Memory Zero (24 page)

“I
T HASN
’
T BEEN HALF AN
hour yet, has it?” Sam pulled uselessly at the handle, and then got out the key-coder Jack had given her.

“No.”

The key-coder flashed red. It couldn’t break the lock. She slapped the door in frustration and turned, watching a puff of pale yellow vapor creep foglike across the carpet. “I think we’d better contact reception and see if she can open the door again. And fast.”

He already had his cell phone out. “No answer,” he said after a moment. “Any idea what’s behind door two?”

The vapor began to catch at her throat. Fighting the desire to cough, she tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. “Bathroom, maybe?”

“Maybe. Come on.” He touched her arm, guiding her across the room.

The vapor was thicker near the doorway. It tore at her throat and seeped down to her lungs, burning like fire. Dizziness swept through her, and for an instant,
everything blurred. Only Gabriel’s light touch kept her upright, kept her moving.

The second door swept open. He pushed her through, and then slapped a hand against the control on the wall. The door shut, momentarily locking the vapor out. She took several deep breaths, then bent over and coughed long and hard.

“You okay?”

His hand touched her back, its warmth contrasting starkly with the ice creeping over her skin. She nodded and straightened. His eyes were red-rimmed and watering, and his face was the color of milk.

She looked around, noting the shower and washbasin. “It
is
a bathroom.”

“And service room, by the look of it.” He handed her the disks and wristcom, then stepped past her and pressed a button on the wall. The response was the soft hum of machinery. “Service lift. And this …” He tapped a circular panel on the wall. A small door gently rocked. “… would be the laundry chute.”

She wiped the tears away from her eyes. Vapor was beginning to seep under the door, curling like yellow strands of rope round her feet. “Neither of which will help us get out of here.”

A bell chimed softly. He pressed another button and a door slid open, revealing a three-foot-square elevator. He glanced at her.

She swallowed heavily. He surely couldn’t mean for them to climb in there. It looked too small for one, let alone two. A shudder ran through her. Too small and far too enclosed. “The two of us won’t fit in there.”

“I could in hawk form, but one of us has to stay behind to close the door and send it down. Get in.”

She didn’t move.
Couldn’t
move. “What about you?”

“I’ll use the laundry chute. Come on—the vapor’s getting thicker.”

The yellow strings were beginning to wind their way up her legs. Legs that didn’t want to move.

She licked her lips, and then edged forward. The closer she got, the smaller the space looked.

“Isn’t there another way to get out of this place?” she asked, balking at the last moment. She knew the question was inane, that she was only delaying the inevitable. But once she climbed into that lift, and the door closed, there would be only darkness and fear.

“You know there’s not.” He hesitated, coughing. “Get in. I’ll meet you down at the bottom.”

She wet her lips again, and then slowly climbed in. The metal seemed to weigh down on her, as heavy as the gathering darkness and colder than her skin.

“You will be there to let me out of this thing when it stops, won’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes, the minute I know it’s safe. And don’t worry—these things almost never fail.”

The way her luck had been running lately, almost was
not
the best of odds. Still, she had no more choice this time than she had the last time she’d faced her fears and the darkness. He shut the door, and the darkness grew tighter. The lift hummed, and then it dropped. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped like hell she didn’t have to spend more than a few minutes inside this metal coffin.

U
NABLE TO SPREAD HIS WINGS
or do anything to even guide his descent, Gabriel plunged down the dark tube and prayed there was something soft near
the bottom. At the rate he was descending, a broken neck was a very real possibility.

Light speared through the darkness. A circle washed by red became visible, and past it, layers of mauve and blue material. He plunged beak first into the middle of the material, then flipped onto his back, wings flying outward from his body and loose feathers pluming skyward.

For several heartbeats, he simply lay there, staring up at the red-washed ceiling, too stunned to do anything. Gradually, he became aware of the musty, almost sickly scent of humanity rising from the material beneath him, and he realized the red light washing through the darkness came from the exit sign to the left of the clothes hamper.

Then he remembered Sam. He had to get her out of that elevator, in case the vapor found its way down the shaft.

After changing back to his human form, he climbed off the mound of damp and dirty laundry. As he moved, a spasm locked the muscles in his back. Pain ripped through his body, and for a minute, he couldn’t even breathe. He clenched his teeth and hoped he hadn’t done anything serious. Hoped it was just a momentary problem. Then the pain began to ebb, and he took several deep breaths. The spasm in his back eased, and it became little more than a muted ache that radiated down his left leg. He ignored it as best he could and limped forward quickly.

The door led out into a long, dark hallway. Light, little more than a splash of yellow, beckoned down at the far end. He limped on. Voices edged across the silence. One he didn’t know. The other was Kazdan’s. He limped closer to the door and stopped, listening.

“The boss isn’t going to like this.”

The speaker’s voice held a hint of Irish brogue. If he was an operative of Sethanon, he wasn’t one the Federation knew about. None of those were of Irish descent.

“Let me worry about that.” Kazdan’s voice held a hint of impatience. “How long will it take for the apartment to clear?”

“Another five minutes.”

“Good.”

Footsteps broke the silence, a tattooed beat of violence. He edged forward and peered through the small gap between the door and the jamb.

A long metal table dominated the view. On it, a wiry black man sat, flipping a dagger from end to end, catching it neatly between thumb and middle finger.
Eddie Wyatt
. Gabriel smiled grimly. He’d had a run-in with Eddie some years ago, when the vamp had gone on a killing spree. He’d gotten off on a technicality and had promptly sought revenge against his accuser—Gabriel. He watched the thug’s hand as he deftly caught the dagger. Five years, and only the thumb and one finger had grown back.

Still, he was lucky it was only his hand that had been chopped. It should have been his friggin’ head. But SIU had been feeling generous that day. Because Eddie had no previous history of violence, they’d let him escape with only a minor penalty. In doing so, they’d created a headache for themselves. Eddie Wyatt was the chief suspect in the recent bombings of several SIU buildings. But up until now, informed opinion said he’d fled the country.

A second man stood farther down the table, barely within his restricted line of sight. Taller, but with the
same wiry build as Eddie, this man had blond hair and a somewhat scraggly ginger beard.
Wolf
, Gabriel thought, noting the almost feral gleam in the man’s green eyes.

Kazdan was nowhere in sight, but his heavy steps were audible. Three men, at least two of them vampires. Not good odds for an attack when he wasn’t one hundred percent fit.

He shifted slightly, trying to ease the ache in his left leg. Kazdan’s pacing stopped. Gabriel froze, wondering if the vampire had caught the sound of a pumping heart. If he was close to the door, it was a real possibility, even though Kazdan was very young in vampire terms and still had to be learning how to handle his newfound senses.

“We don’t dare wait any longer. That bitch at reception is bound to wake up soon and raise the alarm. We have to get the disks and Ryan out of here,” Kazdan said.

Eddie slipped off the table, the movement almost languid. “The boss wanted her left alone.” He flipped the dagger one final time and shoved it into a sheath attached to his right wrist. “He ain’t going to like this.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows in surprise. Sethanon wanted Sam left alone? What exactly did that mean? That she was somehow involved with Sethanon?

“You’re working for me now. You do as I say.”

Kazdan’s voice was sharp with menace. He wondered what Sam would think if she could hear him now. And why did Kazdan want her when his orders were obviously to the contrary?

“What about Stern?”

“Take him straight to the car. He and his brother
were slated for termination at the end of this month, anyway.”

Brother
. Only three people beyond their immediate family knew Stephan and he were brothers. Mary, Karl and Lyssa—the original Lyssa, that was. Whether the shifter taking her place knew depended on just how long she’d been by his brother’s side. But if Kazdan knew, then it had to mean that one of those three was involved with him.

“I thought the boss changed his mind about Stern?” There was concern in Eddie’s voice.

“He did. But I think it’s better for us all if we just get rid of the bastard.”

Sethanon wanted him alive?
That
could only bode ill. He listened to the receding sound of their footsteps, but he didn’t move until silence had returned. He pushed open the door and limped in. The kitchen was long and full of gleaming metal benches and appliances. It was also empty, for which he was grateful. He walked through a doorway to his left and down another corridor. The service lift door came into view. The doors hadn’t even fully opened before Sam scrambled out. She fell into his arms, her whole body shaking, alternately coughing and sucking in huge gulps of air.

Even though she still wore his jacket, her skin felt like ice. This wasn’t an effect of the fog; this was fear. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and held her close. And then tried to ignore the press of her body against his, and just how oddly right it felt. After several minutes, the trembling in her limbs began to ease, but her heart still raced.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were claustrophobic?” he asked softly.

She took a shuddering breath. “What good would it have done? You know there was no other way out.”

If he’d known she was so terrified of small, dark places, he might have tried to find another way. “How long have you had this fear?”

“For as long as I can remember.”

“Have you talked to the psych guys about it?”

“Yeah. They put it down to a childhood trauma.” She shrugged, feigning a casualness that was almost instantly belied by the tremor that ran through her slender form.

“You okay now?” He hoped so, because Kazdan had probably entered the apartment, and it wouldn’t take him long to discover his trap had failed.

She sniffed, then nodded. The top of her head brushed across his chin, and silky strands of red gold tickled his nose. He smoothed her hair down, feeling the dampness near the crown and sides.

“Then we’d better get moving,” he said—though if Kazdan had not been a threat, he could easily have stayed here, simply holding her. It felt good.
She
felt good.

She pulled away slightly. “There’s a problem?”

His gaze focused on her lips, watching them move as she spoke. “Kazdan.”

She tensed. “Jack’s here?”

“Yes,” he said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. “He wants the disks.”

And you
. He frowned suddenly. The tone Kazdan had used when speaking about her was not the tone of a friend. Enemy, yes; friend, definitely not. So why was he so keen to get her back?

She met his gaze. The ring of shadows around the blue of her eyes was more pronounced than it had
been a few hours ago. “Why can’t we just confront him now?”

“Because he has company. I can’t fight three nonhumans alone.” Though with her help, he certainly had a better chance. She’d apparently gotten the better of the two vamps at Kazdan’s house, and she still had the laser. But there was a niggling concern in the back of his mind about her relationship with Kazdan. “We’re better off getting those disks out of here.”

She nodded. “We still have the meet tomorrow night anyway.”

He let her go and stepped back. “I doubt that Kazdan will show up.”

She shrugged and turned away. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

He led the way forward. When they reached the foyer, he crossed to the reception desk. Both the doorman and the receptionist lay unconscious on the floor behind the desk. He felt their necks, relieved to discover both had steady pulses. Given Kazdan’s reputation, that was something of a miracle—though perhaps it was simply a matter of not wanting to shit in his own backyard.

“They okay?” she asked, though her gaze was on the elevators rather than the victims.

“Yeah.” He rose, and got out his cell phone. “Why don’t you head outside? I’ll call in the troops.” Kazdan and his cronies would be long gone by the time the SIU got here, but the apartment itself might yield something useful.

He made the call, and then followed her out the door. But halfway down the steps, he stopped. One of the men with Kazdan was a bomber. The car sat right in front of the building, State plates conspicuous. And
Kazdan had ordered his men to take him down to the car. He’d said Gabriel had been slated for termination anyway. At the time, he thought they’d meant Kazdan’s car, but it could easily have been his own.

“Sam, wait.”

She turned, one eyebrow raised in query. He got his car key-coder out and pressed a button. The car purred to life.

“You don’t think they’d go to that extreme, do you?” Though her voice held a hint of doubt, she stepped back to the partial cover of the foyer entrance.

He smiled grimly. He’d underestimated Kazdan once already tonight; he wasn’t about to make a second mistake. He pressed another button and ran a fingernail across the screen. The onboard computer responded, and the car edged forward, wheels turning away from the curb.