The feed switches to a still shot of him with long hair in some sort of gloomy hotel room. Another of him in a store wearing glasses. All these weeks of searching for him, and now this firehose of information.
I grab my shit. “Get Viktor. Tell him to meet me at the car. Then you get the rest of everyone you can round up—”
“I got it,” she says. “Go!”
Five minutes later I have the SUV in front of the hotel. Viktor jumps in, and we peel out. There’s a load of automatic weaponry in the back, and I have half a mind to use it on the mob of reporters taking apart our brother.
Viktor has Mischa and some of his other guys on the phone. They’re on the road, too.
“Tell me they’re nearer to the hospital than we are.”
“No. They were at one of the park entrances.”
I gun the fucker. Nothing matters except getting to Kiro. “If we’re seeing him out there online, it means Lazarus is seeing him, too.”
“Bladny,” Viktor says. “All they need is a clear shot.”
“Not if we kill them first.”
Chapter Forty
Kiro
The lights areblinding. The questions don’t stop. How did I get the wolves to accept me? Is it true I went in bare feet even in winter? When I caught animals, would I simply eat them right then and there? Still warm and bloody? The reporters ask more about this. They want me to say that the animals would still be alive when I ate them.
“Sometimes,” I growl. “Sometimes they would still be alive, and I would rip out their throats with my teeth.”
Garrick tries to hold his mouth in a neutral line, but I see the smile in his eyes. They begin to ask about the professor. They want me to talk about killing him.
Now and then Garrick takes the microphone. “We’ll get the deeper details on this in theStormlinearticle—we want to get to as many questions as possible here today.”
Garrick wants me to show my scars.
I rip off my shirt. Nothing matters. I’m baring all. Allowing myself to be made into a thing. Their savage. Their circus spectacle. Blindly following her advice.
There’s a squeal of tires. Voices yelling to get out of the way. A commotion. The reporters part for whoever is coming through.
Garrick puts a hand on my shoulder, thinking about getting me out of there, maybe.
Uniforms. Somebody official.
The police.
I exchange glances with Garrick. We knew this could happen, that this is how it might end. Garrick has a lawyer. He says the lawyer will keep me free.
My heart pounds as they come. Reporters are getting footage of them now, though I’m sure they’re capturing my expression, too. Fear, despair—I don’t try to hide how I feel. This is like after the professor—a moment of freedom, then the police come.
Garrick’s lawyer tries to stop the cops, but they push him aside. Guns come out. Two familiar faces appear alongside the police. One is Dr. Fancher, head of the Fancher Institute. He would walk around with Nurse Zara every week, peering into the room.
The other is Donny. Donny grins at me.
I freeze.
The lawyer comes up to Garrick, says something about a commitment order.
Panic rises in my chest. I’m beyond hearing.
The instinct to fight surges through me. I imagine hurling myself at Donny. I could rip his throat out—possibly before I die of the bullets they pump into me. But cameras are rolling. And Ann’s out there. She’d say to trust the story. She’d say light is better than darkness.