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The white brick building sat on a flat corner lot near the freeway and the railroad, a block of two-story condominiums across the street and a vacant corporate headquarters next door. Hunter moved silently over the moonlit, cracked concrete of the storage facility's adjacent fenced-in parking lot, past the handful of rental trucks and stored RVs sharing the thin yellow light of a single pole-mounted security lamp. The place was closed for the night, glass doors at the front shuttered from the inside by a metal curtain.
Hunter circled around to the side, flashing past the closed-circuit camera that watched from the upper corner of the building. Halfway around the building, a metal door marked "No Entry" gave him simple enough access to the facility. Hunter grasped the handle and bent it until the lock mechanism broke loose. He slipped in, and headed for the unit number Vachon's blood memories had provided.
It was located at the far end of the facility's interior hallway. Hunter made quick work of the industrial-strength padlock, breaking it free with a firm yank. He opened the corrugated metal door and stepped inside the ten-by-fifteen-foot box. As he crossed the threshold, he felt a faint vibration in his inner ear and glanced down to see that his foot had tripped a motion sensor's silent alarm. He wouldn't have much time before someone responded to the alert. Fortunately, there wasn't much to see inside the unit. A fireproof safe sat just past the entrance. Toward the back stood a pair of squatty, round stainless-steel drums capped with a hydraulic vacuum seal that looked like a polished metal steering wheel. He recognized the containers from the memories he'd gathered from Henry Vachon, but he would have known their purpose even without the help of his talent.
Cryogenic storage containers.
They were plugged into a large portable power supply, their internal temperature gauges reading negative 150 degrees Celsius. Hunter unscrewed the seal of the container nearest him and lifted the heavy lid. Icy clouds of liquid nitrogen frothed out of the open top. Hunter waved it away and looked inside at the countless vials stored within the deep freeze. He didn't have to pull any of them up to understand they would contain cell and tissue samples, all of them originating in Dragos's secret laboratory.
The physical results of experiments and likely genetic testing, things Hunter could only guess at as he stared at the numerous vials nested several layers down into the container. As astonished as he was repulsed, Hunter turned his attention to the safe. He broke open the small panel door and found a stack of paper files and photographs, along with a handful of portable computer storage disks.
He had to get this material - everything in Vachon's storage unit - into the Order's hands. With that goal in mind, he went to the adjacent parking lot and hotwired one of the box trucks sitting in the dark lot outside. He drove it around to the side entrance and left it idling as he ran back up to the unit to collect the contents.
He had loaded the safe and one of the cryo containers into the truck and was about to turn around and get the last one when he realized he wasn't alone. The silent alarm had apparently gone straight to Dragos, if the Gen One assassin crouched in battle stance outside the open trailer of the truck was any indication.
The big male vaulted off the balls of his feet and sprang forward, a blur of head-to-toe black against the night outside. He crashed into Hunter, driving them both farther into the truck. They knocked against the cryo container, stainless steel ringing out like a bell with the force of the impact.
Hunter came up hard and plowed into the assassin's stomach with his shoulder. The male went down onto his back, but stayed there for only an instant before he was up on his feet once more, coming at Hunter with a dagger gripped tight in his hand.
A vicious fight ensued. Hunter saw a window of opportunity as the assassin swung to dodge one of his blows and left his head and neck an open target. Hunter drove the edge of his hand into the other male's larynx, a dead-on hit that crushed the vampire's windpipe. The assassin wheezed and staggered for an instant, then leveled a murderous look at Hunter and charged forward again with his blade.
Hunter blocked it with a deflective swipe of his arm. He pivoted his elbow, wrapping his hand around the assassin's wrist. The move brought the assassin's forearm down with a hard crack across the front of Hunter's thigh, snapping the limb and rendering it useless. As the blade clattered to the floor of the truck and the assassin lurched forward, Hunter grabbed hold of the black UV collar and swung the Gen One's head down against the edge of the cryogenic storage container.
Blood spurted from the punishing strike. But the assassin wasn't ready to give in just yet. He threw a punch at the front of Hunter's kneecap, a blow that might have taken him down if Hunter hadn't seen it coming. He kicked the assassin back, reaching around to give the lid on the container of liquid nitrogen a hard crank. It unscrewed and Hunter threw it open. Before the assassin could regain his footing yet again, Hunter hauled him up off the floor. He shoved him headfirst into the frothing subzero container, then brought the lid down and held the male pinned beneath it.
It took a few minutes before the vampire stopped struggling.
The body went limp, arms and legs unmoving in the mist of frigid air that continued to pour out onto the floor in a rolling cloud of white.
After another long moment, Hunter lifted the lid. The assassin's head was frozen solid, slack-jawed, the blue lips and dull, unseeing eyes encrusted with ice crystals. Hunter pushed the corpse aside. It fell with a hard thud at his feet, the thick black collar circling his neck crackling as it broke into several pieces and fell away.
The interruption in his current task handled, Hunter went back to grab the last cryo container and load it into the truck.
Chapter Twenty-three
Corinne heard a noise in the guest bedroom as she toweled off from her bath at the safe house.
"Amelie?" she called from behind the partially open door. It had to be after midnight, but Corinne was too anxious for sleep. "Just a second. I'll be right out."
She unfolded the robe her hostess had given her and slipped it on, her hands quickly working the sash belt of the thick pink chenille garment that felt like velvet and smelled like sunwarmed, line-dried cotton. Certain her scarred body was covered, she drew the bathroom door open a bit wider and stepped out to the bedroom.
It wasn't Amelie.
It was Hunter, covered in blood. Bruises rode his sharp cheekbones. His hands were fisted at his sides, knuckles scraped and contused. She'd never seen him look so raw, so steeped in the violence of his profession.
"My God," she whispered, moving toward him in shock and concern. "Hunter ... are you all right?"
"Never mind the blood. It isn't mine," he said, unaffected, his deep voice calm as ever. When he started to take off his gore-stained leather coat, Corinne hurried over to help him. "The boots too," she said, eyeing the blood that covered them as well. While he bent to unlace one of them, she hunkered down to loosen the other. She felt him watching her in an odd silence - odder than his usual man-of-few-words way. He seemed to study her now, his hooded, dark gold gaze still enigmatic, but edged with a softness she hadn't seen in him before.
"I'll take those," she said, picking up his large black combat boots in one hand, the long leather coat in the other. "Come with me."
She turned to carry everything back into the bathroom, Hunter following behind her. She set the coat and boots in the tub, then reached for one of the clean washcloths that was folded on the back of the commode. She ran it under the faucet in the tub, wringing out the warm water as Hunter stood over the sink near the door.
She'd been upset with him all night, angry that he'd left without telling her. Worried that he'd gone off to do his dangerous work for the Order and might have gotten himself killed. Now she could only stare at him, relieved that he'd come back in one piece, even if he did look like he'd strode through a war zone to get there.
She sat on the edge of the tub and watched as he ran cold water into the basin and scrubbed his face. When he was done, he cupped several handfuls into his mouth, swished it around and spat it out. Over and over, like there was a taste he couldn't get rid of no matter how hard he tried. Water dripped off his chin as he looked over at her, the hard angles of his face seeming even more severe in the vanity's bright globe lights above his head.
"Your shirt is ruined," she said, noting still more blood soaked into the black knit fabric of his combat gear. She walked to him and set the damp washcloth down on the rim of the sink. He said nothing as she took the hem of his sticky, gore-soaked shirt and lifted it up, baring his glyph- covered torso and broad, muscular chest. He stood back as she filled the basin with cold water and put the shirt into it. While she did this, he picked up the washcloth and scrubbed himself clean. He dropped the soiled cloth into the sink with his shirt.
