“I think they wanted me vulnerable. And—and Case is trying to keep me locked up.” Fear flashed in her eyes. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t understand—”
“Why the hell do you keep going after her?”
Shane had known the warden was leading the march toward him. Instead of answering the warden, he leaned down and pressed a hard, hot kiss to Olivia’s lips.
The guards grabbed him and hauled Shane back. He broke free of them, and squared off against the warden. “Why? Because I fucking like the way she tastes.” And he still hadn’t recognized her taste. He’d never encountered it before.
She’s half human. Has to be. She smells like a human.
What was her other half?
Case’s eyes blazed with fury. “Tranq him until he can’t move.”
“No!” Olivia cried out as she leapt in front of Shane. “Don’t do that, he’s—”
Shane caught her shoulders and yanked her around to face him. He made sure his fangs were out as he drove his head toward her throat.
The tranqs hit him. Thuds in his back. His sides. He lost count of how many hit him.
He could feel the drug coursing through his blood.
“Don’t…tell…” he managed to whisper. He hadn’t been going to bite her. Not there. Not with her fear in the air around them. When he bit her, she’d ask for his bite. Beg for it. His attack had been faked so that he could get close enough to whisper to her.
His knees hit the floor, and his hands locked around her hips as he stared up at Olivia’s face.
Don’t tell.
She gave an almost imperceptible nod.
And more fucking tranqs hit him.
“Drain him,” he heard Case order as Shane’s eyelids sagged closed. “Let’s see how strong he is once most of his blood is gone…”
Idiot. Shane would still be strong. Just as strong and damn hungry.
“Sooner or later, the Paras here learn that we’re stronger than they are.” Case’s voice was smooth. Calm.
But he was pacing around his narrow office, and his pacing was sure the sign of a nervous man.
Olivia watched him from her seat. “You drain vampires… regularly?” That was torture to her mind.
He whirled toward her. “What the hell else do you want me to do? I use sunlight on them when I can, and that keeps most of them weak, but then we get the alphas in here. Alphas like your friend, Shane, and when they’re ripping the freaking doors off the cells, we have to use any means that we can in order to control them.” His breath heaved out. “So don’t sit there and judge what we do. My men do the best they can, in a situation that no man should ever be facing.”
Her stomach knotted. “You think this prison is failing.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I know its failing. Hell, I was sent down here to clean up the mess that the last warden made, but there’s no cleaning up some things.” Case had stopped pacing. His grim stare leveled at her. “This place was a mistake. They’re too powerful to be kept here. Most of the time, I feel like we’re the prisoners, not them.”
“If they shouldn’t be locked up,” Olivia began carefully, “then they should be—”
“Dead. It’s the only way to keep humans safe.”
She leapt to her feet. “That’s not true. We can learn why they’ve killed. Why they’ve hunted—”
“It’s because they don’t have souls! They’re monsters!” He shook his head in disgust. “After what happened to you, hell, lady, you should know that.”
She tried to calm her racing heartbeat. “Harold Bath.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“A banker from Maine.”
“What?”
“One day, Harold came home from work. He shot his wife. His neighbor. Went on a rampage and hurt ten people before the cops arrested him.” She could see Harold in her mind. His slightly balding hair, his stooped shoulders. His flat voice as he said he’d just gotten tired of hearing his wife talk. “Most people would say he was a monster, but he was just a human. Twisted, but human.”
Case stepped toward her.
“Lindsey Jones.” Another image flashed before her. A pretty red-head with wide-set, blue eyes. “Female serial killers are rare, but Lindsey killed five men last summer along the Florida coast line and she was—”
“Let me guess,” he interrupted, voice tight, “human.”
Olivia nodded. “Monsters are everywhere. We have to learn why they kill, why they break, if we truly want to protect the innocents out there.” He had no idea how personal this was for her. Why? Why? That single question had haunted Olivia for most of her life. What made some people crack—what pushed them over the line and turned them into killers?
And will I be like that one day?
She slammed the door shut on that thought immediately. The way she always did.
“Maybe they’re just psychotic, did you think of that, doctor?”
“Sometimes, they are.” But the cases were often about more than just a chemical imbalance or some brain defect. They were about so much more. “My job is to find out why. I’m here because I want to save lives.”
“Even if you lose your own in the process?”
“I don’t want to die.” She’d never had a death wish.
His laughter was rough, a bit cruel. “Do you even realize how close you came to death yesterday?”
“It’s not the first time a test subject has tried to hurt me.”
Shock widened his eyes.
“I know the risks of my job. I can handle them.” She kept her voice calm with an extreme effort of will.
“You have an alpha vampire who wants nothing more than to sink his teeth into your neck and a werewolf who nearly killed you.” Case put his hands on his hips. “You actually think you can ‘handle’ them? Because I sure as shit don’t believe you can. I don’t believe—”
A shrill alarm cut through his words.
“No,” Case whispered. He whirled for the door. “No!”
The alarm grew even louder.
“What’s happening?” Olivia asked as fear pumped through her.
He yanked open the door. A guard stood there. “Sir, the prisoners—”
“Someone’s trying to escape from the facility. We need to get this place locked down, now,” Case snapped back to the younger man. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get her back to her quarters. Go via the south side of the facility—”
The guard’s blue eyes widened. “That’s where the werewolves are.”
“I damn well know where they are.” Case grabbed a weapon from the cabinet near the door. “Right now, we need to keep her away from a certain vampire, so that’s the safest course. Get her back to her quarters, now.”
The alarm was still shrieking.
Then Case was gone.
She could hear the growls. The corridor was dark, too dark, and it felt as if she were walking right into a cave. The growls echoed all around her. The alarm had finally stopped, and maybe that should have made Olivia feel better. It didn’t.
“Why did you want to talk to the monsters?” The guard asked, glancing back at her. Evan. He’d told her that his name was Evan Jurant.
“It’s my job.”
He grunted, then turned back around. He pulled out a keycard and unlocked a door with thick, steel bars. He opened that door, swinging it so that it opened back toward them. He raised his hand, indicating she should go through first, but she hesitated.