Page 31 of Heir of Ashes
“It’s not mine,” he said before I could ask. He looked at my bandaged forehead, jaw clenching.
Someone cleared their throat and I glanced at Kincaid, who was watching the exchange with interest.
“I have orders to bring him in,” Kincaid said.
I stared at him, thinking furiously. His orders came from the head of security, a man named Marc Johnson, a former navy SEAL. Johnson’s orders came directly from Dr. Dean. If Kincaid had orders to bring Logan in, then Dr. Dean had issued the command. Damn. They knew what he was. But then again,hadn’t the PSS offered Logan the lucrative job to capture me? They already knew who he was even before he’d gotten involved.
We were getting closer to Sacramento, but my mind was too preoccupied to really take in any of the familiar scenery.
“Why? What could they want from him?” I asked.
“It’s none of your business,” Beady Eyes retorted.
I ignored him, looking at Kincaid, who was in turn giving Logan a pointed look. My heart skipped a beat. I had put Logan in this situation. It was my fault because he had helped me, attacking The Elite back in the hotel, and giving the PSS the right to demand his capture. I looked down at my fidgeting hands and tried to think, eyes snagging on the familiar runes carved around the blocking bracelet. Dr. Maxwell’s journal mentioned that the left hand gathered magic, to be released by the right. In my case, the thin band was supposed to prevent me from accessing my other nature, like my talons. Except that it had never worked on me. It was a fact I’d managed to keep a secret throughout the years I spent in the PSS. I looked at Logan’s left wrist and found he had one as well. Did it work on him?
Of course it did. It would stop him from shifting and cut down his strength to less than a quarter. I’ve read this mentioned in Dr. Maxwell’s journal too, the experiment done on a were-fox. I looked up at him, and he was looking out the window as if none of my conversation with Kincaid mattered. He seemed bored and unaffected by the situation, but the tension in his shoulders gave him away. Besides, I’d seen the hot anger in his eyes.
“Where are we headed?” I asked, though I already had a hunch. There was a base on the outskirts of Sacramento, a military camp in a place called Elk Grove; I was taken there before they shipped me to the headquarters in Seattle.
“That’s none of your business. Shut up already or I’ll make you,” Beady Eyes snapped.
I bared my teeth at him, annoyed and emboldened by Kincaid’s presence. “Yeah? What are you going to do? Huff and puff and blow my head off? I’m the monster, remember? So, fuck off. If you haven’t noticed, no one is talking to you.”
Several things happened at once then. The driver, who up until then had ignored us, began wheezing and laughing. Beady Eyes’ face grew crimson, either with rage or embarrassment or both, and he raised the butt of the shotgun to club my skull with it.
Logan’s hand shot up, swiftly taking hold of the stock, his finger encircling the trigger as if it was a part of the weapon—and aligned his aim straight at the guard’s throat. Kincaid batted the barrel aside just as Logan squeezed the trigger, shattering a webbed hole in the window of the passenger side. If Kincaid had been even a millisecond late, the asshole guard would be dead.
The driver, who had been laughing just a second ago, slammed the brakes with such force that Logan and I went flying forward—Logan at Kincaid, and me at Beady Eyes. Ignoring the twinge of pain from my head and shoulder the jolt caused, I seized advantage of the situation. My shackled arms lashed out, fists smashing into Beady Eyes’ face before he could block.
His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. Meanwhile, the driver grabbed a tranquilizer gun and twisted in his seat to aim it at Logan, who was wrestling Kincaid for the shotgun. The space was tight, Kincaid on top, and the driver didn’t have a clear shot. Logan pointed the shotgun at Kincaid’s chest, and even though it wasn’t aimed at anything vital, at point-blank range, a shotgun blast was fatal. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew that much.
“Don’t shoot him!” I shouted at Logan and threw myself across the seat, pushing the driver’s tranquilizer gun away with my right hand and jabbing my left elbow into his face. He grunted, trying to get leverage, and I hit him again and againuntil the grip on the tranquilizer gun slackened. Another shot went off, and with dread, I turned to look. The metallic smell of blood was everywhere, old and new. My elbow was covered with it.
Logan was still pinned under Kincaid, and Kincaid’s hands were around Logan’s throat, his knuckles white. In turn, Logan was trying to choke Kincaid with the link of the shackles, his eyes bulging from lack of air. There was no shotgun in sight, probably pushed under a seat.
Before I could do anything, or think about doing anything, the side door of the SUV opened, and a snip-snip-snip sound cut through the air, followed by a familiar cold sting in my arm. I glanced down to find a red dart protruding from my forearm. Logan had one in his thigh, and even Kincaid had one in his shoulder. I had forgotten all about the other van. The last thing I saw before drowning in darkness was Kincaid collapsing over Logan.
The bitter taste in my mouth made me dread opening my eyes. Nothing good ever came after that bitter taste coated my tongue. My brain screamed at my body to brace for the worst. My heart skipped erratically, my muscles coiling tight, my breaths coming fast and shallow.
There are no experiments,I told myself.No one is going to hurt me.I repeated the mantra until the panic receded.There will be no experiments …I made myself this last vow before opening my eyes.
Four guards sat opposite me, with two more in the front. They had tightened the watch. Two of the guards had tranquilizer guns trained on me. I knew from experience that they’d shoot if I so much as twitched in a suspicious way. To their left, Kincaid sat slumped, still unconscious. To the right, Beady Eyes glared at me, sporting a shiner. I winked and blewhim a raspberry. Beside me, Logan mirrored Kincaid’s limp posture.
We’d reached Sacramento a while ago. With no idea what I could possibly do in this situation, I turned to watch the city where I grew up and had loved so much but hadn’t seen in a decade. It was raining outside. It had been raining the day the PSS came knocking ten years ago. People skipped puddles, others hurried about, some strolled as if the sun was out and shining. There were new buildings everywhere, but much remained unchanged. I remembered that cracked sidewalk that was still cracked, and Luigi’s Italian restaurant was still in the same place. Nostalgia gripped me so hard, my heart ached.
Why? Why me? What gave those people the right to cage me like this? Where were my rights?
Something must have shown on my face because the two guards tensed, ready to shoot. Kincaid’s aura flashed, catching my attention, but he didn’t shift from his slumped position, even when we hit a pothole. I returned to the familiar scenery outside, noting that I’d been right and we were probably heading toward the military base in Elk Grove. We were really close, no more than half an hour away depending on traffic, and considering we zigzagged back and forth onto back roads to avoid it, it was about nil.
How dare they treat me like my life meant nothing more than that of a lab rat? I glanced back at the guards about to destroy the rest of my life, because I knew if I went back to the PSS, there was no way in hell I’d get a second chance to escape. Kincaid’s aura flashed again, and a jostle and pothole later, I noticed his eyes were slightly open. Another flash, another jostle, and his eyes closed. No one noticed. He remained slumped, his breathing even, seemingly unconscious.
When his aura flashed again, the SUV hit another pothole, jostling everyone. The driver cursed, gripping thesteering wheel with both hands. The two guards with the tranquilizer guns regained their balance quickly enough, their aims firm and true.
“Watch it, man,” the guard in the passenger seat—the previous driver—complained, pressing a broad hand to his head.
“I know. It’s like these holes are popping out of nowhere,” the driver replied in frustration. “This damned rain. Cuts my visibility short.”
I fixed my gaze ahead, bracing for the next pothole. When Kincaid’s aura flashed, I tensed. The next pothole was a big one, and I didn’t wait for anyone to regain their balance. I launched myself to the right, out of the tranquilizer gun’s range, hitting Beady Eyes with my elbow as I went. I seized the gun from the nearest guard and shot the other one point-blank.