Authors: Paige Tyler
with hundreds of rounds.
Her arms gave out and she felt her upper body hit the floor. She tried to lift her head again so she could
see Landon one more time before the drugs took their full effect, but it was no good. Hands clawed at her,
dragging her across the floor, and she knew it was too late. For her, at least.
Please
God, don’t let it be too
late for Landon.
“Run, babe,” she begged. “Please.”
Then even her voice stopped working as everything went black.
***
toward her. And right now, that was looking more impossible by the second.
“Hold on, Ivy.” He didn’t know if she could hear him over the headset or not. It didn’t matter. He
needed her to know he was still there. “I’m coming to get you.”
He ducked behind a support column to reload.
Why had she zoned out again on him and jumped over the freaking railing? He’d immediately raced for
the stairs, but when he got to the fourth floor, he discovered the stupid staircase didn’t go all the way down
to the ground floor like it was supposed to. He’d had to run all the way along the concourse to the other end
of the lodge to get to the stairs down to the third floor, then do the same thing to get to the second floor.
Slamming a magazine into place, he turned and emptied all thirty rounds into the swarm of shifters
descending on Ivy. He might as well have been pelting them with spitballs for all the good it did. Some
went down, but not many. The damn things were bulletproof.
He ducked behind the support column to reload, then stuck his head out for a quick look. In the atrium,
one of the shifters picked Ivy up and slung her over his shoulder, then turned and ran back in the direction
he’d come. They’d gone to great lengths to take Ivy alive, and that gave him hope. He still had time to
rescue her. He just had to find a way to get through the pack of ravening beasts looking to put a hole in
him.
He wasn’t only taking fire from the shifters in the atrium. Two shifters were shooting at him from the
stairwell leading down to the first floor, while two others pumped out rounds from the stairwell leading up
to the third floor. He put half his magazine into one stairwell, then emptied what was left into the other.
He had to get to a place where he could both defend himself and put some of these creatures down for
good. To do that, he’d have to abandon Ivy. At least for right now. He’d rather cut his right arm off than do
that. But jumping over the railing into a pack of bloodthirsty shifters was only going to get him killed. Ivy
needed him alive.
Landon grabbed his fourth—and last—magazine and jammed it into his M4. There was no way that was
going to be enough firepower to take down an entire lodge of shifters. He snatched the single grenade
attached to his vest and pulled the pin. It was tempting to throw it into the atrium and blow the shifters
down there to kingdom come so he could rescue Ivy, but without any backup ammo, he’d be toast. And Ivy
would still be in trouble. He needed to clear his exit route, get to the packs he’d hidden in the forest and
load up on extra ammo, then get back here as fast as he could. When he did, he was going to kill every
single creature that stood between him and Ivy. First, though, he had to clear out the shifters in the stairwell.
Trouble was they were too fast and could pick up the grenade and throw it back at him before it went off.
He’d have to hold it for a few seconds before he threw it. Doing that was dangerous, but it was a risk he
had to take.
He pulled the pin and counted to three, then tossed it along the concourse toward the stairwell. It went
off two seconds later. The blast shook the floor, stunning the shifters in the atrium as well as the ones on
the steps, and they stopped shooting momentarily.
Landon was up and running for the third-floor stairwell before anyone could start shooting. The
grenade hadn’t done as much damage to the two shifters blocking the steps as he’d hoped, and he paused
just long enough to shoot both of them in the head before running for the stairs.
He made it up to the fifth floor and onto the wall before he heard someone behind him. That was fine.
He didn’t need a huge head start, just enough to get to the forest before they caught up with him. He knew
where he was going—they didn’t. That meant they’d have to waste time tracking him once they entered the
woods.
When he reached the section of wall where he and Ivy had climbed up, he started thinking he may have
underestimated the shifters’ speed. Half a dozen of them were on the wall and headed his way, guns blazing.
As if that weren’t bad enough, he started taking fire from somewhere below the wall, too.
Swearing, he turned and put a few rounds into the shifters coming at him along the wall. Landon was
sure he hit at least four of them, but only one went down.
Dropping to his stomach, he slid his feet over the edge of the wall. He climbed down the first few feet,
then dropped the last ten. He hit the ground and rolled, making sure to take a second to put a few more
bullets into the wall up near the edge before taking off into the forest. That might discourage the bastards
from climbing down right away.
It didn’t.
The shifters jumped down from the wall, hitting the ground so hard it vibrated under Landon’s feet.
And that theory about them having to waste time tracking him through the woods? He’d been wrong about
that, too. They followed like hounds on a scent, which he supposed was an apt description.
Running through the woods while wearing NVGs was never a fun event—the lack of depth perception
was difficult—but it was even worse when someone was shooting at you. Trying to focus on where his feet
were landing at the same time he was worried about taking a bullet in the back didn’t give him a lot of
speed.
Luckily, the shifters were horrible shots. If he wasn’t in a heavily forested area, he might have been
dead already. The trees around him were taking a lot of punishment, that was for sure. Sooner or later, the
bastards would get lucky and hit him.
He returned fire as accurately as he could while on the run. He was pretty sure he hit a few of them, but
not before they rerouted him away from where the backpacks of ammo were waiting. Then he felt a
sickening sensation—the bolt on his M4 locked to the rear because there were no more cartridges in the
magazine.
Knowing the shifters would figure out he was empty pretty quick, Landon turned and ran. He didn’t
want to think about it, but for the moment at least, his plans had changed. Now, he wasn’t trying to get to
his ammo and then to Ivy. Now, he was trying to stay alive for the next five minutes until he could think of
a better plan.
Behind him, the pack of shifters howled. Landon threw a quick glance over his shoulder. They were
gaining on him. He looked around for someplace—anyplace—he could use to set a trap. If he could take
out the first shifter that caught up with him, he could grab the guy’s weapon. It was a long shot, but it was
all he had.
Landon was so focused on what he was looking for he didn’t realize the forest had opened up in front
of him until he was standing in a patch of moonlight. The ground around him erupted in a shower of dirt
and rocks as the shifters immediately zeroed in on his location. A bullet ripped into his vest, grazing his
shoulder, and he winced. He tried to run, twist, do something to find cover. But suddenly the ground
disappeared from underneath him and he was falling.
A cliff.
Shit
.
What the hell would happen to Ivy if he didn’t make it?
***
Ivy opened her eyes and found herself staring up at fluorescent lights. The brightness only made her
head hurt worse, and she squeezed her eyes shut as the room suddenly started spinning. She was going to
throw up.
She tried to turn over so she wouldn’t get sick all over herself, but something held her down at the
wrists and ankles. Everything came rushing back—the red-eyed shifters, Stutmeir, the tranquilizer darts…
Landon. She prayed more than anything he’d gotten away. She didn’t care what happened to her as long as
he was safe.
She opened her eyes again, more slowly this time. She squinted up at the light, waiting for another wave
of dizziness to hit her. When it didn’t come, she lifted her head slightly and saw that she was strapped down
to the same bed as the red-eyed shifter she’d seen earlier. She was naked except for her bra and panties.
Panic surged through her, making it hard to get enough air, and she forced herself to take a deep, calming
breath. Freaking out wouldn’t help her escape.
She lifted her head again to survey the room and was relieved to find she was alone. She wrinkled her
nose at the scent of blood. It was old, as if it had been there for a while. It didn’t smell like it came from a
shifter. But it wasn’t quite human, either.
More like a combination of the two. Like the creatures Stutmeir had made. Suddenly, kidnapping
genetic scientists and DNA experts made a lot more sense. They’d thought the ex-Stasi was making a
bioweapon, but instead he’d been developing shifters. Why?
She’d have to worry about the answer to that question after she got out of here.
She yanked at the leather straps around her wrists, but they wouldn’t budge. She jerked on the ones
around her ankles next. Same deal. The red-eyed shifter had made it look so easy.
The sound of men’s voices drifted in from outside the room, and she froze.
“We can’t leave now.” A heavily accented man’s voice, German by the sound of it. Stutmeir, maybe?
“Not when we’re on the verge of finally realizing our goal. Last time we moved, it took weeks to get the lab
up and running again.”
Lab
? Ivy almost choked on a laugh. Of a mad scientist, maybe.
“Klaus is right,” another man said, this time with what Ivy thought was a French accent. “Now that we
have a naturally occurring genetic mutation to study, there’s so much we can learn. Her DNA likely holds
the secrets to allow us to overcome the rage and impulse control issues the hybrids display.”
“Which we’ll study when we get to the new location,” a second German said. Maybe this one was
Stutmeir. “Staying here is too risky.”
“I don’t understand why.” The Frenchman again. “The man who came with her is dead.”
The second German said something about the organization that sent them having people combing the
area looking for them by tomorrow, but Ivy didn’t pay attention to the rest of their conversation. She was
too busy thinking about what the Frenchman said and desperately trying to convince herself she’d heard
wrong.
Landon couldn’t be dead. He was Special Forces. He’d been trained to survive every kind of dangerous
situation that had ever been conceived and then some. He’d been to the most perilous places in the world,
done things in his life that would have killed a normal man ten times over. The Frenchman wanted her to
think Landon was dead so she would be more vulnerable.
Tears burned her eyes. What if the Frenchman was telling the truth? That would mean that Landon, the
one man in the whole world who knew what she was and cared about her anyway, was gone.
Ivy wanted to scream and cry and tear whoever had taken Landon from her to shreds, but she didn’t
have the strength to move. She couldn’t even seem to breathe. She was numb all over.
This was her fault. If she hadn’t zoned out and jumped over that railing, none of this would have
happened. Landon believed her little problem was something they could manage, something they could
control, as long as they worked on it together. She’d thought so, too. But they were both wrong. And now
the man she loved was dead because of her.
The light above her shimmered through her tears, and she closed her eyes. In the forest earlier, she
hadn’t been sure the things she’d felt for him were real, but she’d been wrong. If they hadn’t been real, she
wouldn’t hurt so much. She loved Landon. Now, she would never get the chance to tell him.
Footsteps intruded on her misery. Part of her wanted to lie there and let them do whatever they wanted
to her. Landon was gone and so was her desire to live. But then another emotion surfaced—one tied
directly to her feline instincts. Yes, Landon was gone, and these were the bastards who had killed him. She
owed it to Landon to get revenge on his behalf. She was going to kill Stutmeir if it was the last thing she
did.
She opened her eyes to see the arms-dealer-turned-monster-maker leaning over her. His eyes were even