Page 48 of All Saints Day (Lucifer and the Saints #2)
Dennis
J ust before we’re all about to turn in ahead of our big mission tomorrow, Louise gathers us around her beside the small space heater we’re running off a solar battery in the back of the box truck we hopped on, off the boat on the Kenai Peninsula.
She’s wrapped in a tattered blanket, her hair plaited back from her face, her cheeks still pale and wan beneath the small smears of rosy pinkness from the cold
“I know it might seem in poor taste, but…” She pulls both of her hands from inside the blankets, hands balled into fists around something, holding whatever it is tight.
All of us peer at her in curiosity as she unfurls her clenched fingers to reveal a handful of wooden chess pieces.
“Ever since I saw those memories of Frank’s, I haven’t stopped thinking about them,” she murmurs, a pained smile tugging at the corner of her lip where the sliver from Frank’s bonding bite is still healing, her eyes welling with tears.
“I wanted all of us to have a token—something for… well, I don’t know if I’d call it luck…
but something for us to carry into battle tomorrow. ”
I take stock of the contents of her palm; A King and a Pawn hewn from beautifully lacquered yellow poplar, a Knight carved from mossy green soapstone, a Rook made from highly polished ebony, a Queen made of snowy white marble—that I instantly recognized as one of the pieces from the horrible torture chamber at the country estate; and last but not least—a Bishop, carefully wood-worked from a beautiful piece of deep red mahogany, buffed to a mirror shine.
Before I realize it, I’m reaching out to pinch the red wooden bishop from Louise’s outstretched palm.
“Where did you get all of these?” Caz breathes, bewildered.
“The Queen came from the green room at the Country Estate,” I cut in, my eagerness to show my mettle getting the best of me again. Louise rewards me with a warm, knowing smile.
“Good eye.” She nods before continuing, “I took these—” she fingers the gleaming yellow poplar King and Pawn.
“From the fancy antique store, Quentin stopped to buy those old school night vision goggles,” Louise explains, Quentin and Cazimer lifting the King and Pawn pieces from her hand respectively—just as Frank had assigned the roles to them in the memory we had seen down the mating bond.
“That one came from the hippie stoner store in the mall when we stopped to get some clothes that weren’t soaked in blood on our way from the Country Estate to the meetup with Martin.
” She nods as Seb lifts the green soapstone horsehead gingerly from the offerings.
She and I lock eyes as I close my fingers into a fist around my piece—only the white marble Queen and ebony Rook left in her hands.
“I took that one from the set at the log cabin the morning after we bonded,” Louise blinks away her tears.
I nod, then use my free hand to close her fist around the two remaining pieces before I pull her against me and wrap my arms tight around her.
“You can give Frank his when we see him. We’re gonna make it,” I assure Louise, myself, the rest of my pack—even if I don’t know if I believe it.
The morning of the breach is here before we know it.
At 3:00AM—our operation begins in silence; the five of us in our bulletproof vests and all-black kit, moving swiftly on light feet through the darkness of the dense wood toward our destination.
Since there are no roads aside from the limited access ways to the R all of us emerging from the shadowy treeline, the pale stone cliffs still doing their best to reflect what little moonlight peers through the heavy cloud cover.
If the moon had been full and bright, we would be climbing on a near-glowing face of rock; like a glaring bunch of creeping spiders in our black gear against the silvery moonlit stone. Thankfully, we are able to scuttle, dusky and gray, against the similarly dingy darkness.
Like an army of ants, we pry our way into the access tunnels deep beneath the ground; Sébastien lays a Hansel and Gretel trail of bombs in our wake as we make our way to the garbage chute and incinerator.
Thus far it has been quiet; doors with easy to spoof janitorial card swipes, but we anticipated the need to push deeper into the facility—with brute force as necessary.
Quentin, the most experienced of us in the field, takes point, with Louise and I backing him up. Caz and Seb bring up the rear with our trail of explosives.
It is early enough that we are able to pass quietly through a large open foyer that appears totally uninhabited at this hour, but as soon as we pass from the foyer into the access hall to the research department, we run into our first obstacles.
I hadn’t yet had a chance to witness Louise approximating anything like her full capacity since joining up with the Saints.
I am taken off guard by her slick brutality, the way she moves in close—first with her knife, and only when necessary her gun—dropping as many Windmill soldiers as she can with as little commotion as possible.
I find myself holding my breath as she and Quentin bob and weave down the hallway, spilling blood on the clinical-white tiled floors—splatters of red showering across thick glass doors and hallway partitions—as we make our way closer to Frank.
As the corridor splits into two branches—one toward the research offices and the other toward the development labs—Caz and Seb split off to make for the labs, bent on wreaking as much destructive havoc on the crèche of the virus as possible.
I follow closely as Q and Louise continue to lay waste to all in our path, picking off any Windmill thugs that get close enough to cause either of them trouble while their hands are already full.
My stomach turns as we clamber over the fallen bodies—one after another—until we make our way to the end of the access hall, a pair of thick metal doors with a scanner pad beside it.
I’m so caught up with how we’re going to address the scanner pad without the proper work-around, when suddenly Louise is screaming at me, she shoves me to the ground and fires at a man in a white coat who peers from a cracked office door in the hallway we just walked through.
The man lets out a howl as the bullet catches him through the shoulder, dropping him to the ground. I didn’t even see him until just now—if Louise hadn’t stepped in, I’d be toast.
Louise closes the distance between herself and the man in the lab coat—gun pointed at his face.
“Can you open that door?” she barks, her powerful sigma aura oppressive in her heightened state.
“I won’t open it for some dirty sigma bitch,” he snarls, doing his best to assert his gamma aura against hers.
“I didn’t ask you if you would open it, but if you could open it.”
“I’ll never open it for you.” He squares his chest and lifts his chin from his place at the bottom of the doorframe.
“Guess I have my answer then.” Louise gives him a curt smile, and then blows him away—looking to me for assistance, she begins to drag him by the wrist to the scanner pad.
I do my best to help drag him along while covering the both of us.
Quentin makes a pinched, disgusted expression as we drag the body to the scanner and clumsily slap his hand onto the plate.
All three of us are relieved when the heavy doors hiss open on powerful hydraulics.
We scuttle down the hallway and into what appears to be…
a cafeteria? Or possibly a small area to receive lectures or view presentations?
There are scattered tables with safety stool attachments, a small elevated stage area with several banks of fixed seating hewn from rubberized foam; the whole space outfitted in institutional calming beige.
I am about to ask Quentin and Louise what they think this space was used for—when something moves in the shadows of the distant dais and we all stop short.
“Oh god.” The words leave me in a gust just as the bright overhead lights of the cafe auditorium come up—Frank strapped to an inversion table beside a gleaming tray of syringes, forceps, and scalpels.
Beside him, Compton stands—eyes shadowed with lack of sleep and glittering with unhinged mania. He looks grayer, more run-down than I’ve ever seen him. I can feel that the loss of Susan has undone him.
“You all showed up just in time!” Compton booms, brandishing his handgun, turning it so that the tip of the barrel rests against Frank’s temple.
“Mr. Castle and I were just about to start playing a little game.” He grins, steely blue eyes flitting down to the tray of insidious medical tools just within his reach.
“How about you put the gun down and step away and we find you a nice cushy Supermax facility you can spend the rest of your days at—huh, Walt?” I try to reason with him as I take another few slow, steady steps toward him—my gun trained on his head.
“Go ahead and take another few steps, McBride,” Compton warns as he pulls back the hammer. “See what happens to your boy.”
I stop, my gaze darting to Louise and Quentin for the briefest moment before it returns to Compton.
“What do you want, Compton?” Louise hedges as she begins to lower her gun.
“I want you to drop that gun and come up here,” Compton snarls—pressing the muzzle into Frank’s temple. Frank gives a grunt of protest at Compton’s words.
“And what do I get for giving you what you want?” Louise continues to bargain—the hard set of Quentin’s jaw ticking as he glares at her.
“I won’t kill you where you stand.”
There’s a mechanical whirring, and in an instant several green lasers track along the floor—repositioning themselves so that they fix Quentin, Louise, and I squarely in the chest.
“Sniper drones—fully automated crowd control for when our test subjects get restless during group activities.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end.
“Test subjects?” Quentin echoes.
“Viruses and bio weapons research isn’t the only thing that goes on here, kids,” Compton scoffs. “You are way above your pay grade.”
Compton is right. We knew there were plenty of fucked-up oddities lurking in the shadows of the Windmill—but none of our intel had mentioned details like this.
My heart races, panic about to overtake me—when Louise flicks the safety on her gun and drops it to the ground, kicking it away from herself and Compton.
“Fine, you win—you don’t kill them—you get me,” Louise dangles the proposition, hands raised in surrender as she steps onto the stage in the cold beam of the spotlight alongside Compton and Frank.
“You’re not in a position to make any deals,” Compton seethes, his eyes glittering with pure hatred.
“Maybe not with you, but the Windmill will be invested in keeping me alive for their research,” Louise counters, her hands lowering to hang at her sides as she stares Compton down.
“See, that’s the funny thing,” Compton grins, a terrifying glee lighting his hollowed-out face like a Jack-o'-lantern. “The Windmill may want you—and in her own fucked up way, Susan really did care for you, more than she ever cared about me, really,” he snorts a joyless laugh. “But I’m not stupid enough to think that the Windmill keeps me around for long to celebrate all my failures once they finally get their little red bird in hand,” Compton sneers, and my heart rate skyrockets, understanding washing over me just as he says the words.
“But all I care about right now—is destroying the little bitch who ruined my life!”
Before Louise can argue—Compton lifts one of the syringes from the tray, and jabs it into the side of her neck.