When he opened the door to his apartment, his nose was assaulted by multiple scents that had his body fighting to wake up. There was that overly sweet odor coming from inside even as the burnt electrical smell suddenly filled the hallway behind him.
Trey was reaching for his service-issued weapon when a ton of bricks slammed into his back, pinning his arms to his side and smashing him through the partially opened door of his apartment. His werewolf instincts responded faster than his sluggish human mind was in the mood for, claws and fangs extending, muscles shifting, to twist him around in midair so he landed on top of whoever had tackled him.
But the grunt of pain that exploded through the small apartment was all his. Shit. It felt like he’d landed on a frigging boulder. He knew without even being able to see him that he was dealing with the guy he’d fought with in the Cedar Ridge Preserve.
Trey moved to gain a little space, then slammed his head backward as hard as he could. He connected with something that crunched—the guy’s nose most likely. But even though the sound told Trey he’d done some damage, the arms around his torso and arms didn’t loosen a bit. If anything, they clamped down even harder. It was like this thing couldn’t feel pain at all.
Movement to the side caught his eye. Trey jerked his head that way to see a short, stocky man who was all shoulders and arms swinging a baseball bat in his direction. He yanked aside just in time to keep the guy from smashing in his skull, the bat glancing off his temple and thudding hard into his shoulder. Stars exploded behind his eyes and Trey had to fight to keep his grip on consciousness as hard as he fought against the man holding him.
“He wants him alive you fool!” a female voice hissed as the arms around his chest loosened a little and the guy with the bat was suddenly jerked back out of Trey’s sight and sent flying across the room. “He’s no use if his head is bashed in.”
“How are we supposed to get him out of here if we don’t knock him out?” the man across the room muttered. “He’s got frigging claws and fangs!”
There was a laugh and then Nadia Payne was in front of Trey, a vicious grin on her face. “Claws and fangs are overrated.”
Before Trey had time to blink, she morphed from her human form to a bug-eyed vita lamia with a cackling laugh. From the grunt of shock that came out of the goon on the far side of the living room, the man with the baseball bat was clearly surprised to discover Nadia was a life-sucking vampire. He stopped wondering how much the stocky guy knew when the vita reached out her pale hands toward him. If she got her hands on him while he was trapped like this, he was done for.
He let his wolf instincts take over, shifting until he heard bones cracking as his whole body began to reshape itself. The noise must have startled the monstrously large man holding him because his grip loosened. Trey broke free with a savage growl, slashing his claws across the vita’s face and shoving her away at the same time. He paused for half a second to make sure the guy with the bat was still standing on the far side of the living room, then he spun, reaching for his SIG, ready to put a bullet through the man who’d been holding him captive. But then he saw the guy’s face and he froze.
“Kyson?”
Trey suddenly felt like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs as his eyes locked with the friend he thought was dead.
Trey was faintly aware of long, cold fingers wrapping around his neck from behind, but couldn’t force himself to care—not until he felt his soul being ripped out through the icy contact. His inner wolf responded, snarling and telling him to twist around to defend himself. But before he could move, Kyson’s huge hands came up and grabbed him again, holding him firm as the vita began to pull the life right out of him. Trey realized his groan of pain sounded a lot like that guy downtown had made right before Trey rescued him.
There was no one here to rescue Trey, though, and as every muscle in his body locked up in spasms of excruciating pain, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to rescue himself.
He felt like he was a battery being drained too fast. He went from exhausted to not caring about anything in the span of a few seconds. The last thing he saw before fading into darkness was Kyson gazing down at him with sad, sorrowful eyes, as if he didn’t want to be part of this.
If that was true, then why was his best friend helping the vita lamia kill him?
***
Samantha leaned back against one of the stone walls of her cell, trying her hardest to tune out the constant drone of Louis’s obnoxious voice. He was talking in the same tone she’d always identified as his mentoring voice, but now that she knew he was a certified whack-a-doodle, she decided she couldn’t stand it. Of course, it didn’t help that he’d spent the past two hours going on nonstop about how brilliant—if misunderstood—he was. During that time, she’d learned more about bringing dead people back to life than she ever wanted to know. The scary part of it was that Louis reallywasbrilliant. Unfortunately, he was also bent as an old coat hanger.
“I first proposed my resurrection theory during my third-year rotation at Johns Hopkins,” he murmured.
When he didn’t say any more, Samantha looked up, curious despite herself. Louis was staring intently at a monitor on the wall, which was displaying an enlarged image from the electron microscope on the desk. From her angle, she couldn’t see what he was so interested in, but it shut him up and that was good enough for her.
“My ideas were not well received,” Louis continued, as if he hadn’t just been silent for the past five minutes. “It was the primary reason my advisers steered me away from a more mainstream medical career. They thought my views were extremely unacceptable.”
Samantha considered pointing out that those advisers had obviously been correct when a loud noise at the far end of the basement caught her attention. She jumped up, moving close to the door of her cage and wedging herself against it so she could see what was coming, fearing the worse. In the cage next to hers, Shaylee did the same.
Samantha’s breath caught in her throat when she saw Kyson walking in with Trey’s body slung over his shoulder, Rogi behind him. The big man moved across the basement, his face expressionless as he gently placed Trey on the stainless steel table over by the rack full of electrical gear. Her heart started thumping harder as Trey remained completely motionless on the table. There was blood running down the side of his head, soaking his hair and the collar of his shirt. Trey’s skin was pale and sallow, like he was wiped out.
“What the hell did you do to him?” she shouted, banging the palm of her hand against the metal grating of her cage. “Is he alive?”
The three men ignored her, which only freaked her out even more. Kyson moved over to stand near the inclined table he’d been strapped to earlier, his eyes slanting momentarily toward Shaylee before staring straight ahead again. When Rogi came over and strapped him down on the rack a moment later, Kyson didn’t resist at all.
Samantha didn’t bother trying to get Kyson to tell her anything because she knew that would be useless. Instead, she focused all her attention on Trey, praying she would see his chest rising and falling. She was still holding her breath for such a sight when there was more movement over by the door. A moment later, Nadia strolled into the basement as if she were walking into the break room at the institute. She didn’t bat an eye at the sight of Trey lying on the table bleeding, or the hulking Kyson strapped in place near the wall.
When the woman cupped Trey’s jaw in one of her small, long-fingered hands and turned his head to the side to check the wound at his temple, Samantha started to hyperventilate a little. Her hand had been the one that had held the cloth to Samantha’s mouth and nose and chloroformed her last night.
Hugh might not be involved in this mess, but Nadia sure as hell was. Crap. How was this even possible?
“What did you do to him?” Louis asked harshly, grabbing one of Trey’s wrists to take his pulse, looking straight at Rogi the whole time. “If you’ve damaged him so much that I can’t get any use from him, I will eviscerate you. And you’d better believe I will make sure you live long enough to experience every agonizing second of it.”
Rogi turned a pale shade of green, shaking his head the entire time. “Okay, okay. I may have tapped him in the head with a baseball bat, but I wouldn’t have had to do it if the asshole hadn’t spouted frigging fangs and claws. He damn near killed us.”
