Violet (The Silver Series Book 4) (19 page)

“
Then we're coming with
you,” Rafe replied firmly.

Jaze and Jet nodded, but the agent spoke
behind us. “They have to go alone. You'll be killed on sight and
then where will that get you?”

Jaze frowned at him. “So you expect us to
let you drop our friends in the middle of a werewolf concentration
camp so they can blow it up at the risk of getting themselves
killed in the process?”

Agent Sullivan nodded. “Exactly.”

Jet's hands clenched and unclenched and it
was obvious it took all of his control to keep from laying into the
agent. Agent Sullivan took a step back toward the safety of his
limo. “You have to believe me when I say I don't like this anymore
than you do.”

“
We don't have to believe
anything,” Kaynan replied, but the fight that colored his voice in
the limo had faded to resignation.

“
Werewolves are pack
animals,” the agent said quietly. “You do whatever you can to save
your pack.” He looked at me. “We need to take you both to our
temporary location a few miles from here for preparation. Your
friends can come with us if it'll keep them from decimating our
convoy again.”

Rafe glared at him, his arm protectively
around my shoulder. I wanted more than anything to phase and run
with him back to our forest, but I knew I wouldn't be able to relax
until they agreed to leave us alone. I wouldn't leave my parents in
their hands and I owed it to the wolves to do whatever I could to
get them back. Rafe lifted something small in his hand and slipped
it over my neck. I looked down to see the necklace Kaynan had given
Mom.

I gave Rafe a grateful smile and blinked
back tears. “Let's get this over with.” Agent Sullivan climbed back
into the limo and we followed solemnly, leaving the team of
Hunters, werewolves, agents, police officers, ambulance drivers,
and firemen to sort themselves out on the bloody, dark street.

Chapter 15

“
What's in those dump
trucks?” I asked in the microphone on my headgear. I leaned closer
to the window to get a better look. Rows of green trucks drove
below us toward the hunched compound in the dusty Nevada
desert.

“
Bodies, as far as we can
surmise,” Agent Sullivan's voice replied in my headset from the
seat in front of me. He didn't bother to look down at the
trucks.

“
Why do they need bodies?”
The number of deceased people it would take to fill a dump truck,
let alone the convoy below the helicopter, made me
nauseous.

“
Experiments like the ones
in which you were created,” came Sullivan's reply.

“
That's just wrong,” Kaynan
said. “Can't you pull them over or something?”

The agent shook his head. “No grounds, no
warrant. And they just keep on coming. Our best hope to stopping
them is you.”

Kaynan hit his head against the window. The
pilot glanced back at him as if about to tell him not to break his
headgear, but Agent Sullivan shook his head before the man could
speak. I set a hand on Kaynan's arm and he put his fingers over
mine without looking.

***

“
Remind me again, what's to
keep them from just shooting us?” Kaynan asked in a tight
voice.

We walked slowly from the drop off point to
the dune-colored building slumped on the sand like a slug.

“
Supposedly we'll blow
ourselves to smithereens before they can do anything,” I replied
softly to keep my voice from shaking.

“
Uh-huh,” Kaynan replied,
his voice thick with doubt.

We stopped in front of what we guessed was
the door. Nothing happened for a few minutes, then a voice crackled
over an intercom system, “Kaynan and Colleen Anderson?”

“
Werewolf pizza delivery,”
Kaynan replied dryly.

I rolled my eyes, but a thick metal door
slid open to reveal a small, empty room. Kaynan glanced at me, then
stepped inside. I followed him in and the door slid shut behind us
with a resounding thud.

“
Nice,” Kaynan said. He ran
a hand along the metal door in front of us, but there wasn't a
handle. He cleared his throat. “Do we need to say our names again
or are you going to ask us another ridiculous question?”

The intercom crackled and a voice said
drolly, “I am Dr. Verus, Dr. Tannin's understudy.”

“
Wonderful,” Kaynan growled
under his breath.

The man either didn't hear him or didn't
care. He continued, “It’s clear that you have come fully
armed.”

Kaynan glanced down at his vest. A bright
red light blinked at the shoulder and the C-4 was visible. “Oh,
he's a bright one.”

I looked around for cameras and found one
wedged in the corner on the ceiling. “We've come to stop you,” I
said to the camera.

Dr. Verus laughed as though the idea was no
more than an annoying flea. “Why don't you see what we're working
on first? I can guarantee it'll be worth your while.” He paused
meaningfully. “Of course, you'll have to remove your vests.”

“
And if we refuse?” I
asked.

“
We can either wait until
you fall asleep, which I know could be a long time given your
insomniac condition, Colleen, and then we'll remove the vests
ourselves or move you outside the facility, or we can simply shoot
you in the head without giving you time to activate the
bombs.”

Kaynan lifted his eyebrows at me in an
I-told-you-so manner. He grimaced. “You know, I'm tired of no-win
situations.” He unclipped the vest the way Agent Sullivan showed us
and set it carefully on the floor. “I'm also tired of having my
life on the line ever since you guys turned me into a
werewolf.”

“
We didn't turn you into a
werewolf,” Dr. Verus said in a lecturing tone that reminded me very
much of Dr. Tannin. “We merged human DNA with werewolf DNA, your
girlfriend's, if I have my facts straight, and came out with a true
werewolf clone. It wasn't magic, it was science.”

Kaynan looked like he was ready to hit
someone, and it echoed my feelings exactly. “Let us in.”

“
I'm waiting for Colleen to
remove her vest.”

Kaynan glanced at me, but I couldn't fight
the heavy feeling in my stomach at the thought of going through the
door. I shook my head. “I feel better this way, thank you.”

Dr. Verus' tone lightened so that it sounded
like he was talking to a small child. “Now, Colleen, we have no
reason to hurt you. You both are our finest creations, and we're
only happy that you have come home.” Kaynan rolled his eyes, but
the doctor continued, “Having you work with us will help us make
drastic strides in the cloning effort. Your DNA samples from the
Development Center were destroyed in the blast, and we have been
forced to work with inferior strains; but new samples will help us
reenact the cloning process.” When I made no move to comply, he
sighed. “You and Kaynan are anomalies, flukes, a miraculous hiccup
that we have been unable to repeat with other humans.”

“
The bodies you're trucking
in,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster.

“
Yes.” Dr. Verus replied.
“Unfortunately, no one has taken to the DNA coupling like both of
you. We've had some near misses,” his tone indicated that the
outcomes were gruesome, “But with you here, we can begin to
understand our failures and learn from them.”

“
I'll say,” Kaynan replied
in a soft undertone. He nodded at me and I sighed, then shrugged
out of the vest. I set it on the floor next to Kaynan's and we
walked to the door hoping that the camera couldn't see the extra
inch or so in our shoes that made us taller.

The door slid open and men in navy blue and
yellow uniforms filed out. Two men took the vests and walked them
straight out the front door to the desert while the rest waited for
us to pass, then fell in behind. A shudder ran through my body at
the sound of the door shutting and the multitude of feet on the
sandy floor.

Kaynan reached for my hand and I
concentrated on his familiar hold; the shuddering subsided and I
focused on our surroundings.

We followed two guards along a long, sloped
hallway that grew cooler the further down we went. We turned left
at a junction, past several doors sealed so tight no scent escaped
them, then entered a doorway on the right into a room scattered
with couches and plush Persian rugs. The guards left, shutting the
door behind us.

Kaynan and I stared at the fine furnishings,
elaborate impressionist paintings, and gold-leafed scroll work
along the walls.

“
Did you think we were
animals, living in stones caves and dirt?” Dr. Verus asked from a
couch facing away from us.

I bristled at the shot. “I pictured fire and
brimstone,” I replied before I could stop myself.

Dr. Verus rose and turned, “A suitable home
for demons. Touché.”

He smiled and held out a hand. “I'm glad to
finally make your acquaintance.”

The difference between his cold, clammy
looking hand and Agent Sullivan's trust-inspiring honesty was so
stark neither Kaynan nor I moved. Dr. Verus dropped his hand and
went on as though he didn't notice the slight. “Why don't I give
you a tour of our facility?”

He led the way to a side door and we
followed him out into a carpeted hallway. The two guards from
earlier fell in on either side of us. “The youth center is directly
below us. We'll visit there first.”

My heart slowed. “You experiment on
children?”

He nodded. “Turns out they are more
adaptable. Our closest achievements have been with children.”

I felt so sick I wanted to vomit. We stepped
into a gold-gilded elevator and I hesitated about ruining the
beautiful red carpet, then I remembered where I was and almost
hoped it would happen. We reached the next floor down and had to
step out before my stomach made up its mind.

Dr. Verus led us through another hallway,
this one carpeted in pink and blue with doorways painted the same
color. We stopped at a viewing window and the nausea turned to
full-blown horror. Children, healthy human children, stacked
blocks, slid down a tiny slide, and crawled over colorful alphabet
mats. They wore pink or blue depending on their gender, and each
bore a colored medical bracelet like in hospitals.

“
What are you doing with
them?” I whispered.

Dr. Verus gave a predatory smile.
“Insurance, my dear. Everyone has it these days.” He indicated a
small boy close to the window who played with a plastic green
horse. “Also, we get tired of the dead bodies. They smell, you
know. It's nice to work on the living and hope they are still
living when you're done.”

“
How many children do you
have here?” Kaynan asked through tightly clenched teeth.

The doctor shrugged. “A couple dozen. It's
hard to keep track.”

I forced myself to ask, “Are any of the
experiments successful?”

Dr. Verus shook his head and it was all I
could do not to phase and tear out his throat like the wolves had
done to the elk. “Not yet. We've only just started, but so far the
mortality rate is one hundred percent.”

A growl ripped from Kaynan’s throat and he
couldn’t control himself anymore. He grabbed the doctor by the
throat and threw him across the hall. Dr. Verus slammed into the
opposite door and slumped to the floor. The two guards grabbed
their guns, but my instincts kicked in and I grabbed one gun and
slammed it into the temple of the first man. He collapsed at my
feet just as I punched the second guard in the stomach, then
elbowed him in the back when he doubled over. He landed on the
ground and I smacked the barrel of the gun against his skull.

Kaynan looked at me as though I was from a
different planet. I rose slowly and stared at my hands. The gun
trembled in my fingers and I dropped it as if it was a hot iron.
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Kaynan said.

I nodded numbly, amazed at how strong being
a werewolf had made me. Kaynan pulled both the guards and Dr. Verus
into an empty room, then shut the door behind them.

“
What are you doing?” I
asked, horrified. “We have to find the way out!”

“
We're going back the way
we came in.”

He grabbed the doorknob and forced it to
turn. It resisted, then gave with a snap. “Come on, kids,” he said
in his most amiable voice. “We're going to a playground.”

The older kids immediately stopped what they
were doing and ran to the door. Several of the smaller ones
watched, but didn't move in our direction. He instructed the older
children to carry the younger ones and proceeded to the next
door.

“
What makes you think
they're going to just let us all walk out of here?” I asked,
hurrying after him with two children in my arms.

“
We still have bombs,
remember?” He lifted a shoe to remind me, paused a second, then set
down the little boy with the green horse and took off both shoes.
He ran back up the hall, then returned barefooted, a grim smile on
his face.

“
What did you
do?”

“
We don't need both sets,
remember? Let's just say I gave Dr. Verus a chance to learn from
his failures before he's blown to bits.”

I grimaced at the image and opened the next
door. More children stared at us and my heart sank further. My
limbs started to shake with the urge to phase and escape everything
Dr. Verus' facility represented, to escape the torture, the walls,
the experiments, and the stares of haunted children who had seen
their playmates led away to never return.