“Like she said, I won’t be long.”
In the back of Rio’s mind, she tried to find a protest that wouldn’t make them suspicious. When she failed, she could only impotently watch Luke—and she couldn’t help but note how easy it was for him to lift a heavily muscled man up off the floor. And deadweight was tough because there was little resistance to get a grip on.
She couldn’t imagine being that physically strong.
As Mayhem entered a different code on the pad than the one at the other door, she memorized the pattern—and was surprised at the smell of fresh pine as things were opened. Light from an overhead fixture showed off all kinds of new construction, but as with everything she’d seen that had been recently added, nothing was painted or finished beyond the rough-in first stage of the work.
Luke descended four or five steps; then he paused at a second, reinforced door—and looked back at her.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, he stared at Rio like he was memorizing her face.
“You can trust Apex, too,” he said roughly. “The bastard’s a sociopath, but he feels like he owes you, so you’re safe with him.”
Dear Lord, he was saying goodbye.
“What the hell is out there?” she asked.
Mayhem drew her away and closed them in the quarters together. Putting his back to the panel, he squeezed his eyes shut.
Then they waited. And waited . . .
. . . and waited.
As time stretched out, Mayhem started to roam around, hands in pockets, hands out of pockets. He looked at a watch on his wrist—that was not actually there—and for the first time, Rio noticed what he was wearing. It was the same kind of loose sweatshirt Luke wore. And his boots were the same. Pants, too.
Like it was a uniform.
“How long’s he been gone?” she blurted. Because she was wondering, herself. Worried, herself.
Abruptly, he turned to her, took out a gun that was so big, it surely qualified as a hand cannon—and held the weapon out to her.
“You’ve got to go and check on him. I can’t.”
Rio didn’t even hesitate. She took the forty. “Open that door right now.”
The man went over to the keypad. “Listen, once you’re out there, I can’t help you. You’re on your own. Just please . . . bring him back. He can be an asshole, but I’m kind of fond of him.”
“Don’t worry. I got him.”
The sun was low in the horizon, its angle sharp, its rays dulled by the seasonal tilt of the earth on its axis. There was even some cloud cover in the sky, and on top of all that, there were trees around—granted, with not much on their limbs, but the trunks and branches were not invisible.
Yet Lucan didn’t make it more than two feet out of the door.
Yes, there was an overhang, but that didn’t do shit when that great-ball-of-fire was so close to going down on the horizon: The low position of the sun meant the blinding, strength-sucking golden light hit him like a ton of bricks, the force of it taking his breath away. As he slumped, he lost his hold on the guard’s body, but that did not matter.
Instantly, he couldn’t see anything.
The world turned into a shapeless, formless bank of white, and he spun around, thinking he was facing the door. Except he wasn’t. He put his hands out, but he couldn’t find the handle. Couldn’t find the building.
He tripped over something. Fell down. Pushed himself up—
Burning now.
Was it his skin? Yes. And the pain was so paralyzing, he landed face-first in dirt.
Holy shit, he thought. This was how he died. He couldn’t believe it.
There had been a number of other situational volunteers for the lights-out trophy, from accidents, to fights, to an infection when he’d been a young . . . and then there had been the dreaded transition, because he was a half-breed and that was how vampires matured.
But after surviving all of those assaults on his mortality, he had lived to discover that this, this oven-hot-baking-sheet stretch of asphalt, was how it happened. This sun bath was the answer to the question that every person who was alive, be they vampire, wolven—even human—wondered about in some dark corner of their mind.
And the weirdest thing was . . . he couldn’t stop thinking about Rio.
Fear for her life made him try desperately to find the door. Casting his hands out, he dragged himself forward, even though he knew damn well that he could just be pulling himself farther and farther away from safety—
“Luke!”
The voice confused him. What was Rio doing out here? Oh, right. The white landscape around him had to be the Fade—the place where vampires went to spend eternity. And hey, it turned out that the female you wanted to be with was your greeter—
Shit!
“Rio,” he mumbled. “Are you dead?”
“Come on, stand up.”
In the great abyss of his pain, he still wanted to please her, do what she asked of him. So he attempted to get to his feet.
“Fuck,” he groaned as a hold locked around his waist and yanked him forward.
He stumbled into something hard, his face taking the brunt of the impact, and then his balance listed. There was a series of beeps. And then another series—
“Goddamn it, what’s the code?” Rio barked.
Lucan weaved on his feet, and the collapse that was coming his way speeded up like it was a boomerang looking for the hand that threw it: One minute he was holding his own against gravity; the next, he was horizontal, his face back in the dirt, his body not responding to all kinds of get-up, get-up, get-up’s.
After that, there was a split second of relative silence. Which was followed by a helluva lot of noise.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Mayhem! I need the code—he’s dying! What’s the code—”
Lucan threw his hand out toward Rio’s voice, and he got something on her, an ankle, he supposed. “Rio—”
“I need the code! Mayhem—”
“Shh. Rio. Listen to me.” When it was clear he wasn’t getting anywhere, he used what felt like the last of his strength to yell, “Rio!”