Burning Violet_Lick of Fire Read online

  Besides, all Violet needed was a look around the room to find Ryan and meet his eyes. She raised her eyebrows in a question. In reply, he winked at her. They were in agreement, then. ‘If the opportunity presents itself,’ Millie had said. Violet and Ryan would make sure it did. Both of them were shifters, and both of them had been caged before—Violet for only a few days, Ryan for close to a year. They weren’t going to leave anyone behind, and that was the end of it. No para deserved this treatment. As far as Violet was concerned, to fail to even try to free them would be tantamount to collaborating with the authorities. She’d rather cut off her own wings.

  As they filed out of the room, the entire squad passed by Millie and received from her the miniature headset that would allow them to communicate during the operation. Violet, having been in the front row, ended up the last one in line. When she reached Millie, the squad leader didn’t immediately give her the headset, and instead considered her intently, her brows furrowed. She kept her hair cropped to quasi-military standards, which accentuated the severity of her expression.

  “Are you rummaging through my mind?” Violet asked in as bland a tone as she could manage. “I thought that went against the squad’s code of conduct, Sir.”

  Millie snorted and shook her head.

  “I co-wrote that code of conduct, so I know perfectly well what it says. Including the part about agreeing to follow all reasonable orders if you decide to join our group. You do remember that part, don’t you, Ladybird?”

  Code names were regularly employed in the squad, but somehow every time Millie used Violet’s she managed to made it sound mocking. Violet forced herself to smile and held out her hand.

  “Perfectly,” was all she said.

  After another few seconds, Millie finally gave her a headset and nodded her forward. Controlling her breathing, Violet let out a long, slow breath even as she slipped the headset in her ear. She wouldn’t have put it past Millie to ground her from this mission, and that would have absolutely sucked.

  There was a war going on, paras against government, and Violet was a fighter. If she’d wanted to stay safe, she’d have remained at Sanctuary. She wanted to help people who, like her, through no fault of their own, were different. And as far as she was concerned, that included ‘unstable,’ ‘dangerous’ people too.

  Her next stop was by the armory, where the rest of the squad was putting on armor and strapping on weapons. The first, she didn’t need, although she did alter her clothes to match the rest of the squad: black, tight, reinforced over the torso and thighs. It took no more than a few moments of focus to rearrange her feathers and turn them fully black and completely seamless.

  When she was in her phoenix form, they gleamed like gold, but in her human form she could alter their appearance at will. Whether phoenix or human, however, they protected her from blades and most firearms. She would be in trouble if their intel was wrong and the containment center was defended with heavy artillery, but then, so would the entire squad.

  Ryan approached her, and, without a word, handed her two guns. She took one, checked the ammunition and the chamber before strapping it to her thigh. She did the same thing with the second gun. This one, she hid under her feathers at the small of her back.

  “Knives?” Ryan asked

  Violet shook her head.

  “I think I’ll be okay,” she said with a slight smile, and raised her hand between them, fingers spread out. All it took was a thought, and each of her nails extended into three inches worth of serrated talons. Ryan barked out a brief laugh.

  “How could I forget?” he said with a grin.

  Next to them, Petro chuckled, the deep sound like the rumble of thunder.

  “You call that talons?” he asked even as he extended his middle finger upward. His nail grew until it was maybe seven inches long, with a wicked metallic gleam on its edge.

  “Dragons,” Ryan said with a disgusted snort. “Always got to brag about your size, huh? Almost like you’re compensating for something.”

  Petro laughed, as did a few people around them, but not Hazel, Violet noticed. She and Petro used to date, but since they’d broken up she’d been withdrawn. Maybe when they were all back to Sanctuary, Violet would ask her for coffee and see if she wanted to talk about it.

  There was an unspoken understanding between all the shifters in the squad. It didn’t really matter what animal they shifted into. They were family. Like in most families, siblings teased each other at every possible opportunity. And like in most families, they were there for each other, no matter what.

  They all finished their preparations, and when Millie appeared at the door, dressed in the navy blue guard uniform that would help them get access to the facilities, all she had to do was give a single nod. Everybody followed.

  Down in the garage, Violet cast a wistful look toward her motorcycle. She’d shined every last bit of it just days ago, and it gleamed under the lights, the flames painted along the body as bright as a real fire. She’d left the keys in the ignition. No one in the squad would dare touch her baby. She wished she could have gone to the mission riding it. If she had her way, she would ride everywhere. Or rather, she would ride everywhere she couldn’t fly. Today, however, everyone was climbing into one of two vans. Going in, there were only seven of them in each van, two at the front, and five in the back. If all went well, the vans would be a lot more crowded coming back.

  As planned, the drive took about twenty minutes. The location for the base of operations had been chosen for its proximity to the containment center. They would regroup at the base afterward, but then it would be abandoned. The newly-freed prisoners would be brought to Sanctuary to rest, heal if they needed to, and receive new identities, and the members of the squad would be left to their own devices until their next operation.

  It was a simple plan, really, almost too simple, but then simple could be very effective. Simplicity had been at the core of the center’s design, too: build an underground facility, top it with an unmemorable building that looked like the dozens of other commercial properties around it, keep the security to a minimum so as not to attract attention, and remain incognito right on the edge of the east coast’s largest metropolitan area. Many such containment facilities followed the same idea of keeping things small and hiding in plain sight. The design was sound, but the issue here, like so often, was the human element: all that was needed to break the secret was for one of the people who worked there to speak too much.

  Using forged credentials and identities, Millie and Jeremy gained access to the facility, each of them pretending to be bringing in a newly captured para in the van they drove. They were both telepaths, although Jeremy was still learning to use his abilities. The idea was that if they were on the verge of being discovered, or if the guards manning the entrance grew suspicious, telepaths would realize as much right away, and give them a few seconds more to react.

  No such thing happened today. They drove right in, everyone quickly came out of the vans, and they were greeted in the indoor garage by their contact. From what Millie had said, the man wasn’t a para himself, but his mate was. Living with her, he had realized what all paras knew, but that seemed so hard to understand for regular people: having powers did not make paras any less human than the rest of them. A pity that it had taken finding his mate for the man to realize what he did for a living was abhorrent, but at least by then he had enough seniority to be useful to the cause. He and his mate would be sent to Sanctuary to start new lives, too.

  “All right, no time to lose,” Millie said, stepping to the front of the squad. “You know your orders. Good luck.”

  They separated into three groups. Three people remained with the vans, ready to protect the squad’s retreat. Two would disable the guards at the entrance, insuring the squad would be able to leave unimpeded but also ready to report on any potential reinforcements coming in. The rest followed their informant to the service elevator, which was large enough to take them all to the first
of the underground levels.

  Millie had chosen this time, late in the evening, to attack because at this hour the so-called scientists who performed experiments on the paras would be gone for the night, and all the prisoners would be back in their cells. The informant was supposed to be in the surveillance office monitoring the closed circuit televisions, so the cameras placed at regular intervals on the ceiling were not a problem.

  What was a problem, however, was that one of those scientists was either overzealous or running late: when the elevator doors opened onto what should have been an empty corridor, a man dressed in a lab coat looked up from the clipboard he was making notes on as he walked. At his side, a teenager who didn’t look a day older than fifteen was strapped to a wheelchair, his dazed expression and lolling head hinting that he was drugged. One black-clad guard pushed the wheelchair, while another walked behind them. Neither of the guards had a weapon in hand, but the second one had a walkie-talkie close to his mouth and was talking to someone.

  Five shots were fired, no louder than quiet ‘pops’ thanks to the silencers. One of them came from Violet’s gun. The scientist and the guards all fell to the floor as though they’d been nothing more than puppets whose strings had suddenly been cut. But the guard on the walkie-talkie must have had time to give at least one word of warning: within two seconds, the blaring sound of an alarm filled the corridor.

  “All right,” Millie said in a cool voice. “We knew the alarm would be raised at some point. It just means we need to be fast. Siren, you take this kid to the vans and stay down to help the others. The rest of us, onward.”

  They hurried on, following the informant who stopped briefly by his former colleagues to retrieve their electronic passes. If he felt anything at seeing them dead on the ground, he didn’t show it, and wordlessly gave the passes to Millie. She kept one, and gave the other one to Petro. Suzy, meanwhile, was taking hold of the wheelchair and hurrying back to the service elevator.

  Violet looked back to watch the doors close on the young shifter. Her animal form was that of a dolphin, which meant she didn’t have many occasions to shift. She was a quiet little thing, deceptively frail looking, and didn’t speak much. If Violet had had to take someone away from direct action, she’d have chosen Suzy, codename Siren, too.

  Falling into step with Ryan, Violet thought furiously. They’d already retrieved one prisoner, and they had three cards to open electronic doors so that it’d go faster than planned. Which meant…

  She brushed her elbow against Ryan’s, catching his attention. He looked a question at her. She nodded.

  They’d reached the end of this corridor, where it branched out on the left and right. On the left, the informant was already opening a gate with his electronic pass and explaining over the alarm that the prisoners were divided throughout both corridors. They knew that; they hadn’t had multiple briefings for nothing. At a nod from Millie, Petro opened the gate on the other side. Three squad members went one way, two the other way with the guard. Ryan, Violet and John remained at the junction to cover for the arrival of more guards.

  On the back wall, a heavy door was market with the symbol for a staircase, and topped with a glowing red ‘exit’ sign.

  “London, you stay here, cover the hallway,” Violet said quickly to John, all too aware that Millie, down the corridor, would hear every word. “Fangs and I will stake out the staircase.”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer before pushing the door open, Ryan right on her heels. Her headset immediately buzzed to life, Millie asking what she thought she was doing. She didn’t reply. A touch to the headset shut off the mike, but she left the sound on so she’d know what was going on the upper level.

  She looked upward, where she could hear steps rushing down the stairs. She motioned for Ryan and the two of them took cover, waiting for the guards to appear. It was almost too easy to take the first ones down. The rest shouted and remained out of sight; stalemate.

  “I’ve got this,” Ryan said confidently. “Think you can get them by yourself?”

  For all reply, Violet winked at him and hurried down the staircase to the lowest level, taking care to keep her steps as light and silent as possible. If no guards had come from this level, did it mean there weren’t any guards down there or that they were hunkering down? She’d soon find out.

  She paused on the landing and took a deep breath. She came out of the stairwell with her gun pointed in front of her, sweeping all around. It came to rest on a tall man, bare except for torn shorts hanging low at his waist beneath tight abs. For all that he looked young, his eyes were dark, even more so for the deep circles around them. His hair was shorn very short, as though it’d been shaved and was just beginning to grow back. He had something in his hand—keys, and she realized instantly what he was: an escaped prisoner. He froze when he saw her, fear and anger battling in his widening eyes. Her attention had already moved on to the figure running up behind him.

  “Get down,” she ordered, but didn’t wait for the man to obey before she fired.

  She was a good shot.

  No, she was a great shot. She prided herself on her skill with a gun. It didn’t hurt that, as a shifter, her eyesight, coordination and reflexes were all enhanced.

  She fired her bullet above the prisoner’s left shoulder. It hit the guard three steps behind him in the middle of the forehead.

  “Are those the keys to the cells?” she asked, immediately running forward. “Help me get the other prisoners and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  The man simply stood there, staring at her for a few seconds before he looked back at the guard she’d just shot.

  “Hey!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He blinked once, then frowned at her.

  “Of course I understand, I’m not stupid.”

  His voice was low and rough, as though he hadn’t used it in a long time.

  “Then help me,” she demanded, taking his arm and pulling him toward the gate.

  He wrenched his arm free, glowering at her as though to dare her to touch him again.

  “You’ve got a way out of here?” he demanded in that same low voice, now more urgent.

  In Violet’s ear, Millie was barking orders. Shots were being fired. Violet didn’t have time to explain herself.

  “Help me,” she demanded in her strongest voice. “And I’ll get you out.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The part of Idris that was all too aware he hadn’t seen or touched a woman in months wanted nothing more than to tear her mask off and see if her face was as lovely as the curves her catsuit flaunted. But the part that ached from months of captivity wanted to get out of here more than anything, and she looked like she knew what she was doing. The way she’d killed Heavy, with no hesitation, barely a warning for Idris to get down…

  Granted, he’d have liked that better if he’d been well out of her line of fire, but he could still admit it’d been some shot.

  The only question was, could he believe that she would get him out of here?

  He could always go along with her for now, and ditch her when he was out.

  “All right,” he said loudly to be heard over the shrieking of the alarm, and bounced the keys from hand to hand. “I help you, you get me out of here. Deal.”

  They didn’t seal it with a handshake or anything; there was no time to lose.

  The poor bastard in the first cell was still banging on the door, but his cries for help stopped when Idris shoved a key in the lock, then a different one when the first didn’t work.

  The gears clicked. Idris drew the door open, keeping well out of the way. He didn’t know who was in there, what his powers might be or how he would react. If he attacked, the girl had a gun to protect herself. Idris would rather keep what strength he had left until he had no choice but to use his power again.

  “Are you from Sanctuary?” a shaky voice called from deep inside the cell.


  Idris frowned. Sanctuary? What was that?

  “Yes,” the woman said curtly. “Are you wounded? Can you walk?”

  “I’m okay,” the man said. He limped out of the cell, blinking repeatedly and shielding his eyes from the halogen lights in the hallway. His cell was completely dark. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I can’t say how long I’ve hoped you’d come. Thank you.”

  He reached out with both hands to take the woman’s right hand in his, heedless to the fact that she was holding a gun.

  Or maybe, Idris thought darkly, precisely because she was holding a gun. He might be playing the weak, thankful card to get her weapon. He’d seemed perfectly fine when banging on his door.

  The woman might have had the same idea because she took a step to the side, keeping her hand—and gun—well out of reach. Smart girl. Or maybe she was just as paranoid as Idris was.

  “Well, you’re welcome,” she said. “We’ll get on our way in just a moment. Wait here.”

  For the first time, the man noticed Idris. Something glinted in his eyes and reinforced Idris’ suspicions that he might not be as weak as he wanted them to believe. Was this the prisoner who could manipulate electronics? If it wasn’t, what were his powers exactly, and why had he been kept in a high security cell?

  Without lingering on the question, Idris hurried down the corridor, past his open door cell and Gimpy on the floor. He was immobile, covered in fire extinguisher foam. Dead or merely unconscious, Idris didn’t care and he didn’t stop to check.

  “Your work?” the woman asked, keeping close to him. When he nodded, all she added was, “Nice.”

  The word took him aback. He’d have expected horror, or at least distaste. Those were the common reactions to what he did. Still, he didn’t have time to stop now. They went past five doors that stood ajar, the cells empty. Stopping in front of the next closed cell, he unlocked the door, this time on the first try. He didn’t pull back when he opened the door. This was where the crying had come from before, and his curiosity demanded that he look in.