Dangerous (23 page)

“Do you mind if I ask why you were having a meeting with the preeminent Morphate in the Federated States?” he asked quietly. She stopped mid-step and turned to look at him, her soft jewel-like eyes suddenly smiling down at him.

“Of course. You used to be Secret Service. You would be very well versed on who Nick and Amara Gregory are.”

“I think every Joe Shmoe at the corner deli in Lightning, Kansas knows who Nick and Amara Gregory are. When you think of Morphates, generally their faces are the first you imagine. They are very public figures, fighting for Morphate rights in this country. And abroad, ever since the Traveling Act was passed. We let Morphates travel out of this country much sooner than other nations began to allow them into theirs. A lot of Morphates did what you are doing if they wanted to travel. Passed themselves off as humans.”

“I am posing as human for much more serious reasons than the right to go to the Bahamas,” she said heavily.

“Well, maybe you ought to go to the Bahamas. You certainly could use it. Push these weapons of yours onto your human developers already. Fulfill your contract and be done with it. It will take you out of the crosshairs, for the most part, and let you go back to a normal sort of life.”

“Just what is a normal sort of life?” she asked, the weariness in her voice suddenly sounding incredibly heavy. “I've been searching for the key to Morphate mortality for fifty years. Almost every day since the day we were liberated. There were those of us who knew instantly what absolute power was going to do to some of us. We saw the types of people, the dregs of society that Paulson was using for his test subjects. From gangsters to psychotics . . . it was only a matter of time before one of them needed to be put down. But how do you put down an immortal psychotic?”

“So far imprisoning has done the job.”

“Only if a Marshal Force of Morphates is engaged. Until you, no human force has ever been able to catch and retain a Morphate hell-bent on its freedom.”

Liam nodded. The Marshal Force had a reputation for being the baddest asses in the world. Putting the best of fighting-tactics training in the hands of an elite, indestructible force of Morphate men and women had been a brilliant and terrifying move. It had been, as he understood it, the brainchild of another Gregory. Kincaid Gregory, Nick's brother. But that was beside the point, he knew.

“You're changing that. You're making it possible for human forces to stop a monstrous Morphate in its tracks.”

“Somehow those human forces will lack the prestige and glory of the Marshals. But at least they'll be well armed.”

She turned to go back down the stairs. He followed her suddenly swift gait away from the west side of the house to the center. Her goal became obvious as she took him to the vault. As she breezed past the safeguards it was all he could do to keep up with her. When they entered the prototype room, she went straight back to the box she had initially wanted to show him. She keyed in the code and lifted the lid.

She reached in for a small, light, metal and poly fabric object and instantly Liam was fascinated. He had expected a gun. Something with the highest tech in laser sightings, like what was strapped to his hip.

“Here,” she said, reaching for his hand to affix the device. The fingerless glove slid on easily because of the stretch in the poly fabric. The metal was over the back of his hand and there were sensors across the palm. There were four small holes like launch tubes. “Micro darts. The sensors require simultaneous pressure inside the palm and with the thumb pressing the outer first finger knuckle. It might seem complex, but it prevents the darts from releasing accidentally or . . .”

“Or if you're throwing a punch. No one with any training. . . hell, any instincts . . . would throw a punch like that. You lose all strength and physics. Well thought out,” he marveled.

“It had to be. It had to be deadly, quick and, more important, not be able to go off accidentally. The micro darts hold minuscule amounts of mercury and this metal plate along the back of your hand protects you from the radiation. This indicator will turn red if radiation or mercury leaks, even a single microgram. The darts are heat sensitive so they will not inject into non-flesh targets. In the event that some go astray or the shooter misses, the surrounding objects will not be unnecessarily contaminated by irradiated mercury.”

“Is it enough mercury to kill?” he wanted to know.

She grimaced. “The only way to truly test that is on a living subject, so you can imagine it is as yet untried. But using my own experience . . . I think you'd have to hit a vulnerable area with four of the twelve darts this contains, in, say, the carotids, to cause death. You get three rounds of four and it reloads with this cartridge, like so.” She rapidly ejected the loaded cartridge in the weapon as he might eject a clip from a 9mm, only horizontally. Then she loaded in the small clip with just a push of a fingertip. It was auto-loading, the mechanics grabbing onto the clip and sucking it into place. The load light turned green.

“What's your jamming ratio?”

“Only when damaged or if you try to force it yourself rather than letting the machinery do the job. That's its only flaw, I would say, because I've not known very many patient soldiers in my time.”

“Hard to be patient under the gun,” he shot back with a grin that was so unrepentant, she laughed at him. “But you haven't known my soldiers. They are trained to think, not just react.”

“That doesn't surprise me, considering their trainer.” She let go of his hand, allowing him the movement to cock up his wrist and play with aiming the darts. To his surprise, the moment he did a 3-D transparent holographic targeting field appeared in a three inch square over the top of his hand.

“Holy shit. Are these bad boys guided?” If he sounded impressed, it was because he was.

“Next prototype will be. This is just to help you aim. The one I'm fine-tuning now lets you shoot a tracer, then decide to follow it with guided darts. It keeps you from wasting ammo.”

Considering the toxicity of the payload, it was a brilliant idea. The finesse of it put NHK's crude mercury bullets to shame.

“Veronica's going to shit herself,” he said under his breath.

“Veronica almost underbid me for this weapons contract. Unfortunately for her, finances weren't an issue for me. Tell her I am sorry for that. I have no doubt she would have done just as well given the right resources.”

“I wouldn't say that. Brilliant as my partner is, she's known about the mercury for quite some time and the bullets were the best she's developed so far.”

“Again, I have unlimited resources, access to labs and minds far beyond this room. You've done well enough on your own.” She turned to a second box and keyed in a code. It was longer and clearly different from the previous one. This box also required her retinal scan before opening. She reached in and pulled out the last thing he would have expected.

“A knife?” How the hell was a knife . . . ?

“A wasp knife,” she said as she walked over to the lab and pulled forward a beaker with a membrane stretched over the top of it. She pushed the knife through the membrane, explaining every step of the way. “It's a play on a diver's wasp knife. The tip has a sensor that arms it when it undergoes more than five pounds of pressure. Then, if you use the knife, sending it hilt deep into a target, it triggers the CO
₂
cartridge in the handle. Divers use it to inject an explosive hit into a shark, causing it to blow up. I've put mercury in front of the CO
₂
delivery, so basically you're stabbing and forcing an explosive dose of mercury into your target.”

“And if you don't hilt? Most people can't sink a knife that deep . . . or in the heat of a fight . . .”

“Pounds of pressure will compensate. Provided the sensors in the knife are covered up to two inches deep, impact will set it off. The injectors are in the first two inches of the knife, so as a safety measure they won't eject into open air.” Liam watched the knife hilt hit the membrane and a forceful silver spray filled the beaker. The membrane bubbled, threatening to rupture, but Devon expertly turned the knife, widening the slit enough to allow excess CO
₂
to escape. The contaminated metal was heavier than the air and remained inside the beaker. The knife was soiled so she didn't withdraw it, just left it in the membrane and continued to show him the ejection ports, the armored handle, and how it could be thumbprint encoded, allowing only the designated user the ability to change the cartridge and reload the mercury as well. It also locked the injectors so a man's knife couldn't be used against him. The technology around the handle was so sophisticated it could be programmed specifically to a soldier, or more loosely to a soldier's unit, using DNA identifiers.

“How do you keep it from going off when sheathing it?” he asked as she went steadily and expertly about cleaning up the knife, recharging the cartridges and making it user ready—making him one of the users by having him grip the handle briefly for a DNA read. “Wouldn't that technically meet all the injection criteria?”

“You don't sheathe it.” She reached back into her magical box, withdrawing a clip for his belt with a magnetic grip. He could just slap the knife in as he did his gun. Only the clip wouldn't release the knife again, unless the right DNA was touching the handle, keeping him from being disarmed. She reached for his belt buckle, undid it in a slow and careful way that became quickly erotic, and slid the weapon onto his belt. He heard his breath growing louder as his heartbeat began to race. Her fingertips brushed over his belly as she pushed aside the jacket he had hastily donned in order to look decent at dinner that evening. “There. It's coded to your DNA and ready to use.”

“I can't keep it. It's your prototype.”

“It's the lab prototype. The one we use for tweaking and testing and for developing the next stage. We have perfected models somewhere else. Somewhere much safer,” she informed him absently, her fingertips lingering on the belt she ought to be refastening. Instead she was brushing them lazily over the warmth of his taut belly. She could still smell the atmosphere of the restaurant on him, combined with his signature scents. Seeing him armed with her life's work was a powerful, potent thing. And yet her immediate urges were to summarily disarm him. It made her smile wickedly, turning her eyes up to him in dark, beautiful need.

“There are more. So many more. And I'm going to show them to you. But, right now, I need a bath.”

She turned then and left him. Walking out of the vault and leaving him to stare after her. Never had anyone turned him on with the promise of weaponry and wetness all in the same breath. Realizing he was falling behind, he hurried after her, slowed down only by properly resealing the vault.

Devon walked into her bedroom with a much brighter energy to her step, her body moving with its usual automatic seductiveness, heavily enhanced by her anticipation of Liam's arrival behind her. The very thought of him made her smile, made everything seem so much brighter and lighter. Funny, that. He wasn't what she could call a man full of optimism and faith in his fellow man, but he provided the validation she needed for the work she had done, for the path she had chosen, even when she was wavering and not necessarily so sure of it herself.

That had not been her intention when hiring him, of course. Nor had it been her intention when she had taken him to her vaults just now. The intention had been to arm him and protect him to the best of her ability. She would not have him thrust into the middle of a brewing war inadequately prepared for it.

But she let thoughts of war and weapons fall away as she moved into her bathroom and touched the tap control panel inside the door, immediately setting water to fill the tub in a wonderful, heated rush of sound. She reached up to the back of her neck where her dress was tied but her hand froze short of the mark. Thinking her mind was playing tricks on her, she very cautiously turned back toward her bedroom, still standing half in it and half in the bathroom as she did so, and took a slow, searching breath in through her nose.

The Morphate peeled away from the wall, her body perfectly blended into it and not visible to the untrained eye until she moved. But when she did move it was with speed and a furious strength that drove into Devon in a crash of flesh and bone. Devon's head smashed into the doorframe, sending stars across her vision. Her breath left her body as she was yanked off the frame and driven down so hard onto the bathroom's marble flooring that she would have grunted in startled pain had she the breath for it. Her attacker was resolving, still looking partly like the bedroom wall and partly like a lithe, less-than-pretty woman with the bright, joyous eyes of a creature reveling in its element.

Reveling in the kill.

“Just to be clear,” the assassin said with a wicked grin. “Some of us don't take kindly to you playing God, Dr. Candler. We think you need to remember how it feels to have someone else toying with your life.” She moved in closer, her face hovering nose to nose with Devon's, a fine set of fangs on display. Devon could hear claws ripping and popping through the fabric of her dress where the Morphate gripped her. “Because apparently the first few messages weren't clear enough.”

“They were clear enough,” Devon huffed as she grabbed the other woman by her shoulders in return. “They made it all the clearer how much in need some Morphates are of being put down! Just like the rabid dogs they are!”

The assassin growled, her naked body strangely warm and deceptively vulnerable as it pressed viciously down on her. Devona realized that in order to blend with her surroundings, the woman had divested herself of her clothes. No normal Morphate could do what this assassin could do. No Morphate from the original lots of Paulson's guinea pigs.

This was Morphate offspring. Devon was face to face with the second most dangerous secret among the Morphate clans. That their first generation of children was developing the strangest of abilities as mutated genetic codes began to mix. However, that was nothing compared to the second generation of children, whose volatile mental states were sometimes deadly. The touch of crazy dancing in the assassin's eyes attested to that.

“Time to play!” she announced.

She hauled back and punched Devon in her face, the pain of it exploding through Devon's head in an excruciating blossom of hurt.

 

Liam wanted to hurry up after Devon, but as tempting as she was, she couldn't break him of the habitual need to check doors and see that everything was locked soundly for the night on his side of the house. The others were responsible for their sections, but the final check on the west wing side was his chore. He would not rest easy without seeing to it, and when he finally caught up with Devon, he planned on taking a great deal of time with her and wanted no distractions. Keeping her safe was his job and his promise to her, and he would not fail her because he didn't take the time to check a simple window lock.

 

Devon flailed blindly with one hand, her vision blurred by the dizzying impact of incredibly powerful fists. As a Morphate, she could take a fairly good beating and shake it off relatively quickly, but there was a strength in this slim creature that went well beyond the norm even for a Morphate. It began to make sense to her now why the assassin had thought she could walk naked into this house and kill her.

Or maybe she wasn't going to kill her.

It didn't matter. The attacker's end game wasn't Devon's concern. And as Devon finally got hold of a fistful of her hair, she smiled through swollen lips and yanked the bitch off of herself, cracking her head into the bathroom's marble floor just as the creature had done to her.

“Enjoy that!” she spat, wrestling the slippery bitch under herself and smashing her head into the floor once again. “And that! You come in here calling me a traitor, but what you are is proof and validation that my work is sorely needed!”

The girl regrouped before Devon could smash her down a third time, back-fisting Devon across the face so hard and with such force that she flew off of her and crashed into the doorframe. Devon coughed, blood spewing out of her mouth. The assassin's initial attack had broken one of her ribs. This hit had sent the rib through her lung. She had not felt anything so agonizing in her life. She could barely draw breath. Just because she was physically capable of healing herself from beyond the brink of mortality did not mean it wasn't the most excruciating process known to man or Morphate. This was nothing like a shot to the leg. Breathing affected everything, all of her capabilities. The room was spinning as her opponent got to her feet and loomed over her, her wide face looking strangely reptilian as her cold black eyes, the pupils indiscernible from the irises, regarded her from the left to the right and back again. The movement was slow and graceful, almost rhythmic, but it was so reptilian that it was menacing.

“The thing about our healing abilities? It takes
time
,” she noted, a feral grin on her lips. “And in that time, I'm going to fuck you up some more. Then, when you're good and tenderized, I'm going to drag your ass back to Ambrose and he's going to see to it you're tried for your sins against your people.”

Ambrose. So that was who was at the bottom of this! At last she knew who to focus on, who was gunning for her so relentlessly. Of course, he had been high on her short list of suspects, if she were going to boil down the entire Morphate race to a brief list of people who had the most motivation for her destruction. She had been meeting with high placed members of all the clans, one after another, these past weeks, trying to get a hint. A clue. If she hadn't been in a fight for her life, she would have taken a moment to cry out in victory.

It would make her victory doubly sweet when she kicked this Ambrose Clan whore's ass.

The Ambrose assassin couldn't possibly have known the magnitude of the mistake she had made.

Devon lurched up from the floor in one powerful, extreme movement, her body like a battering ram, plowing down the startled assassin. Rhiannon had thought her opponent beaten and crippled. But how ironic that the creature from reptilian Ambrose Clan would forget that having both hands around a deadly snake is no guarantee it won't whip back around and bite you dozens of times in retaliation. Even if injured.

But Rhiannon fast learned her mistake. Devon was spitting a savage spray of blood across Rhiannon's face as her hands closed around the other woman's face and with a rapid-fire extension of claws viciously raked them down over it, slicing through both eyebrows and transecting her eyelids. Only the right eye itself was damaged as Devon's claw-tip sliced through her cornea the way paper might slice through the tip of a finger. Swiftly. Painlessly. And with an effect that wouldn't be noticed for several heartbeats. But all it took was a further stressor on the wound to make the damage come screaming to the forefront of attention, and that was what happened when Devon elbowed her hard in her eye socket.

“I've had fifty years to learn self-defense, whelp,” Devon rasped between blows and the screams of her stunned victim. “Genetics don't make you a badass. You have to work at it. That's what your generation will
never
understand.”

They had become Morphate the easy way. They were born into it. They had never known anything else.

“They threw us away like the rest of the human refuse they didn't know what to do with,” Devon spat in staccato breaths as she grabbed the assassin by her hair, climbed her body, grinding a knee down into her crotch and another into her gut to keep her pinned in place. “Gangsters. Drug-dealers. Pedophiles. The criminally insane. Not just a few, but enough to fill the whole of Dark Manhattan! By the time you were spawned, it was all made pretty again. Made nice so you wouldn't stab your baby feet on the thick refuse of dirty needles and broken crack vials!
I
cleaned that up!
I
lived that every day for decades! What the fuck did you ever survive?”

She would have screamed it in the whelp's face had she been able to draw breath, but instead her words came out as the most savage and frightening combination of gurgle and growl ever heard. They were teamed with clawing and fisting at the girl's face and body in rapid-fire beats of savagery.

By the time Liam ran into the room, the assassin was fleshy pulp, barely recognizable as a woman at all. Certainly no longer dangerous. But he could tell Devon was badly injured. The only act of bravery left for him to do was to reach out and touch her shoulder, inserting himself into a violent berserker episode.

She turned on him with a growl of pure savagery and only his fast reflexes spared him her claws as they swiped at his face and belly. When her slashing hand came back at him for a second go, her eyes blinded by coats of blood, he caught her wrist and slapped his gun into her palm. The feel and weight of the hard steel triggered things in her mind, made her react with logic rather than limbic systems. Emotional, knee-jerk reaction melted away far enough for her to recognize that the thing in her hand might help her achieve her goal.

Devon rose to her feet, her body shaking with the overdose of adrenaline it had been using. Without an instant of hesitation, she pointed the gun at her assassin's head and fired it twice, the amazing accuracy of the second shot near the first something only he would ever have the opportunity to appreciate. Even as Devon was stepping away, turning her back on her victim, the body seized once and exploded into a gaseous cloud.

Devon stood there, shaking, raising blood doused eyes to his, only the briefest of fears hurrying through her slowly stabilizing mind. As she looked into his eyes she realized that her savagery would never frighten this man. Never once had the nature of who and what she was caused him hesitation.

“Come,” he said softly, holding out his hand and beckoning her forward with the flicking of two fingers.

With her heartbeat raging in her ears still, her blood burning furiously in her veins, and her breath choking in and out of her lungs with every breath, she did as he bade her to do. She moved into his embrace. Devon felt him take his weapon from her sticky hand and heard him click it into his holster as he pulled her tight to his chest.

Liam held her to himself, simply stood there and acted as an anchor for her, ignoring his own surges of fury that she had been up here, alone and injured, fighting for her life while he had been out of reach checking the stupid windows. Once again she had had to fight for her own life, a blood-strewn room the terrible evidence of how desperate the battle had been. But when he had heard the sounds of struggle and come running to her, he'd hit the threshold of the bathroom door and stood there an entire heartbeat, staring and asking himself one very clear question.

What the hell did she need
him
for?

Yes, she was injured. Yes, she could have been the one on the bottom side of the fight. But he doubted it. His practiced eyes took in everything in the room and realized the only one who had ever been in danger had been the would-be assassin. The words spinning from her lips had only reinforced his instinctive knowledge. This woman had probably forgotten more about self-defense and fighting than he had ever learned.

What?

What the hell did she need him for?

Liam was not the whiny, needy type. Nor was he the type who could only function as the dominant personality. He preferred to train his principals to take care of themselves. And he had signed on with the understanding that Devon had fought against death all on her own once before. But what he did need was to understand his true role in any situation. He recalled she had been quite straightforward about her needs. That she wasn't interested in simply being protected. She wanted to eliminate the threat altogether. He had agreed with her approach.