Taming the Darkness: Love & Monsters, Book 2 (13 page)

“Ten what?”

“Ten alts. There’s twelve, minus me, minus the one dead in his cell. That’s ten.”

“Ten alts running loose in the lab and we have to kill them.”

He glanced back at her. “Sounds like fun, huh?”

Claire laughed.

She followed him as he ducked down a hallway. “One went down here.”

“An alt?” Her stomach fluttered and she scolded herself for it. This was her moment to shine. No,
their
moment.

“Yeah.” He pointed and her gaze went to the trail of blood on the white tile. Then he took off running. Dammit. She ran after him, barely keeping up. She thought he’d be more careful in the narrow halls of the lab. He’d been slow and careful earlier, but he’d been leading a group out. The way he’d controlled himself amazed her. This was more like the Victor she knew.

He turned down another hall, still following the blood, although now the trail was mixed here and there with blood from humans and nasties. They passed door after door and a few more hallways. She wondered what was down here. All the alts had been down in the second basement. What other creepy experiments were the scientists up to?

The sounds of gunfire and screaming, which had become a kind of background noise, got louder as they neared the end of the long hall. This hallway must go the whole length of the building. Just as they reached the end of the hall a snarl echoed off the walls and something huge jumped at Victor. They crashed into each other and Victor was driven back into the wall. The thing was so deformed it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t a nasty, but an alt. It was his eyes that gave it away. No matter how humanoid a nasty was, there was something alien in its eyes. This creature’s eyes were hauntingly human, like Victor’s. Claire growled. She was a good shot, but she didn’t dare risk hitting Victor.

They growled, tangling in a blur of limbs and claws. Her heart jumped into her throat and she kept her gun trained on the alt, hoping to get a clear shot. Then common sense kicked in and reminded her that the whole fucking floor was infested with nasties and alts and she had her back to the long hallway. She backed a few paces from the fight and put her back against the wall. Then she checked down the other end of the hall. Nothing.

Victor and the alt came closer to her and then moved back to the corner, wrestling and snapping at each other. Victor’s jaw was stretched out and filled with sharp teeth. She didn’t like looking at him when he was like that, but right now it was hard to tear her gaze away. Blood pattered on the floor around them and she couldn’t tell who it was from. Probably both of them.

She forced herself to look down the hall again, just in time to see a man step into it. He looked human except for the mandibles sticking out of his mouth and the arms that ended in a single long claw instead of hands. And his eyes—he had those same all-too-human eyes.

Claire aimed and fired as the alt ran at her.
How many bullets will it take?
The bullets punched into his body and made his steps stutter, but he kept coming. Too fast, way too fucking fast. She tilted her aim up, going for his head. At the last instant, he moved, dodging aside and going down another hall. “Fuck!” She waited a few seconds to make sure he wasn’t coming back, and then she turned back to Victor.

He had the other alt on the ground. They were still struggling, but it was clear Victor had the upper hand. Still, Claire’s stomach twisted with worry. There was so much blood on both of them she couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt. The alt squirmed around onto his back and slashed with his claws. They sliced neatly through Victor’s sweatshirt and tore into his flesh. Victor’s growl rose in pitch until it was almost a yelp, but he didn’t lose his grip. With his other hand, he reached back and punched through the alt’s chest. A wet crunch echoed off the walls, and Claire’s mouth fell open as she watched Victor yank his hand back full of bright red organs. The alt twitched, making a bubbling, gasping noise. Victor stared down at his opponent until the creature stopped moving, then he let out a victorious howl.

Claire couldn’t help a little shiver.
Am I really okay with what he is?
Can
I be okay with something like that?

Victor dropped the organs and turned toward her. One brown eye, one blue. “Nine.”

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant and then she got it. He was counting down. “Are you okay?” She looked at his bleeding arm and tried to see if he was bleeding anywhere else.

“Little banged up.” He looked down at his arm like he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

She fought the urge to check every inch of him to make sure he wasn’t hurt more than he was letting on. He’d healed from the punctures in his side and that was much worse than the slashes he’d just gotten. “If it’s not too bad, the next one just went that way.”

His jaw crackled as it resumed human shape. “Let’s get him.”

They followed his trail down the hall and through a collapsed door to another hall. Blood was all over the hall in spots and smears, mingling with the alt’s trail, but the steady line of fresh blood was clear enough for Claire to follow. She’d hurt him bad. The door at the end of that hall had bloody handprints on it. She reached to open it when a voice came over the com. “All personnel, they’ve breached the main floor. I repeat, the experiments have breached the main floor. We are locking the main floor down.”

“Oh, shit.” Blood drained from her face. “They got to the main floor.” On her first day here she’d wondered if the security was enough. Now she knew it wasn’t. She pictured those things loose in the city and wondered how many people they’d kill before they were stopped.

“Then we should follow.”

She frowned at him as she considered it. He was right. Victor understood how they thought and could fight them better than anyone else, and if they got out of the building he could track them. Claire nodded and opened the door.

They found the alt in the middle of the hall being attacked by a hellhound. For a second, she entertained the idea of saving her ammo and waiting until one of them killed the other. But they were blocking the way to the stairs and she and Victor didn’t have any time to lose. Victor crowded in behind her and she held up a hand. “This one’s mine.”

Even bleeding from a dozen holes, the alt held his own against the hellhound. She felt a little twinge of guilt for taking a possible victory away from him. She fired on both of them. The alt was closer and caught most of the bullets. He howled, his body twitching with the impacts. The hellhound yelped, broke off the fight and ran away. The alt turned, probably to attack her, but he fell to his knees. She put several bullets in his head, turning it into a pulped mess, and he collapsed.

Her ears rang. She watched his body to make sure he wasn’t going to move.

“Eight,” Victor said. If he was confirming the alt was dead, then he was dead. She went past the body, heading for where she hoped the stairs were. She knew there were elevators on this side, if she had the layout right in her head. At least, she remembered them being on this side on the main floor. Through the ringing in her ears, the sounds of battle seemed awful loud. Was there a fight going on around a nearby corner? With a huge thud, something fell out of a doorway and lay writhing on the floor several yards away.

“Oh shit,” Victor muttered. She could barely hear him over all the noise. “They’re using the elevator shaft.” He ran past her.

“Hey!” She went after him as she processed what he’d said. The alts were using the elevator shaft, not the stairs. The elevators probably hadn’t been guarded since they were shut off for the lockdown. The soldiers had to have been guarding the stairs, and either the alts had been driven back and forced to find another way up, or—much more frightening—they’d planned to go up the elevator shaft knowing it wouldn’t be guarded. If any of the alts was as smart as Victor, they were in a hell of a lot more trouble than she’d thought.

Victor fell on the twitching alt and tore his throat open. It was almost a mercy kill. “Seven.” He looked over at another body wedged in a doorway. “Six.”

The battle continued above them. “How are we going to get up there? If we go charging after the alts, our own people will shoot you. Even if I warn them we’re coming, they might not be able to tell you apart. Or they might not care.” It made her feel sick, but part of her understood. Under different circumstances she might agree with them.

“Hmm…” Victor itched at his side. “We could find another way up, one they’re not guarding.”

“And what way would that be? Are we gonna break through the ceiling?” She huffed in frustration.

“That might work,” he said in a distant, thoughtful voice. He looked around. “Or…I could pass.”

“What?” She had to have misheard him over the noise.

He went over to one of the dead guards and pulled off his helmet. “Pass as one of them.”

She swallowed. “You
are
one of them. You’re still human. You’re still a soldier.”

“You know what I mean.” He glanced at her and tugged at the soldier’s armor. “Get the major to give us permission to get to the main floor. We can go back to the other stairway if we have to.”

That was almost on the other side of the building. “We don’t have much time. We have to get them before they get outside.”

“I know. I’ll get dressed fast.”

Chapter Ten

The uniform felt tight. Victor kept fidgeting as they hurried down the hall. He could use his claws if he needed to, but any more shifting than that would ruin the outfit. Holding a gun felt strange and brought a pang of nostalgia. A nasty skittered across their path and he started to go after it.

“Victor!”

He froze mid-stride.
Oh yeah, that’s right.
He brought his gun up. Claire joined him and they both filled the nasty with bullets. Killing it with bullets instead of his hands. The old way, the human way of fighting nasties. It tugged at things inside him, and for the space of a breath, he thought he might cry. “I want out of these fucking clothes,” he muttered as they hurried on.

“Soon enough.”

“I can’t fight them like this.”

“Putting on those clothes was your idea,” Claire said.

“It wasn’t a perfect idea.” He rolled his shoulders, making them a little smaller. The guy he’d taken the clothes from wasn’t as big as him.

“It’ll keep you from getting shot.”

“I know. We’ll need another plan once we get up there. Gotta take this shit off.” How could they keep panicky soldiers—and even more dangerous, panicky scientists with guns—from shooting him? Alston could order them not to, but in the middle of a fight he looked just like the other alts. If he came around a corner fighting one of them, there was no way for people to tell them apart unless they took the time to look at his eyes. “My eyes, if we can get them to pay attention.”

“What?”

“This way.” He turned down the hall that led to the stairway. He knew where they were, almost like he had a map in his head. The map had built up as they wandered the floor, and he knew the shortest way back to the stairs they’d taken. And there was the buckled door and the pile of nasties he’d killed. “If we tell them to look for my eyes, the brown and the blue, I’m the only one with them and they never change.” He wiggled again. These pants were so uncomfortable.

“Good idea. Unless they decide to shoot you anyway. Lathell’s people might not care you’re on our side.”

“Gotta take the risk.” He kicked some of the dead nasties aside and opened the door. “First, they have to let me on the main floor.” Alston had told them to go back to this stairway. There was too much activity going on at the other one. Nasties and alts had poured out of the elevator shaft and that whole end of the building was barely controlled chaos. The nasties were causing enough problems, but the alts were slaughtering the soldiers. One alt had been killed and a big number five kept flashing in Victor’s head. Five more left to kill.

He and Claire raced up the stairs and she pounded on the door.

“Who is it?” A muffled voice asked.

“Scarlotti and Monroe. Let us in.”

The door opened and the major himself stood there. He spent an extra second looking Victor over and then he let them in. “Looking good, Monroe.”

“Not for long,” he grumbled. He couldn’t wait to rip this shit off.

Fear drifted off Claire. “He can’t fight the alts unless he shifts,” she told Alston and the cluster of soldiers surrounding them. “Tell everyone not to shoot the alt with one blue eye.” He listened to her heart
thump thump thump
and had an urge to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be all right.

“That might not stop all of them,” Alston said.

“I know.” He tugged at his chest armor.

“All right.” The major half-turned and gave the order.

“Where’s Patterson?” Victor asked. He was the one that started this, and if there was any organization to the alts’ escape, Patterson was the leader.

“I can see if anyone—”

The alarm went off again. Alston went a little pale. Claire grabbed Victor’s arm and said, “They’re out of the building.”

A few guns, a few more guards and a double electric fence between them and the city. “Which side?” Victor dropped his gun to the floor and yanked at his armor.