Into the Lair (Falcon Mercenary Group #2)(79)

But Esteban never made a move for it. He stared at her, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

“I wanted to be free,” he whispered. “God…”

“You should have never tried to play God,” she said bitterly.

“Your God made me what I am,” he rasped as more blood frothed and foamed over his lips.

She leaned down, her body trembling with pain and rage. And fear for what this man’s actions had wrought. “God is no respecter of persons. He doesn’t make one man evil and another man good. He gives us choices. Control over our own destiny. And you chose wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” Esteban whispered. “He made me imperfect. A mistake.”

“No one’s perfect,” she snarled.

Another stab of pain rolled over her body, and she closed her eyes against the urge to vomit.

“But some are mistakes,” he said. “Freaks of nature. Like me…”

He raised his hand again, his fingers twitching and pointing to the table across the room. “Take it,” he choked out. “The journal. Explains…everything…”

The last whispered past his lips, a long hiss, the sound of finality. Blood burbled and spit over the edge of his mouth, and his eyes lost the spark of life.

Then his body began to shake and tremble. She backed hastily away. The two cats placed themselves between her and Esteban, briefly obscuring her vision. They both hissed, and an eerie yowl sounded.

She shoved at them so that she could see. She wanted to be certain he was dead.

What she saw shocked the breath from her lungs. Lying on the floor where Esteban had lain just seconds before was a beautiful silver wolf. Blood smeared his fur and matted his jowls. The blue eyes were fixed in death.

She wrapped her arms protectively around her chest and stared as tears filled her eyes. The entire world had gone mad. Nothing was as it should be.

The gun lay useless in her lap, and she looked down, wondering how she could get herself and the cats out of the compound.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she squared her shoulders. Ian and Braden had risked everything to save her. They hadn’t betrayed her, hadn’t left her to Esteban. She wouldn’t leave them now.

She’d survived. She could feel sorry for herself later. Right now she had to overcome the mind-numbing pain ricocheting through her body like a short-circuited electric system and get the hell out of here.

She thumped the butt of the rifle down on the floor for leverage and shoved herself to her knees. She promptly bent over, vomiting as her stomach curled and squeezed relentlessly.

The two cats bumped incessantly at her legs, urging her forward. They flanked her protectively, forming a tight circle around her with their bodies. And to think she’d once worried about them killing her. As had they.

Sucking air through her nose, she gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her feet. She nearly went down in a heap and had to lean heavily on the rifle to keep her footing.

The cats followed her to the door, pressed tightly against her legs in an effort to keep her upright. Didn’t retain human cognizance, her ass. They knew precisely what they were doing. Maybe they didn’t remember afterward, but it didn’t mean they were mindless killers.

Her gaze fell on the leather-bound journal lying on the table by the door. Part of her had no desire to know anything about Esteban, but the contents might help Ian and Braden and their teammate Damiano. She might need help every bit as much as they did now that Esteban had probably turned her into a shape-shifting being.

She curled her hand around the spine and tucked it to her breast. Slowly and painfully she headed across the room to the small corridor that she knew led to the lower level. There was a tunnel leading to the outside. She’d heard Esteban talking. Maybe it was to her. She couldn’t remember. He’d spoken to her often, as though he was trying to win her over, to make her understand.

She closed her eyes as more tears simmered in her vision. What had he done to her? And why? What was he? Had he experimented on himself only for things to go horribly wrong as they had with Ian and Braden? Was his mad search for her an attempt to correct his mistakes, to find a cure?

They descended into the cooler, darker tunnel. A sound in the distance sent a wave of adrenaline through her body. Somehow she found the strength to raise the gun as she and the cats moved steadily forward. At the end, two men appeared. As they raised their rifles, she fired off a volley of shots. They went down and she shot again, not taking chances as they drew closer.

The cats sniffed at the bodies and growled but urged her over them.

Deeper and deeper, further down until she was certain they were entering the bowels of the earth. The tunnel wound and narrowed, and at several points she had to stop and lean heavily against the wall.

Tears of rage, of pain and frustration, of fear and of sorrow flooded her eyes, and she angrily brushed them away, furious that now of all times she was breaking.

And then the tunnel sloped upward. The going went slower as she struggled to put one foot in front of the other. Agony seared her muscles. They contracted and protested, shook like a newborn colt’s legs.

Sunlight. Just a beam shining and bouncing off the tunnel wall. She extended her hand, touching the slight trail of warmth along the cooler surface.

It grew brighter, and then she saw the small entrance ahead, a simple trap door in the ceiling, old enough that intermittent splashes of sun leaked through.