Pretty damn bad, if they didn’t get out of here!
Once more using her cell phone for light, Hannah examined their basement prison. With a shock, she saw two more bodies lying on the floor. Both women, one considerably older than the other, and when Hannah got close enough, she saw that they, too, had been raped and bitten.
Both were still alive, their pulses as thready as the punky girl’s.
Her stomach lurched. Gabriel said he sensed one mortal in this house. Which meant two out of these three women were fledgling vampires. But Hannah had no clue how to tell which two.
“Oh, this is just getting better and better,” she muttered.
She explored every inch of the basement, but she didn’t find any way out. She did find her gun, which luckily had dropped into the basement with her. Great. Now she was armed. But she was still in deep, deep shit. After all, she could only shoot one vamp at a time, and this house was teeming with them.
The clock on her cell phone told her it was after four already. Which meant she had at most two hours before her future playmates rose. She made one more futile attempt to get a signal, then reluctantly closed the phone to save the battery. When the sun went down, she’d need that feeble light to have even a chance of killing some of the vamps.
SOMEONE WAS SCREAMING. A high, shrill keen that overlay a cacophony of other sounds. Banging and crashing. Pleas for mercy. Cries of pain and terror. Sobs.
Drake jerked awake, his body awash with sweat. The house was eerily silent in contrast to the clamor of his dream. He took a deep breath to calm the hammering of his heart.
And that’s when he smelled it. Blood. Strong and fresh.
He leapt out of bed, shaking his head to clear the lingering cobwebs, and saw that his door was standing open. The reek came from somewhere below. He reached out with his senses and felt two vampires down there.
Two vampires, and no one else.
What had happened to all Camille’s fledglings? And her mortal pets? The air stank of doom.
Bracing himself, Drake cautiously left his cell and peered over the banister. What he saw sapped the strength from his knees, and he had to hold on to the banister for balance.
Gabriel stood in the entryway below, using a dampened white towel to wipe the blood from his face and hands. Around him, bodies and pieces of bodies lay strewn all over the floor.
The butler and Camille’s other mortals lay together in one corner, their corpses stacked like firewood, intact, but very much dead. The others, though …
Drake couldn’t even have said how many dead fledglings there were down there, based on the profusion of body parts. Except Gabriel had lined up the heads in a semi-circle around his feet. Eight heads. All eight of Camille’s fledglings.
Camille sat huddled in one corner, her arms wrapped around her knees, her shoulders heaving with sobs. Gabriel finished wiping off blood, though his clothes and hair were still soaked with it, and tossed the towel onto the floor in front of his mother. She didn’t look up.
“So,” he said, his voice calm and level, “now you see what it would have been like if I really had been behind the attack, Mother. Do you believe now that it wasn’t me?”
Camille raised her head, and Drake flinched to see what had become of this proud, arrogant creature. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying, her jaw slack with despair. Worse than that was the utter terror on her face. She was pressed into that corner as if she hoped to disappear into the wall, and her whole body shook with tremors.
What the hell had Gabriel done? And how had he managed it, when Camille was obviously older than he?
Gabriel glanced up and caught sight of Drake. “Oh, good. You’re up. If you’d like to be reunited with Hannah and Jules, come with me. They most likely could use our help right now.” He started picking his way through the carnage toward the front door.
Drake hadn’t the faintest idea what to think of what he was seeing. Gabriel sounded as calm as if he hadn’t just massacred his mother’s minions, oblivious to the blood and gore that surrounded him. Was he completely mad?
“Are you coming?” Gabriel asked, his hand on the front door.
Numb and nauseated, Drake started down the stairs, trying not to look at the slaughtered bodies. For whatever reason, Gabriel had spared him the fate of Camille’s fledglings. Drake supposed he should find out what he wanted.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Drake gave Gabriel a visual once over. He was dressed all in black, which helped disguise the blood, but there was so much of it no one could possibly miss it.
“You’re going to attract a lot of attention if you don’t change clothes and wash your hair.” He was impressed with his own calm, considering he was obviously in the presence of a madman. A very dangerous madman.
Gabriel looked down at himself and shook his head. “Can’t be helped. I’ve led your friends to Ian’s hiding place, and I’ve taken their car. They’re in danger, and it’s a half-hour drive. There’s no time to waste. This,” he said, sweeping his hand to indicate the carnage, “is none of your concern. Your friends are. Follow me or not. Your choice.”
Then he was out the door. This could all be some bizarre kind of trap, but Drake could see no reason why Gabriel wouldn’t just go ahead and kill him if he wanted to. And if what he said was true …
Drake made it out the door just in time to see Gabriel, driving Hannah’s rental, pull out into traffic. Cursing, Drake sprinted for his own car. Luckily, Gabriel had to stop at a red light, or Drake might have lost him before he even got started.
A half-hour drive. Drake glanced at the darkening sky. Ian’s fledglings wouldn’t be up yet, but Ian would be. He could only hope that Jules and Hannah were well hidden, and that Ian wouldn’t be looking for them.
The light turned green. Both Gabriel and Drake ignored the speed limit in their race against time.
JULES YAWNED AND GOT a mouthful of straw. He spit it out and sat up abruptly, shaking straw from his face and picking it out of his hair. He rubbed his eyes and looked around him, seeing the horse stall where he and Hannah and Gabriel had taken shelter this morning. Only Hannah and Gabriel weren’t there.
He closed his eyes and reached out with his senses, but he was alone. Alarm shot through his system and he sprang to his feet. The only presence, mortal or vampire, that he sensed came from the distance—from the house that Gabriel claimed Ian’s fledglings were in.
The house was barely in range of his “vamp-dar,” but he sensed a strong vampire presence, as well as a much more feeble mortal one. He’d have to get closer to examine the psychic footprints more carefully.
Hoping against hope that Hannah was nowhere near that damn house, he jogged out into the failing light of late afternoon. The car was gone. Maybe that was a good sign, though he couldn’t imagine why Hannah would have left him alone here in the barn. Was Gabriel up to some kind of trickery?
He hesitated only a moment before continuing his run across the fields. After a couple hundred yards, Jules paused and reached out again.
His unease redoubled. There were nine vampires in that house! And two mortals. Instinct told him that one of those mortals had to be Hannah, though he couldn’t imagine what the damn fool woman was doing in that house without him.
The sun was setting rapidly, and soon even fledgling vampires would be up and about. There was no time to waste.
His jog turned into an all-out sprint, fueled by something akin to terror. If something happened to Hannah because of him …
Fear leant him speed, and soon he was dashing up the steps of a crumbling, derelict house that stank to high heaven. A flood of bats poured from the eaves, squeaking shrilly as they took flight.
The front door was propped open, and Jules plunged inside, only to find himself surrounded by inky blackness. The windows had been boarded over, so the fading sunlight didn’t make it inside.
“Hannah!” he cried, looking frantically right and left though he couldn’t see a damn thing.
br />
“Jules!”
He wasn’t sure whether the feeling that flooded him was relief, or even more terror. What the fuck was she doing in this house?
“I fell through the floor,” she shouted, “and the basement door’s locked. Be careful. There are vamps everywhere.”
He felt the minutes ticking away like a physical force, but he had enough common sense not to go plunging blindly toward her voice without thinking. He’d do her no good if he found her hole in the floor and fell through it with her.
Adrenaline surging through his system, he grabbed one of the boards covering the window and tore it loose, letting in a stream of red-gold light. He tore off two more boards, and the light revealed a doorway to his right. A sleeping vampire lay on the floor near that doorway, and when Jules approached, he saw the hole in the floor. He needed to get Hannah out of here, but he wasn’t sure how long it would take. Best to take out one of the enemies while he could.
Jules reached down and snapped the sleeping vampire’s neck with one hard jerk. Two more lay on the floor on the other side of the hole, and he dispatched them with equal speed. Then he lay down on his belly and peered into the hole.
Hannah stood in what looked to be a basement, looking up at him by the light of her cell phone. He reached his hand down.
“Can you jump up and reach me?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. She’d need springs in her legs to reach him. She tried anyway, but she didn’t come close.
“The door’s over there,” she said, pointing, “but it’s locked.”
He looked in the direction she was pointing, but it didn’t look like the entrance to the basement was in this room. Damn it, he didn’t have time to go exploring! But he couldn’t be sure he’d be able to force the door if he jumped down there, so he had no choice.
A quick psychic check showed him four vampires upstairs. And two downstairs, with Hannah.
“I’ll see if I can find the door,” he said, standing up reluctantly. “There are two vampires down there with you.”
“I know. Unfortunately, there are three unconscious people, and I don’t know which two are vamps.”
“The two over there,” he said, pointing vaguely, but he was already heading back to the entryway to see if he could find the basement stairs.
The sun was almost completely down, the missing boards no longer lighting his way. He took a page from Hannah’s book and opened his cell phone. Its bluish light picked out three doorways that opened off the entryway. The first one proved to be a closet, or at least what had once been a closet. Now it looked like a nesting place for rats and spiders. The second opened into what might have been a bedroom.
The third opened on a set of crumbling stone steps, leading downward. He hurried to the bottom, almost tumbling down headfirst when his foot slipped on some loose rubble.
The door was brand new, and secured with a deadbolt and a bar. He twisted the deadbolt and raised the bar, then slammed the door open.
Hannah stood over the bodies of two women, her cell phone in one hand, her gun in the other. A psychic check confirmed the women were vampires, but as usual, Hannah seemed reluctant to shoot. He moved in quickly, meaning to snap their necks, but when he drew up beside Hannah, he saw exactly why she didn’t shoot.
The wounds on the women’s throats were fresh, not more than a day old.
“Marde!” he cursed. They were so new there was no way they’d had their first kill yet. Hell, they probably hadn’t even awakened since they’d been made!
“They can’t be Killers yet, can they?” Hannah asked. She didn’t wait for his answer. “So they can be saved. Join the Guardians?”
He nodded reluctantly, knowing he was about to have a battle on his hands.
“There’s also a mortal over there,” Hannah said. “I don’t know if there’s a chance she’s going to live or not. She hasn’t woken up all day, and her pulse is very weak.”
He shook his head, hating what he had to do. “We have to get out of here, Hannah. And we don’t have time to drag three unconscious women out with us.”
“We can’t just leave them here!” she protested.
He stood up and glowered at her in the darkness. “There are four Killers still alive in this house, and they’ll be waking up any second now. And one of them is Ian, who—”
“No, Ian isn’t here. At least, Gabriel said he wasn’t.”
“And where the fuck is Gabriel?”
“Long story,” Hannah said. She tucked the number pad of her cell phone into the waistband of her jeans, leaving it flipped open for a little light, then stuffed her gun in a pocket. She bent to grab the arm of one of the young fledglings and slung it over her arm. “Help me out here,” she said, struggling to her feet, the fledgling a dead weight.
Jules didn’t have time to argue with her. He was all for gallantly rescuing the three women, but Hannah had to come first, and if he didn’t get her out of here now, she’d never get out alive. He met her eyes and wrapped her in glamour. The fledgling’s arm slipped from her grip. He put his hand on Hannah’s arm and gave her a little push toward the door. But it was already too late.
From upstairs, a voice howled in fury as one of the resident vampires discovered his dead friends. Hannah wouldn’t move fast enough under the influence of glamour, and he doubted his concentration would hold anyway. He released her, stepping in front of her to take the lead and grabbing her hand.
“Run!” he said, jerking her toward the door.
HANNAH CAME TO HERSELF and almost fell flat on her face because Jules was practically pulling her arm out of its socket as he shouted at her to run.
She wanted to tell him exactly what she thought about him and his glamour, but she heard the outraged cries from upstairs and realized there wasn’t time for it. She managed to get her feet under her and stumbled after Jules as he dragged her up the stairs. She was too off-balance to get her gun out of her pocket.
“Let go, Jules!” she yelled, though she didn’t slow down.
The jackass ignored her, naturally. She banged her shoulder against the doorway as the two of them burst into the hall. Her cell phone came loose and clattered to the floor. Its light shut off, leaving them in total blackness. Suddenly, she was glad for Jules’s grip on her hand. She sure hoped he knew where he was going.
The house seemed to come alive with voices, all angry. No, furious. A body barreled into her, and she lost her grip on Jules’s hand.
“Hannah!” he yelled, but she couldn’t answer him because the impact with the floor knocked all the wind out of her lungs.
The guy on top of her felt like he weighed about two-fifty. He seemed to think that because he outweighed her, she’d cower in fear, for he made only the most half-assed effort to restrain her. Even before she could get any breath into her lungs, she jerked her head up, making solid contact with his nose. She felt and heard the cartilage crack. He howled in pain, and blood spurted her face. She hit him again as he put his hand to his broken nose, conveniently giving her some fingers to break. Another howl, and he rolled off of her.
Hannah lurched to her feet, trying to run toward the sound of Jules’s voice, but someone grabbed her from behind, forearm pressing against her windpipe. Her back slammed into a wall of muscle. Immediately, she turned and bent her head, trapping his hand between her chin and her left shoulder. Then, she started turning to the right, bending his wrist at an unhappy angle. As he realized he was coming out on the losing side of this, she punctuated her point by stomping his instep. He yanked his hand free of her grip but was too stupid to know he was outmatched by the “little lady.”
When he shifted his grip lower, she hooked one of her feet around his ankle, pulling forward as she sat down.
His feet flew out from under him, and her butt made solid contact with his groin when they landed. At last, he let go, and once more Hannah scrambled to her feet.
A hand clamped around her wrist, but though her immediate impulse was to counterattack, i
nstinct or intuition told her it was Jules, and she didn’t try to break the grip.
Together, they charged toward what she sincerely hoped was the doorway. But they didn’t get far before a blinding white light seared their eyeballs.
Ian Squires laughed in delight.
20
JULES BLINKED IN THE blinding light of a Coleman lantern. He put himself between Hannah and Ian, but it was a futile gesture. Ian laughed and put the lantern down on the floor, its eerie white glow filling the room with alternating glare and shadows.
One of Ian’s fledglings lay on the floor, clutching his groin. Another was using both hands to try to stanch the flow of blood from his nose. Two of the fingers on his left hand were bent at odd angles. Despite their dire situation, Jules couldn’t help giving Hannah an amazed look. She managed a sickly grin and a shrug.
“Your woman seems to have a great deal of spirit,” Ian said. “I’m sure you’re going to enjoy watching me crush that spirit out of her.”
The two uninjured fledglings eyed Hannah with lust and hunger. Surprisingly, she clutched Jules’s arm and kind of tucked herself behind his back, as if hiding. But Hannah didn’t back down from anything, and there was no way she’d be sheltering behind him. She was up to something.
Hoping to buy Hannah time for whatever she was up to, Jules swept a contemptuous glance over Ian’s fledglings.
“Where did you get these guys from, Ian? It looks like you raided the local reform school.” The four of them resembled nothing so much as a quartet of teenage gorillas, with bulging muscles and vapid expressions.
Ian smiled. “In point of fact, a couple of them have spent time in such an establishment. Have you any idea the kinds of things young hoodlums learn to do in reform school when girls aren’t available?” He leered at Jules and licked his lips.
Once upon a time, that threat would have made him shudder. Now, he managed to face his maker with no change of expression. “Same things you learned from Gabriel?”