He’ll be here, I assured myself. All I had to do was wait. When he entered the room, I would know it. I would feel his vibrations, just as I felt him when he’d entered Dallas’s hospital room. Just as I’d felt the hum of his energy in the alleyway, and when we’d worked together against Atlanna—and when we kissed.
The memories made me shiver. So many emotions skittered through my mind. Anticipation. Dread. Uncertainty.
Desire.
As if I’d conjured him, a spark of awareness pricked and sizzled along my nerve endings. Soon after, the sweet scent of Onadyn filled my nostrils. Every muscle in my body tensed. My shoulders straightened, and I went on instant alert.
He was here.
I reached in my pocket and withdrew a small black box. On the inside was a single button. I pressed it, knowing a force field was erected outside.
“Don’t let anyone past these doors,” Jack commanded me. “I’m calling in reinforcements.” With that, he stormed away.
I leveled a glance at Jaxon and mouthed, “Kyrin’s here.”
He, too, straightened. “Where? Do you see him?”
“No. But I will.” I shoved my way through the crowd and waltzed upstairs, checking twice to make sure I wasn’t followed. I endured an ID scan, then stepped into the main observation room. Two guards were seated in front of monitors, eyeing me warily. “Shut off the alarm, lock every door to every room, then broadcast me all over the building.”
The guards glanced up at me in surprise. We’d trained for a hypothetical situation requiring a lockdown, but this was the first practical application.
“Do it,” I barked.
One of the men pushed a series of buttons. “Doors locked and systems ready for broadcast,” he said.
Speaking into a mouthpiece, I said, “Agents, arrest every citizen present.”
“These protesters are humans,” one of the guards said. “We can’t arrest them unless they aid an alien in a crime.”
“That’s an order,” I snapped into the mouthpiece.
11:55P . M .
Waiting for the unknown was hell for someone like me. Impatient and anxious, tense and ready, I wanted this night over with, the victory mine.
Jaxon and I stood at the edge of the foyer, watching as hunters continued to round up and band each and every protester and reporter present. A few men and women raced to the doors in a futile attempt to escape. Others fought. But every damn one of them kept chanting, “Kill hunters, not aliens.” Blah, blah, blah, that’s what I heard.
The protesters outside the building were being arrested as well. They’d thrown bricks at our metal-shielded windows and had tried to bust down our doors. And by God, they were going to pay for it.
Intermediately, the press launched questions at me. “Why are you murdering Lilla en Arr?” “How many murders does this make for you? Two hundred? Three?” “Do you possess a heart, Agent Snow?” “How are you able to sleep at night?”
I ignored them all. Yeah, I’d killed a lot of aliens over the years, and I wasn’t sorry. I did what I had to do for human safety.
One of the reporters, who had yet to be banded, had his voice recorder pointed in my direction. “Some have begun to call you and your men the Angels of Death. How does it feel to actually live up to your name?”
“Shut the f**k up,” I said, then paused. Kyrin, too, had called me the Angel of Death. I had to wonder if this man had heard it from him. “Lock this one up separately from the others,” I told one of the agents. “I want to talk with him privately.”
I stepped up onto the dais, straining to see Kyrin. I still felt his presence, but I had yet to catch a glimpse of him.
12:21P . M .
The crowd had been subdued, banded, and ushered into a straight line against the wall. I did a head count. There were over eighty men and women here.
Kyrin wasn’t among them.
Where the hell was he? I shifted from one boot to the other. Had he fled? No, no. His energy still purred inside me. He was here; he had to be here.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. God, I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to do next. I couldn’t very well broadcast his name over the speaker and ask if he’d like to meet me for coffee in sector twelve.
Then…the second alarm erupted at high volume, a staccato wail of disharmony. “Breach in sector five,” a computerized female voice calmly acknowledged. “Unknown alien entry.”
I froze. The blood drained from my head. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Somehow Kyrin had bypassed our defenses and actually made it into cell check-in.
CHAPTER 13
“Stay here,” I shouted to the hunters trying to subdue the increasingly frightened protesters.
“Keep them calm.”
To Jaxon, I said, “It’s him.” We leapt into action. As we raced through the building, we remained side by side, our arms pumping in unison. The walls beside us became a white blur, an ever-constant sea of motion. A bead of sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, and the scent of fear rocked me.
The fear was my own.
Kyrin was smart. I knew that. There was also a distinct possibility that he was immortal. Yet even still, I doubted he was able to walk through metal-braced walls. So how had he slipped past security? How had he bypassed locks, motion detectors, fingerprint IDs, heat sensors, eye scanners, and weight-sensitive floor tiles? Molecular transportation? Then why not take Lilla and go?
If he actually rescued Lilla…
Only the bolts and eye scanners slowed Jaxon’s and my progress. When we at last passed them, I quickened my step, flying past agents who diligently hastened toward sector five. I had to get there first.
“If he nabs Lilla,” Jaxon said, putting voice to my fears, “we’re in deep shit.”
“God, I know.”
We reached our destination, the only entrance to the cells, and endured another retinal scan. The door buzzed consent, and we shoved our way inside…only to discover the thick metal entryway to the cells closed and secured, the cell guard asleep at his post. Asleep? With this noise? Not hardly.
Jaxon had the same idea and nodded. “I’ve got your back.”
I checked the slumped man’s pulse. Too rapid for restful slumber. Definitely not a natural sleep. Either drug-induced, or the man was under mind control.
“Kyrin’s been here,” I said.
Jaxon cursed under his breath.
A sense of foreboding swept through my veins. “I don’t like this,” I muttered. “Let’s get inside and guard Lilla’s door.”