“What if Vicky is already in there?” Brian demanded. “What if she had contacted him before you, and Garth was only setting you up to try and draw you into whatever she’s mixed up in? Did you think of that?”
She had thought of that, but there was only one answer for it. “It doesn’t matter. She’s my sister, if there’s the smallest chance she’s in there, I’m going.”
“So am I,” Ian said.
“No, the three of you have children and mates, or you’re soon to have children. If something goes wrong, I’m sure David and I will figure out some way of letting you know.” Her attention turned to Brian when he stepped closer to her. “Please don’t make me break my promise to you. This is Vicky. I can’t… You don’t know how much she means to me. It would be devastating to me if something were to happen to her.”
There went his plans for throttling her sister, but he still didn’t like the idea of her going into that building with only one other vamp. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends of it as he wrestled to keep himself under control.
“Abby, you’re not keeping us from going inside,” Ethan said.
Abby turned to face him. “If you die, so will Emma. Maybe she’ll be able to last until your child is born, but she would follow shortly after.” Ethan flinched at her words as his eyes flickered red. “Besides, I’m sure it will be a lot easier for me and David to get in there without an entourage of large male vamps following us.”
Ethan, Ian, and Stefan looked completely torn, but she’d struck on the one thing none of them could ever sacrifice, the life of their mate.
“And what about me?” Brian inquired. “If something happens to you in there, what happens to me?”
Abby winced, her heart twisting as tears burned her eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to me.”
“Abigail—”
“I won’t,” she insisted. “If I think there’s any threat to my safety, you will come first. I’ll leave immediately, but David can’t get in there without me, and if we all go storming in there, it could get someone killed; it could get Vicky killed. This is the safest way, and if I wasn’t your mate, you would happily use me as an option.”
“But you are my mate.”
“And I am still the best option.”
Brian’s breath exploded out of him as he swung away from her and paced toward the corner of the building. She hated the stress she could feel radiating from him, but she couldn’t back down. Spinning away from the building, he stalked back toward her. She braced herself for him to toss her over his shoulder and carry her away from here. Her brothers wouldn’t protest the action; they’d probably happily follow along, smiling at her the whole time.
Abby shifted her stance as she prepared to punch him and run for the warehouse. He stopped before her, stress radiating from the lines etched around his eyes, but an amused quirk lifted his mouth as he took in her fighting stance. “Can you wait an hour?” he asked.
She folded her arms over her chest as she tried to figure out what his ploy was. “I’m not going to change my mind.”
“I don’t expect you to. I’m just going to get you more help.”
“Who?”
“Aiden.”
“They wouldn’t let me talk to him before.”
“They’ll let me.”
“Where he is?”
“They have a training facility outside of the city. He can be here in no time. Either that, or I will take your brother’s side in this, and I will remove you from here. If you’re willing to break your promise, so am I. I compromised, it’s your turn.”
Abby felt the body heat from her brothers and Stefan as they closed in around her. She barely managed to keep herself from rolling her eyes, men.
It was only a little longer before Aiden could be here, and she had to admit she’d feel a lot better having someone else to go into that building with her and David. If Brian could compromise, she could too.
“Call him,” she said.
* * *
Aiden arrived less than an hour after Brian called him. They’d waited until he joined them before filling him in on the rest of the details of what was going on.
“Will you get in trouble for being here?” Abby asked anxiously as she embraced her brother.
Aiden’s strong arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her close. “Family comes first, always.”
“What did you tell them in order to get out?” Ethan asked.
“I was meeting my brothers for some drinks, so you have to buy me a few rounds when this is over. I can’t be a liar.”
“Deal,” Ian said.
“They let you out for that?” Abby asked.
“The complete lockdown portion of my training is over.” Aiden’s gaze turned to the run-down building across the street. “There is no way Vicky is in there.”
“We’ve already established it’s a possibility,” Abby said as she stepped from her brother’s embrace.
She couldn’t believe how much he’d changed in the past six months. He’d always been muscular, but now he was solid muscle and broader through the chest and shoulders. His black hair had been shaved into a buzz cut; his leaf green eyes were assessing as he studied the building. He looked like he’d joined the Marines, but then she supposed Ronan’s men were the vampire equivalent of the military.
“There’s no way they’re going to believe you’re an addict,” she said to him. “You look far too healthy.”
“Hate to break it to you, Abs, but you’re not looking like shit tonight either.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she muttered.
Wrapping his arm around her neck, he pulled her close to give her a noogie. “Won’t happen again,” he assured her.
“Cut it out,” she said and shoved against him. Though she had to admit there was something comforting in the familiar torment of her older brother.
He chuckled as he released her. Abby gave him a death stare while she straightened her matted hair. Brian had taken a step closer to them when Aiden grabbed her. She reached out to take hold of his hand before thinking better of it and letting her hand fall back to her side. She’d been more intimate with him than anyone else in her life, but their relationship wasn’t an openly affectionate one.
They were mates, she didn’t deny it, but public displays of affection weren’t exactly their way. The members of her family, who were mated, were always touching and kissing each other, but they were also in love, and she didn’t kid herself into believing Brian felt that way about her. She didn’t know how she felt about him either, so at least they were even on that front.
“Weapons?” Brian asked.
Aiden pulled back his ankle-length, black coat to reveal the stakes tucked discreetly inside and the small crossbow strapped against the side of his chest. Brian nodded before turning to her and handing her a couple of stakes. After they’d been attacked in the hotel room, Stefan had taken it upon himself to teach all the members of the family self-defense and how to kill another vamp; she’d always hated handling the weapons.
David tapped the two stakes tucked into his waistband before pulling his jacket over them. “We should get going.”
Brian grabbed hold of her wrist, tugging her back when she set the hood of her coat over her head. He grabbed the edges of the hood; his eyes burned into hers as he fought to keep himself from changing his mind.
“If anything goes wrong in there, you run. No matter what,” he told her.
“I will,” she promised.
He pulled her back when she went to step away again. The torn expression on his face caused her to wrap her hands around his. He’d already experienced so much loss in his life; she didn’t know if he could take another blow if something were to happen to her. She hated that she was putting him through this, but she had to find her sister.
“This is a promise I will keep. I will run out of there, for you, if anything goes wrong,” she assured him.
“I’
ll throw her over my shoulder and drag her ass out of there if it becomes necessary,” Aiden vowed. “We’re already down one sister, I won’t let it be two.”
Abby smiled tremulously at Brian as she squeezed his hands. “See, and Aiden is a pureblood with some kind of vamp military training. David is in his fifties, and I’m a pureblood, so we have a lot of power behind us.”
She tried to move away, but Brian kept his hands firmly on her hood, holding her in place. His reddened eyes searched her face. “Brian—”
Before she could finish, he jerked her close and took hold of her lips in a possessive kiss that had her melting as the world lurched beneath her feet. Unable to resist, her mouth opened to the tender probing of his tongue as he tasted her in deep, penetrating waves. So much for her opinion on his views about PDA. Dazed, she swayed toward him when he broke off the kiss.
Brian rested his forehead against hers. “Any longer than fifteen minutes, and I’m coming in after you.”
“Got it,” she said, still trying to regain control of her quaking body.
He reluctantly released her hood. Abby fought the urge to touch her lips as she took a hesitant step away. Turning, she noticed her brothers had become extremely focused on the façade of the building.
“Let’s go,” she murmured.
David and Aiden stepped out from the building with her and hurried across the potholed street to the building across the way. Shadows danced across the asphalt as the street lights illuminated the quiet city street. She fought against looking back at Brian, but lost the battle. His eyes were a fiery red in the night as he watched her. Stefan’s hand rested on his shoulder, holding him back from following after her. She could feel the battle he waged with himself to let her go, a battle that had her debating running back to him and throwing her arms around him. He’d probably never let her go if she did. She forced herself to turn away before she did exactly that.
Please let Vicky be in here. She needed this to end, for her sanity as well as Brian’s.
Stepping up to the front door, she kept her face impassive as a large vampire with skin the color of chocolate and eyes to match stepped from the shadows. Beside her, Aiden stiffened as the putrid scent of a landfill washed off the man. She’d never smelled a vampire so rotten before.
Abby fought the urge to wrinkle her nose and press her finger under it to block the sickening stench. She suspected most who entered this building couldn’t smell the man, and those who did, showed no reaction to it. David, unable to smell it, still eyed the man like he was a bug he was contemplating squishing.
“What do you want?” the vamp demanded.
“We’re here for the party.” Abby decided to go with something close to what she’d said to Garth. The guard’s eyes narrowed on her. Before he could say something more, Abby blurted, “Bubblegum.”
He glanced at Aiden and David. “They’re my friends. You can trust them,” she hurriedly assured him.
“Can I now?” the man murmured, but he stepped aside to let them pass.
Abby elbowed Aiden in the ribs when he stared the man down as they entered the old warehouse. Her brother didn’t flinch, but he tore his eyes away from the guard. Instead of stepping into a large center room like she’d expected, they entered into a dimly lit hallway. Goose bumps broke out on her arms. The full-on creeps took her over when she accidentally brushed against the walls while they moved down the hall. She kept her arms forward and her shoulders hunched to avoid touching the germy, critter-covered walls again.
“If Vicky’s in here, I might kill her myself,” Aiden muttered. “Ronan has to know about this place.”
“He destroys the vampires mixed up in this,” Abby protested. “If we don’t find her here, he could find her before us.”
“There’s a reason they’re killed, Abby. You smelled that guy at the door. That wasn’t a one or two humans killed scent like Ethan and Brian had. That was a full-on ‘I’ve killed more people than cancer’ stench.”
Abby huddled deeper into her coat. “What about Vicky?”
“Have you considered there may be no saving her?”
“Aiden,” David said in a warning tone from behind her when she gasped and shook her head fiercely back and forth.
Aiden held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “I’m only saying it’s a possibility she may not want to be saved. After encountering that guy back there, it may be a very good one if she’s mixed up in the same stuff as him. I love her too, and I’d do anything to save her, but I’ve seen a lot more since joining Ronan’s group. Some of us can’t be saved, no matter how badly we’d like to try to help them. Sometimes it’s kindest to let them go, for all involved.”
Abby struggled against the tears burning her throat and the constriction in her chest. “No,” she said. “I’ve never considered it, and I won’t.”
She forced her attention away from her brother as more light filtered into the hall. The walls fell away from her as she followed Aiden into a room the likes of which she’d never thought to see in her life. Aiden’s muscles tensed and a tremor ran through him. His eyes blazed a fiery red color as he gazed at the debauchery before them.
“Aiden.” She rested her hand on his arm, uncertain if she was trying to hold him back from killing everyone in this room or from joining in with them. Would she lose two siblings to this place? The possibility sent a cold chill of terror down her spine. She’d never once considered that something could happen to Aiden in here too. He’d always been so strong and confident that it had seemed impossible. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Aiden shook his head, but his fangs remained elongated, and his eyes continued to glisten like rubies. David stared at him over the top of her head; his face tensed as her brother took a step back.
Ian had told her the purebred males of their species experienced maturation differently than the females. Often a hunger for different things would arise in them that they grappled to control until they found their mates. He’d said some of the women purebloods experienced it on a smaller level, but for the males, it became a nearly all-consuming impulse that drove them every day.
She tried to recall his exact words. Ronan told us some of us crave pain, others copious amounts of blood, some cannot have enough sex, some lock themselves away from humans to resist the temptation, and others give in and kill in order to make it stop. Some experience all of those things.
She hadn’t asked Ian what it had been like for him. She’d seen the vast amount of women who had come and gone from his life before Paige, and he’d tried to keep that part of his life hidden from her. Ethan had withdrawn with Issy; however, there had always been a darker side to him, but what of Aiden?
Aiden had always been easygoing, quick to smile and laugh. He’d never had a parade of women like Ian, never been distant or as overprotective as Ethan. He’d screamed and cried when he’d broken his arm, years ago, finding no enjoyment in the pain. She had no idea what had taken hold of Aiden after hitting maturity, but it didn’t matter; all aspects of those things were somehow incorporated into this room.
In the corners, and in the middle of the floor, couples and groups were having sex. To her right was a human male tied to a post while a woman sliced open his skin and drank the blood trickling from the lacerations. Others were screaming in agony from another hallway on the opposite side of the room. Everywhere she looked, vampires were feeding. The room stank of blood and the potent smell of refuse as the killing vampires drank greedily from their drugged prey.
Lights flashed above them, illuminating the room in strobes like a haunted house. The slurping sounds and cries of pleasure and torment made her long to slap her hands over her ears and block it all out. She’d known her species could be sadistic and brutal. She’d almost been killed when she was fifteen by vampires looking to feed, but this was worse than anything she could have ever imagined.
Why did the humans come here? There was a pile of their remains in the corner. Were they that desperate for drugs, or ha
d they also been promised a chance at immortality to lure them in? She had a feeling it was a combination of both.
Not Vicky. Not here.
Aiden shuddered beside her and his eyes closed as his hands fisted.
“We should go.” The words croaked from her throat. Her entire body screamed against leaving here without searching for her sister. This was the closest they’d ever been. However, Aiden looked to be unraveling before her eyes, and she’d be damned if she lost another sibling to this atrocious lifestyle.
“Yes,” David said. He grabbed hold of Aiden’s shoulder, but Aiden waved him off. “Aiden, we have to go.”
“We’ll search for Vicky first,” he said in a voice so hoarse it sounded as if he’d been chewing on glass.
“Aiden—” she started.
“I’m fine, Abs. I can control it. It’s what I’ve been working on.”
But is he ready? There was only one way they were going to get the answer to that question as he stepped away from her and further into the macabre room.
She cast David a frightened look. “He’ll be fine,” David said, but he didn’t sound convinced of it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Brian paced anxiously back and forth beside the building, tugging at his hair with one hand as he glanced at his watch for the hundredth time since they’d gone inside. Only two minutes had passed, but it felt like an eternity.
“I should have gone with her,” he muttered as he pulled at his hair again. “We could have slaughtered every vamp in there.”
“There could be a hundred in there,” Stefan replied.
“You’re not helping!” Brian pulled back his arm and punched the warehouse beside them, shattering the brick. He barely acknowledged his broken and bloody knuckles. They would heal. He would not if something were to happen to her. He spun back toward where Abby had disappeared and took a step after her.
“Talk to her through the bond. It will help keep you calm and assured of her safety,” Stefan said.
The Vampire Awakenings Bundle: Books 1-5 Page 132