Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Two. He wrapped his power around himself and Diana, willing them to melt into the night.
Three. He bounded up the stairs to the front doors, pulling at the zipper on the duffel. Diana was already there.
Augustine chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. Two of the velociraptors had veered back, chasing after illusions of their doppelgangers. The triceratops had followed. The T-Rex was halfway up, and the two remaining velociraptors were sixty feet away.
He pulled his Angstadt Arms MDP-9 out, unfolding the stock in a fluid motion, and thrust it at her.
Diana ignored it. “The door, Augustine.”
He extracted the party crasher strip from the duffel, peeled the breacher tape off, and stuck it to the door.
The first construct leaped at Diana. She stepped out of the way and hacked at it with her tactical blade.
Augustine slid the detonator into the strip.
Diana became a whirlwind of controlled savagery. Pieces from the two constructs rained onto the ground.
He spun around, lunged at her, and knocked her off the stairs to the side. They landed on the pavers, and he pressed the remote firing switch.
Another explosion tore through the night.
Augustine rolled to his feet. The T-Rex bore down on them, twenty feet away and closing. Diana leaped to the top of the stairs. Augustine sprinted after her. They shot through the smoking doorway just as the T-Rex’s metal teeth scissored the air behind them.
Augustine slid across the polished marble of the foyer and spun around. The constructs halted at the doorstep, motionless.
Diana inhaled, sampling the air like one of her wolves. Her eyes glowed, and she raised her sword and ran to the left down the hallway.
God fucking damnit! There she goes again.
He shouldered his weapon and followed.
The scent burned like a red-hot wire glowing and dragging her through the cavernous house. Kitty, mixed with the odor of a human. All of her senses went into overdrive. Nothing existed except the cub and the scumbag who touched her.
A door loomed, blocking her way. She pounded a kick into the wood. It held.
Another.
One more.
Again.
A strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder and she snapped, nearly biting Augustine’s fingers.
“Wrong spot,” he said.
He stepped in front of her, gently pushing her to the side, and leaned back. His foot shot out like a hammer and smashed into the door near the lock. The wood splintered, and he casually kicked the door again, knocking it open.
She pushed past him and dashed into the room. A man stood in the small bedroom, his hands raised. She inhaled, drawing the scents in, and snarled in pure frustration.
Not here.
“Just a vet,” the man said quietly, pronouncing each word carefully. He held himself like he was facing a rabid dog.
A vet? No. A shitstain, an accessory to torture and vivisection, murderer…
“I am just a vet. A doctor. I take care of them…”
She leaped onto him. Her fingers locked around his throat, and she dragged him closer until a mere inch of space separated their faces.
“Where is my cub?”
Sweat drenched his hairline. He went pale, his pupils widening into black pools filled with terror. Fear dripped from him, sticky and viscous.
“She asked you a question.” Augustine’s voice was sharpened ice.
“In the Vault, they’re all in the Vault,” the man croaked.
She dragged him into the hallway by his neck. “Show me!”
The man pointed down the hallway.
“Walk,” she snarled into his ear.
They started down the hallway, walking in step, her hand still locked around his windpipe from the side. One squeeze. That’s all it would take. One delicious, satisfying squeeze.
They hurried through the house, passing doors and hallways, to the back, behind the kitchen where a solid wall bisected the building in half. A metal door with a numerical lock waited in the center.
She hurled him at it. “Open it.”
His shoulder struck the wall. He yelped and turned to Augustine, his eyes shivering with desperation. “If I open it, will you let me go?”
She hissed at him.
Augustine’s hand gently rested on her shoulder. “Priorities. Kitty is all that matters. He can open the door.”
The human part of her, the calmer rational part that realized when she was three years old that she was not a panther but a person, slid into the driver’s seat.
“Fine. I give my word.”
The man keyed a code into the lock with trembling fingers. Metal clanged, something whirred, and the door slid aside.
Augustine pointed his gun at the man. “Run.”
The man turned and sprinted through the house, his feet thudding on the floor. He would not be back. She had seen enough people in blind panic, and that man was running for his life.
She dove through the hole where the door used to be. A warehouse spread before her—concrete floor, concrete walls, shelves filled with lumber and metal, and directly in front of them, a hundred feet away, another doorway filled with electric light.