinging to each other’s as the wrist was offered and accepted. Though they didn’t touch other than the connection of mouth to vein, they didn’t have to.
The love between them was obvious.
As soon as the female had been brought in, Nadya had stepped back into the forest of the shelves, and taken cover in the midst of the dusty left-behinds. The shellan had been like the others who had come to service their males, in this case blond, but in any event, fresh from the world beyond the prison, dressed in blue jeans and a dark sweater, her body and hair washed, her throat perfumed, her face made up.