The night breeze stirred my hair, and suddenly I was aware of the space and the night, and the sensation that we were high, so high, swamped me. Cold sweat broke out across my skin and my stomach rose. I closed my eyes, swallowing heavily.
I could do this.
I really could.
I switched back to normal vision, and glanced at Misha. He was sweating profusely, and shaking with pain. Shock, or something else? I didn't know, but it was obvious I had to get him to the hospital, and fast.
"I think it's safe."
He nodded and pushed past, heading to the left of the door. A building loomed above us, its inner bones revealed by the massive holes dotting its side.
The shifting haze skimmed across Misha's body, and in wolf form, he ran for the ledge and leapt for the nearest gap. I watched as he hit the other side, his body only half in, his back legs scrabbling for purchase on the rough old bricks. My heart lodged somewhere in my throat, and for several seconds I couldn't even breathe, my fear for him was so great. Then he was in, and safe, and it was my turn.
Oh God, oh God.
I licked my lips again, my eyes on the building directly opposite. It was just a little jump. A tiny jump. A sneeze when compared to some of the things I'd jumped in the past.
I called to the wolf within, felt the haze of energy sweep across my body.
But I couldn't force my paws forward. The concrete seemed to be attached to my feet, holding me down, holding me still.
Then I heard it.
The scrabble of tiny feet against concrete.
The spiders had found a way into the stairwell. It was either the jump or the spiders, and I'd had more than enough spiders for one day.
I sucked in a breath, then ran across the roof as fast as four legs would carry me. Not thinking, not looking, just running.
My leap was long and high, and it was terrifying to feel the wind batter my body, to see nothing but a long drop underneath me. My stomach rose and fear clenched my gut, my lungs, and breathing was suddenly impossible.
Then my claws hit concrete, and I was sliding to safety. I changed shape back to human form, but for several seconds couldn't move, couldn't do anything but sweat and shake and gasp for air.
But the thought that the spiders might somehow be able spray themselves across the gap got me moving. I rose and looked around for Misha. He was halfway across the gutted expanse, heading for the stairs.
"Misha, wait."
He stopped. I caught up with him. The smell of sweat and blood and fear tainted the air, and when his gaze met mine, true terror lurked in the silver depths. My stomach plummeted. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
"I feel like shit," he croaked.
"That's because you look like shit." I wrapped an arm around his waist, half-supporting him as I hurried forward. "My car is across the road. You'll be fine once I get you to hospital."
He coughed and moisture spurted from his mouth. Moisture that was bloody. God, he had internal injuries. "Hang on, Misha," I muttered, almost dragging him as I half-ran for the stairs. "Just hang on."
"You were right," he said, his voice so soft it was barely audible over the sound of our steps. "He figured a way into my foxhole."
"But he didn't kill us, and that's a plus."
"I'm not so sure about that." He stumbled as he said it, bringing us both down.
I grunted as the shock of the fall reverberated from my knees to brain. Misha rolled onto his back, his face contorted and his hands clutching at his stomach. "God," he said, voice a harsh rasp of suffering. "It feels like I'm being eaten inside out—" He stopped as a cough racked him, and bits of blood and water and what looked like specks of flesh gushed from his mouth.
And I remembered that creature on his face. Remembered thinking it was half the size it had originally looked.
Horror filled me, boiling through my body until it felt like my stomach was going to leap up into my throat.
Misha was being eaten from the inside out. When that spider creature had leapt onto his face, it hadn't only eaten his flesh. It had also poured part of itself into his body and somewhere inside re-formed to continue its bloody task.
His hand caught mine, dragging it to his mutilated lips, pressing a kiss I couldn't really feel against my fingertips. "End it, Riley. If you feel anything at—" He stopped again, and this time the rush of water that accompanied the cough was thicker. I shuddered, the bitter taste of bile heavy in my throat, the urge to run battling with the urge to scream and rage against the wiles of fate.
"End it, Riley," he pleaded. "Please."
I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, then took a deep breath and said, "Tell me who your boss is, Misha. Please, just give me that."
"I can't."
"Not even a hint?"
"Not even… Not dead." He coughed, bringing up more flesh and blood. "Please. Stop."
I leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss against his battered lips.
"May you find what you're looking for in your next life, Misha."
He raised a hand to my cheek, cupping it gently, his skin like ice against mine and his eyes gentle. I'd been wrong before. A lab-born creature could feel love. It was there, right now, in his eyes.
"But I have already found what I want. We could have been good together. Real good."
The tears blurring my eyes fell down my cheeks. "Yes," I whispered, and raised the laser.
He caught a tear on his fingertip, raising it a little, a touch of wonder briefly lifting the pain from his gaze. Then he closed his eyes and smiled, and I knew in that moment that he was thinking of us together, thinking of a future he could never have had.
I fired the laser, ending his pain, and his dreams.
It was only after I'd run from the building and his body, when I knew I was safe from the spiders and the creatures, that I let myself cry for the man I didn't love.
Chapter Thirteen
Five days later, recovered from my wounds if not the memories, I was back in the bowels of Genoveve, my hands clasped behind my back as I stared out over the bloody sands of the old arena.
Behind me, Jack was speaking to Rhoan, but his words were little more than a babble of sound that was making no sense. Not that it mattered. I knew all the important stuff already. Roberta Whitby was dead. Jack and Rhoan hadn't got there in time to save her—a bomb had blown the vehicle apart long before she'd ever reached the tunnel where their trap waited. And the man who'd been Mrs. Hunt had been reduced to little more than unknowing flesh, his brain fried so completely he wasn't even capable of looking after himself. This despite all the shields the guardians who'd been bringing him in had placed on him.
Despite all he'd done in the last few days, all that we'd been through, Jack still didn't know the location of the second lab. Still didn't know the name of the man behind it all. While he mightn't be back at square one, he hadn't advanced much beyond it, either.
Except for the fact that Misha had, in the very end, come through with his promises. In the aftermath of his death, he'd given me the answers I needed—although that wasn't something Jack knew just yet.
I closed my eyes against the bloody images crowding my mind. I didn't want to remember how Misha had died, but rather, how he'd lived, in the times when he'd been just a lover and a good friend. Because that was what he was, despite everything. A friend.
A friend who had died loving me.
He'd been buried without fuss in the traditional wolf manner, his body burned and his ashes scattered in the woods of one of his estates. That I'd been asked to the reading of his will surprised me, as did the fact that he'd left me two things—an undeveloped strip of land in the hills where I could—in his words—run free, and a letter.