Forbidden Embers (36 page)

Ducking behind a clump of big trees, he shifted as quietly as he could. Then pulled some clothes out of his bag and dressed quickly. He strapped on his daggers, tucked his Glock in the back of his jeans and then slung his scoped rifle over his shoulder. It was going to take some doing to get into the lab this time around, but he would get in there. The fate of his entire clan rested on him not failing here, not failing now.

He took a few steps forward, went over his planned distraction in his head, then whirled around as a twig snapped behind him. His gun was in his hand, cocked and ready to fire, before he realized that the person standing behind him wasn’t an enemy. It was Shawn.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he whispered viciously.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you have all the fun, did you?” Shawn’s voice was light, but the look in his eyes was completely deadly. There would be no reasoning with his friend tonight.

“You know you could be exposed to the damn virus, don’t you?” Logan demanded severely.

“Yeah, well, everyone has to die sometime.” He pulled out his own gun. “Do you have a plan?”

“You mean besides blasting the motherfuckers to kingdom come?”

Shawn’s grin was fierce. “Yeah, besides that.”

“Not really, no.”

“Okay, then. We go on three.”

“I was joking, asshole.” Logan pointed to the back of the clinic. “I want to do a quick sweep of the perimeter. They’ve added guards since I was here earlier, which is understandable, considering they’re under attack. But the door I want to go in”—he pointed to one on the far left of the building, as far from the actual lab area as it could get—“is over there. I think it’s our best chance of getting in undetected.”

“All right, then. Let’s do this thing.”

Logan glanced at the bag on his friend’s shoulders. “What’s in there?”

“I assume the same thing that’s in yours. Enough C4 to blow a hole in the world.”

Then Shawn dropped to his belly and began to inch forward, using the low bushes around the area as cover.

Logan moved about twenty feet to Shawn’s right and did the same thing. He wasn’t sure how long they would go unnoticed, but he wanted to stay inconspicuous for as long as possible. It upped the odds of them bringing the entire thing down.

No one gets out, Shawn.
He sent him the order.
We don’t know who knows what, and we sure as shit don’t have time to sort it out. If they’re in the lab or around it, they die.

We are.
A pause. Then:
There’s a guard directly in front of me.

Logan scooted forward a few inches at a time, until he was within a couple of feet of the guard. The man looked bored, half-asleep, but he was carrying a weapon that could do a lot of damage.

Shawn rustled a few leaves, let the red light on his scope flash for just a second. The guard straightened up, pointed his gun at where Shawn had been only moments before, and started forward tentatively. He’d taken three steps when Logan grabbed him from behind and slit his throat before he could so much as whimper. He let the guard fall where he stood.

One down; forty-three to go,
came Shawn’s ironic whisper.

For the next fifteen minutes, they repeated the same scenario over and over. Sometimes Shawn was the bait, sometimes Logan was, but by the time they reached the lab, they’d left a string of bloody bodies behind them. More than once he’d had to use his psychic powers to rip their minds apart, but he’d tried not to do it too often. It took a lot out of him, and he had a feeling he would need every ounce of strength he could muster before this night was through.

Okay, almost there,
said Shawn, yanking a computer out of his bag.

I don’t blink. Besides, even I can’t get through security like this. At least not without a little help.
Logan watched in awe as his friend whipped up the lab blueprints and security codes.

The computer you hooked me into was one of the security ports,
Shawn answered as his fingers flew over the keys.
Give me a minute and I’ll get the door open for us.

Logan gave Shawn the minute he’d asked for as he concentrated on laying charges every few feet along the back of the building, especially the spots where he knew there were support beams.

You ready?
Shawn asked.

Yeah.
He stuck the detonator in his front pocket.

Shawn pressed a button on the computer and Logan heard the side door click open. He opened it slowly, slid in, then waved Shawn inside with him. They were exactly where he’d expected them to be, on the administrative side of the building.

We need to find the supercomputer,
Shawn said
. I want to download as much information from it as we can.

Logan cursed, low and long, furious with himself that he hadn’t thought of the arguments Shawn was bringing up.
Okay, then we split up. If you have the blueprints, I assume that means you know where the Cray supercomputer is located.

They made their way down the hallway, not taking the time to hide. The place was crawling with guards in civilian clothes, and Logan was counting on the fact that he and Shawn were shifters and could give any challengers pause. Hopefully, it would take them a couple of seconds to figure out that they didn’t belong, and a couple of seconds was all they needed to take care of the problem.

They were almost to the main labs before they ran into trouble. Two guards were patrolling the corridor in front of a huge meeting room, a fact that piqued Logan’s curiosity even as he told himself it didn’t matter. He nodded to Shawn, and the two of them let loose their daggers at the same time. Shawn’s caught one guard in the eye, straight to the brain, while Logan’s sliced the other guard’s jugular.

Messy,
Shawn said, as they retrieved the knives.

As they picked up the pace, he got one good glimpse inside the meeting room. There were about twenty people inside, chief among them Julian, Luc, Etienne, and Gage—all Wyvernmoon
factionnaires
. The bastards.

It took only another minute for them to get to the lab. Shawn had his computer in hand, and Logan left him to it as he picked up both bags of explosives and started laying charges where they would do the most damage.

Within seconds, Shawn had unlocked every door in the wing, and Logan was inside the labs. In one he found a couple of huge jars of alcohol, and he carried them with him, dumping some of the flammable liquid over every piece of electronic equipment he could find. He had enough C4 to blow this place sky-high, but he wanted to make sure that whatever was left burned completely.

Four times he ran into lone researchers. With the humans, he simply ripped through their brains, shredding them. With the two dragons, both of whom had mental shields, he didn’t waste time trying to break through them. Instead, he just slit their throats.

Within ten minutes, he was back outside the supercomputer room, waiting for Shawn.
Are you ready? We need to blow this thing!

It’s going to take as long as it takes,
Shawn snapped.
Back off. I’ve already got the charges laid on the computer, so any information in here should disappear once everything goes boom.

Okay.
Logan took a deep breath, tried to calm himself down. He wanted to get this done, wanted to get the info back to Phoebe, wanted to get Shawn the fuck away from the lab before everything blew. He’d put extra explosives and fuel in the labs that contained live cultures of the virus, so that everything in there would incinerate instantly, but he didn’t want to take any chances with Shawn. He wanted his best friend as far away as possible before this thing blew to hell and back.

He scanned the area mentally and froze as he picked up on two people in the hallway next to him. He tried to scan them, but they were blocked, which meant they were dragons. And their shields were a lot stronger than any he had seen in the lab so far.

Logan ducked into the lab at the last second and stopped Shawn from hitting the hallway at a dead run. Putting up a quick mental block so that whoever was passing wouldn’t sense him or Shawn if they had powers similar to his own, Logan watched as two huge men in military gear turned the corner.

Shadowdrakes,
Shawn said.

Shawn snorted.
Especially since you stink of sex with the Wyvernmoon princess.

Good point.
He headed into the hallway, his hand on his gun. He didn’t want to shoot the Shadowdrakes, especially if they were there for the same reason he and Shawn were, but he wasn’t going to make himself an easy target.

The two dragon shifters whirled around the second he and Shawn hit the hallway, and in a second they were all staring at one another, guns raised and fingers on the triggers. He saw the glimmer of recognition in their eyes the moment they realized who they were dealing with.

“When’s it set to blow?” one asked him.

“I’m taking it down in five minutes, so you’re going to want to get out,” Logan responded.

“We need longer. We’ve got to download the information.”

“We have no time for that.”

“Make time, or the four of us are going to die right here.”

Well, that’s eloquent,
Shawn said.

Fuck you.
It wasn’t that he was afraid to get into it with the Shadowdrakes, because he wasn’t. He already had their shields half unraveled, and in another minute he would be able to kill them with a thought. But that wasn’t the point. They didn’t want anything more than what he and Shawn wanted—to ensure that their clan could fight this virus if it somehow managed to survive. He didn’t begrudge them that.

“I’ll give you eight minutes,” he said, setting the detonators in his pocket. “Starting now.”

The other men were already moving.

And then he and Shawn were hurtling down the hallways. He was getting Shawn as far away from this goddamn death factory as he could, and he could only pray that it was enough.

They hit the side door at four minutes and counting, and hit the woods behind the lab a minute after that. Shawn slowed down, turning to look at the lab.

“What are you doing? Keep going!”

“I need to see it blow. I need to know it’s finally over.”

“Goddamnit, Shawn. The virus—”

“Will incinerate in the fire. You know that. You made sure of it. I need to see it, Logan.”

Because he understood, because he had the same feeling, he didn’t say anything else. Just stood in the woods with Shawn and waited for the world around them to blow up.