Perfect Mate (12 page)

She swung her gaze to Fletcher and waited for him to test his flame. Flame-throwers were the best defense against the RAs, but they were notoriously temperamental. Her brow furrowed as the dry
click-click-click
of Fletcher pulling the trigger reached her ears.
 

Something heavy thudded against the side of the container. The moaning intensified, enriched by the sound of shuffling feet. One eye on the ramp and the other on Fletcher, Antonia held her breath. He needed to get that flame to catch, and soon. Within seconds. The RAs might be the modern, real-life equivalent of zombies, but that didn’t mean they were the shuffling snail-like creatures of moviedom. Once they’d got a whiff of live meat, those fuckers were
fast.

The first RA appeared at the top of the ramp. On a passing glance, he looked normal. As normal as any of the RA stock looked, anyway. Straight from the cells, with buzz-cut hair, he modeled the latest line in prison-orange jumpsuits.
 

Pausing, he swung his head from left to right, as though looking for something. There was no spark of vitality in his eyes, his jaw slack. A thin line of drool connected his lips to his shoulder. Even in this light Antonia could see his skin was the green-gray of approaching decay, the veins within black with corrupt blood.

“Light the damn flame,” she muttered between gritted teeth, even though Fletcher was too far away to hear. It didn’t matter, the tight look on his face and his controlled movements all broadcast that he knew the clock was ticking.
 

Click-click-click.
 

Crap. The thrower wouldn’t catch. As unobtrusively as she could, she moved toward Fletcher, her rifle at the ready. Dully, the re-animate on the ramp turned in her direction, attention caught by her movement. Its eyes didn’t focus, but she didn’t let that fool her. Already the front of its jumpsuit was soaked with drool and it had begun to chew. Never a good sign.
 

“Fletch, move back and behind me,” she ordered in a low voice, aiming her rifle. The RA’s head was dead center in her sights. They might be fast, they might be nigh on impossible to kill, but nothing could operate well after she’d unloaded a full magazine into their skull.
 

“It’ll catch, Major. The pilot’s just a bit dicey at times.”
 

The sharp stink of sweat rose to surround her as he pulled the trigger again. The thunder of his heartbeat filled her ears, the fast flow of blood a siren’s call to her nonhuman instincts. As always, the darkness inside her uncoiled, presented her with images of feeding… What it would be like to wrap the soldier in her strong arms, bare his neck and sink her fangs deep into his throat.
 

“Get. Back.” Her voice no longer sounded normal, but like a guttural growl, as the RA attacked.
 

One second it was swaying slightly on the ramp, as though listening to its own internal soundtrack, and the next it charged. Teeth bared and a loud moan of hunger issuing from its lips, it ran down the ramp.
 

Crap. She had to get the one who hadn’t gone into rigor yet. Time stretched out as it ran toward her, its eyes now fixed on Fletcher. Her heart thudded in her chest once, twice, as she tracked him through her sights. She pulled the trigger, first pressure…full.
 

The courtyard was filled with the sharp retort of automatic gunfire. The RA jerked like a marionette as her shots slammed between his dead eyes. His skull exploded in a shower of bone and splatter of foul brain matter.
 

Whumph.
Beside her, the thrower finally caught and spat a torrent of fire toward the fallen RA.
 

“Oh yeah, baby! Who’s my girl?” Fletcher crowed, relief ringing sharp in his voice. They all knew how close he’d come there.
 

Eyes sharp, Antonia watched the fallen RA for long moments until she was sure it was down for good. Then she lowered her rifle and nodded at Fletcher.
 

“Torch it.”

He didn’t need telling twice. Flame roared as she turned back to the rest. Without a word, they moved back into place. Two of them started to bang on the sides of the container, using the noise to drive the RAs out.

The moaning and shuffling increased, and a group emerged from the darkness onto the ramp. Like a herd of cattle, they moaned…in distress or hunger she couldn’t tell…and started down the ramp. None of them showed the speed or predatory instinct of the first one. Instead, they shuffled in a group, all swaying in discordant rhythms and knocking into each other.
 

Her gaze latched onto the one white-clad figure among the orange. Garry. Her teeth clenched tight as he paused and looked around. Something approaching intelligence entered his dead eyes, as though he were aware she was watching him.

Her heart, ever slow, stalled in her chest.
Please God, no.
He couldn’t be aware. They’d said they’d altered the virus to stop any possibility of subject awareness. He couldn’t be aware, it would be too cruel, especially considering how terrified he’d been of being infected.

The rest of the group shuffled toward the door, herded by Fletch and Perkins with the throwers. Garry hung back, confusion filtering onto his face like a slow sunrise.
 

There were shouts behind him as two orange-clad figures broke away from the group. Antonia ignored them, unable to tear her gaze away from her former friend.
 

“Deal with them,” she yelled, as the wayward RAs barreled past Perkins and out the other side of the cordon. “Don’t engage, try and herd them through another entrance.”

She shook her head. She’d have to deal with these idiots later. Right now, she had more important things to deal with. Frowning, she took a step closer to the RA in front of her.
 

Awareness had begun to fill his blue eyes, one of them already clouding over with the white film of death. His hands held out in front of him, he looked at them with growing horror.
 

“Garry?”
 

He snapped his head up at her voice, focusing on her with effort, and moaned. It was a sound of terror and pure torment. A tear slid down his cheek.
 

He knew. He was dead and still he knew what they’d done. That they’d turned him into his worst nightmare.
 

“Huuuu…” he droned, spit leaking from the corner of his lips as he tried to speak. “P-p-puh-puh…peas…pleasssssss…”

He looked at her and held his hands out. Not in the grasping reach she’d seen most RAs use to grab their victims, but instead as if to show her the gray skin and blackened veins.
 

His eyes held hers. Easily she read the expression in them. They begged her not to leave him like this. Not to let him kill, even though his new nature demanded it. He was…had been…her friend.

Without thinking, she had her rifle in her shoulder, and she looked at his face through her sights. Relief filled his eyes as she pulled the trigger.

The trigger clicked. Nothing happened.

“Fucking
hell!”

Her magazine was jammed. An unforgivable deadly lapse in a live situation. Swearing, she slung it around her back, pulled her sidearm and aimed square between Garry’s eyes. Before she pulled the trigger, she looked directly at him.
 

“Fitzgerald is a dead man.”

Garry nodded and smiled.
 

She put three bullets through his skull and sent him, finally, to meet his maker.

Chapter Ten

“Fuck me, she shot him.”

Safely concealed by darkness and a net curtain on the second floor, Darce watched the little drama play out in the courtyard below. His amber eyes tracked the tall woman as she holstered her pistol. She stood for a long moment, just looking at the body in front of her. That had been real anguish and anger on her face. Definitely a history with whoever the RA had been when he was alive.
 

Without intervention from his brain, his eyes returned to caress the lines of her slender image. Dressed for combat in black battle fatigues, complete with tac-rig and enough weaponry to give a survival nut a serious hard-on, she was a walking wet dream for a guy like him. Not just for a guy
like
him. For
him
. As he’d opened the main doors, the wind had changed direction for a second and he’d caught a trace of her scent.
 

The fragrance had hit him broadside, reached deep inside him and stole his ability to breathe right out of his lungs. As soon as he’d caught her scent, he knew. She was the one. Trouble was, she was a Blood. His mate was a heartless, blood-sucking vampire.

Who’d just shot an RA dead…okay, deader…before it could be deployed. As she turned away from the body, something that looked suspiciously like a tear glittered on her cheek.
She was crying? Over killing an RA?
Darce frowned as she walked out of sight, tucking a loose strand of dark hair behind his ear as he moved to try and keep her in view.

“Shit, shit, shit. Come back, pretty lady,” he muttered, but she stood too close to the building for him to see. He could
feel
her, as if his body was attuned to her like a compass to true north.
 

It was no good. She wasn’t going to move back into view so he could ogle her some more and, from the sounds he could hear below, the RAs were moving it.

“Later,” he promised the unseen beauty below. Blood, or not, she was his, and he
would
claim her.

The corridor was cold and dark. The soldiers outside had cut the power lines, and the backup generator hadn’t come online. Since it was in an outbuilding at the rear of the hospital, Lillian suspected that it too had been sabotaged.
 

Crouched down behind Jack, she tried to creep closer to his warmth without being noticed. Still naked to the waist, he wore a determined expression as he methodically loaded and checked his weaponry. Scattered around him were more weapons. She could only identify the hand pistols, the rest were like something out of an action film. He wasn’t alone—one of his men sat against the other wall doing exactly the same. Opposite them, in the other corridor, three other guys were also loading weapons. When done, they’d move back along the twisted corridor so that the two teams weren’t shooting directly at each other.

Between them, they had enough guns for a small army.

“Where the hell did you get all those?” she asked, using the question to cover another move closer. She sighed in relief. Warmth rose from his bare skin as if he was some kind of human radiator.

“Guard station on this wing.”

Her eyes threatened to bug out of her head. “What? They had all
that
in there?”
 

He nodded but didn’t look at her. He was too busy loading what looked like a hand cannon. She edged closer still, until she was almost leaning against his back, and looked at the small pile.

“Which one do I get?”

His lips compressed. “None of them. You stay behind me and down out of sight behind the cabinet.”

She looked at him as though he’d grown another head.
 

“Excuse me? Can you repeat that? I thought you just told me that I don’t get a gun.”

He picked up a shotgun and cocked with a swift, efficient movement. “Yup, that’s exactly what I said.”

“Well, fuck
that!
I want a gun.”

“You’re not getting one.”
 

He turned his head and favored her with a hard look. Amber leeched into his blue eyes. She glared back. They were at an impasse, one she was determined to win.

“Oh no you don’t. Pulling the weird wolf eyes shit on me doesn’t work. Now give me a gun. I need one. Hell, after all this weird crap, I damn well
deserve
a way to protect myself.”

His eyes were fully amber now, but she didn’t back down. She knew him…as much as it was possible to know someone she’d met less than twenty-four hours ago. Instinct told her that neither he nor the creature inside him would harm a hair on her head.
 

“You talk too much.”

“Oh yeah? I can talk more. Especially if it irritates you enough to give me a gun.”
 

Her body tensed, her hands practically itched with the need to grab some form of weaponry. She couldn’t sit here knowing something was coming through those doors with no way to defend herself.
 

“Talk all you want. You’re not getting a gun. Have you had any training?” He smirked in triumph when she shook her head. “There, see? You’d only shoot me or, God forbid, yourself if I gave you one.”

“Fine.”
 

Lillian sat back on her haunches and crossed her arms as she tried to figure out a way to get him to let her have a gun. Her gaze wandered over to the other soldier with them. He studiously avoided her gaze. Great, so none of them would go up against their almighty alpha.

Refusing to look at the hunk of gorgeousness beside her, she studied the wall of the corridor. Her gaze followed the design in the plaster until…with a grin, she pushed off and marched down the corridor.