“How did he break free of his restraints?” Logan asked.
“Fuck if I know,” another hunter said.
“He kept thrashing,” Juan said.
Leonardo suddenly backed up until his back hit the far wall of the cell. He stood there for a minute, surveying them with those soulless black eyes. Then he released a hiss, lowered his shoulder, and ran full speed into the bars.
Elena jumped and bit back a scream when the bars rattled and the whole building quaked, but thankfully the bars didn’t give way. Logan stepped in front of her as some of the other hunters edged away. Leonardo screamed as he yanked on the bars.
The muscles in his biceps and forearms bulged. The veins in his face pulsed and swelled. She’d never heard anything like the noises he emitted. The closest she’d ever heard to it was a squealing pig, but this was a squealing pig possessed by a demonic entity about to barf green soup all over them.
She hoped to never hear sounds like it again in her life, but they didn’t ease. When a strange rattling started from him, she realized he was clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
It was as if the demon’s blood completely ruined his ability to speak like a human. She almost slapped her hands over her ears but stopped before she could look like a child. Those awful sounds would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life, but she would not try to block them out.
On the other cot, Diego started twitching.
“We should kill them,” someone muttered.
Much to her dismay, Elena found herself agreeing. They couldn’t save them.
But then, maybe they could. Maybe, if they didn’t get any blood or remained here until the demon blood ran through their system, or any number of a hundred different possibilities occurred, these men would return to normal.
She so badly wanted for that to happen, but she couldn’t shake her growing sense of doom.
She didn’t know when it happened, but at some point, she’d grasped Logan’s hand and squeezed. He held her as Leonardo backed up to the wall and ran at the bars again. This time, he leapt into the air and landed on the bars like a monkey. He wrapped his hands and feet around them.
Leaning back, the muscles in his neck stood starkly out as he strained to rip the bars free of the floor and ceiling. Elena kept waiting for them to bend or pull free, but the reinforcements were holding… for now.
When Leonardo shrieked, Diego started twitching more. Logan glanced between the two men who weren’t really men anymore. He had no idea what they were now, and he wasn’t eager to find out, but whether he wanted to know or not, he would learn.
“Do you have something we can sedate him with, Doctor?” Juan asked.
“I’ve already given him an extremely high dose,” Dr. Espinosa replied.
“I think you should up it,” someone else said.
“I can try,” the doctor said. “I just don’t how I’m going to get close enough to give it to him.”
“No one is going to get close enough to give it to him,” Juan said. “We have a tranquilizer gun in the armory; we’ll use that.”
“I’ll get it,” one of the hunters volunteered, and before anyone could reply, he ran out the door.
Elena envied him his escape and almost turned to watch him run away, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off Leonardo or those bars. If he somehow managed to get through them, she had to see him coming.
A few minutes passed before the hunter returned with the tranquilizer gun. By then, Leonardo had started trying to chew through the bars like an animal trying to break out of its trap. Black blood trailed from the corners of his mouth and slid down his chin to drip onto the floor. Someone was going to have to hose that down with a whole lot of bleach.
Dr. Espinosa gave Juan the tranquilizer. He hefted the gun, stepped close to the bars, and shot Leonardo with it. Leonardo reeled away from the bars and nearly toppled over the cot before bouncing back to his feet and charging at them.
The metal clanked as he slammed his face and body off the bars. She had no idea how he didn’t reel back screaming or knock himself out. Instead, he stuck his arms through the bars. His hands flailed as he swung them back and forth while spitting at them.
Everyone edged away from the black blood spraying from his mouth. Elena swallowed back the nausea rising in her throat as the floor became coated in the substance. Another minute passed before the tranquilizer took hold, and he hit the ground like a ton of bricks.
Diego settled down again once Leonardo fell to the floor.
“Now what?” someone asked.
No one answered him.
