EIGHTY-SIX

Caitlyn had moved into a sitting position on the operating table, rubbing her wrists where the shackles had bit into the skin. Razor was bent over. He’d already freed one of her ankles and had begun on the other.

Caitlyn saw movement over Razor’s shoulder.

Fast movement.

For a split second, as she recognized the man rushing into the room, Caitlyn couldn’t reconcile reality. She’d always dismissed her gnawing fear of Mason as the material of nightmares, part of her horror based on how she’d left him to die.

As the synapses of her neurons raced to match his face to her memories, there was an extra nanobeat of hesitation because of his eye patch. So when she finally reacted, all she could blurt out was a half scream.

“Razor! Behind you!”

Mason was in full stride, arm fully extended with a gunlike object.

Still, Razor lived up to his name. His reactions were so fast that with only two strides left before his attacker reached him, Razor was beginning to fling his arm forward to drop a flashball.

But Mason was too fast.

There was a horrible crackle and an arc of blue light as Mason jolted Razor with a full Taser charge. Razor fell backward, landing hard, and the flashball rolled harmlessly away without enough impact to generate the instant chemical reaction of exploding magnesium. The ball stopped among the shattered pieces of glass where the dividing wall had stood until the hybrids crashed through.

Razor moaned as his body shuddered.

The sound snapped Caitlyn out of paralysis. Frantically, she tried to release the final shackle, leaning forward and scrambling to get the strap’s end in her fingers.

“Let me help you with that,” Mason said. His leer was far worse than anything she’d seen in her nightmares. “More fun for me if you have a fighting chance.”

He slipped his Taser into his back pocket. Then he pushed aside her hand and used his own fingers until the strap fell away.

“Here I am. One good eye. It’s all I’m going to need.” He leered again. “Nice that you’re not wearing much.”

Caitlyn tried to punch him in the face. He swatted her hand away.

“I like that,” he said. “Keep going. Makes all this fun.”

The roof of Caitlyn’s mouth was dry copper. She tried to swallow, to add moisture. But she didn’t punch again.

“There’s a man out in the city,” Mason said. “Everett’s his name. You might remember him. From a rooftop where you put a knife in his belly. He’s got something he wants to finish with you. He made a promise that I could watch if I brought you back to him. But there’s nothing that says I have to bring you back right away, if you catch my drift.”

Mason reached into his shirt and pulled out a dead rat.

Caitlyn gagged.

“Don’t be like that,” Mason said. “Thanks to you, I learned to get a taste for this.”

He lifted the rat to his mouth.

Caitlyn was still facing the doorway, and more movement caught her attention. This time, the movement was slower. This time, her recognition wasn’t delayed. This time, she didn’t shout a warning.

She brought her eyes back to Mason.

“You eat rats?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. If she could hold Mason’s attention for the next few seconds, maybe there would be enough of a distraction to escape.

In the doorway was one of the hybrids.

But Mason had caught her slight shift in attention. He grabbed her hair with his good hand and spun behind her to face whatever she’d seen, using her as a screen.

Then he laughed.

“Another one of them,” he said. “How many they got in this house? Slower and stupider than a half-dead monkey. Blind too. And no arms. It’s hardly a fair fight, but then, I like it that way.”

The hybrid mewled as it moved into the room, sniffing and casting its head as if trying to get the scent of Mason.

Mason yanked Caitlyn’s hair, pulling her off the table, then threw her against the far wall. He glanced at her, satisfied that she was immobilized, then turned his attention on the hybrid.

“I’m right here, stupid,” Mason called to the hybrid. He brandished his knife and advanced on the hybrid. “I’m the one that got your brother.”

The hybrid mewled once again, in a higher pitch.

From the floor, Caitlyn was stunned but was still able to focus on Mason. The second hybrid moved into her vision.

“Hey,” Mason said. “Didn’t I just…”

In the light, it was clear that both hybrids had slash wounds. But their blood had already congealed.

“You know anything about this?” Mason called to Caitlyn, keeping his attention on both hybrids. “These are the two I left for dead. How’d they get up again?”

Caitlyn found the strength to get on her hands and knees. She wobbled from dizziness and shock.

Mason danced past the hybrids, and Caitlyn understood Mason’s plan when Mason reached the doorway.

“Thought you’d get away, bird girl?” Mason said. “Now you got to get past them and me.”

The hybrids lumbered in a half circle to follow Mason’s voice.

“Come on then,” Mason said. “If knife don’t do it, I’ve got my nice little electric surprise for you.”

Caitlyn saw past Razor’s motionless body on the floor, between the two bodies of the hybrids, as Mason tucked his knife behind his belt and pulled out the Taser.

She also saw something round and smooth lying among the shattered glass pieces. With the two hybrids blocking Mason from a direct route to stop her.

On her feet now, Caitlyn lunged forward and grabbed the flashball. Like Mason had just done, she moved around the hybrids to get a clear view of Mason in the doorway.

“Still here,” he cackled, waving the Taser. “One on three, but I like my odds.”

Caitlyn lifted her right hand, ensuring that Mason had to keep his eye on it. She threw her hand forward and down, closing her eyes and averting her head as she released the flashball onto the floor at Mason’s feet.

Even with her eyes squinted shut, the sudden light was bright enough to hurt.

Mason screamed with the agony of that same mini-nova burning his vision.

Eyes open now after a couple seconds of waiting, Caitlyn saw that Mason had dropped the Taser. He was on his knees, blindly reaching for it. There was still a large gap between Mason and the hybrids. Caitlyn darted forward and kicked the Taser away.

The clattering of the Taser across the floor was enough for Mason to realize what had happened.

“Bird girl, you’re dead,” he shouted in rage. Standing again, he brandished the knife he pulled from behind his back. It was obvious he couldn’t see.

Caitlyn thought about trying to fight him, but the hybrids, mewling back and forth, had shuffled even closer. That’s when she realized that the flashball would not have affected them. They were blind anyway, their faces a horrible grimace of rage and exposed canines as they waved their flipper arms and closed in on Mason.

At first contact, Mason slashed out with his knife, stabbing the closest hybrid in the shoulder. But the second one lunged, knocking Mason away from the doorway and into the wall. Mason slid sideways and onto his knees. The first hybrid fell on him with a guttural roar.

Mason screamed as those massive canines found the bicep of his oncecasted arm. Mason tried to stand and run, but he couldn’t escape those teeth. With his good hand, he tried to plunge the knife into the hybrid’s back, but the second one managed to find his other shoulder with its face and buried teeth deep into the muscle.

Mason went down, with both hybrids on him like the Rottweilers that Mason had many times before released on trapped men.

And like those same men before, Mason’s screams became gargles of desperation as he stabbed and stabbed in an effort to protect himself.

The doorway was open.

If Caitlyn could drag Razor clear, they’d both have a chance of escape. As she tried to lift Razor by the shoulders, she was desperately afraid that Dawkins or Charmaine would appear at any moment.

“Come on,” she pleaded to Razor. “Come on.”

She was able to pull him up to his knees, but she couldn’t get the leverage to put him in a position to drag him.

From the doorway came a single word.

“Caitlyn.”

It wasn’t Charmaine or Dawkins. But Billy, with a twisted expression of relief and pain, one arm hanging awkwardly at his side.