Fields of Blood (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 2) (18 page)

F
our young werewolves, one and a half Fae, and one crazy human against a hundred-plus highly trained soldiers who may or may not be able to go wolf whenever they wanted.

This was really going to suck.

While Chester led the way toward the compound, I explained as best I could what the dead guy had told me. How they were using Sadie’s blood to try and infect people with lycanthropy without driving them insane, and testing the stuff on the people they’d kidnapped from Elk Heights.

Hector was right about one thing. A pack of werewolf-enhanced humans could probably take down anything.

“I don’t understand,” Tate said. “The stuff they want is in Sadie’s blood, right? So why did they take the elders?”

Taeral’s jaw clenched. “They need no reason. They’ve always captured and tortured Others, simply because they can.”

“Yeah, but it still doesn’t make sense,” I said. “That base has been there for years, on the same mountain as a whole pack of werewolves. If they just wanted to grab them and take them apart, they would’ve done it before now. Wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose,” Taeral said.

“Dead Hector called them the Quaestio branch. The assholes from New York, I mean. So maybe these guys are doing something different out here.”

“I already told you,” Chester said over his shoulder. “They’re building an alien army. Didn’t I say they were making super soldiers?”

Elara and Tate both looked at me. “Aliens?” Elara mouthed.

“Uh, yeah. Some of us aren’t convinced on the alien thing,” I muttered.

“I heard that.”

“But he’s right about everything else,” I said louder. “Anyway. Whatever they took your family for, it’s not going to be good. We’ll have to figure it out after we go in and get them, and the people from town.”

“Yeah, and what then?” The heavy voice came from Luther. “They already got whatever they needed from Sadie. And they have an army. What are we supposed to do when they come after us again?”

I let out a breath. “I wish I knew, kid.”

The only thing I did know was I couldn’t think about massive numbers, global sites, and cult members in the Pentagon right now. All of that was happening somewhere else.

The odds were already impossible from here.

We’d been picking our way across rough terrain for nearly an hour when Chester led us through a thick, steep stretch of trees and onto a well-worn path. “Douse your lights and keep an eye out,” he said, making an adjustment to his own flashlight that reduced the bright glow to a pale, focused beam. “I doubt anyone would be up here this time of night, but you never know.”

“Where’s here?” I said.

“Hiking trail. They train on this sometimes, but mostly they just use it for walking.” He looked back over the group. “I’d have a weapon ready.”

I grabbed the .45, and a small burst of rustling and clicking erupted around me as everyone armed themselves.

At least it was relatively easy going, except for the tension of trying to watch everywhere at once for signs of Milus Dei. I focused on catching my breath. It’d been a long time since my last trek through the wilds, on a mountain a lot like this one. The only time I’d ever traveled the wilderness alone.

When I finally escaped the Valentines, and ended my sixteen-year sentence in hell.

I’d been planning the night I left for just over a year. They never would’ve let me leave—the Valentines were poachers, illegal big-game hunters with a long list of crimes under their belts from petty theft to outright murder. I’d witnessed it all, and they knew I hated them, wouldn’t hesitate to turn on them if I got the chance. My only way out was dead. So that’s what I intended to make them think.

Unfortunately, I got caught.

The family was camped in the northern Pennsylvania Appalachians, hunting down black bears. I’d planned to take off in the middle of the night while the rest of them were passed out in drunken stupors, and leave a staged ‘animal attack’ behind. I had three days’ worth of food and water, a few bottles of fresh blood from the day’s kills for stage dressing, and a hunting knife I’d finally managed to steal from one of my brothers.

Part of the plan involved cutting off some of my own skin and hair, just to make it convincing. It would’ve been worth it.

But Orville, the man I thought was my father for most of my life, happened to stumble out of the Airstream he shared with Mama Reba to heed the call of nature—just before I’d hit the safety of the tree line bordering the camp. He somehow managed to figure out my plan, despite the handicap of having a brain entirely fueled by meanness and whiskey.

He beat the hell out of me. Broke my left arm and a few ribs, blacked one eye shut, and battered me hard enough I was pissing blood for a week. Lucky for me, he was too tired to finish killing me—so he chained me down in the bed of his pickup and promised to finish the job in the morning. Said I was officially useless dead weight, and he was going to make me the ultimate hunting trophy.

Orville went into detail about how he was going to skin me alive and carry the skin around with him, mount it up in the Airstream and charge his twisted poacher friends ten bucks a pop to look at my dead husk.

I believed he would.

That was the night I learned about the power of sheer desperation and my incredible will to save my own ass. At the time I had no idea I was half-Fae, but I did have the moonstone pendant. It must’ve helped me open the padlock Orville used to secure the chains, when I thought it had somehow popped from me pulling it with my teeth, shoving a splinter of metal into the lock and fumbling around, and finally begging it to just open.

Looking back, I figured my non-human status had been the only thing keeping me alive all those years while Hodge and Morris used me for target practice. They’d shot me so many times, I should’ve died from the shock alone.

But the Fae healed fast, even when they didn’t know they were Fae. And it probably didn’t hurt that the Valentines were most active at night, so I spent a lot of time in the moonlight.

After I slipped the chains and ran, I spent four days wandering the mountain in a delirium of pain and fear. Jumping at every noise, thinking they’d found me. Knowing that every minute I stayed away, they’d make my death that much slower and more painful. I’d eventually made my way to a paved road, where a man headed to New York gave me a lift.

He was too drunk to notice I was half-dead. The cop who pulled him over when he crossed into the city wasn’t.

From there I was shuffled into the system, but I made sure I disappeared from that system as soon as possible. I could never let the Valentines find me. By now, they probably figured they owed me a painful death stretched out over ten years or so.

“Um. Gideon?”

Elara’s soft voice beside me scattered the memories. I looked over, and realized I could see much better than I expected without the flashlight. At least while the moon was up. Her face, so much like Sadie’s, was pinched with worry.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Go for it.”

She drew a shaking breath. “Did Sadie really come back…just for me?”

“Yeah. She did,” I admitted.

“So it is my fault, then,” she whispered.

“It is absolutely not your fault.” I tried for a reassuring smile. “You know, you’re a lot like her,” I said. “She tried to blame herself for something Milus Dei did too. But it wasn’t her fault—and this isn’t yours. Okay?”

“I guess.” Her expression said she wasn’t convinced. “You think I’m like her?”

I nodded. “That’s a good thing, by the way.”

“Yeah. But some of the others, they don’t think so.” She sighed and stared ahead at nothing. “Dad’s always been so mad that Sadie keeps going against family traditions. He thinks she doesn’t belong, and says her running off just proves it.”

I couldn’t help a short laugh. “Have to take Sadie’s side here,” I said. “Just because it’s tradition, doesn’t mean it’s right.”

“Tell me about it.” Elara’s features darkened. “And Marlon…well, he’s an asshat. He’s the one who drove her away. Dad was only going to—” She stopped suddenly and looked at me. “Do you know why she left?”

“She told us about Michael,” I said.

“Oh. She must really like you, then.” The corners of her mouth twitched down. “It was all Marlon’s idea,” she said. “Dad wanted to forbid her from seeing him, but Marlon talked him and the elders into…what they did. To make an example, he said.” Anger burned from her eyes, glinting in the moonlight. “He told me about it once. How he killed Michael, how he begged for his life. Marlon said he was weak. And he was
laughing
.”

I shuddered inwardly. This Marlon sounded like a real winner, and I wasn’t looking forward to rescuing him. Especially if he was the one I’d stabbed when they took Sadie—which seemed likely, since he’d been giving orders.

But Sadie was the important thing here. We had to get her back.

Ahead of us, Chester slowed his pace, and then stopped. “Okay, it’s right around this bend,” he said. “I just have to hack into their security system and disable the alarms, and we’re in.”

“Right,” I muttered, hoping Chester really wasn’t as crazy as he seemed—because otherwise, we were officially screwed.

C
HAPTER 27

C
hester was full of surprises. One of them was a gadget that plugged into the electronic lock at the gate leading from the compound to the trail, and started finding the combination that opened it.

The gate was set into a chain link fence, around eight feet high and topped with another three feet of razor wire, that enclosed the compound. Just beyond it was one of the two large single-story buildings—the one Chester said was their recreation facility. From our vantage point, it was the only building visible, and there didn’t seem to be any activity.

There was a strange noise coming from somewhere inside the compound, though. A kind of low hum, a muttering whisper, and something that sounded like distant rain, with a single steady tone running through it. The blend of barely audible noise was ominous, almost threatening.

I was pretty sure I didn’t like that sound.

It wasn’t long before Chester’s gadget did its work. There was a soft beep, and the red light below the lock’s number pad flashed green. He pushed the gate open and gestured for us to follow.

I thought he’d head for the building entrance, but he brought us to a service ladder and onto the roof. The sound was a little louder up here, and there was a lot of light coming from the ground at the far end of the building. That seemed wrong, too.

Once we were gathered on the flat, broad expanse of cement, Chester deemed it safe to whisper. “We can see the whole place from up here,” he said. “Find out where they have guards posted, plan entry into the research building. That’s the next one over—”

“What
is
that?” Taeral whispered harshly, looking toward the light. “That sound.”

I glanced at him. “You hear it, too?”

He frowned and strode across the roof, in the direction of the glow. Everyone followed.

The light came from the circular stadium building I’d seen on Chester’s aerial photos. Four bright, blue-white floodlight panels mounted on poles rose behind the ring of bleacher seats, illuminating a field that was separated from the seats by more chain link fence and razor wire. A long section of fence with a sliding gate in the center split the field in half. The muttering hum sound came from the light panels.

I suspected I knew what it was. Something Sadie had mentioned after Milus Dei captured her the first time—artificial moonlight. More than enough to simulate a full moon.

“Get down!” Elara hissed suddenly.

Seconds after the seven of us flattened along the edge of the roof, I heard what she must’ve picked up first with her wolf hearing—footsteps. A lot of them, coming from the four smaller buildings to the left of the stadium.

Then black-clad Milus Dei soldiers started swarming into the place and filling the bleachers.

“Shit,” I whispered. “Think we should go now, while they’re busy?”