Taken by Fire Read online

  Both men had let their guard down too easily. Devlin should’ve known that no man or woman spawned from Alek could be totally trusted.

  He guessed that had to include him as well, even though it twisted his gut to think that way. Because this man in front of him … he’d killed Dev’s biological mother after she gave Dev up to his adoptive parents. Alek had caught her, and no doubt her death hadn’t been pleasant. Years later, he’d used a brutal mind-rape on Devlin, which allowed all of ACRO and her agents to be exposed to the great evil Itor was.

  One of the most evil men Dev knew was his biological father.

  Getting past that would never be easy. Getting out of Alek’s grasp could prove to be impossible.

  Alek closed his eyes in concentration and then opened them. “You’re worried that Melanie sold you out. That I can get ACRO secrets easily now. That you’ve betrayed your entire organization by putting your faith in the wrong woman. That you know no good can come from your biological family.”

  “Always trust your gut, Dev,” Mel said softly. “That’s what Alek taught me.” She shifted, easing away from Dev, which was wise, because he really wanted to strangle her. “Father, I’ll tell you what I know about ACRO—and it’s a lot—in exchange for my life. I know you don’t want Phoebe dead.”

  “Phoebe doesn’t have to die for what I have planned for you.” Alek strolled over to the wet bar, opened a drawer, and removed a leather box. “I’ve given you so many chances, Melanie. Because you’re my daughter, I’ve allowed you freedom and luxuries. But when this is over, you’ll have none of that. Your time in that body will be spent in chains, and I’ll make sure whoever I assign to watch over you knows that he can enjoy you as much as he likes.”

  “I told you,” Melanie said, her voice trembling with desperation, “I’ll tell you everything I know. Please. Just … promise not to punish me. Promise, and I’ll tell you what I know about ACRO’s plans for the attack today. If I don’t, Itor will fall, and if ACRO gets hold of me, they won’t just torture me, they’ll kill me. Which means your precious Phoebe will die too. Ask Devlin.”

  Alek didn’t have to ask. He could read Dev’s mind on the matter and Mel was right. Dev would kill her on the spot himself if given the opportunity.

  Fuck. Devlin needed to stop thinking about all this shit. Distract Alek so he couldn’t read his mind so easily—Dev had practiced his own form of a mind shield, but it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as the one the ACRO psychics used when they linked their thoughts with him, and it required a hell of a lot of concentration.

  Taking a deep, calming breath, he put it into place, building it slowly while Alek was busy. Keep him busy. “Tell me more about my mother.”

  There was a long, tense silence as Alek opened the box, palmed an object inside, and walked over to Mel. “What would you like to know?” He gripped her arm and injected her with a syringe filled with green liquid.

  “Why did she leave you?”

  Straightening, Alek smiled. “Because I’m a bastard. Like father, like son.”

  “And daughter,” Devlin muttered, and Mel laughed—laughed—next to him.

  “Devlin, I thought you knew better than to trust anyone from Itor. Especially me.” And just like that, Dev knew Mel was gone, Phoebe in her place. “Alek, maybe we should let him watch the fireworks? It’s time, isn’t it?”

  “See, Devlin,” Alek said, as he hit a button on some sort of touchpad mounted to the wall, “that’s the kind of forward thinking I appreciate in my offspring.”

  A wall panel slid back, revealing a large flat-screen TV, on which was a feed from London’s bustling Trafalgar Square.

  “I hate England,” Phoebe said. “So this is going to be very amusing.”

  “Agreed.” Alek glanced at his watch. “In exactly nineteen minutes, my 2012 machine is going to perform a test run and send a killing concentration of gamma rays into London. And you have a front-row seat. We’ll make it a family night.”

  “You sick fuck,” Dev growled, and then a familiar tingle of awareness washed over him, and he felt the soft brush of Gabe’s fingers on his wrists.

  Excellent. In a moment he’d be free. The catch was that if Alek decided to go on an exploratory mission inside Dev’s head between now and then, both he and Gabe were dead men.

  There were times when Phoebe hated her father. And then he’d go and do something that made her all warm and squishy with the nearest thing she could feel to love.

  Maybe it was love. She wasn’t sure. The closest she’d been to the emotion was a few years ago, when she’d slept with an Itor agent named Jacques, and during the month they’d been together, she’d lost interest in all other bed partners. But then he’d gone and screwed some waitress.

  Phoebe had killed the waitress instantly, but had let Jacques linger in agony in a hospital burn unit for three weeks before he died.

  Hell hath no fury like a woman who can scorch.

  And thanks to Alek injecting her with the antidote they’d developed to counteract the suppressant, Phoebe was now out and ready to do some of that scorching on Dev.

  Strangely, though, she could feel Mel in the background, almost as if her sister was knocking on a door. Phoebe couldn’t hear the knocks, but she could feel their vibration. Annoying, but Phoebe had another sibling to deal with, so Mel would have to wait.

  “Oh, brother,” she said sweetly, as Alek released her from her bonds, “you are going to die very, very painfully.” She stood, rubbing her wrists. “After we watch every living thing in London reduced to a smoking pile of radiated ash, of course.”

  “You sick bastards,” Dev growled. Such a broken record.

  Alek shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to kill those people. I have to.” He poured himself a glass of whiskey, neat. “Now, your sister … she enjoys killing. A little too much. I think a few of her recreational activities have caused some damage.” He tapped his temple. “Here.”

  Phoebe schooled her expression to hide the twinge of hurt. “Everything I’ve learned has been from you—” Her words were cut off as his backhanded strike slammed into her mouth.

  “I never taught you to kill indiscriminately.”

  She almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she dabbed blood from her lips and glared at Dev. Surely it was his presence that was making their father so testy. It was definitely making Phoebe testy. That, and the fact that Melanie had stepped up her protest at being locked out, and was now a constant thud against the inside of Phoebe’s skull. Figured that she’d choose this moment to grow some balls.

  Alek sipped his drink. “Like I said, it’s not that I want to kill the Londoners. I’m not a monster, despite what you may think, Devlin. But I have to perform a test run on my machine, and when I took aim at the world map, London got the dart in its stiff upper lip.” He assessed Dev with eyes that matched his son’s, and Phoebe had to bite back a snarl of jealousy that her asshole brother had gotten more of their father’s features than she had. “Look at it this way: Scientists perform horribly cruel tests on animals, but they create medicines and medical procedures that help mankind. This is the same thing. Ultimately, I’ll be saving lives with this test. I’ll work out any glitches we find, so that when 2012 comes, I can be sure that my machine will absorb the gamma rays that would otherwise destroy all life on earth. I’ll then be able to concentrate the power, end wars, genocide—”

  “For a price,” Dev snapped. “You’ll sell death to the highest bidder. This has nothing to do with wanting to save mankind.”

  “Of course it does.” Alek swirled the amber liquor in his glass, and why the hell didn’t he hit Dev for mouthing off, the way he had Phoebe? “If mankind dies, where does that leave me?”

  Snarling silently, Phoebe wheeled around to flip on the outside monitors, wanting to know how the battle was going. As she reached for the switches, a blow came out of nowhere, striking her in the kidney, and suddenly, Dev was up and crashing into Alek, and she was figh
ting with someone she couldn’t see.

  Gritting her teeth against the pain from the sucker punch, she struck out, heard a grunt, and felt her fist slam against a wall of muscle. Quickly, she released a stream of fire. Didn’t hit Mr. Invisible, but she set Alek’s couch on fire. A fist sank into her gut, a fucking low blow, sending her stumbling backward. As she caught herself on the edge of the bar, she let loose another blast of flame, and this time was rewarded by a yelp of pain and the hiss of fire burning clothing and skin.

  And still, Melanie was fighting for control, a distraction Phoebe didn’t need. Especially because it seemed that the bitch had grown stronger.

  People were pounding on the door outside—ACRO, had to be. Another blow, this time to the temple, knocked her off her feet. In the space between the coffee table and the leather recliner, she could make out her father and brother battling. Both were bleeding, battered, and though she knew Alek was in top form and a damned good fighter, Dev was younger, in great shape, and no doubt as expertly combat-trained as Alek.

  She reached out, prepared to send a fireball into Dev, but Alek wheeled into the path of her weapon, and she cursed, rolled to her feet just as an invisible foot connected with her chin. Again, she tumbled backward, but this time, she swept her legs out as she went down, catching the invisible motherfucker hard enough to knock him into the wall. A picture crashed down and splintered, and suddenly, there was an unconscious, bleeding man on the carpet.

  “Asshole,” she spat.

  Dev had Alek pinned to the floor and was pounding on him, his fists dripping with blood that sprayed in an arc with every blow to her father’s face. Rage lit her up so hotly that her veins might as well run with lava.

  “Die!” She threw out her hand to blast him with a stream of fire that would make a flamethrower seem like a child’s toy.

  Nothing happened.

  No! She couldn’t be empty. Panicked, she reached deep, feeling for her power. Relief washed over her when she felt the nearly full well … but she couldn’t access it. It was as if there was a shield over the opening.

  Melanie! That bitch! Somehow, she was blocking Phoebe, and damn her, she would pay dearly for this. If it was the last thing she did, Phoebe would hurt Mel so badly that she would never recover.

  Cursing, she darted to the two men and leaped, landing a spin-kick right in Dev’s mouth. He fell backward, and she took instant advantage, slamming her boot into his ribs. She went for a second kick, but he rolled, and then was knocked flat by Alek, who had recovered enough to put a serious hurting on Dev.

  A sudden scratching on the inside of Phoebe’s skull was like nails on a chalkboard, except searing, agonizing pain came with it. Melanie wanted out … fuck … no …

  Something niggled at her, and she cranked her head around to see Stryker looking through the window in the door as his ACRO buddies worked to get the sucker open. And then it started. The low rumble of an earthquake that put a knot of dread in her belly. Terror was a monster inside her, and as she felt herself being sucked into unconsciousness, her one consolation was that Alek had a knife, and he was about to plunge it into Dev’s heart.

  Melanie came to in a screaming rush. Before she even fully understood what was happening, she saw Alek straddling Dev on the floor, a knife poised in the air and murder in her father’s eyes.

  He brought the knife down.

  With a scream of terror and fury, Melanie sent a blast of concentrated cold at Alek. It struck him like a blow, knocking him off Dev and shredding the skin on the right side of his upper body. Dev rolled, captured the knife, but he was injured badly and—

  “Mel! Let us in!”

  “Stryker!” She darted to the door and spun the lock, releasing the mechanism and swinging the door open.

  Men rushed in, and she heard yelps, thumps, and Stryker tugged her into his arms and held her as the sounds died down.

  She didn’t need to look to know her father was dead.

  Stryker tightened his arms around Mel. “You did it, Mel … you controlled your powers. You helped Dev, probably saved his life.”

  “I owed him that much.” The tears welled in her eyes and he stroked her hair. “Alek got what he deserved.”

  “It’s over, baby—he’s gone. That bastard can never hurt you again.”

  That bastard was currently being hauled away by Ender and Trance—his body would be taken back to the ACRO compound for safekeeping. And, probably, experimentation.

  Stryker didn’t give a damn, as long as the man was gone from their lives. Itor was nearly destroyed—its agents would no doubt scatter and try to regroup, but to gain the same strength Itor once had would be impossible.

  “One down, two to go,” Mel said as she watched Alek being carried away, referencing both Phoebe and the machine, although the latter was the far more pressing problem at the moment. “We don’t know the location of the weapon.”

  “I do.” Dev groaned from where he’d rolled over on the ground. Gabriel was at his side, dazed, and with blood running down his face. “I read the bastard while we fought. That’s why I got my ribs kicked in. I was distracted.” He spit blood onto what was probably a damned expensive carpet. “Machine’s set to go off within minutes. We gotta go. Vehicle. Now.”

  Stryker fished his phone from his pocket as Gabe helped Devlin to his feet. “Ryan will have a Jeep waiting outside.” He sent Ryan a text, knew the guy would be ready by the time they all got topside.

  Gabe practically carried Devlin out of the underground compound himself as Stryker scooped Mel up. She was still shaky and there was no time to waste.

  “I’ve got you,” he told her. “This is almost over.” Almost, but not close enough. Outside in the sun made hazy by remnants of Remy’s storm, the all-too-familiar stench of battle struck him in the face—blood, bowels, smoke, dirt. The fight was still going on, the sounds of bodies colliding, gunfire, and electric blasts thick in the air, but it was clear that ACRO now had the upper hand, and it was only a matter of time before Itor fell completely.

  “Hurry, Stryker—just hurry,” Mel whispered, and he did, easing her into the Jeep’s backseat and scrambling in next to her. Gabriel came in on her other side, having put Devlin into the front seat next to Ryan.

  “Hang on,” Ryan advised them all, as the Jeep had only a bikini top and the doors were long gone. Mel bounced around with men on either side of her, holding on to the roll bar as best she could.

  The wind roared in their ears as Ryan drove the Jeep like a madman, Devlin directing him along the crude ranch roads that jarred them back and forth.

  “Dev.” Mel tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about earlier. At the office. I wasn’t switching sides. I was hoping Alek would release me so I could help you—”

  “I know.” Though Dev was obviously in pain, he reached up, took her hand, and gave it a squeeze. “I know now. I should have trusted you. And I should have told you I was your brother.”

  Ryan did a whiplash thing to stare at Dev for a second, and then he shook his head and went back to watching where he was going.

  “It’s okay,” Mel said, but Stryker knew she and Dev were going to have a lot of talking to do when this was over.

  The Jeep slowed as they entered a patch of brush-covered ground. “This isn’t it, Ryan,” Devlin said, spacing his words between pained breaths. “Keep going.”

  “There’s nothing here,” Ryan said, but he did as Dev asked and stepped on the gas. Stryker squinted against the sand and wind, his body practically quaking with anticipation.

  Mel was leaning into the front seat, staring out the front window for better visibility. “We’re close. I’ve seen this before.” Stryker wondered how she and Dev recognized anything—it was all dirt, rock, and nothingness.

  But then, in the middle of nowhere, sharp, unnatural angles caught Stryker’s eye. Reaching between the seats, he grabbed Ryan’s shoulder and pointed as a sand-colored set of giant doors rose out of the side of a hill. A hangar. The dam
ned facility blended so well with the surroundings they could’ve easily crashed into the thing.

  If there had been a sandstorm, they would have.

  “This is the main entrance,” Dev said. “I saw some sort of feeding shack that Alek used, but this is for moving large equipment. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the code out of Alek’s head.” He glanced at his watch and cranked his neck to face Ryan. “I hope to hell you can deal with this. We have five minutes until eight million Londoners die.”

  Stryker slapped Ryan on the shoulder. “No pressure or anything.”

  “Fuuuuck,” Ryan breathed. “Let’s go.”

  They piled out of the vehicle, and Stryker, Gabe, and Dev provided cover as Ryan, with Melanie beside him, did his weird electronic magic on the mechanism that worked the doors.

  “This thing is built like a fortress,” Gabe muttered, as he kept a sharp eye on the horizon.

  “So how do we stop the machine?” Stryker asked, swinging his pistol toward a puff of dust in the distance, but he relaxed at the sight of some sort of rodent skittering out of the brush.

  “A drop of blood.” Dev’s voice was mushy through his swollen lips, but there was the typical Dev determination there. “It’s set for Alek’s and Phoebe’s blood.”

  There was a funny feeling in Stryker’s gut, though, that all of this was a little too easy.

  A massive clanking noise rang out, followed by a whir as the huge hangar doors slid open. Stryker slipped through the crack first. Inside, a single male in a white jumpsuit raised his hands into the air. Clearly, the people here were scientists, not soldiers.

  He gestured to the others, and everyone followed, Mel in the middle, kept safe sandwiched between Ryan and Dev. Ryan used flex-cuffs to restrain the guy, and then they moved quickly to the rear of the hangar, ran into another white suit, and Ryan repeated the procedure. Stryker hoped to hell the guy had a pocketful of the plastic cuffs.

  Fortunately, they encountered no resistance as they moved through the halls, and when they reached the door at the end, they found out why. A man in a white coat ran into them as he hoofed it toward the exit.