down. The fencing system that surrounded the property was worthy of a federal penitentiary, some twenty feet tall and mounted with security cameras. As he hit the brakes and prepared to come to a complete stop, he prayed the alarms didn’t start going off just as he dealt with the guard’s mind—
The gatehouse’s sliding door opened on their side, and an arm extended out from the sentry point, giving a little wave-through. Then the gates began to part.
But of course. The SUV’s windows were all tinted and up tight against the cold—so whoever was on duty was just assuming the CEO was behind the wheel.
As Murhder cruised through, he stared straight ahead and lifted his hand as he guessed Kraiten might have. Then he beat feet out of there.
As they came off the property, he went to the right and sped away.
“Everyone okay back there?” he asked roughly.
“Yes, we’re good,” the human woman said.
“All good,” the pretrans echoed.
Murhder started to smile.
He’d done it, he thought as he squeezed the steering wheel. He’d fucking done it. The young was out of that hellhole, and nothing was going to happen to the kid now.
He hadn’t let Ingridge down.
All at once, this strange energy entered not just Murhder’s body and mind, but his soul. After everything he had been through with his unreliable thoughts and his swirling craziness, it was hard to trust the rush. But damn, it was as if sunshine had entered him on the inside, the dark spaces between his molecules illuminated with a heavenly glow, whole sectors of his personality, previously eclipsed by penetrating sadness, now bathed in a healing warmth.
With the same abruptness as it had failed, his switchboard seemed now fully operational and ready for business again, his circuits up and rolling, his wires uncrossed, his functioning returning to a normal that he had previously taken for granted, as the healthy and whole always did.
That smile pulled hard at the corners of his mouth. And then, like an athlete after a warmup, his lips stretched wide. Sure, he was in an arguably stolen vehicle, which was owned by a man about to die in a grisly way, and he had an orphan and a human woman in the backseat who both needed his protection.
But after two decades of being in an insane wasteland, he felt like himself.
Fuck that, he felt like a goddamn superhero.
“Are you taking me to my mahmen?” the boy asked.
Murhder’s eyes flashed up to the rearview. As he met that hopeful stare, he felt a piercing pain in his heart, and all his optimism collapsed.
“We need to talk, son,” he said grimly.
In spite of all the reasons Xhex had to slaughter Kraiten where the bastard stood, she decided not to go that route. It was too easy. He had earned a much worse fate and she was just the symphath to give it to him.
“Hold him for me?” she asked her mate.
As John nodded, she transferred Kraiten over into what turned out to be a vicious headlock—and yup, she had a moment of reconsideration. Her hellren had bared his fangs and was looking like he was ready to make a meal of the guy.
Except she had a better plan.
“John,” she said, “you gotta loosen that hold on his neck. He’s turning blue—there you go. Respiration is a good thing for the living.”
Certain that John was in control of himself, in spite of that bloodthirsty snarl of his, she calmed herself and entered the human’s brain.
Kraiten’s emotional grid was interesting, and one not uncommon to sociopaths: He had little to no registry around the core of his superstructure—which meant that nothing affected him deeply. Everything was superficial to him, with the ego sectors the only thing that were lit up elsewhere.
He was very protective of his position of superiority.
Well, that was going to change. And she was also going to teach him a lesson in what it was like to be out of control.
Using her symphath side, she set the man upon a path that was going to make him insane, and as she worked, she thanked the higher powers for the opportunity to ruin him. She had never expected to run into the guy, and this was such a bonus to getting that young free.
After she was done, she erased his memories of the infiltration, the hostage taking and the rescue, making sure that he would have no recollection of any of this. Then she nodded to John and he let go of the