Styx's Storm (2 page)

PROLOGUE

GENETIC EXPERIMENTATIONS LAB OMEGA SCIENTIFIC HOUSING COMPOUND ANDES MOUNTAINS

The lights were off, the electricity having sputtered out, leaving them to navigate with only the dim emergency lights to see by. Outside, flares of light from the explosions that rocked the labs illuminated the windows. Gunfire and screams echoed, coming closer, filling Storme with a fear so agonizing it shuddered through her body.

"Storme, you have to hide. Don't let anyone find you, do you understand me? No one can find you." Her father helped her slide into the narrow crevice between the walls in the back of her closet.

She stared up at him in terror, aware of her brother working behind him to erase information contained in the computers and on the discs filed along the wall.

"Take this." He grabbed her hand.

The antique sapphire ring her mother had once worn was shoved onto her finger. He had showed her the secrets of the ring days before. The hidden compartment beneath the hollowed out stone and the data chip he had placed here. He had warned her, so many times he had warned her, that if anything happened to him, then she would become the protector of the information contained on that chip.

"Daddy, come with me." Storme could feel panic tightening her chest as the sounds of gunfire, screams and animal rage grew closer to the living area of the genetics research laboratory where her father had worked her entire life.

"No, we can't go with you, baby." Tears filled his tired brown eyes, grief creased his face. "Your brother and I will be fine. Get to the safe house; we'll meet you there after we're certain we've done what has to be done here."

No, they wouldn't meet her. She would never see them again, and she knew it. She watched her brother for long, panicked seconds. She couldn't see his beloved face. The creases that were forming on his forehead and next to his lips. He rarely laughed, though he smiled at her often.

She was only fourteen. She didn't want to face the dark alone. She was frightened of the dark.

"No, don't make me go by myself, Daddy." Sobs were fighting to escape her lips as the tears began to fall.

She stared back at him, seeing the fear and worry in his eyes, the mussed gray hair, the grief he was trying so hard to hide from her. And the courage. She didn't have his courage.

She wasn't strong like her father and her brother were. They faced every day the savage human-animals they had created and trained in the compound behind the houses. They lived with the monsters that Storme had only glimpsed from a distance as they trained. Monsters that could rend flesh with their teeth, that could tear limbs from bodies with only their bare hands. The monsters that howled at night with a savagery, with a horror that haunted Storme's nightmares.

"Storme, be strong for me." He shoved a backpack into her hands before pulling back. "Remember the promises you made me. You swore you would do this, Storme."

Her fists clenched as the panel slammed closed, leaving her in the darkness with the terrifying black void stretching out below her.

She had promised. She had sworn to protect herself and the secrets he had been amassing over the years. Secrets that were to go to one person. A person with no name. A person he had promised would find her, protect her. A mysterious someone who would know what to say, and what to do, to gain her trust.

The information the ring held was all that would save her, all that would save so many innocent people, he had insisted. And he had entrusted her with it.

She tried to step down the narrow steps that led to the tunnel beyond. She did. But as she took the first step, she heard an enraged, savage snarl as an explosion rocked the house.

She almost screamed. Struggling to keep her balance, she pressed her hands tight against the wall and fought to keep from falling down the stairs.

Fear held her motionless, her eyes wide as she stared through the crack in the wall into the bedroom and watched her father as he stared toward the doorway in fear.

"We have to get out of here." His voice wavered as James moved in closer to him, protectively. "The Breeds will come after those of us who created them first."

Storme saw the realization in both her brother's and her father's faces, and she knew that the horror she had always feared was upon them.

"But not those of you who helped them." The voice was guttural, angry.

Storme swallowed tightly at the sound as her fists clenched in the effort to stay in place, to keep from trying to protect her father as well.

She had promised she would run and hide. That she wouldn't endanger herself.

"Where is the girl?"

The girl? Her?

"I sent her away yesterday," her father replied, his voice shaking.

"Because you knew what was coming?"

Her father shook his head. "How could I have known?"

"You thought you were so careful." The voice was filled with fury. "You aided our destruction, JR. You'll pay for betraying us by aiding the Breed sympathizers in this fucking rescue."

"I aided nothing," her father, JR, James Robert, denied.

A harsh laughed filled the room.

"We'll find the girl. No doubt you sent what I need with her. Or did you? Give me that research, JR, and I'll let her live."

"What are you talking about?" Fear was thick, heavy, surrounding her father, her brother, even as Storme felt it stealing her breath.

"I want that data chip."

"What data chip?" Even Storme could hear the nervousness, the lie, in her father's voice.

An animalistic, harsh snarl filled the room as shadows moved. As though there were many, not just one. Dark, brutal shadows, glowing eyes advanced.

Storme stared at the aberration. The merciless eyes, the face that seemed too young, and yet too cruel. And she memorized it. Memorized the creature that she knew would kill what was left of her family.

Her brother jumped in front of their father, to save him, Storme knew. That was James, so protective, so loving. As the Coyote latched onto her brother's fragile shoulders, Storme covered her mouth with her hand to hold back her screams and watched in horror.

Dear, beloved James. He played word games with her, made her laugh, and as she watched in horror one of those horrible monsters grabbed him, bent his head, and tore James's throat out.

Blood sprayed as another explosion outside lit the room with brutal light, displaying the scene in harsh detail.

Bile rose in her throat as it tilted its head back, the face, so like a human's, covered in blood as its lips opened and a howl echoed around her.

They could smell fear. They could smell her. Her father had warned her of that. He had made her swear to protect herself and the secrets he had risked his life to steal.

If she stayed, she was dead. Her brother was already dead, and she knew her father wouldn't survive.

Because of the Breeds. Because of the human animals these scientists had created, trained, and were now turning loose on the world. Breeds, like the one now tasting her brother's blood.

She backed down the stairs. The darkness enfolded her, wrapped around her. She could hear her father screaming, denying that his daughter was there. She was gone. He had sent her to stay with relatives.

He swore he had no information. He stole nothing. His daughter had nothing. He was screaming in pain and fury.

They would know better. They would have smelled her presence in the house if they had passed by it. They were that good. But here, deep beneath the earth, cocooned as though in a grave, she was safe.

The smell of her father's and brother's blood above, the smell of smoke, fear and death would hide her for a little while. And once she was through the tunnel and into the small town beyond where the tunnel exited, she would have a chance to run.

She was alone.

She could feel it.

A strange sense of disassociation filled her, washed over her and stopped the tears. Fear choked her, made it hard to breathe, but her mind felt mercifully numb.

As she felt her way through the drainage tunnel her father had dug into years before, Storme knew he must have foreseen the chance that he and her brother could be caught doing whatever it was they had been doing.

She had known for years that they were frightened of the people they worked for. That they couldn't leave. That only Storme had the ability to travel back and forth from school in America to this small community her family lived within.

The place her mother had died just after Storme's birth.

Had those who had killed her brother killed her mother as well?

This place, these Breeds--because of them, because of her father's loyalty to them, everything she had held dear had been destroyed. They had destroyed everything that was love and security to her.

She shouldn't be alone. Her father and her brother should have come with her. They should have saved themselves and damned the information they were so desperate to destroy.

Information that her father swore would destroy so many innocent Breeds. Were any of those creatures truly innocent?

As she made her way through the damp, muddy tunnel, the sight of her brother's death flashed before her eyes, over and over. The memory of the Coyote's head bending--canines curved and wicked, flashing in the light of the explosions outside and tearing into his throat--sliced through her mind.

There was nothing that could numb that memory. Nothing that could erase it or the nightmare vision that insisted on invading her soul at the thought that her father was suffering the same fate.

Breeds. Killers. Animals. They were monsters. Evil, wicked monsters that man had created, that man was now losing control of, just as her father had warned them they would lose control. The Breeds were turning on their creators, escaping, killing, turning the world into a place of conflict where their very humanity was in question. There was no redemption for the Breeds; they had no mercy, no compassion, just as the other scientists had always warned her father. A Breed was a Breed. A Coyote was still a Breed, and a Coyote had just destroyed her world.

They were without souls.

And now Storme was without family.

As she reached the metal ladder below the drainage gate just outside the small Chilean town, Storme forced herself to find the energy to climb to it and push it open.

The serene calm she had seen in the town during short visits didn't exist now. People were pouring out of their homes, standing and watching the display of light and explosions on the mountain above their homes.

Storme slipped silently along the edge of the crowd, her gaze locked on the mountain. Howls echoed from above, enraged and filled with fury as gunfire and explosions continued to rip through the night.

Moving quickly, hurriedly, she began to run through the shadows to the house outside of town. The one her father had promised he would meet her at.

He wouldn't be there. It wouldn't matter how long she waited, he would never be there. Only death would find her there if she waited, and she had promised her father she wouldn't allow death to find her.

As she reached the house, she didn't wait around. Racing into the small attached garage, she threw the canvas from the old, rusted pickup that sat there.

It looked like shit, but she knew it would run. It was strong and fast; the tinkering her brother had done with the motor had ensured that whoever drove it would have the best chance possible of escape.

The passports were still in the glove box, the small box of cash was still hidden in the back of the seat. Birth certificates, records needed to hide their identities if all escaped together--everything was still there.

Carefully, she pulled her father's and brother's papers from the glove box, pushed them into the backpack, then shoved the key in the ignition.

She knew how to drive. She knew how to shoot the powerful gun strapped to the door, and she knew how to fight. She was only fourteen, but her father and brother had been planning this for years.

They had taught her how to survive in case the worst that could happen, happened. As though they had known, despite their assurances to her, that they wouldn't be with her.

As she accelerated from the garage, lights off, nothing but dust moving in her wake, she was aware of the heli-jets lifting off from the mountain.

Breeds or scientists, she didn't know which. Whoever it was, they were no friends of hers. She had no friends, she had no family, there was no one to protect her until whoever her father had been working with found her.

If he found her. And when he did, he damned well better be sure he had proof of who he was, because Storme knew in her soul that she could never trust anyone after this.

Everyone was the enemy.

TEN YEARS LATER HAVEN, WOLF/COYOTE BREED COMPOUND

Jonas strode into the small meeting room, paused and stared at the scientists and the Enforcer staring back at him. Dr. Jeffrey Amburg was a human genome advanced design scientist. He had been involved in more than twenty-five years of Council-backed Breed genetic research. He'd created Breeds, his experiments had killed Breeds, and he was here, in Haven, for the first time. It was the first time in two years that he had been allowed out of the specially secured rooms he had been confined to after Jonas had captured him in Buffalo Gap, Virginia.

Dr. Nikki Armani, Wolf Breed genome specialist and physician, was also human. She too had worked for many years with the Council. The difference was, Nikki had conspired from day one to find freedom for the Breeds she had cared for when they returned from missions wounded and nearly dead. Or when the experiments conducted on them had weakened them to the point of death.

Dr. Elyiana Morrey was the exception here. She was a Breed. A Lion Breed created to treat her own kind. Training had begun with her from conception, introducing her in vitro to the complicated process of manufacturing and repairing the often complicated Breed physiology. She was both physician as well as scientist, and her breakthroughs in the mysterious mating heat afflicting the Breeds had given them the additional time needed to continue hiding the phenomenon from the world in general.