frantic workings of a
tremendously busy urban hospital. Sure, there might be a review or two of patient care, but they
wouldn't be able to find V by then, and that was all that mattered.
When Phury was finished with the computer, he jogged down the SICU floor. As he went, he
fritzed out the security cameras that were embedded at regular intervals in the ceiling so all
they'd show was fuzz.
Just as he came up to the room six, the door opened. Vishous was death warmed over in Butch's
arms, the brother pale and shaky and in pain, his head tucked into the cop's neck. But he was
breathing and his eyes were open.
«Let me take him,» Phury said, thinking Butch looked almost as bad.
«I've got him. You deal with our management issue and ride hard on the security cameras.»
«What management issue?»
«Wait for it,» Butch muttered as he headed for a fire door at the far end of the hall.
A split second later, Phury got a load of the problem: Rhage walked out into the hall with a rip-
shit human female in a choke hold. She was fighting him tooth and nail, the muffled yelling
suggesting she had a vocabulary like a trucker.
«You gotta knock her cold, my brother,» Rhage said, then grunted. «I don't want to hurt her, and
V said she had to come with us.»
«This was not supposed to be kidnap operation.»
«Too fucking late. Now knock her out, would ya?» Rhage grunted again and switched his grip,
his hand leaving her mouth to catch one of her flailing arms.
Her voice came through loud and clear. «So help me, God, I'm going to-«
Phury took her chin in his hand and forced her head up. «Relax,» he said softly. «Just ease up.»
He locked his stare on hers and began to will her into calmness… will her into calmness… will
her into-
«Fuck you!» she spat. «I'm not letting you kill my patient!»
Okay, this wasn't working. Behind those rimless glasses and dark green eyes, she had a
formidable mind, so with a curse he brought out the big guns, mentally shutting her down
completely. She sagged like a mop.
Removing her glasses, he folded them up and put them in the breast pocket of his coat. «Let's
bust out of here before she comes around again.»
Rhage flipped the woman over, draping her like a shawl off his heavy shoulder. «Get her bag
from the room.»
Phury ducked in, picked up a leather tote and the folder marked with the name Klosnick, then
beat feet from the room. When he came back into the hall, Butch was having a run-in with a
nurse who'd come out of a patient room.
«What are you doing!» the woman said.
Phury got on her like a tent, jumping in front of her, staring her into a stupor, planting the urgent
need to get to a staff meeting in her frontal lobe. By the time he caught up with the evac again,
the woman in Rhage's arms was already throwing off the mind control, shaking her head back
and forth as it bobbed to the beat of Hollywood's get-up-'n-go.
As they came up to the stairwell's fire door, Phury barked, «Hold up, Rhage.»
The brother stopped on a dime; and Phury clamped his hand on the side of the woman's neck,
putting her out cold with a pressure lock.
«She's gone. S'all good.»
They hit the back stairs and hauled ass. Vishous's rasping breath was testimony to how much the
express-train action was killing him, but he was hard-core as always, hanging in, in spite of the
fact that he'd turned the color of pea soup.
Each time they came to a landing, Phury pulled a little scramble with a security camera, running
an electrical surge through the things so they blinked out. His big hope was that they'd make it to
the Escalade without tangling with a bunch of security guards. Humans were never targets for
the Brotherhood. That being said, if there was a risk of the vampire race being exposed, there
was nothing that wouldn't be done. And as hypnotizing large groups of agitated and aggressive
humans had a low success rate, that left fighting. And death for them.
Some eight flights down the stairwell bottomed out, and Butch stopped in front of a metal door.
Sweat poured down his face and he was weaving, but his face was soldier-strong: He was going
to get his buddy out, and nothing was going to stand in his way, even his own physical weakness.
«I'll do the door,» Phury said, jumping to the head of the pack. After taking care of the alarm, he
held the slab of steel open for the others. On the far
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