With every ounce of strength and speed I had, I drove the tip of the needle into Colette’s neck. Her grip on my body tightened—I heard bones pop and knew I’d be feeling it soon, but that didn’t stop me from pressing down on the syringe.
Like a horse bucking its rider, she threw me across the room. I hit the concrete wall, hard. The back of my head warmed with blood. I could taste it in my mouth.
But somehow, I stood up.
I met her eyes.
She took a step forward, then stopped. “What have you done?” she asked, frowning, like I was just a naughty child, and she wasn’t about to kill me dead.
“Triple dose,” I said, wishing I had a knife, a sword, a gun—anything other than my fists.
She wobbled on her feet, but didn’t fall. “Oh, I am going to kill that—”
She never got to finish that sentence, because a second later, she went down.
It took me a moment to process the sound of gunfire echoing in the chamber and to see the tiny hole in the back of her head, the blood dying her light hair red.
Someone shot her, I thought dully. I drugged Colette, and someone shot her.
I lifted my eyes to the open doorway—toward Rena and her smoking gun. All business, she walked forward and knelt next to Colette’s prone body.
She put the gun to the vampire’s temple and pulled the trigger.
Again. And again. And again.
“She won’t stay down long,” she said finally. “An hour or two at most. We have to get you out of here. Now.”
“You shot her. In the head. Five times.” I processed those facts. “I couldn’t heal from that.”
Rena dropped the gun onto the floor, her creamy brown skin tinged gray and pale. “She can.”
I heard a scream—human, this time—and took a step toward the door.
“Anything we couldn’t transport, Colette ordered let loose,” Rena said. “The paperwork shows this facility as belonging to one of Chimera’s competitors. They’ll be faced with the fallout, and if the Feds get anyone from Chimera, it will be Paul or me.”
Poor you, I thought, but after everything that had happened, I still wasn’t the kind of person who could say something like that out loud. It must have shown on my face, though, because Rena responded like I’d slapped her.
“You have no idea what I just risked for you, Kali.”
“I do know,” I said, my voice soft. What I didn’t say was that it wasn’t enough, might not ever be enough.
“We have to get out of here.” Rena reached to steady me, and she frowned. “You’re bleeding.”
Out of habit, I surveyed the damage. “Two broken ribs. A concussion. And I’m pretty sure she snapped my wrist.”
Three minutes.
Not enough time to heal.
Rena latched her hand over my good arm and tugged gently. “There’s a back way,” she said. “We’ll leave and seal it off. The Feds could be here any minute.”
Realizing the implication of her words, I pulled back away from her grasp. “Where’s Zev?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”
I considered her question. I saw Zev in my mind’s eye. I felt his fingers closing around my neck, felt him cutting off the flow of air. I saw him, wild-eyed and fighting vainly against Colette’s hold.
He’d betrayed me, but he hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t wanted to. And Rena was just going to leave him here—with the place in chaos and Colette a ticking time bomb, waiting to wake up on the floor. And once Colette woke up, she’d be able to control Zev again. She’d stick him in another cage—if the FBI didn’t beat her to it first.
He’d still be in my head. I’d still be in his. Eventually, someone would use him to find me, and the whole thing would start all over again.
“No.”
“No, what?” Rena’s voice was tinged with desperation, and the din in the background rose to new heights; a man’s screams melding in with inhuman ones, as an alarm—jarring and violent—pierced the air.
“The Feds are here. This place is coming down, Kali. As your mother, I am telling you to move.”
I looked at her, and my stomach lurched. She’d saved my life. That didn’t make her my mother.
Without a word, I sat down next to Colette’s body. Almost on cue, a bullet fell from her skull. She was already healing, faster than I ever had before.
It’s the Nibbler. You feed it. It heals you.
The words Zev had once spoken came back to me with a vengeance, and I did the math. Colette probably kept her parasite very well fed.
“Kali, I have to go. Please don’t make me leave you here.” Rena’s voice broke. “Please.”