Employee of the month, for sure.
As if reading Seth’s mind, Mr. Perkins shot him a vicious look and cut off the intercom. He and the faux soldier hurried away.
Seth was really tired of watching people abandon him in his cell.
Worry swirled in his gut. He really hoped Violet knew what she was doing. Seth would never forgive himself if she got hurt.
The lights flickered, same as they had before. Except this time they did it again. And again.
And then Seth was thrust into complete, unrelenting darkness.
26
RILEY
Riley hurried through the bunker’s back entrance seconds before the power went out, Wolfe barely a step behind him.
Riley had never been so grateful for his enhanced vampire sight as he was now, rushing down the dark hall and into the stairwell. Other than a few glowing emergency exit signs, there was no outside source of light in this place once someone made it past the first level. If he’d been human, he wouldn’t have been able to see past his own feet.
Riley had never really gotten to experience them in any depth, these enhanced abilities he’d gained when his whole life had changed. He’d always been absent in this form, letting the vampire half of him run wild while he hid somewhere safe and distant in the back of his mind.
But he was here now, faster and stronger than any of the horrible humans who inhabited this place, his senses honed beyond what they could imagine. He and his vampire wereworking in sync, and these people had no chance of keeping Seth away from him.
Footsteps echoed below them, and he and Wolfe froze, waiting to see if they’d come past.
The monster in Riley was urging him to keep going anyway, to lunge forward and bite and claw through anyone or anything that dared stop them. But Wolfe had warned Riley to be cautious. “We don’t know what specialized weapons they may have, or what tools they’ve developed to deal with our kind,” Wolfe had said. “We have to be warier than usual.”
Riley had agreed. He hadn’twantedto agree, but he’d been forced to as a condition of the rescue. Otherwise, his moms and Wolfe had all threatened to incapacitate him and stuff him in some closet while they did the heavy lifting.
“This is foolish,” Wolfe growled after the sound of the footsteps trailed off. The humans had been running down instead of up, heading deeper into the bunker rather than fleeing to the entrance.
Riley and Wolfe continued on.
“It was your plan,” Riley reminded him.
“Myplan was to wait for reinforcements.”
“Not happening.”
Riley wasn’t leaving Seth in this place for a single second longer than necessary. It was bad enough he’d run home to tell his mothers and Wolfe in the first place.
Riley hadn’t wanted to. Neither had his voice. After they’d broken into Seth’s house and found no sign of him—his tote and wallet and car keys all left conspicuously on his kitchen table—they’d both been burning to start a rampage, to rip through the town and surrounding areas until they had Seth back in their arms. Their teeth had ached to tear out the throats of whoever had dared take him.
But Riley had stopped long enough to think about what Sethwould do—what he would wantRileyto do—and the answer to that had been simple: he’d want Riley to be smart and careful. He’d want him to ask for help.
So Riley had gone home totellsomeone he was about to start ripping through buildings and tearing out throats, and they’d made. Him. Wait.
Wolfe had made calls. So many calls. He’d located a hacker, some relative of Alexei’s he’d met once on the East Coast. And then there’d beenmorewaiting as the hacker did what hackers do, somehow finding his way into the research institute’s system, narrowing down the exact location where Seth had most likely been taken.
It had involved a lot of assumptions, this plan. Assuming it had been the institute that had captured Seth. Assuming he’d been taken and not…something else.
They knew they were relying on guesswork, but the gut feeling of every vampire in that room was all they’d had to go on, so that was what they’d done.
Finding the location would have been a feat in itself, considering the spot the hacker had identified was actually a second, hidden bunker, separate from the main research facility. It twisted in Riley’s gut, the knowledge that he probably wouldn’t have found it on his own.
But the hacker hadalsofound digital blueprints of the facility, and a way to take over both their main power and the backup generator remotely.
Calling him had been the definition of smart and careful, and Riley had hated every second.
