“Luc, you and Lindsey take the door on the west,” Ethan said. “We’ll take the east. Don’t let anyone out of the building.”
“On it,” Luc said. He kissed Lindsey, her eyes darting with surprise, and they ran low across the back of the building to the other side.
Ethan looked at me and Jonah. “You ready?”
We both nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
We moved around to the door, which was rusted and a couple of steps above the ground. We lined up against the wall, Jonah on one side, me and Ethan on the other.
Jonah moved closer, pressing an ear to the door, listening for anything on the other side of the wall. After a moment, he shook his head, then pulled two dangerous-looking knives from his jacket. Ethan and I drew our swords.
Ethan signaled us to move . . . and the battle began.
Jonah kicked open the door, and we rounded it, swords drawn.
The door led into an enormous open space dotted by processing equipment just like we’d seen at Bryant Industries—an assembly line of gleaming silver tanks and conveyor belts, currently still but clearly ready for action.
Yelling sounded from various points around the room. The people he’d employed to guard or work at his facility had seen us. They rushed forward, wearing Clean Chicago T-shirts.
“Something’s wrong,” Jonah said.
He meant with the attackers. They looked like mostly humans, but their eyes were nearly white, as if they’d lost all pigment, and their features were oddly stretched, as if someone had attempted to sculpt a human from clay and hadn’t quite gotten the features right.
For a moment, we stared at them.
“I presume they’ve been given the serum,” Ethan murmured, gripping his sword and preparing to strike.
“We’ll find out,” Jonah said.
They screamed at us, rushing forward, the attack begun. Ethan, Jonah, and I separated, driving them apart.
Three came toward me, waving arms and legs but with no obvious weapons in hand. McKetrick wanted to build them, but maybe he hadn’t believed in them enough to give them weaponry.
I dropped my sword to the ground, thinking it only fair that we fought on the same terms. The first one to make a move ran toward me, hand already fisted for a punch. I grabbed his wrist, twisted, and sent him to the ground, then used an elbow at his neck to knock him unconscious.
The next one launched, airborne and ready for a fight. I ducked to the ground, letting him sail above me and land behind. I swung around, offering him a kick to the ribs that sent him skidding across the room. He landed flat on his back.
I looked back at the third and smiled, just a little. “Ready?”
She bared her teeth and came running. I expected a strike, but she pummeled me like a linebacker, knocking me to the ground. She pulled my hair, and screamed into my ear—“Vampire whore!”—before clamping her hands around my neck.
Suddenly, I couldn’t get oxygen, which made me panic.
I kicked beneath her, trying to roll and dislodge her away, but I couldn’t get enough oxygen to make my limbs move.
I punched her in the stomach, then the ribs, but she ignored the pain. Was she human, but with the strength of a vampire? That, I thought, as my vision began to dim at the edges, was disturbing.
And then her weight was bodily lifted from me, and she was thrown across the room.
Before I could crawl to my feet, I was hauled upright and saw green eyes staring back at me.
I huffed for air and put a hand around my neck, feeling for the bruise I imagined had already popped up.
I saw the worry in Ethan’s eyes, but his sarcasm masked it. This was a battle, after all. “Let’s try to stay on our feet, shall we, Sentinel?”
I nodded weakly and got to my feet again. “Doing my best, Liege.”
I glanced around, ensuring Jonah was all right. He pushed the hair from his eyes and seemed healthy; the floor was littered with minions we’d dealt with handily. But where, I wondered, was the main course?
A boom sounded in the other section of the warehouse.
“That’s the sorcerers,” Ethan said. “Let’s go!”
I grabbed my sword. Ethan in front, me behind, we ran through the door and into an even larger space. This one held stacks and stacks of boxes. They contained syringes, if the box closest to me was any indication, and a lot of them.
A wall of blue smoke had divided the space in two. The smoke shifted, and Mallory, Catcher, and Jeff ran toward us through the smoke.
“They’re behind us,” they said, and we backed up.
“Make a line,” Ethan said, and we did.
And when the smoke cleared, we could see the enemy. The protohumans, with their milky white eyes, had assembled into a line, probably forty strong. We stood against them, our cadre of supernaturals.