Annihilate (Hive Trilogy #3)(53)

Why do parents feel the need to call you by your childhood name in front of your boyfriend? And grown up? Hah. The understatement of my life. She had no idea what I had been through and I would never tell her. So I simply nodded, my smile weak but genuine.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I said, pulling her close for another hug.

“Shit!” Kyle’s curse echoed around the room. He looked up from the computer perched on his lap and my gut dropped when I saw his face. Something very, very bad had happened.

Ryder and I practically crashed into Sam, all of us fighting to get over to Kyle.

“What is it?” Ryder demanded.

“Those motherfuckers.” Kyle was still swearing, and I was about to crack him over the head when he spun the laptop in our direction. It took me about five minutes to wrap my head around what I was seeing. I recognized the images, but my brain was having trouble processing.

Holy shit! We had been expecting some backlash. Lives did hang in the balance when it was anything to do with vampires … but this, this was so much worse.

The video footage was image after image of vampires spilling out onto the streets as the sun was setting in New York. They were attacking humans. Killing them, turning them, drinking from them, destroying homes and buildings, causing damage for the sake of causing damage. Shit! What was happening? Had some started to turn to human already, and the rest went crazy? Were they going to take out as many as they could before the cure kicked in?

Ryder’s jaw was clenched. “Three hours.”

“Huh?” My brain was still processing the video.

Ryder turned to everyone in the room. “The sun goes down in Portland in three hours.”

Well … fuck. Maybe I wasn’t getting out of this alive. Because you bet your ass if the vampires were coming for the people of Portland, I was going to be there to stop them.

“It’s a one-hour drive, so we have two hours to suit up and make a plan.”

Jayden offered up an idea. “Let’s burn that damn place to the ground.”

Personally, I’d love to see the Hive burn, but Carter shook his head. “No. They’ll be on high alert. Snipers in every window. We won’t get close enough to the Hive. The vampires may not be trained like ash, but they are strong and have an arsenal that would put the Marines to shame. You won’t get within five hundred feet without losing your head. Not now. They’re expecting it.”

Fuck. Not to mention our ash buddies were still inside.

I met his gaze. “Then what?”

He started to pace. “I’m guessing eighty percent of them were in the celebration of new blood and feeders. They will be cured, eventually. The other twenty percent won’t go down without major bloodshed. Lock down the humans, martial law, curfew, the whole bit. Then we go in and fight them old-school. Like the culling, give them everything we got.”

Kyle spoke up again, his eyes trained to a second laptop he had open. “Vampires have warnings going out to all the Hives now. Looks like this bitch is gonna get ugly.”

I swallowed roughly. “Did any of them get cured?” Please tell me that my father was right, that at least eighty percent were knocked out. Vampire numbers were nothing on humans, so we’d have a chance if a good lot ingested the cure.

Kyle typed a few times, and finally glanced my way. “I’ve interrupted the alerts for now. They think they’re sending it out into the world, but it’s just staying on their particular server.” He paused, seeming to be choosing his words. “Sanctum is updating me; they believe that a good percentage of the vampires, in all Hives, have partaken of the cure blood. In some places the change to human is already kicking in. Thankfully, by the time they’ve fully changed back to human, the majority will have taken the cure.”

He flicked his head across to Becca, standing in Sam’s shadow, who had barely stepped two foot from her. “Whatever you put in the cure serum to speed up the process is really working. In fact, it’s much faster than we anticipated, which is why New York is already going crazy. Their celebrations started a few hours ago, and already vampires are showing signs of humanity.”

Becca paled, stepping around Sam to see the footage better. “Crap! I’m sorry. I thought it would be better to get the cure acting straight away on them all. I thought I’d calculated the right amount of time so that no one would notice until all had time to drink.”

She looked devastated, her eyes running across the footage again and again. Stepping over, I took her hand. “This is not your fault. This is war, girl, and there are always casualties in war. We’re trying our best to free humans from the control of these assholes. We have to stay strong now, and go and do our best to save them all.”

Ryder’s cell rang then, and all of us fell silent as he answered it on speaker.

“Ryder here. Talk to me.”

Blue Eye’s voice came through loud and clear. “Red alert, Ryder. The cure is working, but as we suspected the small numbers who did not drink, or noticed early, are out on the streets trying to turn humans. Build their numbers back up.” He sounded harried, but not crazy pissed or anything.

“We saw the New York footage,” Ryder said. “We’re about to suit up and hit Portland Hive before they can get to the humans.”

“I’m on my way there too. I already have men stationed there, on standby. The other Hive cities are quiet so far, and I have people in place to handle any that get out of control. The international ones have required me to call on their local law enforcement. All have been more than willing to help. Hopefully when the dust settles, the Hives will no longer be there. I’ll check in with you over the next few hours, but for now, things are as good as we could expect. Head to Portland if you feel you must. I’ll see you there.”