Page 70 of Bound

TWO NIGHTS LATER, VLAD’S PEOPLE JUMPED our strike team made up of ten shifters and eight vampires to the observation deck of the university campus tower. At over twenty floors up, the tower provided an unobstructed view of campus, its sidewalks illuminated only by streetlamps. To the south, the streets of Austin sprawled out towards Lady Bird Lake and the pink granite domed Capitol, the lights surrounding the football stadium glowing softly in the east. I leaned out over the cool limestone wall to better see as a wild tangle of bats careened madly overhead.

“Have you been up here before?” Cal said from beside me, doing one last weapons check.

“Once. On a tour. Been a while.” I touched the scars in the stone where police officers had engaged in a firefight with a mass shooter back in the sixties. “Saw your statement earlier today.”

He smiled faintly, the expression not quite reaching his eyes. “The lawyers wrote most of it. My job was to stand there and look like I wasn’t thinking about biting anyone.”

“And that looks like what, exactly?”

“Calm but not angry. No sudden movements. Definitely do not show interest in the plate of doughnuts they had set out for the press.”

I snorted. “Seriously, doughnuts?”

“I didn’t say they were good rules.” He rubbed a hand over his beard. “According to my statement, I was infected by a freak bite two years ago while on a camping trip and none of you had any idea I had the virus until this week. Each sample takes nearly twelve hours to run. The test kits are expensive and there aren’t enough supplies, technicians, or labs with the equipment capable of running them. The hardliners in the government keep making noise about how they want to test everyone in sensitive positions, but the reality is they don’t have the resources. Not by a long shot.”

“This is just a witch hunt, and an excuse to intimidate anyone who identifies in a marginalized group.”

“Sometimes I really hate what we’re capable of doing to each other.” Cal nodded over to where Topher was standing, talking quietly to River. “And then I look at the two of you, at Dallas and Lacey, Hayden and Ethan, and I remember we’re capable of so much good.”

A lump formed in my throat. “There’s a demonstration planned before school on Monday. Some of the kids are organizing it. I know I can’t attend, obviously, but it’s a nice gesture. Several teachers stopped by my room Friday. Pretty sure I have Marc Torres to thank for that.” Behind me in the tower, the bells began to toll at a quarter to midnight. “I have a formal meeting with my principal on Monday.”

Cal smiled wryly. “Wonder if the topic will come up?”

“So what are you going to do?”

“For now? Pick up more private patients, I think. Guillermo has been pushing me for years to take on a larger role providing mental health services within the shifter community, but with my job at the state hospital, I’ve never had time to take on more than temp contract gigs. I’d love to work more with feral wolves in recovery, and with survivors like Topher who’ve experienced trauma only members of the supernatural community can understand. They can’t stop me from practicing. I’m going to keep helping people, one way or another. I’ll just find another way to do it.”

“That’s two minutes,” River said and instantly we all straightened. “Everyone check your gear. Alpha and Beta teams are going in together for the initial assault. Vlad’s asset inside the compound will disable the wards on the door once we’re in position. Anything goes wrong, Delta team, you’ll breach the secondary entrance. Expect to encounter hostile fire.”

“Understood,” Brody said. He and London stood in the shadows surrounded by three vampires.

“We won’t have long,” Vlad said, keeping watch over the silent campus from the shadow beneath the round clock tower face. “There are motion sensors throughout the tunnels. Someone will sound the alarm as soon as we dematerialize in. The cell blocks split off into three branches, and we’ll have to search all of them. They’re careful to move prisoners around.”

“We’re going to have to move fast. There won’t be any room for error.” River touched his earpiece. “That’s one minute. All teams, form up.”

Jori, a vampire from Vlad’s team, who at five foot six and with long eyelashes that fluttered against her smooth dark brown cheeks, looked more like she should be baking cupcakes in Lacey’s shop rather than breaking into a prison, took me and August by the arms.

“Breathe out,” she whispered, with a touch of an accent. “It will make the jump easier. I take you in three, two, one—”

I exhaled hard. The night fractured around me in a kaleidoscope of cerulean blue and pearl white shards. I fought the urge to gag at the familiar sensation of having a vacuum cleaner suck out my insides. And then suddenly I was slamming into a wall of shockingly cold air, like I’d been catapulted into the middle of a lake. Except this was no lake. Wherever we were, we were deep underground. I took a few steps, trying to regain my bearings. Concrete walls eight feet across and seven feet high were lighted by a system of LEDs spaced every few yards. Heavy ductwork hummed along the ceiling and walls, adding to the sense of claustrophobia. The air smelled of wet earth, rodent droppings and cigarettes. I glanced to my right. The rest of strike teams Alpha and Beta were in position, cast a ghostly green by my night-vision goggles.

“Utility lines,” August whispered, pointing to the pipes overhead as we inched forward. “These subterranean tunnels connect all the buildings on campus. It’s how they got the two police officers up into the tower the day of the Whitman shooting. I even heard there’s a line that branches off towards the Capitol so that in the event of an attack, the governor would have an escape route.”

“So when did the fang-heads move in?”

“They’ve been there for over a century, according to Vlad. This is just one of hundreds of prisons they control. The tunnels apparently extend west, away from campus.”

“So how come they’ve never been discovered?

“The entrance is well concealed and magically warded behind a solid iron wall. To humans it looks like an old section of the steam pipe distribution system that got sealed off unless you know where to look for the entry keypad.”

“Cut the chatter,” River snapped. “Delta Team, call in.”

“We’re in position at the secondary door,” Brody said. “London is setting the charges.”

The tunnel terminated at a series of metal grates. A reinforced door was set into the middle of the first grate, with heavy chains securing the lock. Decades worth of graffiti covered the concrete walls, wavering eerily in our flashlight beams. Karl, one of Phoenix’s friends from the North Austin pack, scanned the auxiliary tunnels while August and I hurried forward with bolt cutters.

“Copy that. We’re nearly to the primary door.”