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)
Apex swiped the palm. And when the pinpoint red light did not turn to green and there was no unlocking, he wondered if blood flow was required. The palm was getting cold—
The grinding reverberated through the steel panel, making a sound that fortunately didn’t travel far, and as the seal on the entry was broken, the whiff that came out was of concrete, old oil, and death.
Too impatient for the automatic opener’s slow pace, he yanked the heavy weight wide, and gave the wolven’s flashlight a vista to pierce. The ascent was at a stiff angle, a pair of trolley tracks disappearing up the rise. An old cart was locked onto the tracks at the base of the incline, its high sides brokered by locked flaps that could be lowered by—
Between one blink and the next, he saw bodies tangled in its grim belly, the dead humans shriveled in their own skins, having wasted away. The vision was accompanied by a pungent smell he recognized as the full fruition of that which he initially scented as the door had been opening.
Bringing his hands up to rub away the image, he poked himself in the eye with the guard’s middle finger and almost dropped the palm. But the grinding into his sockets did nothing. Lids up or down, what he was being shown didn’t change.
“Apex?”
He didn’t know which of the two said his name. Probably Kane. Who the fuck cared.
“Gimme a minute.”
Sagging against the concrete wall, he felt a dampness seep through the thin tunic he had on, and he tried to tune in to what the cool wet felt like on the crest of his shoulder. Sometimes, if he could hook on to something that was real, he could bring himself out of it. But that didn’t always work—and until the vision decided to move on, he was stuck where he was, blinded by something that had happened in the past, the stain on the landscape the kind of thing that never washed out, but was never seen or sensed by anyone but him—
“What’s going on, mate?” the wolven asked softly.
“You guys go up the chute, I’m right behind you,” Apex said.
Kane took off, running up the concrete steps that paralleled the body car’s tracks. The guy might not have had any idea where he was going, but all he had to do was get to the top—and there was a lock on the door up there, so he wasn’t going to go start biting people and melting them all willy-nilly.
“Mate?”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Except Apex’s body refused to follow commands. But it was always like that, when the dead forced him to see their corpses. And fucking hell, he could do without that smell, the sweet stench of decay making him choke.
Flailing around inside his skin, he clapped his eyes on the wolven. “What the hell are you waiting for.”
There was a pause. Then the white-haired, blue-eyed wolven replied, “You. I’m waiting… for you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On the ascent, Kane’s legs were moving like pistons, his thighs pumping as he ascended a grade that was almost a total vertical. As his breath inflated his lungs and exploded out of his mouth, he had a thought in the back of his head that this shouldn’t be possible. Even before he’d been burned, he would never have moved up stairs like this.
An image of the guards’ throats dissolving and the bodies dropping free barged into his mind.
Good thing he reached the top of the body chute. Behind him, the thin beam of the wolven’s light started jerking back and forth, reminding him of a butterfly’s flight path. It didn’t take long for the other two to join him.
The guard’s hand came in handy for a second time, and Apex was careful as he opened the vaulted door. There was no need for directions. The smell that entered the chute was that of the clinic—and Kane’s body moved on its own, shoving the other male aside.
So close. He was so close to Nadya—that scent of disinfectant was unmistakable, and it was emanating from the left—
Two guards rounded a corner in the dim, rough-walled corridor, and he ducked back into the chute, closing the door so that there was only a slit to look out of. As the uniformed guards talked back and forth, their voices were hushed, and waiting for them to go by took self-control he barely had.
Somehow, he managed to hold himself in place—and then he slipped out into their wake. He jumped the one on the left, grabbing the guard’s head and wrenching it to the side with so much violence, the vertebrae cracked as they powdered—and he had the presence of mind to catch the male before he fell so there was no flopping noise.
Apex was right behind him, taking care of the other one, his knife penetrating the guard’s temple as he turned to look at his cohort. It was over so fast, Kane was aware of a feeling of letdown. Which was not right. Who the hell wanted to engage in combat?