Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(82)

Rick inclined his head. Occam was watching us, his eyes shifting back and forth.

Softly, Tandy asked, “When you’re in a bad mood, is Soulwood in a bad mood?”

Sometimes Tandy was too dang discerning. I stood. “You all going in to DNAKeys’ compound and checking out that blood or not?”

“We’re going in,” Rick said softly. “You have blood on-site. We have two reports of prisoners on-site. The county tactical team is on the way. I want Nell, Occam, T. Laine. Vests. Service weapons only. SWAT will carry the big guns. Let’s ride.”

? ? ?

We took Unit Eighteen’s van to the site, up the mountain and then down into the holler, riding the bumper of the county SWAT team, moving fast so DNAKeys’ security cameras wouldn’t have time to warn the employees. We flew past the site where I’d parked recently. Then the drive where we’d parked before, then an empty parking lot. Closer to the lights of DNAKeys. The pavement developed speed bumps that Unit Eighteen’s van was not equipped to handle. I held on to the grab handles, what the others called the “oh, shit” handles, feeling the van roof brush my head on one particularly high-speed bump.

And then the van doors slid open and things got confused.

The guards at the front of the compound were taken out by SWAT. The werewolf was shot with a beanbag that knocked him down. His handler was hit too. No blood. Thankfully, no blood.

The door went down, no match for the battering ram wielded by the team.

Occam muttered, “Dumb-asses.”

It took a moment, but then I realized the steel door had been held in place with wood strips. I might never use the word dumb-ass, but I had to agree it was poor security. Someone screamed, “Flashbang!” Instantly a flashbang went off inside. Light and noise and smoke. Then another. And a third. Smoke bombs filled the entrance with gray-white smoke.

Then I was inside. Fighting my way through the low light and the smoke. As probationary agent I was near the back of the personnel entering the building. The SWAT guy pulling the six position pushed me with his weapon. Probably not standard behavior, but then I wasn’t standard-issue either. I sped up and nearly ran into the SWAT woman in front of me. The team cleared the first floor. I followed the woman and tried to take it all in, but it was a jumble of smoke and flashbangs and lights going off and coming on and DNAKeys’ employees screaming. That was the worst.

Vampires screaming. That awful, high-pitched wail of fear and death.

Wolves snarling. Grindylows jumping and cutting, steel claws slashing. Blood, scarlet splashing. But my bloodlust was muted by the speed and violence.

A witch throwing defensive spells that made my teeth and the roots in my belly hurt, until T. Laine’s null weapon took her down.

Wolves howling in fear and grief. Stairs leading up and down.

What might have been a juvenile gwyllgi, raging in his cage. Another were-creature I couldn’t identify.

Laboratories. Green color scheme. Machines and machine noise.

Storage rooms. Dull gray. Boxes. Old, dusty jars containing liquid and fetal humans and creatures with genetic abnormalities and horrible deformities, like things confiscated from a traveling carnival of the fifties and sixties. Newer jars full of sea creatures, starfish, jellyfish, small sharks. Strange things. Strange creatures.

Offices, pale stone color scheme. Desks. Computers.

Then the laboratory on the lowest level. And the glass doors. And the blood inside. In bags. Like a blood bank.

In bags.

Blood bank.

For research.

A vampire wearing a lab coat looked at me and demanded, “Call Ming of Glass. Call her. Now!”

“Ming?” I whispered, looking around, taking in everything. The lack of caged were-creatures. The lack of vampires in silver cuffs. Blood in the refrigerator in plastic bags. Gallons of it. No torture room. Just a blood bank. I was an idiot. I had messed up badly. The fact that Soul and Rick had pushed for this raid didn’t make that knowledge any better.

? ? ?

Rick and the PsyLED team met back at the entrance and the broken door frame. “The paras are on the DNAKeys compound willingly,” he said, his tone wooden. “They are cooperative and well-paid test subjects or are employed here in research projects. And the lab has all its animal research paperwork up-to-date. Everything here is legal and monitored by the proper authorities.”

He didn’t look at me as he continued. “This was a waste of time and resources. You all have your orders for the rest of the night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Shoulders hunched, I went to the van and took a seat in the back. I was immeasurably happy that Rick hadn’t fired me on the spot.

? ? ?

Much later, I drove to the senator’s place on the river, stopping by Starbucks just before it closed, where I picked up a leftover banana bread loaf, a carton of coffee, and a short stack of foam cups. It was a probie move, meant to create a warm and fuzzy feeling in the agents already on duty. I didn’t have to do it. I didn’t have to spend my hard-earned money. But I was feeling stupid . . . really, horribly, abysmally stupid.

No, the raid itself wasn’t on my shoulders. But . . . the stupidity sat heavily on me.

I parked on the shoulder of the road and got out, carrying a hefty load of food and gear. Warm air blew past and, overhead, clouds scudded through the sky, racing in ragged tails, lit by the moon. The wind was strong enough to overpower the scent of coffee and I caught other smells on the night air: burning tobacco, wet dogs, the ozone of something electrical.