Page 72 of Hunted

“I’m not going.” I coughed as smoke started seeping beneath the door.

Jori swore, but she pulled her service weapon alongside Quinn, moving to flank me as we covered our faces and headed for the stairs.

“Stay close to me,” she ordered. “If this goes sideways, I am jumping you out of here whether you like it or not.”

“Understood.”

Thick plumes of smoke choked the stairwell, billowing from beneath the door heading to the hallway on the ground floor.

“I texted Vlad that we need backup to evac the rest of the research team,” Jori shouted, coughing. “He’s not responding.”

Quinn growled. “I don’t like this. The rooftops are usually crawling with Cristof’s fang-heads. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a vampire. Where is everybody?”

We spilled out onto the sidewalk into the damp November evening. Sirens wailed in the distance. Red and blue lights from the approaching fire trucks illuminated the night.

“We need to get under cover,” Quinn said urgently. “Move the researchers into a different building. Somewhere Rossi isn’t gunning for them.”

Jori opened her mouth to respond—

And froze. Not just froze. She went mannequin at the mall on a Black Friday sale still, staring blankly ahead. The sirens screamed in my ears as I turned in slow motion to Quinn, my head suddenly feeling as if I was ten feet underwater. But when I met the eyes of the werewolf former military officer on my protection detail, he wasn’t moving either.

No. That wasn’t entirely true. Quinn’s hands were shaking, his eyes wide with panic. My blood ran cold.

“Quinn,” I shouted desperately, his name coming out slurred. What was wrong with me?

Around us, one by one, my lab mates fell to their knees, leaving me, Jori and Quinn the only ones standing upright.

This time, when I looked back at Quinn, he managed to mouth a single word.

Run.

A second later a sharp pop reverberated between the narrow corridor of inner campus buildings. Several more followed. Suppressed gunshots.

The hair rose at the back of my neck, every instinct in me screaming to run. I was the one Rossi wanted. Not Jori and Quinn. Not the rest of my team. And now I was their only chance for survival. I shoved Jori hard, knocking her behind the bushes. My arms felt like they were encased in cold concrete. I kept moving. Quinn made a low growl in the back of his throat, realizing what I intended, and not liking it. The heavy buzzing pressure in my mind grew louder with every breath I took. Was I too late?

Screw that, my sister Hayden shouted in my mind, fierce in her promise to haunt me forever with crappy eighties ballads at my gravesite if I didn’t return to her. Fight that bastard.

My hands useless, I slammed my shoulder into Quinn, bouncing off that wall of werewolf muscle, harmless as a fly. Total cringe. It took a second try and almost a third to eventually bump him over into the grass. Something sharp and silver pinged into the brick building. A tranquilizer dart? Somehow that thought was far scarier than the idea that Rossi wanted to kill me.

I staggered around the side of the building. My legs felt like I was trying to run through the deep end of the swimming pool, my feet unable to gain traction, the strobing emergency lights swirling in a Christmas tree kaleidoscope of color across my visual field. If I could just get far enough away, get clear from the rest of the group, I would be the only target. River could only hear and manipulate minds within a roughly two-hundred-yard range. If I could get Rossi outside that radius, lure him away from the others, my friends would wake up, could get to safety.

Which also meant I had to keep his attention focused solely on me so no one got shot.

I staggered along the sidewalk. Pressure squeezed my skull like a vise. My ears rang like I was underwater. How far had I gone? The pack would track my cell phone signal. Where were the vampires on wide perimeter detail? Had Rossi’s team somehow managed to take them out? Was it even possible he could control vampires, not just drones, but break into their minds without causing the damage other neural manipulators believed was inevitable with vampire rewrites, and brainwash them so skillfully they could appear normal, go about their assigned tasks on a protection detail with no one realizing they’d been compromised? It was a scary thought. But Rossi was scary powerful. The thought sent a chill up my spine.

River, I silently screamed, tracing the scar at my throat. Help me.

Without warning, my body went numb. Icy needles stabbed my skin. I slammed into the cold concrete, the sidewalk rushing up to meet me. Blackness engulfed me, pain a dark clap of thunder roaring between my ears as I tried to get up. My phone had fallen a few feet away, the screen lit up in the dark. My fingers unfurled in front of me, grasping for it. But it was useless. I couldn’t make my body obey.

“I don’t think so,” a smooth male voice said, the words slightly accented. A hand bent to retrieve my cell phone. I forced my eyes to focus on the man standing over me. He was so young. Maybe it was simply that one didn’t expect mass murderers with designs on taking out millions to look like Italian models.

“Your guard detail is dead.” Matteo Rossi tilted his head. “You shouldn’t have tried to run. But you’ll learn.”

“River,” I slurred, fighting his hold on my mind.

“River Caldwell is no match for my power. Of course your mate will come for you. And then he’ll die like the rest of your friends.”

“What do you want?”