Justus (13 page)

He’d have to go through if he
hoped to find her.

Justus took a deep breath and
ran. The flames lashed his skin, pain blossoming all over his body.
He fell to his knees on the other side of the wall of flames and
found Paige on the ground.

Mustering everything he had,
Justus crawled over to her and lifted her still form into his
arms.

“Paige,” he said, His voice
harsh from all the smoke.

Her eyes stayed closed, and
he wondered if it was already too late.

“Looks like she wasn’t
chosen.”

Justus turned to find John
standing across from him, a pistol drawn and aimed directly at him.
He slowly lowered Paige back to the ground.

“You son of a bitch,” Justus
roared and made his way to his feet. “What did you do to her?”

The man laughed hysterically.
“I gave her God’s will. I’m but his messenger.”

He looked down, praying that
she hadn’t been shot.

His gaze returned to the man
he hated most. He could feel the hunter in him come to surface,
aching to rip the man limb from limb. His eyes glowed brightly now,
his light in evidence in the smoke.

“Yes,” John said excitedly.
“There’s the demon. Show us your true nature, spawn of hell!”

Justus roared. He stepped
forward.

He stopped when Paige
coughed.

“Justus?” she said quietly.
Her eyes blinked a few times as if she were trying to make things
focus.

“I’m here,” he said and
looked around. “We need to get you out of here.”

“No!”

John screamed in rage, but
the click of the gun was the only sound Justus cared about. He
curled over her, shielding her the rage of a mad man.

The gun fired.

The bullet ripped into his
back. Blood dripped down.

A click sounded, then
another. Apparently, John had used up the rest of his ammo
already.

“Fine then, abomination. Die
slowly.”

Justus looked back to the man
he wanted to kill and then to the woman he wanted to protect. John
slipped into the flames, and he knew if he didn’t follow him right
at that moment, the bastard would likely escape. But going after
John meant he wouldn’t be able to get them out. He looked down to
Paige and knew it wasn’t a choice at all. If she didn’t make it,
there was no point in anything. Vengeance would have to wait, no
matter how much the hunter in him called for blood.

He took off his shirt and
wrapped her in it. He could see the blood-soaked holes where the
bullets pierced.

Justus shoved all thoughts
out of his head and stared at the flames. He was going to have to
move quickly. The poison in the bullets was already starting to
affect him. It wouldn’t be long before he could hardly walk.

With a burst of energy,
Justus surged into the flames. His bare skin hissed at the contact,
but he pushed through, ignoring the pain and the fatigue. He had to
get Paige out.

He felt his body sway and
buckled his legs to keep from falling. But standing still only
meant he burned more.

Again, he pushed forward. One
foot in front of the other until they reached a clearing away from
the burning field. He took three steps away from the flames and
stumbled to the ground.

“Have to get away,” he
grunted. “I love you, and I won’t let you die here.”

Sounds came from all around
him, but he couldn’t stop. He had to get Paige safe.

A hand pressed hard on his
shoulder.

“For fuck’s sake, stop man,”
Varius said firmly. “You’re safe.”

He looked down at Paige who
rested in his arms and closed his eyes. Whatever came, she was safe
and that was all that mattered.

Chapter
Seventeen

Paige tapped her pen
against the clipboard she held. This was the third time she had
heard this argument, and it was about to get on her last nerve.

“Well, if you had just called
sooner, none of this would have even happened,” Titus shouted from
near the wall.

“I’ll keep that in mind next
time some asshole decides to keep me a prisoner for months,” Justus
said.

She looked over to where
Justus lay in the hospital bed. The strips of white bandages stood
out against his dark skin, coving the burns that had nearly covered
his whole body just four days before. They hadn’t known if he would
make it.

Paige woke up next to him,
within the walls of the lodge. A machine breathed for him for the
first day, but he’d been well enough they were able to remove the
tube by the next day. If he’d been a normal man, he would have
surely died.

She hadn’t really been any
worse for wear. She was tired and ached all over. Her lungs were
still a little rough, but she’d insisted on taking care of him.
There was nothing else she could do but the job she knew how
to.

Lena passed by the door and
peeked in at the heated debate. She was still getting used to the
way the hybrids acted: loud and bossy but sweet at the same time.
It was going to take some getting used to, but Lena was happy to be
there.

After what had happened at
the hospital, she wanted nothing to do with anything outside the
walls. Paige knew it wasn’t normal, but want could she say? For
them, outside the walls hadn’t been safe. Not only that, but
Reverend John had escaped.

For now, she supposed things
were fine as they were. Better safe where they knew they could
trust the people around them. At least if they were attacked at
Luna Lodge, they had a whole building full of hybrids to defend
them.

Paige rolled her eyes at her
friend. Lena laughed, but hurried on her way when both men turned
to glare at her.

Paige went back to her task,
checking his charts for the last day.

His healing was amazing.
She’d first thought it was just because he was a hybrid, but
apparently he was healing even faster than other hybrids. Rachel
was still running tests on it, but it seemed to be an anomaly,
maybe even something they had specifically selected for because of
the nature of his original job for the Horatius Group.

Her eyelid twitched as they
continued their argument. The longer it went on, the more she could
feel her temper slipping.

“I’ve told you,” Titus said
loudly. “We had no way of knowing—”

That was it. No one had
gotten any peace for days, and she was about to make sure all that
came to an end.

With a loud thwack, Paige
slapped the clipboard hard against the bedside table, startling
both men out of their debate.

“I’ve had enough of the
pissing contest going on,” she said loudly.

Justus raised a brow at her
irritation.

“He’s still healing,” she
said, pointing to Titus. “And if you plan on coming in everyday
just to have the exact same fight, I think you need to have your
head examined. I’m sure Rachel would have something to help with
that.”

Justus chuckled as Titus
scowled at her. She whirled her pointed finger to the man in the
bed.

“And you, stop instigating.
Tell him you accept his apology. Shitty as it might be. If Titus
hadn’t showed up to help, we’d not made it out.”

She ignored the irritated
snort from Titus and kept her focus on Justus. He frowned and
turned his head, so he didn’t have to look at her, a sure sign of a
full-on man pout.

She rolled her eyes and
sighed.

“Accept, or nothing else will
be instigated on my end ever again,” she said loudly.

His head snapped to hers. She
knew he understood her meaning. The past two days he’d tried every
trick in the book to start something a bit sweeter, despite his
injuries.

Paige was the one to raise a
brow this time.

He sighed, knowing there was
no way to win this fight.

“Fine,” he said.

Titus smiled as if he were
the one to win the debate.

They turned as Rachel and Sol
entered the room.

“We’ve got news from the
sheriff’s department,” Sol said.

Paige tensed. Even though the
hybrids had mostly done their best to exercise restraint and were
only defending themselves, some of the Reverend’s men had been
killed. She wondered if the sheriff would use it as an excuse to
try and move on Luna Lodge. Even if John started it, who would take
the side of the freaks from Luna Lodge?

“Seems that there was a fire.
A lot of men tried to put it out and ended up getting hurt in the
process,” Rachel said. “Even a few deaths. All very tragic.”

Paige couldn’t keep the anger
from her face.

“And how do they explain all
the townspeople?” she asked.

Sol frowned. “Fungus in the
water causing hallucinations.”

“That was no fungus,” Justus
said.

Titus nodded. “We expected as
much. The government is going to keep a tight lid on this. They may
have even leaned on the sheriff.”

Paige frowned. “Keep a lid on
what?”

The leader sighed. “We’re not
sure entirely where in the government this is coming from, but I’d
put money that at the root of this is the Horatius Group, and you
can bet Woods has some hand in this.”

“What are you talking
about?”

“Years ago there was talk
about a secret mind control study,” Sol said. “You might have heard
of MK-Ultra. It was originally a CIA mind control project: drugs,
mind games, that sort of shit.”

Paige shook her head. She
wasn’t really one to give in to government conspiracies, but
apparently she should have. Mr. Cobb had, and he’d been ready when
things had gone south.

“We don’t know all the
details, only that they are using some sort of transmission to mess
with people’s minds.”

“Why didn’t it affect some of
the people?” she asked, thinking about the store and Lena. “Mr.
Cobb said that he just followed along when everyone filed from the
store into the cars. He thought it was some government plot, and he
brought his gun to kill some men in black.”

Rachel shook her head. “Val
is trying to hack in and see what she can find. Whoever is running
this experiment would have those sorts of notes. If we can get our
hands on that, it will give us the tools we need to fight this. It
may be that they are amplifying people’s natural fears, and so the
hybrids are a nice, natural target to test against. Really, though,
we just don’t know.”

Paige nodded. She was glad
that Mr. Cobb and Ms. Martin had decided to visit Florida for the
winter.

A small smile played on her
lips. It was a tad funny. All it had taken was Mr. Cobb coming in
like a hero for something to ignite between him and Ms. Martin.
She’d been a little surprised to see Ms. Martin racing toward the
ambulance. Although Mr. Cobb looked even more surprised. She’d been
glad to see them loaded into the ambulance together. In the end,
they really were a good match.

She looked over to Justus who
gave her a funny look, almost as if he knew what she was thinking.
Paige walked over to his bed and sat on the edge, lacing her
fingers with his.

“So where do we go from
here?” she asked.

Titus sighed. “We build our
forces and ready ourselves for whatever comes next.” He looked down
at her and smiled. “Until then we live the life we should have had,
and don’t waste a single second.”

She looked over to Justus and
smiled again, her heart full of the love she felt for him. Whatever
the future brought, they were together now, complete. She was his
other half and he hers.

“I think we can do that,” she
said.

A Note from
Madison

Thank you for reading
Justus
. If you enjoyed this book, please consider reviewing
it. We authors live and die by reviews.

Please keep an eye out
for the next book in the series,
Zeno.

You can join my mailing
list at
http://eepurl.com/OX9r5

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Author Bio

Madison currently lives
with her husband and two children in the Valley of the Sun in
Arizona. After leaving the frozen tundra of the north, she was more
surprised than anyone with how much she has enjoyed living in the
desert. Seeing as she stated on more than one occasion before
moving to Arizona how much she hated heat, it was an odd move, but
it seems her hatred for sub-zero temperatures and ice has won out
in the end.

When she’s not writing,
she’s enjoying time with her family. Madison and her family
frequent festivals in the area, as well as local cultural events,
and spend time with family in the area. In the summer, she is most
likely to be found in the pool with the family and in the winter by
the fireplace. Since both her children are autistic, days can be a
little chaotic, but with her husband beside her, there’s nothing
she can’t handle.