“Dr. Rupple, the exterior security has been disengaged. We are under attack. Secondary protocol has been engaged.”
Brit looked at the intercom on the wall. Incog
had
arrived. Secondary protocol? So, Dr. Rupple did have a plan for escape.
He paused as he ingested that information but then finished nesting the vials into the foam of the case. “It’s no matter. I have all the research. It may take longer than I would like, but I can continue on at a new location. And I still have you.”
“And what of the subjects? What will happen to them?”
Rupple shrugged one thin, skeletal shoulder. “I have the samples I need.” He patted the side of the silver case. “Without you, Incog will never be able to determine the importance of the subjects, and they will eventually be released. We can easily recover those that proved promising.”
Brit swallowed and stared at the vials. She was positive her sister was among the number of people being held in this facility. This research, the project she’d started all those years ago, would make certain Meghann and all the others would always be in danger. Hunted. It was a life she didn’t want to share with her sister, if she lived. She couldn’t—wouldn’t let that happen.
“And the data?”
Dr. Rupple’s smile was mocking. “All the data on the servers was wiped when secondary protocol was enacted. Come now, Dr. Mahoney, you know as well as I how vulnerable information stored on computers can be. It was why we found nothing in your files when we infiltrated Incog’s security. I am no more a fool than you are.”
Keeping the gun leveled at her, he opened a seemingly innocuous cabinet. It revealed the front of a safe, and he leaned in to release the lock with a retinal scan. Piled inside the compartment was a short stack of ledgers. His lab books.
Brit waited, heart surging. Of course. Most scientists kept meticulous lab books, especially those who mistrusted technology. All of his data from the ARSA project had to be in those books. Supplemented with her own knowledge and current suspicions, that data might help her reverse the damage done to Katya Schaffer before her body shut down. She needed those books. And she sure as hell couldn’t allow him to take them out of here.
Scooping them up, Dr. Rupple waved the gun at her. “If you would be so kind as to collect the case, we can be on our way.”
Brit stared down the gun and weighed her options. It was unlikely Dr. Rupple would seriously injure her if he needed her help on his research—at least that was the assumption she wanted to believe. Either way she could not allow him to continue this research, and she was the pin in this particular grenade. With a sigh, she reached for the case and fervently hoped Incog had the situation outside the lab under control. Otherwise she might be forced to engage Rupple for the gun to ensure her safety while she waited. The thought of even so much as touching the weapon made her cringe. She was one of the few employees at Incog who had refused weapons training.
“Training would have been useful at this moment. You will learn when we get you to safety.”
Brit cast a disgruntled glare at the steel door as the rumbling words rolled through her mind.
Not bloody likely
. She would rather leave the chest beating to the Neanderthals and trust in science to help her out of tight spots. Clenching her fingers around the sample case, she took a deep breath. Science was going to render Dr. Rupple unconscious in just a moment—with her help, of course.
Beyond the room, the animalistic growls grew in intensity as though Vin knew her plans. He was a Drachon, and if he was anything like his brother, he likely did. It must be genetic, the Jennings tendency to overlook personal boundaries when it came to private thoughts.
“Britony.”
The warning thundered through her mind.
“I forbid you to endanger yourself.”
This Jennings would learn as well as the other that she did not take orders. What he forbade was of no consequence to her. He was out there, and she was trapped in here. Right now, she was the only one capable of affecting any type of resistance against the nasty little doctor.
Without betraying her intentions with even a twitch—a skill she’d perfected these past ten years—she advanced on the doctor. When he motioned with the gun toward the far corner of the lab, she continued to close the distance between them. A frown creased the narrow space between his small eyes, and he retreated a step, bringing the gun back around to her. Now was as good a time as any. She just hoped Rupple’s reluctance to kill her would delay his reaction enough to give her time to incapacitate him. Bracing her feet, Brit swung the case in an arc aimed at the doctor’s head, hoping the weight of the thing would make up for her lack of strength and provide the momentum that would be needed to lay the foul doctor out.
The impact vibrated up her arm, and the unexpected crack of his gun was a heavy percussion against her ears. Fire exploded through her shoulder, but she maintained her focus. She could force her body to work in the lab for days without sleep or food. She could manage to capitalize on the doctor’s injury to obtain those books. Distantly she heard the roars that felt as though they rumbled up through the very floor and into her legs, but she was more interested in the second gun being aimed at her. While she’d been focused on Dr. Rupple, the tall, innocuous cabinet that housed a variety of different jars in the far corner had slid to the side to reveal a guard ducking out of a hidden passageway. She instinctively lifted the metal case up to block her body. The bullet from the guard’s gun slammed into case and sent it crashing back against her head.
Light exploded behind her eyes from the blow. It sent her reeling back, and she lost her grip on the case. That had definitely not worked out precisely as she’d anticipated. Damn, she hated firearms.
A screech of steel being wrenched filled the room, puncturing the dull ringing in her ears as her vision shrank. The floor rose up quickly, and she couldn’t twist fast enough to get her hands beneath her. The concrete was cold against her cheek. Her head bounced off the floor, muting even the sounds of gunfire and roars. She could barely manage to open her eyes, but she needed to see where those books went. Dr. Rupple was there, on the floor in front of her, black gaze blinking back into focus even as a guard was dragging him through the hidden passageway.
The lab books. They were on the floor. Dr. Rupple was clawing at them as he was being hauled to safety, and Brit knew she couldn’t let him have them. Her consciousness was narrowing to the barest pinpoint, but it was still enough for her to concentrate through. She had to have those books. It was important. Using the last of her waning strength, she fought against the hands that pulled at her and slapped a bloody arm down over the scattered pile. She clung to them—to her hope of fixing the damage she’d caused.
Chapter Nine
Vin peeled the door back. Where the strength came from, he didn’t know or care. Alarms pierced the air around him, but the sound of the gunfire and the smell of Brit’s blood filled his senses until there wasn’t much room for rational thought. He had to reach her, protect her. Anything beyond that was inconsequential.
A frantic search of the room, and he could see her crawling toward a scattering of lab books. A guard dragged Dr. Rupple back and another reached for her. Vin’s dragon exploded inside him with a violence that bordered on insanity, barreling up through him. His breath burned through his nose with each exhale. Without pausing he grabbed a nearby tray table and launched it at the guard as though it were a throwing knife. The metal leg skewered the guard, but Vin was already following it. He wrapped his fists around it and jerked it up through the guard’s body to ensure the kill.
The dragon inside him demanded it. No threat to his mate could live.
A frenetic energy crackled over his skin, and his dragon tattoo burned like hot coals on his arm. He threw back his head and roared. The sound was returned, resonating through the facility. A call to arms. The other Drachon were engaged in the battle, fighting together as his people had once done in days long past. There was no force more powerful than Drachon males, and somewhere inside him, in a place he’d kept dormant for so long, he felt a primal spark ignite.
Pushing a cabinet out of his path, he dropped down next to Brit, her bright hair rippled on the floor like a flame. He gently lifted her, but she resisted, eyes closed, arms still reaching for those lab books. They had to be what she was looking for. Information. What could be more important to a scientist than information?
Vin jerked his head up. His awareness of Tag crackled through his mind a bare moment before his brother launched himself over the destroyed steel door. Tag had a gun in one hand, the muzzle spitting fire, and Vin turned to see another guard slam against the wall, tissue and jagged ribs a macabre frame around the hole in his chest. The cabinet was sliding back into place as the others retreated.
“The doctor is escaping through a hidden passage.”
Vin motioned to the cabinet as it clicked shut. Tag nodded and knelt down on the other side of Brit, gun still clutched in his fist. There was a distinct buzz in Vin’s head that indicated his brother was communicating with someone else.
“How bad is she injured?”
Tag smoothed her hair from her face. There was a vicious knot over her left eye, the swelling bad enough to split the skin until blood oozed from the tear. Added to the damage from the day before, she looked as though she’d survived a war.
“Damn, what the fuck happened to her?”
Vin lightly pressed around the dark bruise as Tag moved his fingers over her collarbones and down each arm.
“I can smell her blood,”
Vin said and looked over her body.
“Gunshot wound.”
Tag grunted and ripped away the bloody sleeve over Brit’s right shoulder to reveal a jagged furrow across the pale flesh high on the outside of her upper arm.
“Superficial.”
Vin watched his brother’s brusque movements and reached out to touch the surface of Tag’s mind, careful to keep his presence light. There was a linear focus to his brother’s thoughts, a sense of purpose that was direct and disciplined—a distinct change from the brother he’d grown up with. Where humor and spontaneity had once made him crackle with a life that was always electric, now Vin could only feel this heaviness that lay over Tag, muting him.
Did I do that to him with the choices I’ve made?
Tag was calm and efficient as he tied the rest of her sleeve around the wound. Vin felt his brother’s appraisal and subsequent dismissal.
“Vin?”
Vin glanced at the books on the ground, stained with Brit’s blood.
“She was after something and convinced them to take her to Dr. Rupple.”
He touched her pale cheek.
“She didn’t lose too much blood, but I don’t like that she hasn’t gained consciousness yet.”
The longer she remained unconscious, the higher the chance her head wound was serious. He reached for her mind and felt normal brain patterns. That meant the head trauma couldn’t be too severe.
“What’s the status on the others?”
Tag leaned back on his haunches and frowned at his bloody hands before he shook his head and holstered his weapon. A static crackled around Vin that indicated Tag was speaking with others again.
“The reports coming in are that most of these bastards are retreating. Those that didn’t are being taken alive—when possible.”
His smile was lethal.
“The shock of being attacked by Drachon males made the guards easy marks. Forestor wants us to stay put until the rest of the facility is secured.”
Vin nodded. They knelt there for a long moment with Brit lying between them as the strains of the battle receded. With little effort, Vin could pick up on the energy spilling from the people in the facility, and if he really focused, he could pinpoint a specific person and touch their thoughts. Species of the Arcane possessed natural barriers against telepathy, but Vin’s abilities had always been beyond extraordinary. He had to use more exertion, but other Arcane were still accessible to him. In an emotionally volatile environment like this, he wouldn’t have to put too much effort into it. He could feel the others in this complex—pick up on the myriad of their emotions. Particularly Tag’s. They simmered just below the surface and hardly required any talent in telepathy to discern.
Tag was pissed—particularly at him, although Brit was the subject of a healthy amount of it. However, the resentment that tinged his brother’s anger belonged solely to Vin. Tag would have to get over it, because Vin had no intention of leaving. Not this time.
“We claim her.” Vin said the words aloud, mostly for himself. It made them real. So many times he’d entertained the thought of them in his mind, his dreams, but always with the knowledge that they were nothing more than words.
When he’d left the complex in Ireland, he hadn’t any thought beyond protecting her by getting her away from the Triumvirate. Even then his motivations were grounded more on instinct than any real intention. Now that driving impulse to protect her was still there, still an insistent throb in his gut. Looking down at her, he didn’t think it would ever fade. He’d often wondered if he would be capable of letting her go twice if he ever saw her again. Now he had his answer.
Tag’s gaze was harsh—raw—as he stared back at Vin. A muscle ticked in his jaw. Vin could feel the battle raging in his brother, his desire to claim Brit warring with a need to distance himself from Vin. Nearly twenty years spanned between them, and the memory of their bond from the time before only echoed in the emptiness, emphasizing just how wide the breach truly was.
Would their shared connection to Brit be enough to bridge it? Vin wasn’t sure, but he knew one thing, and that was if Tag wanted Brit as badly as he did, then his brother would find a way to move past it.
“Fine,” Tag finally bit out. “We claim her.”
* * * *
Brit studied her intertwined fingers folded on the cold, smooth tabletop in front of her. She’d been bandaged up in the clinic but had refused any strong painkillers. Her head still throbbed something fierce, but at least the pain in her arm had receded to little more than an incessant ache. That damn rat doctor had shot her, and she’d been so sure he wouldn’t risk it.