“No,” I said. “You aren’t sorry. You all seem to think you need to push and prod and remind me constantly what I was and what I came from.” Tandy let out a sharp breath, startled. A barb of anger speared up in me, hot and sharp. I was mad, not spitting mad, or throwing-things mad, but some other kind of mad, and I was holding it in like a... like a goodchurchwoman?
At that thought the anger burned hotter for a moment, struggling to blaze free. My anger would never be a churchwoman’s anger, something chaste and controlled, or pot-throwing mad. My very own anger was different from all others I knew. Because when I stood up for myself, people died and were fed into the earth. I was a killer with too little control. I didn’t get to let loose and howl.
I was both a victim of my past and a victimizer through my gift. That thought stopped me.
Turning my lips in and back out, thinking, feeling the winter-chapped skin chafing on itself, I nodded. Yeah. I had good reasons for not getting mad when others might, not fighting back or arguing as a human might. Because I knew how easy it was to lose myself to the bloodlust. So very, very easy. And there was all that blood on DNAKeys’ compound.I was overreacting because I wanted—no—becauseSoulwoodwanted that blood.
I said, “I want you all to stop pushing me. I have a right to work through things on my own terms, in my own time.” I lifted my chin, knowing it was a confrontational gesture. “And if you don’t grant me that time and space, I’m gonna get...”Furious?“...unhappy. I don’t like who I become when I’m in a bad mood. I don’t thinkyouwill like me in a bad mood.” I looked up at Rick, who had an inkling just how dangerous I could be. “Understood?”
Rick inclined his head. Occam was watching us, his eyes shifting back and forth.
Softly, Tandy asked, “When you’re in a bad mood, is Soulwood in a bad mood?”
Sometimes Tandy was too dang discerning. I stood. “You all going in to DNAKeys’ compound and checking out that blood or not?”
“We’re going in,” Rick said softly. “You have blood on-site. We have two reports of prisoners on-site. The county tactical team is on the way. I want Nell, Occam, T. Laine. Vests. Service weapons only. SWAT will carry the big guns. Let’s ride.”
•••
We took Unit Eighteen’s van to the site, up the mountain and then down into the holler, riding the bumper of the county SWAT team, moving fast so DNAKeys’ security cameras wouldn’t have time to warn the employees. We flew past the site where I’d parked recently. Then the drive where we’d parked before, then an empty parking lot. Closer to the lights of DNAKeys. The pavement developed speed bumps that Unit Eighteen’s van was not equipped to handle. I held on to the grab handles, what the others called the “oh, shit” handles, feeling the van roof brush my head on one particularly high-speed bump.
And then the van doors slid open and things got confused.
The guards at the front of the compound were taken out by SWAT. The werewolf was shot with a beanbag thatknocked him down. His handler was hit too. No blood. Thankfully, no blood.
The door went down, no match for the battering ram wielded by the team.
Occam muttered, “Dumb-asses.”
It took a moment, but then I realized the steel door had been held in place with wood strips. I might never use the worddumb-ass, but I had to agree it was poor security. Someone screamed, “Flashbang!” Instantly a flashbang went off inside. Light and noise and smoke. Then another. And a third. Smoke bombs filled the entrance with gray-white smoke.
Then I was inside. Fighting my way through the low light and the smoke. As probationary agent I was near the back of the personnel entering the building. The SWAT guy pulling the six position pushed me with his weapon. Probably not standard behavior, but then I wasn’t standard-issue either. I sped up and nearly ran into the SWAT woman in front of me. The team cleared the first floor. I followed the woman and tried to take it all in, but it was a jumble of smoke and flashbangs and lights going off and coming on and DNAKeys’ employees screaming. That was the worst.
Vampires screaming. That awful, high-pitched wail of fear and death.
Wolves snarling. Grindylows jumping and cutting, steel claws slashing. Blood, scarlet splashing. But my bloodlust was muted by the speed and violence.
A witch throwing defensive spells that made my teeth and the roots in my belly hurt, until T. Laine’s null weapon took her down.
Wolves howling in fear and grief. Stairs leading up and down.
What might have been a juvenilegwyllgi, raging in his cage. Another were-creature I couldn’t identify.
Laboratories. Green color scheme. Machines and machine noise.
Storage rooms. Dull gray. Boxes. Old, dusty jars containing liquid and fetal humans and creatures with geneticabnormalities and horrible deformities, like things confiscated from a traveling carnival of the fifties and sixties. Newer jars full of sea creatures, starfish, jellyfish, small sharks. Strange things. Strange creatures.
Offices, pale stone color scheme. Desks. Computers.
Then the laboratory on the lowest level. And the glass doors. And the blood inside. In bags. Like a blood bank.
In bags.
Blood bank.
For research.
A vampire wearing a lab coat looked at me and demanded, “Call Ming of Glass. Call her. Now!”
