Lethal Engagement (An Unbounded Novella) (18 page)

Lucinda’s face hardened, becoming something ugly. “He sacrificed us too. Always in the limelight. Always the stares.” Her attention flicked past us down the hall.

Keene followed her eyes. “Is that where they have Patrick?”

“Don’t move!” Lucinda ordered, her voice no longer moaning or uncertain. “Or I’ll hurt Noah. I swear it. She’s so thin, so fragile, much weaker than the agent I killed at the house. All those self-defense classes Patrick made me take, you know. I may be weak from the poison, but I promise, I can stop her long enough for the Hunters to get her. After they’re finished with Patrick.”

“You mean, after they cut him into three pieces.” Keene took a step toward her, his face a mask of fury.

I thought Keene would jump at her then, but he leaned close to me, his words coming so faint I had to strain to hear. “There’s something odd about one of the doors near the end of the hall. Some kind of energy. Patrick might be there.” I hoped he was right. Because if they’d left the hospital altogether while Lucinda distracted us, we might never catch up to them in time.

“Go see!” I said to him.

“Stop!” Lucinda shouted as Keene started to turn. “I’m. Saving. Humanity!” With each word she pushed the knife deeper into Noah’s neck, perhaps intent on cutting out her gift of music. Blood sprang up around the blade. Keene hesitated. “Hunters are the only way we’ll survive!” Lucinda continued. “If Patrick was his old self, he’d agree this was the only way.”

“You’re wrong. Patrick knows he’s the only hope we have of uniting humanity before the Emporium takes control. The president needs him to help pass laws that will protect everyone.” I glanced at Keene, brushing my hand against his so he’d know what I intended. We needed to end this now. His head dipped a fraction. Letting my knife slip into my left hand, I reached for the numbers, and sluggishly they obeyed.

“Well,
everyone
can’t have him.” Lucinda shook Noah. “
She
can’t have him! This Unbounded slut is just like all those women with the signs, wanting his favors, offering the baby I can’t give him. I
won’t
let any of you have him! He’s mine!” With a fluid motion, she raked the knife over Noah’s throat. Blood gushed down into the front of Noah’s dress. Noah cried out, but the wound apparently wasn’t fatal—not even temporarily so—and Noah remained on her feet.

Anger fueling my energy, I shifted, appearing behind Lucinda. My bad arm slid around her waist to hold her in place, a bite of pain stealing my breath. My knife pierced her clothing near her left kidney. “Let her go or I’ll put this inside you.” I kept my voice light but pushed the point of the knife into her flesh, letting the metal speak for me. I could smell the sour stench of her body, vomit mixed with expensive perfume. I could also feel her fear because she was shaking with it. There was something intimate about the moment; I understood her as I wouldn’t if I’d simply pointed a gun at her head. My knife begged to go deeper.

“Oh, I get it,” Lucinda said, mocking now. “You’re not Homeland Security, are you? You’re one of
them.
” She looked around at me, her blue eyes as pale and cold as ice. No wildness there now. Only calculation.

I gave an insincere chuckle. “Finally, something you got right. You know what? Maybe Patrick
is
different. Maybe like me, he’s happy he’s Changed. Maybe like me he feels alive for the first time in his life. Now let her go!”

Lucinda loosened her hold, and Noah nearly fell from her grip. Sighing, Noah leaned against the wall, her hand going to her neck, her breath ragged.

I stepped even closer to Lucinda until our bodies touched, still keeping the knife in place. Lucinda betraying Patrick hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could still feel about Trevor. “You may think you’re Patrick’s one great love, but you know what? Next year you’re going to be nothing more than the woman who betrayed him to a murderous cult, the unhinged woman he wished he’d never met. I know because that’s all my dead husband is to me now—eyes I can barely remember, a pretty face I wish I hadn’t wasted time on.”

“Mari,” Keene said. His synergy crackled through the air, an offer of help if I needed it. Or perhaps a warning.

I released her. “Right. Let’s find Patrick.” I started down the hall.

“Monster!” With a cry, Lucinda raised her knife and plunged it toward my back, but Noah was there, pushing me out of the way.

The knife sliced deeply through the flesh and muscle of Noah’s shoulder. That should have been it, but instead of stopping there, the blade continued on with force, down in an arc until it embedded in Lucinda’s own stomach. She gasped and pulled out the knife. Let it clatter to the floor.

For an instant no one moved. An agonizing second filled with horror and realization. Then both women collapsed, the back of Lucinda’s head slamming sickeningly on the tile. Keene caught Noah before hers did the same. His face was devoid of color, and I could no longer feel his synergy. I knew that meant he’d used his ability on Lucinda, to enhance her strength after she’d plunged the knife through Noah’s shoulder. Otherwise, she might have stopped her thrust in time to save herself.

What’s more, I knew he’d done it to save me, both from being hurt and from having to hurt her. He might not have meant to give her quite that much energy, but he’d chosen to use his ability, and now he’d have to live with it.

“Is she . . . ?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Lucinda was bleeding badly, but I was more concerned about Noah. Not because she wouldn’t heal, but because she was more vulnerable now to whatever group was here at the hospital.

Keene removed his shirt and balled it against Lucinda’s stomach, placing her hands over it. Her eyelids fluttered but she remained unconscious.

“Go get Patrick,” Noah said as I knelt beside her. Her voice sounded odd, whistling and wet. Air bubbled the blood welling from her throat, and looking at it twisted my insides, reminding me of Trevor.

I dragged my eyes away and nodded at Keene. “You go. I’ll stay with her. They might have someone watching the monitors.” I removed my own jacket, exposing my bare arms and arm sheaths, and began tying it awkwardly around Noah’s hurt shoulder and under the opposite arm to stem the copious flow of blood.

“I’ll be back.” Keene turned and sprinted down the hall, his face angry and determined.

“Go with him.” Noah’s dark eyes pleaded. “If Hunters or the Emporium were coming, they’d already be here. It’s Patrick they’re after, not me.”

I debated only a few seconds. “Okay, but text Jace, if you can. Let him know what’s happening.” I put Noah’s phone into her right hand and placed her gun on the floor next to her, removing the silencer. “Use the gun if anyone comes. I’ll hear and shift back to help you.”

She nodded. “Just find him.”

I SHIFTED NEXT TO KEENE
, who’d stopped at a door just before the yellow caution tape where the hallway intersected another that ran both left and right. Peering around the corner, I saw a nurses’ station far down the hall where three women seemed to be at work. A man with an untrimmed beard sat behind them, awkwardly dressed as a doctor, one hand hidden by another white smock puddled in his lap. Definitely not Emporium.

“Hunter,” I whispered.

“Something’s strange here.” Keene had his hand flat on the door.

He was right. When I tried to call up numbers that would get me into the room, nothing came. There were simply no coordinates available except maybe a foot or so beyond the door. “Definitely, something’s blocking me. There’s a tiny bit of space. I might be able to shift just to the other side.”

“We have no idea what’s there.” Keene tried the knob and found it locked. “We’ll go in the old-fashioned way.”

“Why don’t we just knock? Don’t they have a special pattern?”

“Yeah, but my info will be way out of date, especially if an Emporium agent has infiltrated their group. They’ll have changed protocol.”

“Try it anyway.”

He gave a series of taps that sounded rather juvenile instead of cool. We waited, hearing low murmurs. Footsteps, and then the doorknob turned.

Keene shoved hard on the door before it opened more than a few inches. As he pushed inside, two men pounced on him. He threw them back, knocking one down with a punch and pistol-whipping the hand of the one who held a gun. I sprinted past them all, seeing that Keene had it under control. He didn’t move as fast as Jace, but every punch was carefully placed and accelerated by his synergy. I was pretty sure the first man he’d hit wouldn’t be getting up again, but the other, dressed in the jeans and T-shirt that were typical Hunter garb, moved like a combat Unbounded. He had to be an Emporium plant.

The part of the room I could see was empty except for a few beds and several odd, three-foot metal poles emitting streams of yellow light that intersected one another. The far part of the room was curtained, and the lights from these transmitters continued through this curtained area, the plastic-backed material was pulled slightly aside for that purpose. The instant I passed through the light stream in front of the doorway, I could feel Patrick’s color and calculate the numbers that would take me to him.

Clicking the release on my left arm sheath to slide the knife into my hand, I shifted across the room and past the curtain. On the other side, it looked as if a tornado had ripped through the place. Overturned chairs, scattered medical instruments, and red trash cans with DANGER printed on them spilled everywhere. Blinds had been pulled from the window and several machines smashed. Papers, needles, and wrappers mixed in with tongue depressors and alcohol wipes. The single bed had been pushed up against the wall and in it was Patrick, cuts and bruises on his face, his eyes filled with terror. His hands and legs were secured to the bed with silver duct tape, his mouth had a swath over it, and more tape layered his chest and secured him to the bed. Evidently he’d fought hard.

A tall, thin man in green scrubs stood over him, a needle in hand. On a tiny table next to him was a large saw that was stained dark with old blood.
Definitely a Hunter,
I thought. No doubt about what he’d been intending, though usually Hunters didn’t sedate their victims, believing that the suffering freed their souls from their vile natures.

The man was staring blankly at the curtain when I appeared, obviously worried by the racket Keene and his opponent were making. His face was closely shaven, except for the droopy brown moustache. His untrimmed eyebrows resembled caterpillars marching across his ruddy brow. When he saw my knife, his face paled.

Patrick also saw me and renewed his struggle, the panic fading from his face. The Hunter looked between me and his needle. I could almost see his brain working. Then, thrusting his jaw forward, he dived at Patrick, who jerked up, bashing his forehead into the side of the Hunter’s skull. The man stumbled backward.

Go, Patrick!

I reached for numbers, intending to shift behind the Hunter, but a sudden dizziness prevented my fold. The second time I got it right. The Hunter whirled on me as I appeared, the needle aimed at my eye. Instinctively, I brought my wounded right arm up to block. His arm crashed into mine. For an instant, my vision went red with agony as something ripped inside my arm.

But the knife in my left hand found its way to his body.

He screamed.

So easy, it would be to slip it farther up, to pierce his lungs. Then a mere twist into his heart and he’d never kill another Unbounded again. The music of the knife beckoned. He deserved it. He’d been going to murder Patrick.

I fought to step back from my desire for revenge. Wasn’t he a victim of his own lack of education? A pawn of the Emporium and other men who used their fervency to further their own agendas? But I didn’t really buy that because all the Hunters I’d met seemed to use their belief as an excuse for murder—the most heinous, horrific kind of murder. No, there was nothing redeeming about this man. Nothing to hold back my hungry knife.

Nothing except my stronger desire not to be like him.

“Mari!” Keene swept open the curtain, his gun aimed at the Hunter. “It’s over. You don’t have to.”

I let out a sudden breath, then dragged more air into my lungs. Painfully, as if it’d been far too long since I had taken a breath. I stepped back, my entire body shaking, and Keene rushed forward to deal with the Hunter.

Moments later, I was trying to pull tape from Patrick’s mouth when the door slammed open to reveal Cort and Jace with Noah between them. “Patrick!” Noah rushed forward and would have fallen if Jace hadn’t caught her. “Oh, thank, God!” With her good hand, she pulled the knife from my grasp and began working at the tape holding Patrick’s arms. After making sure Noah wasn’t going to collapse or cut herself, Jace drew out another knife and freed Patrick’s legs.

Patrick sat up and hugged Noah. “Luce?” he asked.

Noah’s smile fled. “I’m sorry Patrick. She didn’t make it. A nurse is with her now.”

Pain filled Patrick’s face. “Did the Hunters . . .”

“No!” My voice came out a little too forcefully. “It was her, Patrick. She’s responsible for her own death. She was behind everything. Those texts on the way here? She betrayed you to the Hunters. She tried to kill Noah.”