“Yes,” the Jackal whispered as they shook. “You’re… right.”
Kane pointed with his weapon to the parking lot. “We think the guards might have taken someone who isn’t their problem to the prison, and we believe Apex has gone in there, alone. We’ve got to save the both of them.”
The Jackal just kept staring at Kane. But then a bullet sizzled by the male’s head and snapped the former prisoner out of his holy-shit.
“Let’s go,” Kane said. “If we survive, I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
When the Jackal nodded, the three of them moved into position at the corner of the building, peering around what cover they had. Guards were using the lineup of trucks and other vehicles as a shield, trading fire with a target that was not visible, but was clearly trying to get inside the prison itself. There was also a flank inside the ring of forest, their shadowy figures moving in and among the tree line.
“How do we get in?” the Jackal asked.
“I have an access code to the keypads.” Mayhem glanced back. “But not everything is locked that way anymore, and I’m worried they changed the codes anyway after our escape. It’s the first thing I’d do. I need to get to the back door that goes into the Executioner’s private quarters to try what I have.”
“That male is in charge now?” the Jackal muttered. “Great.”
“No, we killed him. Now it’s someone worse.”
“Of course it is.”
Kane was about to suggest a strategy when the wind changed direction, and the instant he felt the breeze on the back of his neck, he knew their presence was going to get announced. Sure enough, as their scents blew in to the guards, the gunfire that rained on them was well aimed and well timed.
Which was to say it was an absolute barrage.
As they returned fire at the guards, and bullets were traded in waves, they were forced back—and Kane experienced the strangest focus. Instead of being scattered and panicking, he became more and more calm as Mayhem and then the Jackal dematerialized up into the first aboveground floor for protection.
As opposed to taking their very prudent lead, he stayed where he was, even as the males stuck their heads out through some broken panes of glass and urged him to follow.
The inside of him was taking over. He could feel it.
And then… something happened.
His body floated off. That was the only way he could describe it. One moment he was up on his feet, shooting, ducking bullets. The next, he was flying.
No, he wasn’t in the air…
He was on the ground. Moving smoothly through the grass. Staring out of a different set of eyes: The color of the world was suddenly in shades of red, all of the other hues gone.
With a strange sense of peace, he capitulated to the transformation, and the more he went with the altering of his form, the more leeway he was given in terms of awareness: He could feel the different sensations on his belly, the leaves of weeds, the coarse sand and small pebbles, the dirt. But the scents in his nose were not the same. Or perhaps, they were the same sources, but registered in a different way. Sounds were nothing as they usually were, either, the noises of the gunfight, the yelling, the footfalls, like the ocean rushing against a shore and retreating, undifferentiated.
Yet as he halted his forward progress, he heard what he recognized as the Jackal and Mayhem speaking. The codes weren’t working… up on the first floor, where they were… the passcodes were not working in the stairwell.
How he could hear them from so far away, he had no idea. And though he was now in a form other than his vampire one, his mission had not changed. He still had to infiltrate the prison camp, and save the wolven, and find Apex.
But how—
The crack in the building’s foundation was not large, just four inches or so wide, running at an angle from the seam of the brick siding to the concrete wall that was underground. It was not the kind of thing he could have fit his hand through, much less his body, yet he knew it was his way in.
The viper in him was not going to have a problem with the squeeze.
As he slithered through, somehow his serpent side knew the path to go, finding and following the routes that had been created in the concrete due to the exposure to the elements and neglect of the structure—and then abruptly, he was out of the compression and into the open, slithering along the floor at its intersection with a wall.
Halting his forward progress, his viewpoint swung back and forth, the viper moving its head around as if it knew he wanted to orientate, the red wash over everything not compromising his visual acuity.
He was inside the private quarters of the head of the guards.
And yes, there was Callum, over on a bed, tied down and unmoving—and past him, at the door that came in from the rear parking lot, the head of the guards was dragging an unconscious Apex inside, the male’s dead weight something that with her physical strength was not a hard graft.
She was speaking, her mouth moving, but Kane didn’t listen to any of it.