“Okay.” Layla backed away from the door to show her compliance. “Go!”
But he was already pelting around the corner.
Please let him get to Talia.
The door hissed closed, and a deep metallic clang signaled it was secure. Only the voice code, which she had cycling in her mind, would release her now. Drawing a huge breath, she turned to look around.
The wraith examination room smelled brightly foul, like decay covered with bleach. The transparent wall looked out to an observation theater, and considering the thick metal slab and restraints in the room, she shuddered at the thought of what had been restrained and for what purpose. She pitied the wraiths. Was there any coming back for them? Segue research said no. The mutation was permanent.
Layla rubbed her hands on her arms to fight a sudden chill. The silence this deep underground was eerie, almost as bad as Talia’s scream. What was happening? Layla couldn’t begin to imagine. At least here she wouldn’t be a liability.
In each upper corner of the room, cameras looked down on her. And Layla caught the gleam of lenses on the other side of the partition. For once, she was the one being captured on film. She almost signaled her awareness but glanced away instead.
Wait it out. Someone, eventually, would come for her.
The metal cupboards and drawers were all locked, so to pass the time she decided to pick them to discover the contents. The first drawer contained scalpels of all sizes and varieties, what must have been a bone saw, flat metal things—retractors?—a pointy tong that looked like a corkscrew. None of it good. All made her nauseous.
Adam Thorne, what goes on in here?
She decided to keep the rest of the drawers shut.
And that’s when she noticed the woman leaning on the transparent wall. One-half of her was girl next door, though blood splattered her clothes, and the other half was reptilian, a lizard claw tapping lightly on the glass.
Khan found Talia backed up into a corner of the nursery, her children crying in her arms. The room was dark with her own Shadows as she attempted to cloak the babies, but there was nowhere for her to run. And she was too clumsy with the children in her arms to attempt a concealed dash. A wight hung in the air, its limbs ravaged, face hollow. Whether male or female, it long ago ceased to matter. Its smell polluted the air. The wight swatted a rocking chair out of the way as it lunged toward Talia’s position.
Khan sent a jut of Shadow its way and its maw hung slack, its body gasping into decay, dead, a stain and stink in the pretty room. Adam would take care of that.
The door shuddered. Behind it a wraith, probably the wight’s master, attempted entry.
“A moment,” Khan said to Talia. Adam’s stalwart doors didn’t stop him. Couldn’t stop darkness. A wind rush of black anger, and the wraith’s flesh went slack as well.
Down the hallway, wraiths were a thick press of teeth and menace intent on reaching Khan’s daughter and her children. They crawled the ceiling and walls, blocking human escape.
Khan seethed. Where were Adam and the security he promised? Where was Layla?
He briefly sought her light among the souls in the building. She was not present. Not here. Whether that was for good or ill, he did not know, which frenzied him like a sudden madness.
But he couldn’t leave Talia and the children to this danger.
Fast. Hurry. Now.
Khan cast dark magic down the hallway to batter the wraiths from their perches. A wraith leaped at him. Khan grabbed his head out of the air, twisted to a double snap, and threw the rot out of the way. He flipped the wraith that dared to land on Death’s shoulder to the floor and stamped his skull while reaching for two more of the vermin. He took them each in course, the soulless living husks of once-mortals, wishing for steel to make his progress faster. He ranged through the building, casting them into oblivion.
When all that was left was the reek of corpses, he sent fingers of Shadow throughout Segue to sense for other threats. He found the cold shift of a ghost, and another, and the blazing purpose of Custo, just passing through Twilight, too late to kill the wraiths.
But nothing that could hurt his daughter.
He returned to find Talia sitting on the floor cradling her children against her chest. She rocked them rhythmically. “Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh.” But her face was fae pale, her eyes large and hot with her own strong feeling.
“Where’s Layla?” he demanded.
“With Adam in the holding facility.”
For the wraiths to come so far, there had to be another at work. The devil. And here he’d thought she was simple.
Custo burst into the room. His gaze darted about, settled on the dead wraiths. “Holy fuck, what happened here?”
Talia looked up at Khan. “We’ll be okay now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Custo added. “Go get your girl.”
Rose Anne Petty. Devil.