Hines was in Joanna’s head and knew precisely what was going on out there on the lawn behind the asylum. When the blue-haired woman who’d helped take out Perses arrived, he began to curse under his breath. He should’ve left hours ago. Now, they would waltz into his facility and reclaim his playthings before he even had a chance to see whether or not his serums would work.
“What do you want me to do, Doctor?” Joanna asked. She was peering through a pair of binoculars from an upstairs window and saw Larkin organizing his troops on the other side of the moat. Hines could see just fine using his telepathy.
He was pacing back and forth in the same library where he’d found the book, the ancient text that gave him hope that this wasn’t all for not. Asteria had taken that damnable baby upstairs with her, and he could hear her scurrying around, cursing, followed by a crash of furniture now and again. He knew she’d be of little use until she decided to put that child back in its cage. It could feed like the rest of them if it wanted to—there was no need for it to suckle at her teat like a newborn kitten. What they needed to do was leave the creature here and get on a plane now. Though, by the time they arrived in Melbourne, chances were all the fun would be over.
“I want you to go ahead and prepare the patients,” Hines finally said. At least he’d be able to watch what happened through Joanna’s mind. It wasn’t always clear, but it would do. “You’ll have to do the procedures yourself.”
He heard an inner gasp as she processed his statement. “But, Doc, are you sure? This is your brainchild. What if I mess it up?”
“You won’t, Joanna. You’re as capable of giving shots as I am. You’re simply giving them the injections with the blue lids, and once they take, you’re giving them the red ones.”
“But… didn’t you say, in some of your experiments, the blue made the tissue react more violently, rather than simply dissolving the DNA strands that are responsible for creating Guardians from humans?”
“Yes, that has happened. That’s why you must strap them down securely. Use the same method I’ve taught you. We have ten beds prepared. Everything is ready to go. You’ll be fine.”
“And what if they break into the facility before I have a chance to administer the red?”
Hines was silent for a few moments. Blue to change them to human; red to kill them. “We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t transpire.”
* * *
Paul had all of his people in position and was ready to go back across the lagoon of doom, or so he’d come to think of the moat. Getting over the enormous, spike laced wall seemed easier this time, perhaps because they were all too angry to care when a barb pricked an arm or sliced into a leg. He had decided to take twenty souls with him and leave the rest behind in case they all needed rescuing. If he couldn’t do this with Margie and Grant, he couldn’t do it at all. But he wasn’t leaving that building this time without his people—all of them.
The pontoon bridge was deployed across the moat now by a few of the Roatan Guardians, and Paul had planned to lead the way across, in case the concerns that the bridge could easily be toppled were legitimate, which he thought they probably were. But when Margie volunteered to go first so that she could test out her new speed, he let her go, and she zoomed across so quickly, he could hardly see her. “I need to get me one of those booster shots,” he muttered, watching Grant tear across after her.
Paul was next, and while he wasn’t slow, his speed was nothing compared to theirs. He tossed his Beretta across first, Margie catching it, thinking he might be able to move a little faster that way. As he sprinted across, the bridge bucked and quaked as if something enormous was underneath it, and he’d almost reached the other shore when a large purple tentacle stretched out of the water, aiming for his waist.
The Guardians on the shore opened fire, hitting it enough times to throw it off its trajectory, and Paul made it over. The Guardians shot into the water near where they thought the creature must be, an attempt to keep it at bay, as more of Paul’s teammates made it over. The final few were on the bridge when something rammed into it from underneath, hard, sending the center of the bridge high into the air.
Jill and a Guardian, Maurice, were on the bridge at the time. Both of them went flying into the air, landing in the water on either side of the bridge. “Not again,” Paul mumbled, ready to jump into the murky water one more time.
“Let us,” Margie insisted, gesturing at Grant. Paul stared at them for a second as Margie dropped her gun and flung herself into the deep, Grant doing the same on the other side of the bridge. They were moving so quickly, Paul couldn’t even track them.
It seemed like only a few seconds later when Grant surfaced with Jill. She was panting, sucking in air like she’d been down there forever. Perhaps she hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath before she went under. Grant kicked his way to the shore easily, deposited a sopping wet Jill, and then went back beneath the surface.
Paul shifted his IAC to Margie. She was struggling against another one of those octopus like creatures they’d seen the day before. She had her knife out and was hacking at its arms. “Go for its heart,” he relayed, and she shifted her attack just as Grant joined in alongside her. Maurice was struggling but had little room to maneuver to try to free himself.
Walking to the edge of the moat, Paul prepared to leap in should they need him. A shark fin was making a beeline down the middle of the moat, headed their way, but gunfire from the distant shore seemed to dissuade it and it circled back. Paul thought it might actually dive deeper and go in to help its tentacled friend so low it couldn’t be seen from the shore.
Margie and Grant could hack away at the octopus much more quickly than he’d been able to, and eventually, the beast turned to ash, freeing Maurice, and the three of them headed to the shore.
Paul offered Margie a hand, but she was standing beside him before he could even blink, so he pulled Maurice to his feet, and Grant was already well behind him before it even registered he was out of the water. They were all across now, and Larundel loomed behind him, all of its secrets about to be exposed, whether the Vampires liked it or not.
