“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. And one day, I’ll tell you about your father.”
Gabriella placed the transducer back into the ultrasound machine’s shelf. The screen went blank. She quickly toweled off the gel from her belly and gave it a mother’s pat. She got off the bed and powered off the machine. Not only were she and the other vamps in danger, but her baby’s life was at risk as well. She focused her anger inward, amplifying her powers for war. Her fingernails sprouted to lengths she’d never seen before. Gabriella narrowed her eyes. Now to battle Volk. She sped to the lab.
****
Gabriella charged into the laboratory, ready to lead her army to victory over Volk. She halted and spun around, confused. Her soldiers were missing, and the lab was dead silent. Where was K.L.? Where was Uncle Claude? All the preparations for Volk’s coming had vanished.
“K.L.? Uncle Claude?” she called.
Gabriella rushed to the lab counter. Test tubes, slides, and pipettes smashed to the floor as she flung them out of her way. The dagger was gone.
She ran to the pathology section. Maybe they were huddled there. Ah, a surprise attack. She opened the door and stood alone in the middle of the pathology lab, gobsmacked. They weren’t there either. Pangs of worry began to consume her. The lab was eerily quiet. The door to the morgue creaked open. Volk leaned against the doorframe. Her heart shot to the back of her throat.
“Gabriella. So nice of you to join us on this festive evening.” He smacked the dagger in his palm, repetitively, each strike successively crisper. “Were you looking for this?”
She raised her claws, bared her fangs, and hissed at him.
Volk rolled his eyes, mocking her fight stance. “Oh, come now. Don’t be like that. Put your nails and teeth away, and join us in the holiday fun.”
He slowly opened the door wider.
Her knees buckled and her eyes desperately tried to deny what was before her. Gabriella’s mouth dropped open. Her fangs poked her bottom lip. “Max,” she said softly, as if he was an illusion.
Max reached for her. His chains rattled. “Gabriella,” he rasped.
Blood dripped from cuts on his face and oozed from a gash in his neck.
Volk parodied them. “Max! Gabriella!” He grinned. “Oh, this is going to be the best Halloween ever.” He swiped his finger across Max’s flesh-torn cheeks, and licked Max’s blood. “Hmm. Tastier than I had imagined.” He offered his finger to Gabriella. “Care for a nip?”
Anger with a dash of disgust simmered in her veins. She struck his cheek with her talons in revenge, drawing blood.
Volk wiped the blood from his cheek, slowly, and then flicked his finger, smattering the blood to the floor. He glared at Gabriella. His obsidian eyes widened. He paused, amplifying the fear snaking up her spine. She’d thrown down the gauntlet first. She should have waited and calculated her moves more carefully. The consequence of her bold action came hard and swift. Volk grabbed Gabriella by her neck and lifted her high above his head. He squeezed her jaw with his fingers. “I’d rip your head off your pretty neck, if I didn’t love you.”
He tossed her across the room. Her body slammed into the wall. The ceramic green tiles cracked behind the back of her head. She rebounded to the floor dazed. Gabriella shook her head.
Max wiggled in his bonds and pounded the heels of his sneakers into the autopsy table. His ankle shackles clanged against the stainless steel.
Volk whipped his head toward Max. “Be patient, my man. Your turn will come.”
Gabriella righted herself. She wasn’t going to go down this quick. Stay focused. Remember the plan.
“Release Max. I will come with you. But before I do, tell me what you’ve done with my uncle and K.L.”
Volk shrugged. “That’s certainly a plan, but not the way I’d go. However, I do feel obligated to inform you about their whereabouts, you know, for closure.” He scratched his head. “And Max? Well, that’s not negotiable.” Volk crooked his finger. “Follow me. I’ll let you bid farewell to your friends.”
Gabriella paused, eyeing him with suspicion. She widened her stance and dug her feet into the floor. It was a trap. She readied for him to turn on her.
He clasped his hand to his chest with melodramatic flare. “A trap?” He shook his head. “You offend me with your mistrust.”
Volk read her thoughts with crystal clarity. She summoned her abilities. But try as she might to read him, his mind was barb-wired secure. All she was able to illicit in response was a snowy pattern. His telepathic powers overshadowed hers exponentially.
He laughed, gleeful at her failed attempts. “You’ve always been persistent. But then so have I.”
Volk walked over to the morgue’s cold chamber and opened the door. The pungent draft from the dead smacked her in the face. Gabriella blinked and reared back. She’d only smelled live prey or the freshly demised ones. Most importantly, she picked up neither K.L’s nor her uncle’s scent.
He motioned for her to join him inside the massive refrigerator. “Stop standing there so aloof, darling. We’re wasting time here.”
Gabriella inched toward the cold chamber, careful to stay behind Volk and close to the exit.
Volk massaged his chin. “Let’s see. Where did I stash them? Three rows over and three down.” He flipped his palms out, sarcastically. “How could I have possibly forgotten?”
He grasped the handle of a stainless steel corpse drawer, and yanked. K.L’s body catapulted out, his wrists and ankles bound with ropes.
“K.L.!”
Volk lifted K.L.’s toe tag. His initials were written in blood. He glanced at Gabriella and grinned. “Yes, this is the right one.”
K.L. did not move. Fear had crept from her brain and spread to her muscles.
“Oh, he’s all right.” Volk slapped K.L.’s cheek. “Wake up, my little fruit!”
K.L.’s eyes flicked open.
Gabriella abandoned her “escape position” and rushed over to K.L. She smoothed his hair.
Volk chortled. “How touching.” He grabbed another handle. “And cater-cornered, we have...”
He pulled another drawer open.
Gabriella’s heart cracked. “Uncle Claude!”
“I’m all right, dear. My confinement was actually quite restful.” Claude glared at Volk. “Although, short-lived.”
Volk lifted Claude’s bound body and threw him against a wall. Claude crumbled to the floor.
Gabriella raced to minister to him, but Volk raised his palm. His power halted her before she could reach her uncle.
“Leave him!” Volk bellowed.
Her mind ticked. She had to get Max out first. He was losing too much blood.
“I must be losing my touch. I can’t seem to kill this traitorous vampire. Nor this scoundrel here.”
Two drawers above Uncle Claude’s, Volk yanked out Marcus. Volk shook his head. “You again.”
Marcus smiled. “Perhaps you are fading a bit. Between me and Claude, you’re zero for two.”
“Well, allow me to improve my abysmal statistics.”
He gazed at Gabriella, his obsidian, narrowed eyes piercing her angry ones like daggers. He pointed his talon at her. “Go sit by Max and watch. I have four now, to take care of. Then we’ll be off.”
A revised plan struck her. She scrambled the tactics with random words, thwarting his ability to read her thoughts. Unless he was playing coy, he made no response. It must have worked. Gabriella willed her eyes to soften. Feigning obedience, she walked over to Max and sat on a stool by his side. She caressed his wounded cheeks with her eyes. Max let out a grateful breath.
One by one, Volk dragged K.L., Claude, and Marcus to the autopsy suite, and bound them each to their own stainless steel table. He stepped back and reveled in his accomplishment. This was her chance. Gabriella sprang from her stool and grabbed the bags of salt. She reached into the back pocket of her scrub pants and whipped out her trauma scissors. Gabriella ran and positioned herself between Volk and her
imprisoned men. Snipping the ends of the bags, she held them at arm’s length and raced around Volk spraying the salt, encasing him in a circle of tiny grains, a gazillion tiny grains that he’d be obligated to count, crystal by crystal.
Volk growled. “Damn you!”
The plan hadn’t gone as planned exactly, but the effect was the same. It bought her time before the next step. She grabbed the dagger and freed K.L., her uncle, and Marcus’s bonds.
Gabriella looked at Max, crestfallen. The dagger wouldn’t work to liberate him from his iron shackles.
K.L. jumped off the autopsy table. “I have an idea.” He looked at Max. “You’ll be free in a minute, Dr. Cade.”
“Hurry, K.L. He’s counting fast.”
K.L. ran over to a fire glass case. He cut a hole in the glass with his fingernail, so as not to set off an alarm that it had been smashed, and threw the fire hose aside. He grabbed a hatchet and rushed back to Max. With four precise whacks he broke Max’s wrist and ankle cuffs.
“This doctor needs medical attention,” Marcus said. “I’ll get him safely to the ER. I know every back exit, and I can detour if I have to.”
Max stumbled to his feet and embraced Gabriella. “I’m not leaving you with this monster. I’m staying here.”
She kissed his head. His hair was matted with blood. “No, go with Marcus. You are a strong man, but you can’t win with him. This is my battle.”
“No, I won’t go. I won’t lose you. I’ll fight by your side.”
She had to reason with him, for his protection. Gabriella placed his hand on her lower belly. “Max, this is your baby. The pregnancy does not follow human growth. Our child will be a hybrid, part mortal and part immortal. You have to fight hard to survive. If I live, and am led away, know that your child exists.”
Blood tinged tears rained down his cheeks. “Our child?”
Gabriella swiped the tears from his face with the back of her hand, careful not to cut him further with her razor sharp nails. “Yes, but go with Marcus. I will come as soon as I can.”
Marcus tugged Max’s hand. “Come on, Doc. Let’s go. Gabriella is strong-willed, and the cavalry is yet to arrive.”
“Cavalry?” Max asked in a fatigued tone.
“I’ll explain on the way out of here.”
Max slowly lifted his hand to Gabriella.
“Go,” she said wistfully, knowing she might not see him again.
Chapter Fourteen
Marcus grabbed the doorknob on the lab door and twisted it. The door didn’t budge.
“As I expected, Volk has sealed this exit with his powers. He had no intention of any of us leaving here alive.”
Feeling as if he was about to pitch over, Max leaned against the wall. His heart hammered in his ears, pumping overtime to compensate for his blood loss. “What do you mean by ‘alive’? I thought vampires were immortal.”
Marcus kicked the door. “We can be killed.” He looked at Max. “It’s complicated. I don’t have time to explain.”
Max swallowed past the lump rising in the back of his throat. “Gabriella? She could die?”
Marcus nodded.
Max pushed off the wall and stumbled forward. “I won’t let her. I won’t let him kill her. I’m going back.”
The lab spun before his eyes through a brown haze. His legs turned rubber. Max crumbled in nightmare slow motion. But before he collapsed to the floor, Marcus grabbed the back of his scrubs, clothes-lining him. Max rebounded upward. The top of his head grazed the ceiling. He wind - milled his arms, grasping at the air, trying to save himself. Wind rushed past his ears as he plunged downward. He landed in Marcus’s arms.
“I got you, Doc,” he said. “Sorry about the inadvertent toss, But I couldn’t let you hit the ground. You’re weak from blood loss. You can barely stand much less get in the ring with Volk.”
Marcus was right. Worse yet, so was Gabriella. But the male instinct jabbing at him to protect her lingered stronger than his rapidly dwindling physical strength. Cradled in Marcus’s arms, Max glanced up at him. His face appeared blurry now, and a yellow light surrounded it. So weird, he thought. A vampire with a halo. Max stumbled for the words, but what came out was, “Can’t her I leave.” He even realized he was spouting word soup. The perfusion of blood to his brain was dangerously slowing.
“Gabriella isn’t alone. Although she can be killed, I’m confident Volk won’t do it. He attacked her to teach her a lesson. His obsession with her is ironically in her favor. Your role is to heal. You’ll need the strength should you need to search for your child.”
Max’s eyes flickered and his head flopped back. “Father I be,” he mumbled.
Marcus laid him down. Max closed his eyes. He was cold, but he couldn’t shiver. He just wanted to go to sleep.
Marcus shook him. “Stay awake!”
Max prodded his eyes open. His surroundings appeared as if he was viewing them through jelly jar glasses.
“You’re losing too much blood. I have to slow the bleeding.”
Marcus’s words echoed distantly in Max’s head.
He propped Max up against the wall and took off his cravat. He wrapped it around Max’s neck.
“I have to get you to the ER. We’ll have to travel through the duct system. There’s an opening to the far left of the lab.” He hoisted Max onto his back. “Hold onto my neck.”
Riding on Marcus’s back was like riding on a rocket.
Marcus jumped up and flung back a ceiling panel. “Head’s up, Doc. We’re on our way. We’ll land in the call room corridor in a few seconds. Then on to the ER.”
Marcus deftly maneuvered through the system of tubes. Max took a deep breath. He felt weightless, as if he were flying. Vampires go so fast! He thought of how Gabriella vanished even when he was not far behind her, and how she disappeared after her shift. She healed people by touching them, and there was no way that that dagger in her uncle’s chest hadn’t penetrated his heart. She healed him, too. And she was always cold. He was so silly that he thought she needed a thyroid test, when all along, she was just a vampire. Max laughed at his musings.
“Sounds like you’re a bit loopy, but at least you’re conscious,” Marcus said. He tapped the ceiling tile. “We’re here.” He jumped down into the corridor with Max still flopped onto his back. “Good that no one has seen us. We’re going into the ER now. It is imperative that I do all the talking.”
“Problem no,” Max gurgled. He furrowed his forehead. His spoken words were tangled, yet his thoughts made sense.
“Yes, I see that’s not going to be a problem,” Marcus said. “Ready?”
Max wearily nodded.
Marcus ran into the ER with Max in tow. “I need help! Dr. Cade has been attacked!”
“Oh my God!” a trauma nurse yelled. “Hurry, bring him into trauma room one.”
Marcus rushed to the room as directed.
A hoard of nurses descended upon them.
“Lean toward the table, sir.”
“One, two, three,” one of the nurses called.
On the count of three, they rolled Max from Marcus’s back onto the trauma bed. His arms flopped to his sides like wet spaghetti. A high-pitched zip roused him. He’d heard that sound of trauma scissors hundreds of times before. His scrubs were being sheared off. He felt no pain as he watched the nurses poke him in his veins trying to get that “pot of gold” IV line inserted in his collapsed vessels, and the slaps of cardiac electrode pads to his chest felt like mere taps.
“Page Dr. Van Court, stat.”
Max shook his head and mumbled, “Kidnapped.”
A trauma nurse yelled to the unit clerk, “Call the police. Overhead page any available doctor in the house. Get the nursing supervisor and security. Have them lock down the hospital.” The nurse leaned over him. Her face looked distorted, like a “Picasso” in scrubs. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Max rolled his head toward Marcus.
“Sir, what is your name?” the nurse aske
d.
“Marcus Pemberly. I’m Dr. Cade’s friend.”
Two trauma surgeons, George Toth, his OB/GYN friend, and the cardiologist who he didn’t care for, descended upon him.
“Max!” George called.
“Shit!” the cardiologist yelled.
One trauma surgeon gently unwrapped Marcus’s blood-soaked cravat from Max’s neck. “Who did this to you?”
He opened his mouth, but no words came.
The other trauma surgeon assessed the rest of his body. The cardiologist’s eyes shot straight to the cardiac monitor. He frowned. “Sinus brady, and he’s starting to throw PVC’s.”
Max processed the information. His heart was slowing and it was having dangerous irregular beats. It was the beginning of the end, as he recognized it.
“Something went down in the call room where Max was staying,” George offered. “When I passed by it, there was broken glass and blood everywhere. I was calling security when I heard the stat overhead page.”
The nurse pointed at Marcus. “That man brought Max to the ER, slumped onto his back. Marcus Pemberly, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What do you know about this?” the trauma surgeon asked while glancing up from Max’s wound.
“I was at a Halloween party that turned out not to be what I expected. So I called Max to ask if I could come over for a bit. While we were talking on the telephone, I heard a loud crash, like glass breaking. Then the telephone went dead. I rushed over straight away. I found Max on the floor, his face bloody and his neck cut. I took off my cravat and applied pressure to his neck wound. I scooped him up and ran to the emergency room.”
“You did well,” the second trauma said. “You’ve helped keep him alive.”
Max lifted his thumb. That was a great lie!
“He needs surgery, right away. And he’ll need several units of blood.” The surgeon turned to the nurse. “Call the lab right away.”
Another trauma nurse looked up. “Hey, where did Mr. Pemberly go?”