Hunter let out another world-weary sigh. “I suppose ‘your worship’ will do after all.”
Nikolai swallowed a growl of frustration and impatience. “Can we please—for the love of God—just get the information we need from this mudak so I can go get Violet?”
Hunter turned a terrifying smile on the vampire who was now openly weeping. “This might hurt a bit.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“I don’t understand why she called me a boy.”
Riddick sighed. “Harper didn’t call you a boy, Seven. She was quoting a movie line.”
“’Bye bye, boys—have fun storming the castle’ is what Miracle Max and his wife said before Westley, Inigo, and Fezzik went to rescue Buttercup at the end of The Princess Bride,” Hunter added.
Seven still looked confused. “We’re not storming a castle. It’s clearly some kind of old abandoned military bunker.”
Lucas looped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “It’s Harper. Life’ll be a lot easier for you if you just assume everything she says will be confusing on some level.”
Nikolai could barely pay attention to the group’s banter as he watched dozens of armed guards—armed vampire guards—walking the perimeter of the old compound. Their view from the ridge where they’d parked Hunter’s SUV was clear, giving them an unobstructed view of exactly what they were up against.
He’d been up against worse for less, he decided. They were outnumbered 20—no, more like 30—to one, but with Violet inside? He knew he’d gladly take on twice that many by himself to get her back safely.
“I don’t like the odds,” Seven said.
“You don’t have to go in with us if you’re scared, sweetheart,” Riddick answered in a tender voice he apparently reserved for his wife, daughter, and sister.
Seven blinked at him. “I’m not scared. I just meant it’s not a fair fight. The five of us can cut through these baby vampires without really trying.”
It was true. The vampires guarding the facility seemed to be newly turned. None of them would fare well against the oldest vampire in existence, three dhampyres, and a werewolf. But given their sheer numbers and weapons, the threat the vampires posed couldn’t be taken too lightly. To say nothing of the fact that Violet could get caught in the crossfire if things went south.
“Their weapons go a good ways toward evening the odds,” Nikolai murmured.
“Seven and I can take care of that,” Hunter said. “We’d just need a distraction. Something that gets all of them to draw their weapons at once.”
Riddick snorted. “Too bad we left Harper at home. No one can cause a distraction like her.”
“True,” Hunter said. “But it’s best that she’s not here. She’s a good fighter, but we already have one human to worry about tonight. It’s better for our concentration if we don’t have to worry about her safety.”
“You know she’s not likely to forget you having Mischa barricade her and Benny in the house, right?” Riddick asked.
“I’m aware,” Hunter said dryly. “I fully expect to find myself with a home covered in toilet paper and inexplicable subscriptions to every gay porn site she can find.”
“That’s if you’re lucky,” Seven mumbled.
“Can you tell how many vampires are inside with Violet?” Nikolai asked Hunter.
“I can sense six minds in the room. One human—Violet, I presume—and five vampires.”
“And you think you can disarm those five, plus the ones out here if you have a distraction of some kind?”
“With Seven’s help, yes.”
“And can you tell where Violet is in the room? Is she far away from the door?”
“She’s in the back of the building, a good distance from the door.”
Riddick narrowed his eyes on Nikolai. “Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t like it. You need to keep your head in the game, man. Keep it together.”
Riddick was right. Nikolai knew he was distracted—his worry over Violet’s safety scattering his thoughts all over the place. He wasn’t normally like this on a mission. He was usually calm and collected.
But then again, usually the woman he loved wasn’t directly in the line of fire.
Panic flickered through him at the thought of losing her, but he didn’t let the thought take hold. Not here. Not now. Instead, he shoved it to the back of his mind as he looked back toward the compound.
“I have an idea about how to create the distraction you need to disarm the guards,” Nikolai said. “But I have one question for you first, Hunter.”
The ancient vampire frowned at him. “What is it?”
“How attached are you to your car?”
Chapter Thirty
Gunshots rang out in the distance, but Violet could scarcely lift her head to see what was going on. Whatever drug Briggs had given her left her feeling foggy-headed and weak. But even her drug-soaked, addled brain realized what the sounds of destruction, panic, and chaos in the distance meant.
Nikolai was here.
He was alive and he’d come for her!
“I told you he’d come,” Violet said, trying to ignore the drunken-sounding slur of her words.
“Yeah, yeah,” Briggs muttered. “You told me so. Guess that makes you feel all intellectually superior, huh? Well, it just means we’re going to have to speed up our timetable. I need you to give me those names now, doc. Patients, former patients, random vamps you’ve passed on the street…I want them all.”
Her brain felt like it was being torn in half. Part of her demanded that she give him whatever he wanted. She’d like to think that was the drug doing whatever it was supposed to do to her.
The other part of her, the rational, logical part that knew Nikolai was just outside and was coming in after her? Well, that part wanted to tell Briggs to take his demands and shove them straight up his ass.
What the hell was she supposed to do? Violet forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. She wished Harper was here. Harper would know what to do. She was always tough, cool, and in control. What would Harper do right now?
Violet lifted her head and looked at Briggs through dry, gritty, bleary eyes. The bastard looked so smug sitting there, leaning forward in his chair, waiting for her to spill her guts, so sure she had no choice but to comply. It was in that moment, looking into his smug, irritatingly calm face that she knew exactly what Harper would do.
Violet head-butted the bastard.
He grunted as his head snapped back, then he leaned forward to spit a mouthful of blood at her feet. “Gotta say, I’m surprised, doc. Didn’t think you had that in you.”
Neither had she, really. But it felt surprisingly good. Other than the blinding headache that came with head-butting someone. Harper hadn’t warned her about that. Ouch.
“I’m not telling you anything,” she said through gritted teeth.
She couldn’t hold back a gasp when he snagged a fistful of her hair and forced her head back. The pure hatred in his eyes as he stared down at her sent a shiver of pure dread down her spine.
“You know, I promised Miles he could have you when I got what I needed from you. But there’s one thing Miles forgot about. The first lesson in how vampires think and act.”
She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know, but Violet, for some reason, still asked, “What’s that?”
“Vampires lie.”
“Get ready!” Nikolai yelled as he jumped behind the wheel.
“Don’t kill anyone!” Hunter yelled back. “Snap as many necks as you want, but no severed heads. Understood?”
Riddick and Lucas grumbled, but Nikolai and Seven nodded. He imagined Seven was being truthful in her agreement. Nikolai wasn’t entirely sure he was, though. If Violet was hurt—or worse—he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t kill every vampire in his path.
He sped down the uneven ground of the ravine toward the bunker, dodging trees and bushes as best he could, going airborne at times. Good thing Hunter had said he didn’t give a shit about the car, because it
would surely never be the same after this.
The vampires raised their weapons as the car broke through the last of the brush and skidded into the open ground around the bunker. One even managed to squeeze off a shot that splintered the windshield into a spider web of cracks. Nikolai kept going.
In the rearview mirror, he saw Seven raise her hands, and with that one motion, the vampires’ guns were yanked from their grasps and held aloft, high above the tallest tree branches in the woods around them. Next to her, Hunter did the same, and the guns exploded in midair, raining gunpowder and metal shavings down onto the heads of the vampires.
He’d take a moment when this was all over and Violet was safe to appreciate how utterly—what would Harper say?—badass telekinesis was. But at the moment, he still had work to do.
Now that he was certain he wasn’t going to get shot, Nikolai yanked the emergency brake and skidded into a spin, letting the car slam into the bunker’s metal door. He kicked what was left of the windshield out and leapt onto the hood of the car, ready to face the now-unarmed vampires who rushed him all at once.
What came next could only be called an explosion of violence.
Lucas burst through the clearing in full wolf form, snagging the first vampire he encountered in his massive jaws. The wolf shook his head with enough force to snap the vampire’s neck. When the vampire went limp in his grasp, the wolf dropped him and moved on to his next target.
Seven caught a vampire who started to go after the wolf in the back of the head with her elbow, and when he pitched forward, she spun around with inhuman speed, got in front of him, and drove her knee up into his face. The vampire spit a mouthful of teeth onto the ground before passing out as Seven glanced back to check on her husband, who huffed out a noise that Nikolai took to be a wolf’s version of “thank you.”
Nikolai jumped up and off the car to avoid the snapping jaws of two vampires who lunged at him. On his way down, he drove his elbow into the back of one vampire’s head, and caught the other on the chin with a kick that sent him reeling backward, unconscious.
Next to him, Riddick seemed to be tearing through a throng of advancing vampires and, God help him, he looked like he was having fun. Elbows and blood and teeth were flying everywhere and the crazy bastard looked to be…smiling.
Hunter didn’t even have to wade into the violence to do his part. He strolled casually toward the bunker, flinging vampires out of his path and into the woods with nothing more than casual flicks of his wrists.
“Go get her! We got this!” Riddick yelled over the melee as he tossed the body of a limp vampire at another who was rushing him.
Nikolai gave Riddick a terse nod of thanks, and with one swift kick, the bunker’s already battered metal door snapped off its hinges. He avoided seeking Violet out. Instead, he focused on the vampires—one, two, three, four—who rushed him.
Blood sprayed the walls, bones cracked, and the odor of fear and sweat permeated the room, but the vampires didn’t stand a chance. Nikolai took out every vamp that came at him with ruthless efficiency.
That’s when he saw Violet. Bloodied, head down, tied to an old office chair. Blood pooled at her feet.
He nearly doubled over, fighting the urge to vomit. Oh, Jesus…was she dead?
He wouldn’t survive losing her.
No one here would survive if he lost her.
She shivered and the sense of relief that took hold in him nearly buckled his knees. She was alive! Moving faster than he’d ever moved in his life, he raced across the room toward Violet. His only purpose, the only thing he had to do in this life, was getting her to safety.
Then it occurred to him that there’d been five hostiles in the building with Violet. He’d only taken out four.
A tall, blond vampire stepped out from behind a concrete pillar and squatted behind Violet, using her body as a shield. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he pressed a six-inch hunting knife with a serrated blade against the delicate skin of her throat.
Don’t kill them, Hunter had said.
All bets were off with this one. This one was dying. Soon.
“Stop right there,” the man said.
Nikolai stopped, his boots skidding across the blood-soaked concrete. The monster that lived inside him, the one he was barely keeping hold of at the moment, howled in frustration.
He stared at the vampire, doing some quick calculations in his head. Nikolai knew he was faster than the vampire, but was he fast enough to take him down before he could cut Violet? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t take the chance.
“What do you want?” Nikolai asked.
Violet’s head lifted and her eyes fluttered open at the sound of his voice, but Nikolai refused to acknowledge it. She was alive. He was going to get her out of this. That was all that mattered.
The vampire smiled. “Well, now, you seem much more agreeable than the good doc, here.”
Nikolai spread his arms wide. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Just let her go.”
He shook his head. “But see, that’s just the thing. I don’t need anything from you. I need answers from her. I need to know where she keeps her patient records, and let’s just say she’s been less than cooperative. So, I’m afraid I’ll be taking her with me. And you’re going to need to let me go.”
Over my dead body.
“You don’t need her for that,” Nikolai said as calmly as he could manage. “I had her under surveillance for months. I can give you the names and locations of every one of her patients.”
“No.” The word came out as a whisper, but Violet’s eyes blazed and screamed at him.
He met her eyes and held them, forcing everything he felt for her into that one gaze. “I need you to trust me, kotehok. Can you do that?”
She blinked at him slowly as he tried to pretend her answer didn’t mean everything to him.
Nikolai knew his request wasn’t easy for her. He’d betrayed her trust before, and her patients meant so much to her. She’d never let anyone hurt them. Hell, she’d endured torture just to protect them. And now he was asking her to trust him after he’d just offered her patients to a madman on a silver platter.
But after a tense moment where Nikolai was pretty sure his heart had taken up permanent residence in his throat, she nodded. And if he wasn’t mistaken, he thought he saw one corner of her mouth quirk up a tiny bit.
That tiny little smile told him everything he needed to know. Not only did she trust him, but she had every confidence in him, knowing he’d get them both out of this. Her trust was the greatest gift he ever could have received.
The moment was ruined when the vampire chuckled. “Aw, this is so sweet. It’s like watching a Lifetime channel movie play out in real time. But seriously, pal, I’ll need you to call off your scary-looking friend back there.” He pressed the knife blade into Violet’s skin just enough to elicit a tiny gasp and a pin-prick of blood from her. “I mean, sure, I need her, but that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt her.”
Nikolai didn’t need to turn around to know who was behind him. “Riddick, get out. I’ve got this.”
Riddick took a step forward so that Nikolai could see him out of the corner of his eye. “No way, man. This guy’s gonna—”
“Go!” Nikolai shouted.
“I’m not leaving without Violet,” Riddick said.
Nikolai raised a brow at the vamp. “She can go, right? You don’t need her since you have me, yes?”
The vampire rubbed at the scruff on his chin with his free hand and grinned. “Sure thing, pal. She was kind of a pill, anyway.”
Then he shoved Violet in her wheeled office chair to Riddick, who grabbed her, chair and all, and picked her up like she was no heavier than a child. Nikolai let out his first easy breath since Violet was taken when Riddick ran for the door.
The vampire took advantage of Nikolai’s distraction by grabbing him around the throat with one arm and pressing the blade to his carotid artery. Nikolai swallowed his rage, forcing himself to fe
el nothing. Violet was safe with Riddick. That was all that mattered.
“Didn’t imagine there was any way you’d really go quietly,” the vampire hissed in his ear.
Unfortunately, Violet chose that moment to look back at him over Riddick’s shoulder. When she saw the knife pressed to his throat, she let out a shriek that Nikolai knew he’d never in his life forget.
Don’t watch, kotehok. Turn away.
Violet pleaded with Riddick to put her down, to help Nikolai, begged him to stop, but Riddick—thank God—didn’t listen to her pleas. It wasn’t long before they were safely out of the building.
Time to let the monster slip its leash.
With one elbow strike, Nikolai created enough room between his body and the vampire’s to draw his own knife. The vampire roared in frustration and swung. Metal clashed.
The vampire didn’t have a prayer of winning this fight. Nikolai was faster, stronger, better trained, and most importantly, he had pure, unadulterated rage on his side. For every slice the vampire inflicted, Nikolai scored two.
And each one felt better than the last.
He didn’t let up, either. Didn’t give his opponent time to relax or rest. Nikolai continued to push forward, forcing the vampire to stay on the defensive.
The vamp swung his knife desperately in an arch at Nikolai’s face, but the blow was weak, sloppy. Nikolai easily dodged the blade, then kicked the vampire’s hand. The knife went flying.
Nikolai dropped, spun, and neatly swept the vampire’s legs out from under him. He went down on his back hard, arms flailing. In a matter of seconds, Nikolai had him pinned on the bloody concrete floor, with his hands around the vampire’s throat as he slowly started squeezing.
“Any last words?” Nikolai snarled.
“Fuck…you,” the vampire choked out.
“Pathetic waste of last words, mudak.”
Nikolai tightened his grip until he felt the vampire’s esophagus crumble beneath his fingertips. The monster demanded he grab a fistful of the guy’s hair and slam his head down into the concrete, which Nikolai did with barely restrained glee.
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 96