The guard’s hand came in handy for a second time, and Apex was careful as he opened the vaulted door. There was no need for directions. The smell that entered the chute was that of the clinic—and Kane’s body moved on its own, shoving the other male aside.
So close. He was so close to Nadya—that scent of disinfectant was unmistakable, and it was emanating from the left—
Two guards rounded a corner in the dim, rough-walled corridor, and he ducked back into the chute, closing the door so that there was only a slit to look out of. As the uniformed guards talked back and forth, their voices were hushed, and waiting for them to go by took self-control he barely had.
Somehow, he managed to hold himself in place—and then he slipped out into their wake. He jumped the one on the left, grabbing the guard’s head and wrenching it to the side with so much violence, the vertebrae cracked as they powdered—and he had the presence of mind to catch the male before he fell so there was no flopping noise.
Apex was right behind him, taking care of the other one, his knife penetrating the guard’s temple as he turned to look at his cohort. It was over so fast, Kane was aware of a feeling of letdown. Which was not right. Who the hell wanted to engage in combat?
They dragged the bodies into the chute.
“Let’s get changed,” Kane said as he whipped off his shirt.
He wasn’t sure where the idea came from, but it was suddenly an urgent solution to a problem he wasn’t aware of consciously tracking.
“You two take the clothes,” the wolven said. “Something tells me I’m going four-footed soon.”
In the thin light beam, they made quick work of the togs. The fit should have been loose, Kane thought, as he pulled off a large pair of pants and shirt that seemed three sizes too big. Yet when he got the uniform on his body, he was constricted in the shoulders and the thighs.
“Good idea,” Apex said as he tucked his new shirt in.
No hats, which would have been helpful, and they already had gun belts. Callum took one of the spare holsters, and after he cinched it on, he glanced up and down.
“Just so you know,” he said, “you both lucked out with the short hair. You two could pass for guards, you really could.”
On that note, they filed out of the chute one by one and he glanced around. The hallway had a bare concrete floor and rock walls that were streaked with groundwater seepage, and absolutely no guards.
Kane started running.
When he got to the former storage room, he skidded on the concrete as he wheeled in through the open door.
“Nadya?” he called through the rows of shelves.
Bursting out on the far side, he jerked to a halt. The beds…
… were nearly full. There were only two vacancies, and one of them was the berth in which he had lain. But that wasn’t what he cared about—and neither were the guards who had been tended to over on some cots.
“Nadya,” he said sharply.
He looked all around, even though he knew by the scents of the males and the blood, and the clearly-nothing-fresh of Nadya, that she wasn’t in the clinic. With a curse, he went over to the nearest patient, noting the precise bandaging, the care that had been taken to clean him of the dirt and blood, the way the guard was in comfort in spite of his injuries. Then he glanced over to the desk. There was an array of drugs and supplies that he had never seen before. While she had been treating him, and Lucan’s Rio, she had made do with what she could find.
But of course, guards were more important than prisoners, so human-grade medications and supplies had been brought in.
He refocused on the patient. “Do you know where the nurse is?”
He willed those eyes to open, and as he waited for a response, he glanced over at the bed where he had been. He could recall the pain as if it was something he could pull back into his own flesh, like a pall that still hovered around in the air, free for the grabbing if you were dumb enough to volunteer for it. Then he pictured the brown robes, sitting at his bedside, his nurse’s kindness and compassion like a blanket to tuck around himself.
And that was when he realized why he hadn’t died. Nadya had been a tether that had kept him on the earth, the way she touched him with such care, and spoke to him, and listened to him as he mumbled, all ties that had bound him to the present… and kept him out of the Fade.
A penetrating guilt went through him, and unable to bear its implications, he marched the length of the room, going all the way to the far end. But like that would change anything—or make Nadya come backfrom wherever she was? As he passed by the beds, he assessed the other males who were under her care. Then he glanced down at himself, picturing the whole flesh that was under the stolen uniform—
“You are not one of us.”
His eyes shifted to the patient in the last berth down the row. The guard’s eyes were trained in Kane’s direction, suspicion gleaming out of them.
“Where is the nurse,” Kane demanded.
“She’ll know. The head of us will know you’re not—”