Anarchy (Hive Trilogy, #2)(49)

My breathing started to increase, the fear in my body catching up before the fear in my brain. Ryder and Kyle reacted in an instant. Both of them drew their weapons and fell in back to back on either side of me. The three of us were silent as we observed the area around us. We weren’t out in the open, we’d stuck close to the walls as we searched for Tessa, but something was stalking our footsteps.

Lucas popped out of the shadows then and Ryder nearly took him down. At the last second, he pulled back.

Lucas’ face was pinched in anxiety. “Charlie,” he whispered, his voice husky. “I’ve been voted off the Quorum. They no longer trust me, but I overheard them. Your mom, they’re going to take her.”

I sagged against Ryder’s side, the air knocked out of me.

Kyle had to speak for me because I was at a loss for words. “Who is going for her mom and when?”

Chattering reached me and I noticed a group of vampires coming over to us. In the center was Tessa. She was beaming smiles and entertaining, being a social butterfly as usual.

“Vampires. Working for the Quorum. It’s all going down right now. At her work … at the hospital,” Lucas murmured before turning away from us and crossing to the advancing group of vampires. He intercepted them before they could reach us. “Enjoying our little Tessa?” I heard him say. “She’s a doll, isn’t she?” He was using his best weapon to distract that group from us. His charm.

My friend finally noticed me then. She’d been a little busy laughing and sucking face with Blake. Asshole. My heart pulled in two directions as Tessa waved me over.

I shook my head at her, before turning away. “Let’s go,” I told my boys, and a quick glance back had Tessa staring after me, a frown marring her pretty face.

Not up to dealing with her pain, I turned away and practically raced off the rooftop.

“Charlie!” Tessa called, and it tore my insides to leave her. But some motherf*ckers were after my mom and that was the final piece of information I needed to snap. It was like I was back in the culling again, seeing red, hell bent on murder.

We didn’t have time to get the other boys or try to communicate with them. We had to assume every move we made was being watched and listened to. We moved as fast as possible without arousing suspicion. Ryder led the way, right into the locker room. Inside, Sam was on one of the weight machines, but he dropped it and jumped up when he saw our faces.

Ryder reached out and grasped his friend by the shoulder, leaning in closer and talking to Sam in another language, which I was pretty sure was French. My jaw was on the floor right about then. How could I not know he spoke French? My boyfriend’s hotness had just skyrocketed. Dear God. That body and he speaks foreign languages.

As Ryder finished Sam nodded swiftly, and strode across the gym, flipped open his laptop, and within seconds was typing like a crazy person.

Suddenly the siren over the locker room, which told us that there was a call coming in, started wailing. I met Sam’s eyes and grinned as he winked.

Jason, one of the call room ash, came running in. “We’ve got another suspected ash. On Alberta Street, may have attacked a human.” He was out of breath.

Thanks to Sam, the world’s best hacker, we’d just been handed the perfect excuse to get out of the Hive.

Ryder nodded at the panicky ash. “Thank you. Don’t bother to call out anyone else. We’re on it.”

We suited up quickly, tossing on bulletproof vests, and guns, before jogging out the door.

In the Humvee, Ryder sat shotgun and Kyle drove, while Sam slid in beside me. We peeled out in a rush of screeching tires and engine acceleration. I noticed when we were halfway across the grounds that the gate wasn’t opening like it normally did.

“What’s happening?” Ryder leaned forward, his eyes locked in. I knew what was worrying him—dispatch always radioed the gate to open it for us. If they hadn’t, that must mean…

Mother-effers. “They’re stopping us!” I pounded the back of the seat.

Sam was hammering away on his laptop as Kyle slammed on the brakes. We had been barreling along and had to slow or we’d have smashed into the fence.

“They’re not blocking me,” Sam said, and I breathed out a huge sigh of relief when the gate opened. “But they didn’t dispatch through like normal.”

Thank God he’d thought to bring his computer with him. Maybe he had anticipated this happening. Why hadn’t they dispatched it through? Was the Quorum not even trying to pretend they weren’t targeting us now? The thought was partly liberating but mostly frightening.

Kyle gunned it. A guard had stepped out of his tower to stop us, but when it was clear we were not slowing this vehicle, he did the smart thing and jumped out of our way.

“Where did they say the ash was? Legacy hospital?” I asked, playing my part for the listening vampires. It was also the easiest way to let them know that was where my mom worked.

Sam played along. “Yeah, just near that on Alberta.”

After the longest eight minutes of my life, Kyle hopped the Humvee onto the curb outside of the emergency room where my mom worked. I had the door open and was halfway out before the car had even stopped. I was powering toward the entrance when a familiar scream rang out into the night and had me changing direction toward the smoker’s alley. That shriek had sounded an awful lot like my mom.