Free Dire Blood (#5) (The Descent Series) by SM Reine

against his gut.
    But there were no alarms. His earpiece remained silent.
    She ripped the gun from his hands and flung it across the ground. And then she vanished into midair, scattering into shadow like a flock of ravens.
    A buzz. “ We’re registering unusual activity in your sector. Did you fall over? ” The tiny voice had a hint of laughter to it. The dick in the control booth was laughing at him. Nobody fucking laughed at him when he had been commander. When the Union put him in charge again, Mack was going to be the first on latrine duty.
    He tried to punch the button his earpiece and missed. He hit it on the second try.
    “I just got attacked,” Zettel said, scrambling to his feet and grabbing his gun. “There is an intruder, and it’s not registering on the sensors.”
    “ Negative, Gary —”
    But control was cut off by jangling alarms. They shattered the air, echoed over the plains, and made his eardrums vibrate. The spotlights on the building turned red and began to flash.
    A dozen voices began speaking in his earpiece simultaneously.
    “ Something just entered the garage level —”
    “— registering a bogey, moving fast —”
    “ What did you see? What is it? ”
    Zettel felt a surge of satisfaction that was almost as strong as his confusion. He pressed the talk button as he ran toward the door, but he didn’t know what to tell them he had seen. The pale skin, dark hair, and how it had vanished into the shadows—those things always meant a demon of some flavor, like a nightmare or a succubus.
    But what he had seen couldn’t have been a demon. It couldn’t .
    Mason rushed to meet him at the side door, which stood ajar. The lights inside were on alarm, too, and black shapes rushed through the halls as sleeping kopides began to awake and mobilize.
    “Jesus, what was it?” Mason asked.
    I think it was a ghost.
    That would have sounded insane, so all Zettel said was, “I’m going after the bogey. Drag Malcolm’s drunken ass out of bed and have him find me.”
    And then he slammed through the door and entered total chaos.
    The screeching alarms were worse inside the warehouse. They rattled and bounced off of the walls, and the pitch made his eardrums tremble. The alarm lights were red, so it took no time for his eyes to adjust after the darkness outside.
    He was surrounded by shipping trucks and the crates they had been carrying, each turned to black cubes by the strobes.
    Nobody was working in the garage that late at night. The only active personnel should have been patrolling, just like Zettel had been outside. But as far as he could see, the room was empty.
    Footsteps banged on the metal walkway above. He whirled to follow the sound, raising his gun.
    The runner vanished before he could target.
    Swearing under his breath, he launched himself up the ladder and onto the walkway. The shadow had already reappeared on the opposite catwalk, shoved open the swinging doors into the hallway, and passed through.
    Ragged breaths tore through his throat as he chased the disappearing and reappearing shadow. The chatter on his earpiece fuzzed in and out of static.
    The shadow swept through the halls ahead of him, darkening a few feet at a time, like a black hand was moving over the lights one by one. Doors slammed around him, opening and closing of their own volition.
    Occasionally, he saw a flash of a hand, a slender throat, a face glancing over a shoulder—like he was chasing a beautiful ghost through a forest of fluttering darkness.
    He was never going to catch up.
    “Issue a quarantine protocol on my level!” he shouted into the earpiece.
    Mack moved fast. The fire shields began to slide over the hallway doors.
    Zettel slid under the nearest one just in time to see the shadow pass around the next corner, near the armory. He could cut it off if he reached the next level first.
    He leaped up the stairs, taking them two at a time. His shoulder bumped into a kopis as he passed his quarters. He recognized