Scream squeak… Hammy… He made me sound horribly adorable, and yet I was starting not to mind. Wiley was seeing allof me, not just the bat or the vampire. Not even just the lawyer or noble. He saw every bit and found reasons to want and care for everything I was.
“Thank you,” I said without really thinking.
He looked genuinely confused. “For what?”
For loving me, but I wasn’t ready to say those words. Instead, I pulled him in for a slow, deep kiss that I hoped made known some of what I felt.
When I pulled back, he had his eyes closed and slowly licked his lips before blinking up at me and grinning. “You’reverywelcome,” he said and winked.
After walkingfor a couple of hours at least, we came to a door that I had to damage to open again. This one led us into the bowels of a building with pipes of all sorts snaking above our heads. The furnace was cold and rusty, making me think this was the abandoned warehouse everyone else from Parnell was aiming for. Wiley and I headed up toward the light that shone in through broken windows from streetlights outside.
I opened the outer door to utter chaos.
I should’ve checked. I should’ve paused to hear the words being yelled. I’d assumed the noise was from the evacuees and Coalition members. But it was actually armed soldiers in black tactical gear shooting at everyone out there. A dart hit me in the center of my chest and had my knees buckling seconds later.
“Run,” I croaked at Wiley, pushing him away.
“No! Oh, god…”
“Run!”
I thumped against the filthy floor face first, not even able to brace myself, but I could see Wiley running away. He went back toward the door into the basement, and I was glad to know he headed for the tunnels. He could lose them down there.
But then boots were surrounding me, rough hands lifting me, and the world swam before my eyes. I lost sight of Wiley, but I heard him yelp. He hadn’t made it.
Everything in me raged at being caught again, for putting Wiley in danger, for being completely unable to do more than growl impotently. I was thrown on top of others, snarling and unable to move. They stacked us inside the trailer of a semi, and then they closed the doors and drove away.
I couldn’t smell Wiley. Was he in another vehicle, tranquilized with other humans?
Had he been shot dead and left behind?
If he was gone, no order or weapon would stop me from exposing supernatural kind to the world as I tore apart every single soldier and their masters. No one would escape me. I would remake the entire American government through murder if that was what it took to stop these people. I would be the nightmare they thought I was until my last breath.
Chapter
Eleven
OH LOOK! GUNS!
Guess they figured out that their tranquilizers needed an upgrade because I hit the ground like I was sliding into third base the second that fucking dart thing hit me. That hadn’t scared me nearly as much as watching Hamilton drop like he had, though. I wasn’t the one they wanted to experiment on. Sure, maybe I was going to be his dinner later, but I didn’t mind that at all. Knowing he’d been recaptured by the people who’d given a scary badass vampire bat shifter nightmares scared me a hell of a lot more.
I couldn’t let them break him.
That I woke up in a room the size of a closet with a white ceiling and floor—that had a drain in the middle {shudder}—with clear glass walls worried me. That there were two other naked men in the cell with me and three or four in the rooms around us worried me even more.
“Who’re you?” I asked as I sat up against one of the walls.
The two of them shared a look that I took to be hesitation to speak until they were on the same page. Well, the time to coordinate their stories had been when I was unconscious.
“Spit it out,” I said. “Whatever it is.”
Finally, the beefy blond with red cheeks said, “PFC Austin Kazinsky.”
“Sergeant Kendall Row,” said the bald guy with startling blue eyes.
“Oh, the fuck?” I snapped and tried to get to my feet. I wobbled, but I got up. “What are your fucking orders, huh? Because I’ll have you know I’m hopped up on vampire bat shifter jizz and I can paint this room with your motherfucking guts.”
Ew. Seriously, me? I swore I didn’t know who I was sometimes.
