Of Royal Descent (32 page)

I heard the elevator ding
, and I shoved Chuck through the entrance, closing the door behind us.  It was some type of storage unit.  Odds and ends lined the many shelves of the massive room.  Large equipment was pushed up against the walls.  I ushered Chuck into a small alcove between what appeared to be outdated models of individual containment chambers for royalty and vaulted myself to the ceiling.

The door nudged opened
, and three footmen with rifles up made their way inside.  I scurried soundlessly above their heads amid shadow before pouncing into the middle of the group and slashing them apart effortlessly.  A gun fired, and I realized a fourth guard stood just outside the door.  The bullet was not from his rifle, but from Chuck's, who had taken the man by surprise.  His face was frozen with shock as he crumpled to the floor.

We lost no time moving further into the mini-warehouse
, and I broke into a wide smile when I noticed a dumbwaiter cut into the wall along the back of the room.  It looked old and seldom-used, but I only saw the potential it held in getting us to the floor beneath.  There was no way one of us, let alone both of us, were going to fit inside the cage.  But the shaft?  Maybe.

With some elbow grease, I was able to dislodge the base of the lift and expos
e the passageway below.  Good thing I wasn't claustrophobic.  It was going to be a squeeze.  I focused on my safe word, shading into human form, and making my body as small as possible.

"I'll go first," I said in a whisper.

Climbing over the edge, I lowered myself down headfirst into the confined space.  There was no need for either of us to worry about a free fall.  Even Chuck, without my wall-climbing abilities, would not have been capable of falling down such a cramped space.  After some progress, I felt the tunnel shake as Chuck climbed in after me and I fervently hoped we wouldn't be discovered until we had at least emerged from the other end.  Elbow in front of elbow, I army-crawled lower. 

Eventually, we arrived at the bottom of the passageway.  A small gate was drawn shut in front of the exit portal.  With some shifting on my behalf, I was able to outstretch my right hand
, and the gate crumpled under pressure.  I slid through to the floor and turned to help Chuck.

"Why did you come feet first?" I asked quietly, amused upon seeing Chuck's Converse sneakers dangling from the shaft.  I pulled him the rest of the way out.

"I figured if anything attacked me, I'd want to see it coming," he said seriously.

I smiled.  "I guess that would make sense, you know...
If you could die."

Chuck shifted his weight uneasily.

"But you can't die,
right?
"  I suddenly felt alarmed.

"Yeah, about that," Chuck ran his hand through his hair.

"You said you couldn't die.  You said you were
better than cured
!" I shouted in a whisper.

"I'm sorry I lied, okay?  But would you have brought me if I hadn't?"

"Do you have a freaking death wish?"

Chuck stared at the ground.  "You should know by now, I don't abandon my friends."

Something about the way he said "abandon" made me shudder.  He was referring to my less than cordial good-bye speech to him while I was under the influence of the second shade.  I was still angry with him for lying to me, but now I understood his latest bout of recklessness was partially my fault.  I exhaled.  Chuck had gone from being an asset to a liability on this endeavor. Now I would be distracted.  He would need protection from Bradbury, lab coats, security guards, MZs, royals, and quite possibly me.  And I was starving.

I squared my shoulders.  There would
be time for regrets later.  What I needed was a plan.  The room we had dropped into was a small mechanical room, and I felt like a sitting target in such close quarters. 

"Stay close to me," I mouthed before shading to royalty. 

Chuck removed his rifle from over his shoulder and readied it in front of him while we crept toward the door.  I eased it open and peered through the crack.  It was hard to suppress a laugh. 

We had made our way to the pit - the meeting place of the royals.  If we were to have any potential allies in this war, this is where we
were going to find them.  I glanced up to check the observatory deck.  One lab coat sat behind the glass, focused on a computer terminal screen. 

Grabbing Chuck's arm, I
slid from behind the door, into the walkway, and around the massive cage.  I trebled softly, calling to the royals.  I looked back at the clinic employee.  He hadn't noticed us.

No answering call sounded
, and I momentarily panicked. 
What if they weren't in the pit?  What if they were in their individual cages somewhere?

But then, there it
was - a soft response from the overhead branches of the trees.

"So you're the reason the guards have been doing rounds every thirty minutes.  You've filled out well," a female royal trebled to me softly.

"When are they due back?" I asked.

"Any
time now."

From my previous experience with the cage, I knew the entrances were evenly spaced along the bottom and operated via a trip release mounted onto the individual cages.  Looking around the room, I could see one individual cage.  However, it was sitting directly in view of the observatory deck.  I didn't think my luck would hold out long enough to swipe it without being noticed.  Not that it really mattered
.  The cage doors lifting would be loud enough to alert the lab coat anyway.  I was going to have a make my decision quickly.

I called out again to the royal hidden in the trees.  "
Is the entire colony with you?  I'm going to let you out."

She dropped from her hiding spot and crouched by the side of the cage.  "Why would you do that?" she asked.

Chuck instinctively stumbled backward in response to her unexpected appearance, and I grabbed out to steady him.

"I need your help.  I promise to set you all free if you help me save my father and grandfather.  Oh, and you'll have promise not to eat my friend," I added with a nod in Chuck's direction.

"Deal.  Quickly, they'll be here any second.  I'll round the others," she said before speeding off into the dark.

I shaded to human form just long enough to relay instructions for Chuck to follow my lead.  I slithered along the walkway with him creeping behind me.  We made our
way to the cage, and as I began pushing it back to the pit, a deafening alarm began to blare.  I didn't waste time looking into the observatory deck.  I wasn't concerned about a single unarmed scientist behind glass. 

I shoved the cage into the closest entrance point
, and the door began to lift.  Chuck staggered back in fear as royals emerged from the darkness and jockeyed for first place.  I grabbed Chuck's rifle from his shoulder and jammed the door to the pit before pulling the individual cage away. 

Guards began to
file into the room as royals began to pour out of the cage.  Upon sizing up the situation, the guards began to fall over one another as the front line attempted to back peddle. 

"Turn back!" one of them screamed. 

The royals began to leap upon the unlucky front-liners, and the doors were sealed from the outside.  It happened so fast, the guards never even got off one shot.  They lay in a distorted, bloody heap under the feet of royals, who crouched, eating their fill from the remains. 

I hadn't moved from my place beside Chuck.  My first priority was protecting my friend
, but the violence I'd witnessed had my adrenaline pounding and produced a slightly euphoric effect.  My teeth ached to join in the mayhem, but still, I stood between Chuck and the royals.  After all,
what was the word of a zombie worth?
  A promise not to hurt Chuck from one member of the group didn't mean I had the word of all.

I scanned the crowd but Dylan wasn't among them.

Bradbury's merry voice filled the air, "Welcome back, Doyle.  I'm glad to see you've joined us."

Everyone directed their gaze to the glass-enclosed deck above us.  Bradbury, looking victorious, stood at th
e intercom with a caged Dylan a few feet from him.  Terror stabbed at my chest.

"What?  You didn't think I would leave my bait so carelessly exposed, did you?" asked Bradbury, reading my expression.

I couldn't answer, not in either language.

"Oh.  You did," he con
tinued sympathetically.  "That is sad indeed.  I wish you had listened to me the first time I told you I always get what I want.  It could have saved us both some heartache.  You see, I now have what I want - all my royals in good health and secured position.  The shaft you used so cleverly to gain entrance to this level has since been welded over.  All that is left now is for you to recognize you've been bested and shepherd your brethren back into the pit.  Dylan remains alive, and we all live happily ever after.  And to show the extent of my good will, I will even make comfortable accommodations for your friend, Mr. Johnson, to live out the remainder of his days as," Bradbury paused to scratch his beard, "I don't know… a type of pet." 

Throughout his speech, Dylan shrieked for me not to trust Edgar.

I ran my tongue over my teeth before shading to human form. 

"Are you through?"  I asked, hatred seeping from my pores.  He smiled and nodded. 

During Bradbury’s speech, the royals had begun to form a circle around me and Chuck.  I felt no threat radiating from them.  Instead they were reacting instinctively, just as I had done with Chuck.  They were protecting their family.  A couple corpses were beginning to reanimate, and it was William that barked orders for them to stay still in order to protect my friend.

"
The thing is, I don't think you'll kill Dylan," I said with an air of satisfaction.  "Because if you do, you've lost your bargaining chip, haven't you?"

"Youth," Bradbury answered, shaking his head sorrowfully. 
"So full of misguided confidence.  If you don't cage yourselves immediately, I
will
kill Dylan.  And if you still don't cage yourselves, I will starve you all until your friend dies.  And if you still don't cage yourselves, well... I believe there's a little girl back home in northern Tennessee you'd hate to see anything happen to." 

I fought the urge to shade.

"And that one would hurt me most of all.  I would love to have a royal pheromone-bonded couple.  It's not been seen before and would grant us a deeper look into the inner workings of the science of pheromones.  You are aware she has undergone the surgery, aren't you?" he continued.

"Without the injection, it was pointless," I responded.

Bradbury's eyes twinkled.  "Who said she doesn't possess the injection?"

It felt as if someone had knocked the breath out of me.

"We noticed a syringe missing the night she disappeared.  It would appear Adeline has not been completely honest with you.  Choosing to become royalty is now completely at her discretion.  Oh, don't look so grief-stricken.  This is good news.  I am willing to extend the olive branch of protection to her as well, provided you act accordingly.  Now, run along," he said, brushing his right hand forward in the direction of the pit, "so that we can end all of the unpleasantness."

No one moved.

Bradbury sighed.  "How many people die at your hands is up to you.  I would prefer not to kill one of my royals, but we all must make sacrifices for the greater good."  He raised a gun to Dylan's head and I shaded to royalty.

"You have ten seconds to make your decision," Bradbury relayed into the speaker.

Chuck grabbed a rifle from the floor and shot at the glass barrier, sending the bullet ricocheting back into the room.  We crouched and Bradbury chuckled.

"Eight seconds," came his response.

At William's command, the colony swarmed the glass barrier and began a combined effort of locating the weak point. 

"Six seconds," Bradbury spoke calmly, unconcerned with the royals beating against the window.

A flutter of movement behind Edgar's head caught my eye.  There, just sliding free of the air vent, was one of my birds, the raven, riddled with the MZ virus. 

"Four seconds."

I wailed for the bird to attack, and immediately it went for Bradbury's eyes.  He dropped the gun and thrashed at the raven.  Emboldened by the new development, I joined the colony in raging against the barrier.  There was a loud groan and a small crack began to splinter and skip its way down the middle of the glass.

I looked to see how my black bird was faring and found it choking down one of Edgar's eyes as it hovered above his head.  Bradbury howled in pain as he tried to staunch the flow of blood oozing from his eye socket.

"No more!" he screamed and grabbed the raven, managing to get a grip around its neck despite the mad thrashing of its beak and claws.  He reared back and smashed the skull into the wall, letting the lifeless body of the bird fall to the floor.  Turning, he saw the frame of the barrier begin to buckle.  Without pausing long enough to grab his gun, I watched as the normally jolly, fat man booked it around the corner as the glass gave way and the colony leapt onto the observatory deck.  No one pursued him as William had not given the order.  Instead, he released Dylan from his cage.