Slade Read online

  “I’ll work on it.”

  She motioned with the gun. “While you’re working on that, why don’t you tell me how you got in here without sounding the alarms?”

  “I’m a scientist.”

  “Not an explanation.”

  His head canted to the side. “I’m good with electronics.”

  “No one’s that good.”

  “The fact that I’m standing here would argue otherwise.”

  Yes, it would, which just gnawed the edges of her temper more. She’d insisted on tweaks to some of the security elements herself. Elements she thought plugged the only holes. Yet proof that they hadn’t was standing right in front of her. “You’re not as interesting in person as you are online.”

  He actually smiled, revealing even, white teeth. “You’re just irked that I got past the security system.”

  “Not entirely.” She was also irked that he was so good-looking. Good-looking men were a faithless lot, and she would have far more preferred he’d had the stereotypical geek look she’d imagined. Someone to whom her own geeky looks might be of interest.

  His head lifted and a sudden stillness wrapped around him, as if he were a predator scenting danger. When he glanced down, the green in his eyes was more pronounced and the illusion of light in his eyes was stronger. “Pack up your laptop and let’s go.”

  “Let’s go? Since when did I give the impression that I’m going anywhere with you?”

  “Since Sanctuary just showed up.”

  She slapped his hand as he reached for her laptop. “Who the hell is Sanctuary?”

  He kept leaning in. “Men whose acquaintance you do not want to make.”

  “The guards will stop them.”

  “Humans are no match for Sanctuary.”

  He said “human” as if he were speaking of another species. “Humans? You’re not delusional are you?”

  It would be a shame if he were delusional.

  “Not anymore.”

  Now there was a comfort. “Then I think we can leave security to handle whatever you’re worried about.”

  This close, she couldn’t ignore his scent. Crisp, like nightfall tinged with a subtle male musk that wrapped around her senses in a comforting hug. She could breathe in his scent forever. She should push him away. She knew that, but the scent just tempted her so. As did the sense of strength and protection Vamp Man produced. She’d never been protected. Never known the illusion of being safe since her mother had remarried when she was eight. It was as seductive as she’d always dreamed it would be. Vamp Man’s hand brushed her hair as her laptop clicked softly closed. “We’ve got to go, sweetness.”

  The intimacy lingered after he straightened. “That nickname is more annoying spoken than when typed.”

  His fingers brushed down her arm with the lightness of amusement in his voice. Unplugging the cord from the socket, he said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Only to annoy her more, she was sure. “I’m not leaving.”

  His arm came around her waist as he straightened. “Yes, you are.”

  He lifted. She twisted, straining to see the screen on the desktop. The program wasn’t fully implemented. Kicking back she grunted, “I need more time.”

  “For what?”

  What did she have to lose with honesty at this point? “For the wipe program to finish. I can’t risk them stopping it.”

  He looked at the computer with the barely there completion bar and let her go, his eyes narrowed and energy focused toward the screen with such intensity she swore she could almost see it.

  “What’s your sub password?” he asked.

  “What makes you think I have a sub password?”

  Not even a blink disturbed his composure. “You’re too smart not to.”

  At least he saw her as smart. “What do you want it for?”

  “To fix the program so they can’t stop it.”

  “You can do that?” She heard the sound of something crashing outside in the hall. She jumped. He didn’t.

  “Yes.”

  It should be easier to imagine pigs flying. But it wasn’t. Vamp Man had a way about him that inspired confidence. “What’s your name?”

  “I need to give you that for the password?”

  She put the gun on the table and her hands on her hips. “I’m not giving the password to someone I know only as Vamp Man.”

  His lips twitched. “You don’t see me as a superhero?”

  The name was kind of superheroish. She couldn’t hear anyone approaching, but she could feel them—dark, malevolent shadows on her consciousness. She took a shaky breath and hugged her laptop to her chest. “No, but I’m beginning to wish you had some hidden powers.”

  She had generalized feeling that superpowers were going to be called for to get her out of the mess. Vamp Man touched her cheek. No one had ever been so careful with her, but she kind of liked the way he did it. “Then today’s your lucky day. My name’s Slade. Now give me the password before I have to take it.”

  A shiver of dread ran down her spine. In that second she gave him what he wanted, feeling as if she was saving her own life even while giving it into his care.

  “Kitty poo.”

  The keyboard tapped, the computer revved and revved until she thought it would explode. She shoved her laptop and cord into her backpack. Suddenly, Vamp Man grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the back of the office as another crash came from the hall. This one was followed by a soft thud. It sounded distinctly like a body hitting the floor. “Run.”

  There was only one exit. A small door without a window. She reached it, hesitated. What if there were more on the other side?

  The door swung open all on its own at the same time that Vamp Man’s hand hit the small of her back, propelling her through. “Go.”

  Since she didn’t have any choice, she ran awkwardly, carrying the laptop. It would have been so much easier if Slade had grabbed that, too. The door slammed shut behind them. She glanced back at the door, then at Slade. Her gut said he had something to do with the door slamming shut when no one was near it. The arch of his brow acknowledged the question on her lips. She didn’t ask it. If he was telekinetic, she didn’t want to know. She much preferred to think of him as Vamp Man—computer geek extraordinaire.

  The wall behind them vibrated as something slammed into it. She spun around. Slade’s arm snaked around her waist and lifted her off her feet. “Keep going.”

  She didn’t have any choice but to clutch the laptop and let him sweep her through the huge room with incredible speed. When the next door swung open and he put her down, he didn’t need to say a word. She ran as though her feet had wings. Whatever was banging against the wall was coming through. And no way in hell did she want to see what it was.

  “Where am I going?” she called over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of him standing in the middle of the corridor. His shoulders squared, feet braced shoulder-width apart and two vaguely human hairless hulking pointed ear creatures rushing at him with mind boggling speed.

  “To the garage. Hurry.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. She ran as if her life depended on it. Which it probably did. Her footsteps echoed—a hollow, pounding sound that slid under the pounding of her heart, amplifying it. Snarls chased her down the hall. No human made noises like that. Creatures in horror movies made noises like that. The snarls grew louder. The memory of what she’d seen grew stronger. Clearer. The pointed ears. The misshapen skull. The bloodred lips in the ghastly white face. The fangs ...

  Monsters. The word whispered through her mind. The edge of the laptop cut into her arms through the pack as she drove herself forward. There was another crash followed quickly by an inhuman howl. The hair along her arms rose and a cold chill slithered down her spine.

  “What is that?”

  It was five more steps before she realized Slade wasn’t with her to answer. Slowing, she looked over her shoulder. She couldn’t see him. She stopped at a doorway, pressin
g her back against the smooth surface of the door, doing her best to disappear into the shallow indentation. Leaning forward, she peered down the eerily lit hall. Why did emergency lights have to throw off that putrid color that made everything look so abnormal? And where was Slade? What could be keeping him?

  More snarls ripped down the hallway from behind the closed door. Oh heck, not that. She remembered how he’d stood braced for a fight. Of course that. What else would someone called Vamp Man, who’d come into her lab at a time when she needed saving, do when monsters appeared? He’d fight to buy her time. Whether she wanted him to or not. Good grief, she was living in the middle of a comic book! Complete with her own superhero named Vamp Man. Could her night get any weirder?

  The door that had closed behind her when he’d set her down burst open. A man came running down the corridor, little more than a blur in the weird lighting. It was Slade, but not a Slade she recognized. His face was distorted and his eyes were glowing, adding a whole new level of freak to an already freaky night.

  She watched him, clutching her computer so tightly the case was in danger of breaking. “I just wanted to stop world hunger.”

  The discovery of a new humanoid species, she would leave to other scientists, those trained for it. The ones who didn’t find it shocking. The closer Slade got—the more she was able to see the morphed state of his face, the thrust of his brow and cheekbones, the enhanced fullness of his mouth—the more she pressed back into the door. It wasn’t natural, right, or absorbable.

  He slowed.

  Keep running. Keep running.

  He stopped in front of her.

  Nothing could prevent her from flinching as he reached out. “You’re afraid.”

  It took all her courage to pretend she wasn’t about to expire from terror on the spot. She pushed off the door. “What makes you say that?”

  “I can hear your heart racing.”

  “I’m out of shape.” It wasn’t a huge lie.

  His words were strangely distorted. “Will it make you feel better or worse if I believe that?”

  “I guess that would depend on which answer will keep me safer.”

  It took her a moment to figure out that the baring of his teeth was a smile. The fangs it exposed commanded all of her attention. It took another moment to find a coherent thought. Those were dang big fangs. “Take your pick.”

  He held out his hand. “I think you’re out of shape.”

  Did that mean he didn’t want her to be afraid of him? She wasn’t certain enough to put her hand in his.

  “I’ll force you if I have to.”

  She didn’t doubt he meant it. Didn’t doubt he could, but still she couldn’t take his hand. Not with the memory of those fangs lingering in her mind.

  Something flashed behind the glow in his eyes. “Don’t make me force you.”

  “Turn your head.”

  “What?”

  “Turn your head.”

  After a look, he did. Without the strangeness of his features, she could pretend he was just a man like any other. She took his hand. The brush of his thumb across the backs of her fingers was a surprisingly soft gesture for the fierceness of his appearance.

  He glanced down at her, a question in his strange eyes.

  “I’m very good at make-believe.”

  “Why?”

  Inside, everything slammed down. She forced a small smile to her lips. It probably wasn’t too convincing, but that could be attributed to the direness of their circumstances. “It’s something every child indulges in. Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  She found that hard to believe. “Try again.”

  He glanced back the way they had come. “Maybe later.”

  “Don’t tell me there are more of those things.”

  With one tug he had her out of the shallow haven of the doorway and into the openness of the corridor. “Yes.”

  Her heart pounded with such force that she couldn’t breathe evenly. She pulled in a tattered breath, afraid to look, unable not to. The corridor was empty, but the sense that at any second it would be full of frothing-at-the mouth creatures didn’t abate. “What part of ‘don’t tell me’ did you not understand?”

  If he smiled she was going to slap him, superhero or not.

  He started off down the corridor, dragging her faster than she could run. “Apparently the part that said you were serious.”

  When she stumbled, he just lifted her. It happened so fast that she didn’t have time to realize her feet weren’t touching the ground, that they peddled pointlessly.

  “I’m always serious,” she gasped. “I’m a scientist. We have no sense of humor. Ask anyone.”

  She chose to interpret the grimace on his face as a smile.

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” He set her down in front of the heavy-duty door that led to the garage.

  She’d breathe a lot easier if he had just opened it. Instead he steadied her with a hand on her upper arm.

  “Once you go through that door, I want you to run like hell to the left.”

  “Why left?”

  “Because to the left is my SUV.”

  Of course it led to his SUV Superheroes always had some sort of macho car. “I have my own car.”

  He nodded. His hair fell over his brow. Her fingers itched to push it back. “Twenty spaces up and to the right. You’ll never make it.”

  She didn’t ask how he knew either fact, but she believed him. Which was maybe the scariest thing of all.

  “You’re saying there are creepy crawlers on the other side of this door.”

  His shrug was a flex of his massive shoulders. “It’s likely.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I can’t be sure as they’re probably masking their presence the same way I’m masking ours, but it would be a logical conclusion.”

  A logical conclusion. Good grief! She glared at him. “You’re pretty much winging this, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t deny it. “No one expected you to come here tonight. It was very out of character.”

  He said that as if it were a crime. She put her hand on the door as if the cold metal could transmit the threat of danger on the other side. “I’m working on spontaneity.”

  “You could have picked a better night for it.”

  “It appears to me that this was the perfect night, because if I were sitting at home, I’d probably be a monster snack.”

  “They don’t want to eat you.”

  “I’m so relieved.”

  As if he’d known she’d been stalling while she worked up her courage, his hand slid off her arm and rested beside hers on the door. It was a very big hand, twice the size of hers and lean with inherent strength. “Are you ready now?”

  She nodded and took another breath. “Where’s your car, again?”

  “Six spaces up and to the left.”

  “How will I recognize it?”

  “It’ll be the one you can’t see.”

  His hand shifted to the wide bar. As he pressed it and the mechanism clicked she asked, “Anything else?”

  His hand in the middle of her back pushed her toward the expanding opening.

  “Yeah. Run like hell and don’t look back.”

  2

  JANE made it a few steps into the garage before the lights went out. In an instant there was nothing around her but inky darkness and the certainty that monsters lurked, claws curved, fangs bared, ready to tear her apart.

  They don’t want to eat you.

  Faint comfort there. She bumped into something hard, bruising her shoulder. A column. She wrapped one arm around it, hugging it as tightly as she held her laptop. She desperately needed something solid to hold on to. Her nerves crawled under her skin, and she dreaded the moment she’d be grabbed by the unseen ... things. She braced against the fear. The emergency lighting came on, a flicker at first and then full strength, bathing everything with its eerie green glow. The sense of being in a horror movie increased as the ala
rms went off, screeching their warning. Behind her was Slade and the monsters. Ahead of her, she didn’t know what waited.

  How will I know which car is yours?

  It’ll be the one you can’t see.

  Dear God, what had she gotten herself into?

  The things that had come after them were not human, yet Slade had faced them down without blinking an eye. That meant, in all likelihood, that he wasn’t human. Oh damn. And he had fangs. She rested her head against the column, resisting the conclusion that wanted to be drawn. Her day was not improving.

  Jane inched past the column. No sound came from beyond it. Then again, the creatures that had stormed into the lab hadn’t made any noise. They’d just been there between one blink and the next. Grotesque mutations invading her private space as if they had the right. Slade had known they were coming, and if she got to see him again, she would ask how. But whatever sixth sense had alerted him to the presence of the bad guys, she didn’t have it. And she had no way of knowing what was ahead, and what was behind. Sweat dampened her armpits. The laptop felt like a brick in her arms.

  It was awkward to hold. She wished she could risk hiding it, but the only reason the creatures would be in this part of the lab would be for her research. Of their own volition or because someone sent them. If they had any kind of brains whatsoever, they would assume she carried important information on her computer. In fact she did. Just not the kind of information that would matter to them. But one never knew when a red herring would be useful, so Jane wasn’t putting the computer down. She reached the third parking space without incident. Looking around, she still didn’t see any sign of bad guys, but the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. The fact that she was in the parking garage only added to her fear. She hated parking garages. They were dark and scary, and way too many horror movies featured them as the places where the heroine met her death. She did not particularly want to meet her death today.

  Gunfire snapped out of the recesses of the building, staccato punctuations to her slowly settling understanding. This was real. There was danger. And Slade had told her to run.

  But she wasn’t running. She was crouched beside a stranger’s car, hugging the shadows as if monsters couldn’t see in the dark. That was stupid, and she did try very hard never to be stupid. Leaning around the fender of the compact car, she first checked right and then left and then, feeling ludicrous, even up. But this was a night of weirdness. And she’d seen Blade about fifty times. And those things looked close enough to the vampires in that movie to make her believe that maybe that movie wasn’t so far-fetched. She recalled that the Blade vampires scaled the walls. Maybe these things could, too. Pressing her head to her forearm, she shook it.