A Perfect Blood

he said, and the pixy took off from my shoulder, leaving a softly glowing dust. “We’re under radio silence. Will you tell team two six minutes from . . . mark?”
    “Gotcha,” he said, and he was gone, his dust dissolving to nothing in time and distance.
    Glenn’s dark eyes took in Ivy, not wearing her vest, and me in my stylish, sulfur-coated nylon. Beside the car, Wayde stood in frustrated silence. He wanted me to stay with him at the transport van. It wasn’t going to happen. Glenn clapped his hands together once. “Everyone’s set. Let’s go. Rachel, stay with Wayde.”
    Like hell I am. I shook my head at Wayde, making him grimace. My pulse jerked into a faster pace, and after checking my splat guns, I broke into a slow jog after Glenn, now headed for the building. Ivy was behind me, her footfalls almost unheard over my come-and-go breaths.
    “I am not going to run over there.” Teresa’s voice came faintly. “Get in the car, we’ll follow at a discreet distance and time.”
    “Rachel . . .” Glenn all but growled, and I smiled slightly at him as I jogged. Dr. Cordova’s car door thumped shut, and he winced at the noise.
    Looking back, I was surprised to find Nina tagging along with us, looking especially trim in her suit as she effortlessly loped along. “Storming HAPA with two dozen guns is safer than sitting in a parked car with Dr. Cordova,” she said.
    “Yeah!” Jenks was on Ivy’s shoulder so his dust wouldn’t give us away. “That woman is a pterodactyl.”
    “There,” Glenn said, and we angled to the service door I’d seen earlier with the binoculars. There was an FIB man decked out head to toe in anticharm gear beside it, complete with a helmet, night goggles, and a weapon as long as my arm that looked like it should be in the armed forces, not a residential arsenal.
    We came to a stop, none of us breathing hard. “Did you know he was coming?” I whispered to Glenn, and his eyes flicked to Nina behind him.
    “I didn’t know you were coming,” he said sourly, looking at the red-glowing screen the FIB officer held out to him. It was a breakdown of where everyone was. I hadn’t known the FIB had such technology. Neither had Nina, if her high-eyebrow expression meant anything. The vampire had put on an I.S. armband during our jog here. It looked vaguely like something I’d seen in an old ’40s movie, and again I wondered how old this guy was.
    “Rachel, I appreciate your zeal. Go back to the car,” Glenn said as he studied the screen, the information electronic, not magic, and Jenks snorted.
    “The pixy is right,” Nina said, and Glenn’s eyes fixed on hers with a hard intensity. “Rachel is safer surrounded by the I.S. and FIB than sitting in a car, even if she is in close proximity to the very people who would like to see her captured. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
    Glenn glanced at his watch, then dropped his head, tired. “You good with that?” he asked me, and as Jenks hummed his approval, I nodded, even as I edged away from Nina. I’d go with a chaperone if it got me inside. Once the fur started flying, it wouldn’t matter, and I felt the bumps of saltwater vials I had in my belt pack, nervously counting them.
    For another long moment, Glenn looked at me, his brow furrowed. “You stay behind us,” he finally said, and I nodded. “Okay, let’s go,” he added, and eased to the door, already open and waiting for us. I slipped in after him, immediately sliding to the side and out of the small patch of lighter darkness. Ivy and Nina followed, and the FIB guy eased the door shut and remained outside to keep our retreat open.
    I was in. Elated, I breathed the smell of moldy oil and decayed sawdust. It was a single large room with the ceiling girders glinting softly in the skylights. In the corner came a flash of a penlight, one, two, three.
    “The primary entrance to the lower floor is over there,” Glenn whispered in my ear. “Stairs. That’s what we’ll take. There’s a service elevator outside against the far wall where the majority of the men will come in.”
    Ivy took off, loping toward the light when it blinked again. Clearly it was another FIB guy. They had this place stocked with them. I followed her, Nina taking the position behind me, and Glenn bringing up the rear. We said nothing as we passed the man at the top of the stairs. He was suited up head to toe in ACG like the one outside, making me feel naked with only my vest, but Glenn was