Ultraviolet (29 page)

The lobby area, just behind the weapons scanner at the main entrance, was saturated with blood and layered with the dead bodies of his entry security forces.

“My God,” Daxus breathed. This couldn’t be happening, he wouldn’t
let
it. He’d put the gun to Violet’s head himself and squeezed the trigger—for God’s sake, the damnable evening news had even put footage of it, which should never have existed in the first place, on the evening news for the entire city of Chicago to see. Now the local and national newspapers were buzzing about it, and of course the Internet had taken it to all parts global in a matter of minutes. The underground sites had even uploaded the more gory film of the actual shooting, although the camera had stopped filming right after the execution itself when the security forces had noticed the helicopter and begun firing at it.

If he was catching hell for killing her, what the hell was Violet doing
alive?

But there she was, staring forward with an expression that was like stone as she stepped over the corpses and headed deeper into the building, completely unconcerned at the fresh security forces that were flowing into place behind her. She just kept coming.

Heading toward
him.

Daxus tossed the Flex-Screen back at the guard, then gestured at the others to follow him as he raced out of the lab and into the corridor. After the sealed, sterile whiteness of the operating area, it was disconcerting to see dawn starting to spill through the narrow glass block windows that were set into the line of the ceiling along the hallway—sometimes it amazed him how deeply he could get immersed into this Hemophage thing, and just how quickly his life was passing. He really needed to get this Violet problem solved so he could move on with the bigger and better things—and there were so
many
—that he had planned for himself and the ArchMinistry of Medical Policy. He was going to be the next best thing to an American King, and he simply didn’t need this Violet issue following him into his upcoming reign.

With his team streaming behind him like good little mice, Daxus hurried to the end of the corridor and turned into another, this one lined with his most elite force, the heavily armed ArchMinistry Sentinels. He should have been comforted, but . . . damn it. There it was—that nagging voice at the back of his skull, the memory of all the unfortunates who had already fallen at Violet’s hand. God, the thought just made him absolutely
furious.
“The boy is
dead,
” he snapped at no one in particular. “This is pure suicide!”

“Maybe someone should tell
her
that, sir.”

Daxus blinked when he realized the Security Tech was still rushing alongside him, then sent the man a murderous look that made him wisely shut up. Another turn, and then he, the team, and the elite force were piling into a stairway and climbing—they didn’t dare take the elevators with Violet somewhere in the building. The risk of being trapped by her was far too great. “I want the Gravity Shifters released from the armory,” Daxus ordered.

The Security Tech gaped at him. “But, sir, they’re still experimental!”

“Now, damn it!”
Daxus nearly screamed. “I am going to
level
that bitch!”

TWENTY-FIVE

Without so much as blinking, Violet left a path of blood and destruction behind her, and with the sunrise at her back she slammed through the double doors and into the corridor not far behind Daxus. He was so close—her heightened vampire senses made her able to literally
smell
him, the cloying scent of too much expensive aftershave and the more earthly, sweaty
fear
that was spilling from his pores as he ran like the coward he was. When the doors banged shut behind her, Violet jerked up short and faced the waiting security forces, line after line of densely packed soldiers, and every one of them with a gun aimed directly at her. She stared at them for a long moment, and they stared back . . .

Then fired.

But she’d known it was coming—the anticipation was in the air, just like Daxus’s terror. She dived right at them the instant before the front-line men squeezed their triggers, and the arc of her body took her down and made her roll into their legs, where she cut a blood-soaked swath through flesh and bone using a pair of swords pulled from the flat-space sheaths hanging on her hip belt. She swung and cut, swung and cut, and she lost track of time as she fought her way through the crush of bodies,
beneath
them, using the men’s own fear of friendly fire to her own advantage.

Sometime later—a few minutes or perhaps a lifetime—Violet burst into the ArchMinistry Library, a two-story circular room lined with black and silver volumes, the culmination of centuries of the so-called wisdom that had resulted in the segregation and genocide of millions of other people just like her. She felt like she was living the same quarter hour over and over—charge into an area, find it full of soldiers, kill anything and everyone in sight, then do it all over again. Her hands were burning from the gunfire, nerves tingling and trembling from the never-ceasing firing from her left side, the constant back and forth sweep of her right. Draw, fire until empty, toss away, draw again. Draw, fire until empty, toss away, draw again. It became a litany running through her mind, undercutting the basic autopilot that kept her alive, moving her constantly forward and ahead of the soldiers’ bullets, making sure she wove back and forth in patterns too random for any one person to follow.

And finally, it was just her, standing in the midst of a sea of carnage and stench and death.

Violet lifted her chin and looked around the room, careful to keep up the appearance of strength and fearlessness, determined not to show how tired she was. A room like this, Violet knew, would have a half-dozen cameras hidden away, just to make sure no one filched any of the nearly priceless books. Daxus was probably watching her on a bank of computer screens, planning his next move, thinking he was going to kill her all over again. Or maybe he wasn’t doing that at all. Maybe he was sweating instead, trembling. She hoped so—she hoped his skin was gray with panic, that his hands were clammy and cold and shaking, his voice hoarse with anxiety as he ordered his men around.

While none of that seemed too far-fetched, it was more likely that he was conferring with his assistants and security managers, wondering how much she had left in the way of weapons and ammunition. Violet grinned as she recalled the expressions on the faces of the scanner techs back at the entrance, at the pure shock on their faces when their scanners revealed the practically bottomless flat-space arsenal she’d brought to help defend herself. If his security leaders had an ounce of courage in them, they’d be telling Daxus about those scans right now, as well as reminding him that everything they’d thrown at her so far had been virtually useless.

But there was no more time to dwell on her accomplishments, real or imagined. Violet scrambled over the corpses and made her way across the library, aiming for the exit on the other side of the room. Pushing through it, ready for another battle, she found herself entering instead an internal corridor. She was surprised to find it empty, silent, and well lit. That told her it was clearly a private exit meant for only the most precious among the ArchMinistry’s inner circle. It was a good guess that Daxus was following it, and since she could see a dead end at the far side, that also meant he’d had only one route to take.

Up.

She leaned against the wall, panting and betting that there were no hidden cameras in this private corridor. She could feel her body tiring, wanting to give out, but she mustn’t let the physical side of herself take control right now. There were more important things in the world than herself—Six, for instance. She
knew
the boy was alive, just as she knew Daxus had come through this corridor. She would find Daxus, and when she did, she would find Six.

Violet wiped at her face, then realized her hand was wet—she was covered in blood. Was it hers? Or that of the men she had killed? She had no idea. She hurt in dozens of places, everything from beestinglike annoyances to bone-deep aches, but she honestly didn’t know if she had any openly bleeding wounds. She didn’t feel anything major and right now, she didn’t have time to be concerned about it.

She took a deep breath, tuned out the pain, and began to climb the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

He was sweating.

Daxus pulled an expensive silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket and pressed it under his chin, trying to look unaffected in front of the elite Sentinel soldiers waiting for his orders. He wished he could see their faces, but their dark visors hid everything. Were they laughing at his fear? If they were, they were fools—they should be just as afraid. His gaze darted across them, searching for holes, searching for weakness, anything that Violet might find and exploit. He saw nothing, but then he’d believed that about the literally hundreds of men before these, all of whom had fallen before the blade of her swords and the blaze of her guns.

Daxus paced in front of them like an Army Drill Sergeant, trying to mask his nervousness behind a commanding, merciless demeanor. Did it show anyway? Of course it did, in every bead of perspiration that rolled down his neck and soaked into his collar, and he wasn’t stupid enough to think that any one of these men would miss something like that. They were too highly trained and there was nothing to be done to hide it. If they silently ridiculed him because of it, that was fine—Daxus was willing to bet that every man in this room would start sweating just like him once they faced off with Violet in the flesh.

“Excellent work,” he said, because he had to say
something
, he couldn’t just keep walking silently back and forth. “Everyone’s doing excellent work. Keep it up.” The words sounded inane even to his own ears, but he couldn’t seem to think of anything better. Finally, he just turned his back and ducked inside the door to the Mortal Sciences Lab.

In here, he felt a bit—but only that—safer. The men waiting inside the lab were the very best the ArchMinistry had to offer in the way of protection . . . no, the best of the best. They were the Praetorian Guard, named after the soldiers who had once helped rule ancient Rome. But were they going to be good enough? God, he hoped so.

They looked at him expectantly and he said, “Everything’s good,” automatically. “Everything’s under control. We’re just going to . . .” He glanced toward the closed door and was helpless to stop himself from visibly swallowing. “Wait here for a little while.”

It didn’t take long for Violet to reach the rooftop, and if she had previously been surprised about the emptiness of the path in front of her, this situation fell right into the realm of her expectations—the place was crawling with Security Commandos, a miniature army clearly positioned between her and her goal. That would never do, and she waded into them like the blade of a lawnmower, moving with precision and speed, with every move calculated to expend the least amount of energy necessary. She was past the point of feeling pain or exhaustion, of feeling anything but the need to keep going. If she’d been a regular person, or a human soldier, she might have been proud of herself when she reduced the assault force to nothing more than moaning puddles of destroyed flesh, but she wasn’t a regular person, and she was dying on top of that. She was just . . .

Tired.

At the end of the battle, she slumped against the entrance to the skybridge on the far side—toward which she had been struggling the entire time—and let herself rest, but only for a moment. There was something odd about her sword hand, something . . .
cold,
and when she glanced down at it, her eyes widened at the double spurt of blood—too much to lose. Two fingers and part of the hand were just . . .
gone,
shot off by one of the Commando’s bullets. She hadn’t even felt it.

Violet clamped her other hand over it to slow the bleeding and her face twisted. She was losing steam, losing blood, losing
herself
—could she even do this? She wasn’t afraid of dying—she’d done that once and wanted to do it a hundred times more—but she
was
afraid of failing, of being killed and losing Six forever, leaving him in the hands of a cold and heartless man whose only goals in life were power and greed.

No, damn it—she would
not
fail, she would
not!
Violet let go of her wound and wiped her sodden hand on the side of her coat, then spun her machine pistol around to face the roof’s surface and fired it. Two seconds later, without even hesitating, she swung the gun over and pressed the stubs of her missing fingers against the red-hot barrel, searing the wound—most of it, anyway—shut. Even for her, this time there was no suppressing a scream.

It took a precious half minute for the grayness to clear from her vision, then Violet pushed off from the wall and steadied herself. Her hand was still oozing blood but at least it wasn’t pouring out of her anymore—she’d bought herself a little more time, although at this rate her time left was going to be shortened considerably. If she was going to find Six and get him to safety, she needed to get on with it.

Straightening her shoulders, Violet stepped onto the skybridge that led to the Mortal Sciences Lab. That’s where Daxus would have Six, she was sure of it. Heading toward her from the other end were more soldiers, and more after that, but she would not be stopped.

She would
not.

Violet was coming.

Only a fool would miss the signs, or misread them and stupidly believe in the wrong outcome. Daxus could hear the screams and shouting of men, a barrage of seemingly never-ending gunfire—even a few small explosions as various pieces of equipment got in the way of the ammunitions fire meant for human flesh. If he’d been a man with a conscience, the screaming would have weighed heavily on him, but he hadn’t the time to be concerned about the lost lives of others. He was the most important thing here, and he could only be concerned about that. This woman, this
vampire,
was like a juggernaut, a huge, unstoppable force that was going to crush everything in its hunger to get to him . . .