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

the cry of protest, even under the blaring alarms—Malcolm.
    Then the shadow swept over them.
    For an instant, it was utterly black. Something cold washed down Zettel’s spine. The back of his neck itched and crawled.
    It was gone an instant later.
    “The hell?” Malcolm asked. He slept naked, like he was still a bachelor at university, but he had his clothes bundled under one arm and a gun in the other hand. What a goddamn pig.
    Zettel hit the button on his earpiece. “This level also needs to be closed, control. I think the bogey must be going for artifact storage.”
    The commander tried to follow him down the hall, bouncing on one leg to pull on his pants. “Oi! Gary! What bogey?”
    Between control’s shouts on the earpiece and the blasting alarms, the rest of the units in the warehouse were mobilizing, but it was too late. Men stepped into the hall seconds after Malcolm had already run past them, and the shadow was already long gone.
    That meant that the lift would be too slow, too. Zettel launched himself up the stairwell, Malcolm just a few steps behind with his trousers around his knees.
    He got out on the fourth floor. Went two halls down.
    There was nobody in sight, and the door into artifact storage was still closed. Totally silent. No shadows, no ghosts, no intruders.
    Uttering a silent thanks, Zettel punched his access code into the panel to check the logs. Text scrolled past on the screen, but he wasn’t sure what he expected to find. If the door was locked, then even a shadowy bogey wasn’t going to be able to break through three inches of heavy steel without leaving some traces.
    No attempts at opening the door showed on the log for six hours. He had beaten the bogey there.
    He squinted through the reinforced glass. There were no alarm lights inside the secure storage room, so he could barely make out the shelves of crates and containers inside as the strobes behind him flashed.
    A strobe momentarily illuminated the aisle between the shelves. A woman stood at the end, wearing the shadows like armor.
    Cold shock washed over him. For a moment, all he could do was stand with his mouth agape, face pressed to the glass. The intruder glanced up at him as she pulled a box off of the shelves. It was the size of a suitcase, and marked with the Union insignia.
    How had she gotten inside?
    Zettel inputted his access code, but it took a few seconds for the whirring locks to disengage. He slammed his fist into the door, as if that could make it go faster.
    “You bitch!” he yelled, spit flecking on the door.
    The woman saluted him with two fingers to her temple.
    Click . The locks released. Zettel flung the door open.
    Everything went black.
    The heavy hand of darkness pressed against his mouth and nose, squeezing into his throat, down his chest, and gripping his lungs. The rattle of alarms filled his skull. An impact rocked through his spine.
    And then the darkness was gone—and so was the bogey, the box, and any sign of her shadow.
    Zettel had somehow ended up sprawled out on his back, and he wasn’t sure how or when it had happened. Maybe that had been the pain he’d felt. The bitch must have pushed him.
    Before he could get up, Malcolm ran out of the stairwell, one hand hanging onto the pants around his thighs and the other holding a 9mm. He jerked his trousers over his hips and belted them. He was still shirtless and barefoot. He must have abandoned the rest of his clothing somewhere in the stairwell.
    “Did you see her?” Zettel asked, scrambling onto his hands and knees.
    “Her who?” Malcolm grimaced and pressed a hand to his temple. “God, that shrieking—someone turn that shit off. Hear me?” When the alarms continued, he put a hand to his earpiece. “Come on, you bastards, turn off the bells!”
    Silence flooded the hall. Control was still chattering away, the useless fucks. Zettel turned the volume down on his earpiece.
    “We’ve got a problem, sir,” he said, getting to his