* * * *
“Do you think she’s going to be trouble, Ten?”
Tenorio studied his captive with cold eyes. “For about ten minutes. She’ll crack. They always do.”
“But she was resisting you,” the man behind him pointed out worriedly. “No one ever has before. The dose we gave her was more than double.”
Ten waved a hand in dismissal. “Just proves I was very, very right about her. She’s capable beyond even what I had imagined. Studying her for the last three years gave me all the information I will need. We will extract her genetic code, as we did with the others. Production of the strands has been moving well. And our test subjects have been receptive.” A cell phone rang. Ten pulled it out of his pants pocket to glare at the screen. His look became thunderous as he spoke. “Fine. Tell the Senator I had to step out. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He disconnected with a snarl on his lips. “Can’t even go to the bathroom without him looking for you,” Ten griped.
The other man stared at their prisoner one long minute. “The tranquilizer will hold? She shouldn’t have woken up after only an hour.”
“She may not have drunk enough of the juice,” Ten replied unconcerned, spinning on a heel, leaving out the door. “Don’t worry. She’s out for the duration.” Tenorio shot his man a contemptuous look. “And she’s tied and harmless. A woman.”
The other man stood straight at the reprimand, closing the private door with a firm hand while Ten took the long hallway to the main house.
* * * *
Red flames colored the world through Diego’s eyes. He had felt her, heard her, the pain of her terror stripping every last civil thought from his mind. The bitter tang of her fear had coated his tongue, left a foul stench in his nostrils.
Even the hole in his back had ceased to matter. Nothing mattered but her.
They had taken her. They would pay. All of them. There was no room for compassion in his heart. His compassion had been stripped from his arms and was trapped somewhere in that large house.
Diego stood just outside the perimeter wall of the lavish, mansion-styled home in the northeast woods far from San Francisco. He had counted close to fifty men on guard, some relaxed, others patrolling. It did not matter. They all would die.
He watched with hate-filled eyes as a car pulled from the garage, the gates opening to let it out, vanishing down the long, winding road.
Tenorio.
The name was a hissed curse. Nails grew to claws, the thirst for blood, for revenge, demanding fulfillment.
Titania.
His eyes closed, and he found the strength to let the car go. He had to find her. She was his only priority. Tenorio was a walking dead man who had no idea judgment had been delivered.
Out of the silence of the night, he found Houston’s wild scent. Stalking.
“Not tonight, my friend,” Diego told him softly when he was near. “No one is getting out alive.” When Houston stood at his side, he explained in brief the little Titania had been able to describe in her moments of lucidity before he had lost her again. “They are running experiments. He wants to create an army of clones with abilities. This cannot be allowed.”
Houston’s expression was somber. “You can get to her?”
“I will.” Conviction left no room for failure. “Down the road, there is a copse that covers the roadside. Wait for me there. I do not want you to be implicated when this begins.”
Houston looked up, side to side. “He has cameras.”
“And I am a ghost,” Diego replied, shimmering into a cloud of mist, hardly visible to the naked eye.
“Bring her home, Diego.” Houston’s words followed the mist trail over the wall.
Diego flew unchallenged right up to the house. Finding an open window, he entered without difficulty. This house had never been a home. Peace did not rest here at night.
He slid past a guard on the landing, who whirled, his face pale, grabbing his gun at the ice-cold wind that snaked around him lightning-quick. Diego ignored him. He was already buckling to his knees, gasping for breath. Diego had found what he looked for in the man’s depraved mind. The secret hallway and room where they were holding his heart. His soul.
Fangs dropped in punctuated anger as man after man collapsed to the ground. Some died of asphyxiation. Others died of aneurysms. Diego did not care. They all had a part in her abduction.
He paused in the last hallway, tapping a man on the shoulder. When he turned, Diego silenced him, claiming his mind with a thrusting force. The man stilled, aware but unable to stop him, tilting to let Diego feed. Hunger raged through him, the red haze of death clouding Diego’s thoughts. The man’s heart pounded fear-laced adrenaline through his blood. Diego drank deeper. It would be so easy to take every drop. He deserved to die.
Titania.
Her beckoning name infiltrated through the killing frenzy. Diego stopped abruptly. The man crumpled to the ground unceremoniously, to wither and die from blood loss. He strode over the prone body, waving a hand at the concealed hallway door. It shattered apart at his command. Shouts were beginning to echo throughout the house. The fallen men were being discovered.
A snarl lifted his lips as he single-mindedly moved through the angled corridor toward the lab where they had chained her. Like an animal. The door before him exploded without his stride breaking. The two men guarding the access room leaped from their chairs, reaching for guns.
Diego paused in the shattered doorway and watched dispassionately as both men were tossed backward like children’s toys, slamming with paralyzing force against the wall. He stalked up to them and slit the throat of one with a long claw, then captured the gaze of the other.
“You will die a horrible death. You dared harm the one I love.” Diego’s voice was unemotional. A glacial wind seemed to fill the room with amazing speed, seeping into the dying man’s skin. Immediately the man began to cough, to gasp for air. The entire time Diego held his gaze, letting the man know he was dying. And he could do nothing to stop it.
The man’s gaze widened as air became short. He tried to claw at his throat, ripping at the shirt he wore. Nothing helped. Diego kept his gaze locked with dispassionate patience. It took mere moments for the man’s lips to turn blue and for his eyes to glaze over.
Without warning, an auxiliary metal door clanged closed behind him, the lock snicking into place from an outside command. Diego looked over his shoulder and growled at the camera tucked in the room’s corner, letting his rage eclipse everything. The camera shattered, electrical sparks filling the room. Papers ignited.
Diego dismissed the dying men on the floor, reaching for the metal door that Titania had seen. The lock gave way easily under his hand, and he pushed it inward. He was not prepared for the sight of her bound to the table. A snarl hardened his lips, the real anger he felt withheld. Freeing her first was paramount.
He reached her side in an instant. The rage he felt at her condition only compounded his determination to make Tenorio pay for his actions against her. He touched each manacle and they cracked, smoldering. The state of her undress was deliberate, and whirling, he located two more cameras. They disintegrated instantly, his rage having yet another target. Sparks fell from the electrical wiring. Several sheets began to smoke, flames leaping to life.
He yanked off his jacket to tenderly pull her into his arms and wrap her in it. “
Cara
,” he whispered, emotions so strong—anger, fear, pain—they made his voice hoarse.
He cursed again when he saw the needle track on her arm. Her head lolled heavily on her neck. The beat of her heart staggered weakly within her chest. Realization happened quickly. He sniffed her arm and growled angrily. She moaned as he brought her higher in his arms. “You are safe, honey,” he told her. She didn’t respond, and his soul cried.
Sounds were invading his anger, reaching him from the exterior hallway that he’d just traversed. Several men, with the heavy rush of adrenaline preceding them. He knew their thoughts. Knew Tenorio’s plans. Knew many of the men had already fantasized about the woman in his hold, only waiting for Tenorio to finish with her before he handed her over for the men’s enjoyment.
Cold fury coiled around him as he bypassed the charging men unseen. The armed group was confused when they found the lab deserted, when they knew someone had been there just seconds before. Once clear, the door slammed behind Diego with an echoing death knell, and he locked it securely.
They would suffer in death as they had wanted her to suffer in life.
Diego scanned the floors overhead, found more men scattered through rooms. He took a few precious seconds to concentrate on one room in particular. The computer room, where all the research and security information was processed and stored. Screams echoed as explosion after explosion sounded, rocking the house to the foundation. Lights flickered and died. Fires erupted as if out of nowhere as he passed by furnishings. Drapes, carpeting, wood bookcases, it was all ablaze in a matter of seconds.
The front door bowed out, then shattered into the front yard in a burst of wooden twigs. Diego rushed through it without a backward glance. Faintly, he heard shouts to the rear of the house, and a maliciously satisfied smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Not five seconds later, fireballs mushroomed over the roof of the house in succession. Cars and storage tanks of fuel. Confusion reigned as men lost their way, unable to breathe in the thick, toxic smoke. Beams cracked and splintered within the house, pinning several. Not one would find his way to the clear air of the grounds.
When the fire department unearthed the lab, they would find a slaughter. Six men roasted—rotisserie style. Panicked, the men had tried to fight their way out of the secured lab. The explosions had created long, surgical-sharp fingers of metal from the steel walls. Not a single man would escape their jagged ends in the lightless, smoke-filled interior.
Diego buried his nose into Titania’s hair and drank in her scent. Slowly, the killing frenzy left him. He called her name, a repeated litany, as much to find her voice and bring her back to him as to calm his own furious rage. Chilling silence was his answer. Fear plagued him. Her heart was still working too hard, too slowly. Ice began to seep into his own blood.
It took only a few moments to locate Houston hidden in the trees, his black Ferrari all but invisible in the night’s shadows. He found Laney’s scent coming from the car, thankful neither had been hurt.
He landed on silent feet behind the car. Houston leaned against his fender with a worried frown digging into his expression. Relief was immediate until he saw Titania’s condition.
Houston’s hand shook when he brushed away her hair. “What did they do to her?”
“She has been drugged. She is not taking it well. I have to take her home.”
“Home?” Houston met his gaze.
“I have a cabin in Oregon. Meet us there when you are able.”
Houston scraped a hand over a cheek. “I guess this means the tour is over.”
“It has to be. Tenorio escaped. That was him in the Mercedes. I have to eliminate him. He will always hunt her. He will discover she escaped when no one else did.” As if to emphasize his point, several explosions rent the quiet night miles up the road, flames licking at the inky, smoke-filled sky.
“And Brakka?”
Diego curled Titania closer to his chest. “A pest. Nothing more.” He was less than concerned about him at the moment. Diego looked once more at the drawn, pale face of the woman in his arms. He could not meet her best friend’s gaze, knowing his next words could very well be his own death sentence. “Houston, she will need time to adjust.”
Houston’s hand froze on the door, his head falling with a whoosh of air fleeing his lungs. “She isn’t sick, is she?”
Diego’s voice was graveled with the agony of what must be done. “No. I have wanted to keep her safe since the beginning, and I failed. The night she was attacked, I was not fast enough. I had no connection with her. I needed that to keep her safe.” Diego went for broke. “Once the process begins, it cannot be stopped.”