Chapter Nine
Craeg’s running shoes found the bottom of the pool just as the … well, it was a male, that was for sure … hit the water with an impact like a sedan had been tossed in there. After the deluge settled, the environment became evenly illuminated, the light emanating from that big, ridiculously outfitted body creating a glow that turned the Olympic-sized bathtub into its own lamp.
The guy was like part pro wrestler, part Toys “R” Us.
But Craeg wasn’t going to waste any time figuring that combo out.
Wiping his face, he identified the possible escape routes first—there were four or five doors, including the one that thing with the floaty corset had come through, but he was willing to bet they were all locked. Nothing on the ceiling. On the walls. On the bottom of the pool.
Second check-in was to see if there were any other third parties in the mix. Yup. Over on the periphery, there were two huge males dressed in black with hoods over their heads and night-vision goggles on their eyes. They were armed heavily, but their weapons were holstered—and they appeared to be monitoring everyone in the pool as if searching for signs of weakness or danger.
Third assessment was of who else had made it to this stage. Ten—no, twelve … wait, thirteen people were in the pool with him, including the female he’d fallen from that great height with.
And the blond receptionist, Paradise.
Although she was not alone.
Nope, she was up against one of the males, her hand resting on the protective arm that was around her waist.
Hardly a surprise. Females like her were never without someone of the opposite sex around them. Moths to a flame and all that bullcrap.
Craeg forced his eyes away from the pair of them—and that worked for maaaaybe a minute. Next thing he knew, he was leveling a combat assessment at the guy, taking note of the male’s size, the strength in his shoulders, the set of that jaw.
As if the two of them were going to come into conflict.
Which was insane, of course.
He had no right to that female—and more to the point, the only thing he needed to care about was making it to whatever finish line was waiting for him at the end of this—
Conventional lights came on all around the room, cutting the shadows down to nil, showing nooks and crannies that hid no further threats.
But he didn’t think it was over yet. He certainly wouldn’t have stopped now if he were the Brothers. Too many people still standing.
The door in the far right corner blew open as if it had been kicked in.
And that was when the next wave appeared.
One by one, a group of almost a dozen warriors marched in—the Brotherhood, he thought. This had to be the Brotherhood: Their bodies were enormous, dwarfing even him, and like the other two guards, they had masks over their faces and black leather covering them from boots to heads.
Unlike the other two, they had guns in their hands.
In a flash, the one who’d made the big appearance with the kiddie props up and disappeared. And then the last of the water glugged out the drains in the deep end of the pool.
All around him, candidates milled in their soaked clothes and relative exhaustion. He stayed still—as did Novo, who seemed to sense, as he did, that things were only going to get harder.
So it was best to conserve their energy until they had something valid to confront.
Those guns, he thought, were bad news.
With classic group-think, the other candidates congregated together, people in the shallow end backing up as the fighters came down the long side of the pool and made the turn to the set of steps that were slick and led to nothing but concrete and puddles now.
And then those menacing males with the guns were descending into the basin, their shitkickers landing like thunder, the shifting of their holsters making creaking sounds. When they came to a halt, it was impossible to know precisely who they were focusing on, as their heads were all facing the group, but their eyes were covered.
Triangulating his position, Craeg decided that, for the moment, sticking with the pack was for the best, so he—
One by one, the Brothers raised their autoloaders, aiming directly at the trainees. And then the tallest of them stepped forward, swinging his muzzle in a slow, lazy circle as if looking for the best target.
Talk about herd panic. Candidates freaked out, running this way and that, fighting to get behind others, slipping, falling. A couple of them went down on their knees, blubbering and begging before there had even been any shooting.
Craeg was having none of that. If the trainees were going to get hit with some lead, it wasn’t going to be anywhere lethal. There were too many precautions in place so far. And he was ready to take a bullet—if that was what he had to do to get to the next round?
Hit him. He wasn’t afraid of pain.
Squaring his shoulders, he faced off—and was aware that there was probably another reason why he halted. But he refused to acknowledge it in any way.
Come on, he thought. Over here.
Over here …
But they didn’t go toward him.
No … they went toward someone else.
Not her, he thought. Shit, not Paradise.
“Hey,” he called out. “Hey, asshole!”
As soon as those males in black stepped into the pool area, Paradise recognized the Brothers. After having spent so much time working around them, their scents, their auras were well-known to her—and she had grown to consider them like protective pseudo-fathers of hers.
That was not the case tonight.
Especially as they came down into the now-dry pool, lifted their guns … and one of them settled on her as a target.
Rhage. It was Rhage who trained his weapon on her and then began to walk forward. She knew because his body was so much larger than the others’.
No, no, she thought. You can’t do this. My father—
But he didn’t hesitate. He came right up to her and Peyton, leading with that firearm, finger on the trigger.
“Hey! Asshole!”
From out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the recruits step forward and wave his arms.
It was her male—the male, that was. Craeg—
“Shoot me! Hey! Motherfucker! Shoot me instead.”
And so the Brother did.
Without turning his head away from her, Rhage’s arm swung to the side and he pulled the trigger, a bullet exploding out from the muzzle.
Paradise screamed and jerked against Peyton’s hold as chaos went hog-wild, shrill voices echoing around like the panicked clatter of a thousand flushed birds. “No! Oh, my God—no!”
“Shut up,” Peyton hissed as he kept her in place. “Just shut it.”
NFW. As Craeg fell over, she broke free and lunged in attack at the Brother. It was like a bug hitting the windshield of a car, but none of that mattered. She just couldn’t have anyone get hurt—especially not that male. Slapping, hitting, she clamped her hands on the muzzle and held on for dear life, trying to control the weapon. She failed. Before she knew what was happening, she was facedown on the damp concrete, and pinned at the back of the neck and small of the back. Turning her head, she looked frantically across the pool bottom to see if Craeg was still alive.
The male was down on her level, writhing while holding what looked to be his thigh. The only other female in the group crouched beside him, forced his hands away, inspected the wound. Then on a quick jerk, she pulled her shirt out of her waistband and ripped it off, exposing a muscled torso and a black sports bra. With a tear, she took the hem off all around the base, freeing a strip of cloth.
She tied a tourniquet on his upper thigh as if she had been trained.
“Let her go,” Peyton demanded from behind her. “Let her fucking go!”
“Or what,” came a distorted voice from speakers overhead—as if someone had spoken into a microphone with a synthesizer attachment.
That was when Peyton lost his mind. Craning to twist her head around, she caught the unbelievable sight of him in full aggression, fists flying at Rhage, feet kicking, his fangs bared in a snarl as he tried to get the Brother off of her. And then suddenly he wasn’t alone—the male who had displayed such athletic ability on the pommel horse joined in.
Pop! Pop!
Both of them were picked off with bullets by another Brother. And so were another two males who likewise tried to get involved. Meanwhile, people were climbing the walls, using the stainless-steel ladders to try to leave the pool—only to be electrocuted and fall back down.
A door opened.
From overhead that voice announced: “Anyone who wishes to leave may do so. No harm will come to you. This can all be over—right now. All you have to do is run for that door.”
At that moment, she was released, Rhage hopping off, stepping back.
She scrambled across to Peyton, rolling him over once again. “How bad? Where?”
“My arm—my fucking arm.”
Paradise yanked her shirt up and followed the example of the other female, tearing a section with one of her fangs, ripping a strip free, and trying to tie it just above the bleeding wound on his triceps.
She glared up at the Brothers. “Are you out of your fucking minds! This is school, not war! What the fuck!”
“You may leave now,” the voice from overhead droned on. “Just proceed to the stairs at the shallow end of the pool and let yourself out of this.”
A sudden sharp rage had her seeing white, and before she knew it she was up and at the line of Brothers. “Shoot me! Come on! Do it, you bunch of fucking cowards!”
She had no idea what the hell she was saying. What the hell she was doing. She had never seen so many guns before, much less deliberately put herself within point-blank range of such weapons—but she had snapped and discovered a surprising surge of power came with the unhinge.
Not that the Brothers seemed to care. They just stood there, unmoving and unreactive, as if they were content to wait until she ran out of gas.
So she turned on the trainees who were leaving. “Where are you going! You need to fight! This is wrong—”
Just like that, the door was closed and the unmistakable sound of a bar being clamped into place ricocheted around the space.
“You will now be required to complete First Night,” the overhead voice stated. “The final session begins in three … two …
“…one.”
And that was when the illumination went from incandescent to the purpley-blue of blacklight.
Also when the Brotherhood opened fire on all of them.