Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

The words ran an endless litany in Toni’s head as she clambered and slid down from her perch high above the ring with far less grace and finesse than when she’d climbed up there. It didn’t matter. No amount of noise she made would matter. The audience below was too fixated on the action in the ring, their hoots and hollers loud enough to cover her slipping and sliding down between the metal rafters.

The recording equipment set up around the ring amplified the sound of fists hitting flesh and grunts of pain, sounds punctuated by the scent of fresh blood on the air. Darce’s blood. Anger ripped through her, the urge to drop into the crowd and carve a swathe of carnage and destruction almost overwhelming.

She gritted her teeth around the snarl trying to escape her throat and dropped the last ten feet to the floor. The guards that were supposed to be on the doors were in with the crowd, sick excitement on their faces while they watched the men in the ring try and beat each other to death.

No. Watched Steele beat Darce to death.

The thought spurred her on and she headed for the holding area. Her mind relayed all the options while she ran. She had to stop this, needed help, and she needed it fast. No time to get topside…and who would she get to help her there? McCoy and his goons would throw her in the ring themselves and with Garry dead, the only other option was Wilson. Yeah, right. He was human. She might as well throw a kitten in with a pack of dogs.

She hit the doors running, bursting through them and into the space beyond like a whirlwind. The room was still packed with cages, the ones who had already been cycled through the ring obvious by the bloodstains. But half—new since she’d crept through here before—hadn’t.

She paused in the middle of the walkway and caught the eye of a lycan in one of the nearest cages. He put his finger to his lips in warning, but she’d already heard the sound of a cage door locking closed and smelled the stench of human sweat.

“Where?” she mouthed.

The lycan pointed to the left and then curled his fingers in. Okay, left, and a right.

“How many?”

He held up two fingers and then lifted his hand, holding it at two levels one after the other. Approximate heights. She nodded, giving him a thumbs up in thanks and padded along the row of cages. Another roar erupted from next door. She closed her eyes and fought back the bile. She had to help Darce. Before there was nothing left to help.

“Fucking things!” a voice burst out, and another metallic screech echoed through the room. “I swear they’ve all got wonky wheels or something.”

Toni flattened herself against the side of a cage. The occupant, another blood, watched her from the back. She put her finger up to her lips, warning him to be silent. She’d get them out of there. Get them all out of there.

Another squeal of tortured wheels signaled the human’s ongoing struggle with the trolley. Toni took a chance and leaned out to snatch a glance around the corner before ducking back. Two men offloaded the unconscious occupant of a trolley into another cage. No blood, so a newbie for the ring.

The other guard emerged from the cage. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, John. You always ram them in. You gotta ease them in, persuade them to go the way you want…gentle. Like you’re persuading your missus to let you see a bit of pussy action.”

“I ain’t seen no pussy for months,” John griped.

His partner grinned and took control of the trolley. “You see, exactly my poin—hey!”

His head snapped up and around when Toni stepped out from cover, pretending to study the identification numbers on the cages so they couldn’t see her eyes. Black on black, there was no way she could pass for human.

“Who are you? You can’t be down here.”

“I’m looking for subject number three-five-seven-zero-alpha. You got him down here?”

The first guard frowned and reached for a clipboard.

“No, we haven’t had any of the alp—”

He started but the other guard was looking too closely at Toni. His breath caught. “Fuck, she’s a blood!”

She launched herself toward the two guards and the cages around her erupted with snarls and roars. The first guard was as inept in hand-to-hand combat as he was with a trolley. He stumbled backward, fear rolling off him in waves, and tried to use his clipboard like a shield. Snarling in rage and blood lust, she grabbed him by the front of his shirt and threw him against the cages behind her.

The occupants were ready. The moment he hit, his fleshy body slamming into the reinforced bars, arms snaked between them. Wrapping him up. Holding him in place. He stiffened, his back arching and eyes rolling back. A muffled scream escaped from under the paw-like hand clamped over his mouth. Thick, fat droplets of blood hit the floor below him as the white tips of someone’s claws erupted from his chest.

One down. One to go.

She whipped her head around, dark hair dancing on her shoulders, to zero in on the other guard. He backed up, fumbling for the pistol in his belt. Toni stalked toward him, shoving the trolley out of the way with a violent push.

The cages around them erupted, all the occupants—blood and lycan alike— united in their support as they urged Toni on. A sense of kinship filled her and she prowled forward toward the guard. Then he had the weapon in his hand, finger around the trigger.

She was quicker, crossing the space between them in a heartbeat to close her hand over his on the gun.

“Not happening.” Her voice was soft, but the crack of bones breaking as she tore the pistol from his grasp was loud. “So not happening.”

He screamed when she twisted the broken wrist and dug her fingers in to grind the edges of the bones together.

“Key code for the cages.”

Her demand was little less than a growl and she started to haul him toward the central control panel for the cage locking system beside a door up ahead. It wasn’t the one she’d come through on the way down, nor the one to the cage room. Fuck knew what was through it, and she didn’t have time to go see.

Pausing with her struggling armful, she kicked the pistol on the floor toward a cage with a blood in it. He held a hand to his side, blood seeping over his fingers, but his eyes were bright, unclouded by either pain or oncoming death.

“Cover the door,” she ordered. “If it’s human”—Not one of us—“kill it.”

The blood picked up the weapon and nodded, setting himself against the bars of the cage and covering the door with a grim gaze.

“Please, don’t hurt me…oh, god, don’t hurt me.”

The guard yammered and whimpered while Toni dragged him along. His booted feet kicked and scrabbled at the floor as he tried to get purchase but, even taller than her, he was human, and no match for her strength.

They reached the control station and she threw him across it. He bounced, pathetic cries transformed into a bellow of rage, and came at her, slamming a hard kick into her thigh. Pain flared along her leg, but didn’t hamper her reactions. Her hand was a blur of speed, she punched him across the face, the blow spinning him around to fall across the small desk again.

On him in a second, she flipped him over and pinned him to the desk. One hand curled around his throat, she shoved a hard knee between his thighs and into his groin. He gasped, eyes bugging out when she pressed against his balls. Just enough to cause pain but not enough to incapacitate him.

“Control code. Now.”

She lifted her free hand and stroked her index finger over the soft flesh under his eye. Her skin parted with a fleshy snick as she extended a single claw. It wasn’t a fingernail, not really, it was more a bony talon hidden beneath the nail. Extensible and retractable, the three-inch length shouldn’t by rights have fit in the space between the end of her finger and the first knuckle but it did, and she’d long ago stopped questioning the specifics of her change.

He stilled at the sight of the claw. Throughout their fight she hadn’t flashed them or her fangs for one simple reason. One scratch and the shit the guards pumped into their veins to stop them getting infected would kill him faster than she could. Didn’t mean she couldn’t threaten him with it. She’d heard it was a horrible way to die.

“P-please…you don’t have…”

“Code.”

Her talon stroked along his eyelashes and he whimpered in fear, babbling something. Toni leaned in. “What? Louder, man.”

“Five-eight-six-five-one-five-Charlie,” he reeled off and yanked his head to the side the instant she lifted her talon. At least he hadn’t pissed himself, which she’d been expecting. On reflection, perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea to shove her knee into his balls. She reached over to punch the combination into the keypad, hearing the dull tone and then a click when the cages opened.

“Good boy.” Her voice held a faint note of praise as she moved and let him slump to the floor. “If you want to live. Run.”

He whimpered and scuttled off. She didn’t bother to see which way. It was no longer relevant.

It was show time.

So why was nothing happening?

The cage doors remained where they were, open half an inch. There was no mad rush for freedom, as though the occupants didn’t trust the evidence of their own eyes. Didn’t trust that she wasn’t some agent of the Project here to torture them with the promise of freedom only to snatch it away again.

Another roar from the next room had Toni’s head whipping around. Darce was taking a beating out there and these pussies were scared of their own damn shadows.

“Out!” she yelled, running along the first row of cages and flinging the doors wide. “You’re free. Get out…”

Another roar from the crowd and she saw red.

“There’s a man in there being beaten to death. Like this one—”

She slammed a cage door shut, the lycan within deader than a dodo, the scent of death clear from across the room. She spun around and spotted a dead blood in another cage. Her hands caught the edge of the metal and with a vicious twist of her trunk, she slammed that door too.

“And this one. And that one, and him over there. They’re killing us and they’re fucking laughing about it. Now move, you fucking assholes. Without bars holding us in, what are they?”

The door nearest her edged open, the lycan within pausing a second before he pushed it farther and ducked down to step out. He straightened up and turned to fix her with a solid amber gaze. He still wore the remains of a pair of combats, but the rest of his uniform and his boots were long gone. Vicious claw marks racked across his stomach, the pink lines almost healed now, and other cuts and bruises scattered over his heavily muscled body said that he’d survived a couple of turns in the ring.

“Nothing,” he growled in answer. “They’re nothing. They’re…prey.”

“Prey…prey…prey…”

The call was taken up as blood and lycan alike scrambled from their cages, retribution ringing in their raised voices. They streamed past Toni and through into the main room. She paused for a moment, long enough for the cheers of the crowd turn to screams. Feral roars and gunfire soon joined the mix.

Nodding to herself, she headed the other way to the last corridor. If they had recording equipment, that feed had to be going somewhere. Which meant there was a control room. She just had to find it.

Steps silent, she headed for the last door, stopping for a second by the still-warm corpse of the first guard. Her gaze swept over the crumbled form before zeroing in on his sidearm. She reached down and snapped the retainer, palming the weapon. A quick movement later and it was locked and loaded. Holding it down at her side, hidden by her thigh, she pushed the third door open and stepped through.

This corridor was identical to the others, but with a slight upward incline that pulled at the back of her calves. Blood decorated the floor, old by the smell, and one splatter bore trolley wheel marks. They’d brought more victims of, or for, the ring up here.

She trotted along the corridor, her breathing loud in her ears. With each step farther away from the noise in the cage room, her unease increased. She shouldn’t have left Darce in the ring…should have gone back for him.

“For fuck’s sake, stop it,” she growled. Darce Foster wasn’t some lost kid she had to protect. He was, had been, a highly trained soldier. A rebellious poster boy for spec ops with devastating good looks and a kill record off the chart. And that had been before they’d given him the rabid wolf upgrade and permanent anger management issues.

A footfall warned her a moment before someone stepped around the corner. Four someones, all men, naked to the waist and covered in wounds and scars.

Toni slowed to a stop, a hiss rattling in the back of her throat as every instinct she had went bat-shit crazy. She snapped the pistol up and aimed for the guy in the lead.

“Freeze right there.”

They didn’t stop, just kept on walking and the blood froze in Toni’s veins. Her instincts screamed that they were wrong—abominations—and now her eyes picked up the visual clues. They walked almost normally, so very near perfect for human that it almost fooled her. It would have, if she’d been human. But her vision worked differently, processed images faster. If she concentrated, she could see things in a freaky version of slow motion.

Like now, letting her see the rapid fire jerking movements these guys made, the spasms so fast they were almost imperceptible. But she saw them. Caught the motions when they fanned out, the three at the back scuttling sideways like spiders. She frowned, her logical mind trying to fill the gap with a normal side step but it didn’t quite work. They weren’t human. They weren’t lycan. Or blood.

Which left one option.

Re-animates.

She focused on the face of the guy in front, her finger taking the trigger down to first pressure, ready to pull it all the way and blow his face through the back of his head. A face which came into focus. She paused as recognition kicked in and cut through her instinctive reaction to reveal the cutie driver from the hospital attack.

“Fredericks?”

He snapped a hand up—and the small group slowed to a stop—and looked at her. The frown between his brows matched hers.

“Major? Major Fielding?”

She lowered the pistol a little, still wary. It was Fredericks, no doubt about it. Part of her team for the hospital cleanup, the last time she’d seen him had been the asylum before they’d parted ways, she to track Foster and he with the main force after the rest of the lycan team. Her gaze slid sideways, checking out the faces behind him and her heart sank. Perkins, Fletcher and Kelwood. All alive up until a few days ago. Correction: all human up until a few days ago, because what they were now… She hadn’t a fucking clue.

“Crap. What the hell happened?”

Fletcher shrugged and between one blink and the next, he was two steps closer. Toni started, half bringing up the pistol again but made herself hold steady. She knew better than to discriminate on the basis of a person’s humanity, or lack thereof. But hell, that was some scary shit.

With speed like that, they could overpower a blood or a lycan with ease. Now the little scene she and Darce had witnessed in the ring made sense. From the runt of the Projects experiments, the re-animate line had emerged the victor, able to kick the butts of the other two lines.

And fuck, they looked good. The virus had dropped weight off already rangy frames and added muscle. Shitloads of it. They were lean, mean and ripped as fuck. Whatever you wanted to call it, zombies should not look hot enough that any red-blooded female felt an instant need to jump their bones. It was a predatory alteration so clever it was almost poetic. Why stalk your prey when you could get it to come to you, all hot and eager?

“Fredericks…what happened to you guys?” she prompted, not liking the way he looked at her. To the rest of the world she was like Ghengis Khan and the Second Coming all rolled into one. To him, she was probably lunch.

Fredericks shook his head and focused in on her again. A sad smile curved his lips. Her gaze flicked down for a second and she winced. He was covered in wounds. None of which seemed to be either bleeding or bothering him.

“You know this place. Live to serve, even when you’re not. Alive that is. Especially when you’re not alive. As for what happened… We got hit by the lycans and then brought back to base.”

He took another step forward, the smile turning. She backed up a step and then realized her back had hit the wall. How had he gotten so close so fast?

“They didn’t wait for us to croak it. Kelwood was awake when they got us. Said it was some kind of new blend. Must have been—because there’s way more going on here than normal.”

He tapped at his temple and took the last step into range. His hand closed over the pistol and took it away. A small voice yammered in the back of her mind as Toni watched him, let him. What the hell was wrong with her? She couldn’t move, like she was hypnotized. Like something deep within her, something dark and dangerous and not human, recognized him and what he was. Something all the way dead, rather than near dead like her.

 “The other guys down here say they’ve been using a new strain of RA to fuel this place…” He motioned to himself and the men with him, a look of disgust on his face. “Using us to… No, you don’t want to know.”

“The other guys? There are more of you?”

He stilled, his expression blank, and she knew where some of those wounds had come from. “Not anymore.”

She couldn’t help it. Empathy and sorrow welled up inside her, knocking out all her bad-ass bitch reactions as she put a hand on his arm. He snapped his head around, that freaky-sharp movement making her jump and then catch her breath. But not as much as the look in his eyes did.

In them was sorrow and anger. And something so alien her heart stilled. He stepped in to crowd her against the wall. His hand snapped out, closed around her throat. She stilled. Freeze, flight or fight. All her survival instincts were triggered with a mere look. These new re-animates…they were dangerous. Way more dangerous than normal RAs.

“So pretty, even for a blood.” His deep voice pulled at her, pulled at the virus wrapped around her cells. But it was a wrong attraction, like the virus reacting to him, not the woman. “Always thought so…”

He slid his hand up, forcing her chin higher, and his thumb stroked over the line of her jaw. She kept eye contact, looking for the slightest indication he was about to rip her throat out. She’d seen what they could do in the ring…

“C’mon, boss, we gotta get out of here.” Fletcher shifted behind Fredericks. “Take care of the blood and let’s get gone.”

“No!” Fredericks snarled over his shoulder, slamming his free hand into the wall by Toni’s head. “We’re not hurting her. S’not her fault…and we aren’t the monsters they turned us into. We have a choice.”

“No. You’re not monsters.” She saw her chance and clamped the back of his neck. Made him look at her. “None of us are. We don’t need to fight each other. It’s us against them. Against the Project.”

He shook his head.

“You. Not us. We’re too much of a liability. Only four of us left with the new virus. Kelwood heard ‘em talking. It’s all they had left, synthesized from the blood of a successful subject. So if they don’t have us…”

“They can’t make more of you.” She nodded in understanding. They were a weapon, pure and simple. And one she couldn’t afford to let fall into Project hands again.

“Go on then, and no chomping on any civilians.”

Her lips quirked as he let her go. She stepped back, adding bravado she didn’t feel to her voice.

“Or I’ll have to track you down and kick your ass.”

A crooked smile split his lips, showing a brief flash of straight white teeth before he winked.

“Darlin’, I’d look forward to it. But all we want to do is disappear somewhere they can’t find us. Can’t use us anymore. Die in peace and let this shit die with us.”

She nodded, watching as the four men walked down the corridor. Fredericks paused when the rest turned the corner and looked over his shoulder. He lifted his hand into a salute. One soldier to another.

With a heavy heart and a grim sense of determination, Toni returned the salute. Then she turned and continued up the corridor. Now she knew there were no more weird-ass RAs to run into, blood was going to be spilled.