“I like the way you think.”
She itched to do the same thing herself. She was half-tempted to start killing the humans in order to get them to scatter. Humans had never bothered her before. She’d always liked them and their world, but their presence here grated against her skin. She had to fight the urge to scream at them that they were a bunch of idiots for being here. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath to steady her mounting impatience.
“They are my men,” Ronan said, drawing her attention back to him. “I will do whatever it takes to get them back.”
“Brian’s not one of your men.”
Those strangely colored eyes slid to her. “He may not have gone through the training, or be a pureblood, but he is one of us. He will not be left behind.”
Abby almost sobbed with relief. She bit her lower lip to keep it from quivering as his eyes burned into hers. He didn’t come across as the hugging type, but Abby almost threw her arms around him. Saxon and Lucien saved her from the impulse when they reappeared.
“I think we’ve got something,” Lucien said and jerked his head toward a back hallway.
Ronan’s hand on her shoulder kept her restrained. “It will do him no good if we find him, only to lose you. Remain calm or I will have Lucien drag you out of here.”
Lucien gave her a smirk that made her realize he would enjoy doing just that. Abby glowered at him. “Stay here and keep watch behind us,” Ronan said to David as they stepped into the hall.
David’s eyes shot between her, Vicky, and Aiden but he took up a protective stance at the beginning of the hall. Ronan turned to Vicky next. “You’re to stay with him.”
“But—” she started to protest.
“There are no buts,” Ronan interrupted firmly. “Stay with him.”
Abby recognized the fighting expression on Vicky’s face as she thrust out her chin. Aiden grabbed hold of her arm and turned her around before she could gear up for an argument. “Stay here,” Aiden commanded her.
“I can help!” Vicky protested.
“Being here is as important as being with us. We’ll need a warning if someone tries to come at us from behind.”
Vicky sulked as she folded her arms over her chest. She relented when David grabbed hold of her shoulder and pulled her closer against his side. “This sucks,” Abby heard Vicky mutter before Lucien all but shoved her into a room full of cleaning supplies and various extras from the bar.
She glared at Lucien when he brushed by her to press against something on the wall. Abby stepped back as the wall swung inward to reveal a long, dimly lit hallway.
“That looks about as welcoming as the closet in Poltergeist,” Aiden said.
Abby shuddered at the comparison and wondered if something would slither out to grab hold of them. “I don’t like this,” Saxon said.
Ronan’s gaze ran over the walls of the hall before them. “Neither do I.”
As they stood there, the door started to swing closed again. Ronan thrust his hand out, his muscles bulging as he strained against the door. Abby realized it was made of a foot-thick steel. The metal beneath his hand bent in. With a low creak, the door stopped moving and ground to a halt. A bolt fell from somewhere and clattered against the floor before rolling away into the shadows.
Abby almost laughed out loud at the realization he’d literally busted the springs out of the door but managed to keep it suppressed.
She barely kept her jaw from gaping when he released the door to reveal his handprint dented into the steel. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. The vast amount of power that had taken rattled her. Thankfully he was on her side. She hadn’t felt overly confident they’d all get out of here alive; now she knew this man really could tear this place down with his bare hands, probably in a matter of minutes.
They remained in the doorway, peering down the hall. Ronan stepped inside first. He didn’t bother to pull weapons free like the rest of them did, but she realized now he was his biggest weapon. Abby had believed they would creep down the hall. No, Ronan and his men stalked down it as if they owned it.
She glanced at Aiden who nudged her arm before stepping inside. Was he really going to become one of these men? Was he really going to do this for the rest of his existence? It seemed so at odds and out of place with the easygoing brother she’d always known. Right now though, his leaf-colored eyes were as steely as the door Ronan had just dented.
“Come on, Abs,” he said.
She walked by his side down the hall. Focusing inwardly, she sought Brian through the connection binding them. The call of him drew her onward, but his mind remained blocked to hers.
The scent of drying blood wafted to her before they stepped into the small room littered with dead bodies, cards and poker chips. None of them are Brian. She knew that, but her gaze still darted around as she sought to reassure herself none of the dead bodies were his.
“They came through here,” Lucien said as he kicked aside a head with the spine still attached.
A queasy feeling assaulted her and sweat broke out across her upper lip when the head thudded across the floor before settling against the wall. Saxon bent to examine another vamp with arrows protruding from his chest. “Definitely Declan’s bolts.”
“What is that smell?” Aiden asked as he sniffed the air from the doorway.
“I don’t know,” Ronan replied.
The door began to close behind him when Aiden stepped the rest of the way into the room.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Ah, they’re here,” Drake purred from beside him.
The effects of the last round of gas made it so Brian could barely get his eyes open to look at the monitor one of Drake’s men had wheeled in while he’d still been struggling to wake up. There were at least twenty separate pictures on the large screen, each showing a different space or viewpoint. Most of them were focused on empty halls and rooms.
On one of the screens, he spotted Declan restlessly pacing behind the wall of a glass cell. Killean sat on a bed in a separate cell with one of his knees drawn up and his arm draped over it. Whereas Declan looked about ready to start beating on the glass and shouting, Killean appeared bored.
Drake’s head tilted to the side as he studied the monitor. “Only one twin though.”
Brian closed his eyes when his vision blurred. He forced them open again before Abby stepped into view on the monitor. His heart lurched into his throat as the camera angle showed her walking down the same hall he’d first traversed. Ronan strode down the hall before her with Lucien and Saxon flanking her sides and Aiden at her back. From the angle of the camera, he could tell it was located within the room he’d been captured in earlier. They were only a few feet away from that room.
He strained forward against his restraints to discover his freed hand had been re-bolted to the table. More metal crossed over his chest and arms than before he’d passed out.
Drake cast him a negligent glance. “Had them reinforced while you were sleeping.”
Sweat slid down his face when he fell back against the table. Tremors rattled his body as it worked to shed itself of the rest of the effects of the gas. “Ronan’s confidence will get him killed,” Drake said as he tapped the remote against his good cheek. “I won’t be keeping him alive. He would fetch a fortune on the market, but he’s too risky. With as old as he is, we don’t know what he could be capable of, you know?”
Brian’s heart raced when they stepped into the room where he’d been taken. Abigail, go back! She showed no reaction to the message he tried to send directly into her mind on the monitor. The gas had somehow managed to dim whatever it was in his mind that opened into hers.
Fisting his hands, he pulled against the metal binding him. His muscles bulged and his veins swelled, but there was no screeching of metal against his burst of strength. “No!” he bellowed.
Not Abby, he would not allow Abby to be chained to a wall and feasted upon by greedy, ravenous vampires. Her radiant soul shone through the black an
d white of the TV. The idea of it being dimmed in any way caused savagery to surge within him. No one would ever touch his mate in such a way.
Drake glanced back at him, his one eyebrow lifting as his mouth quirked in amusement. “My, the mate bond does make one persistent, doesn’t it,” he murmured. A keen light came into his eyes as his gaze raked over Brian. “I was going to kill you right away, but I think I’d like to see how and what this bond does to a vampire. It shall be fun!” he declared and threw his hands into the air.
“I am going to shove your intestines down your throat before I kill you,” Brian vowed.
“How dramatic.” Snap, snap went Drake’s fingers above his head with a dramatic flair.
Brian bared his fangs at the man, but Drake turned his back on him again. Brian’s gaze was drawn back to the monitor as the door started to close and gas released into the room. “Abby!” he shouted.
Ronan moved so fast Brian didn’t see him until the door was torn from its hinges and crashed into the wall across the way. Lucien pushed the others back out of the room as the gas continued to fill it. Ronan remained behind, his eyes now entirely red as he surveyed the room. Then his head tilted back, and his gaze latched onto the camera.
His glistening fangs were revealed by the smile curving his mouth. Walking across the room, he climbed the bodies to grab the camera. His red eyes filled the lens before he tore it from the wall and the screen became nothing but static.
“Interesting,” Drake murmured as he tapped the remote against his cheek again.
* * *
Gas slid down the hallway past them, floating in waves that made the hall smoky. Abby held her breath and tugged her black sweater over her nose. At least now she knew what the smell in the room had been as the acrid smoke made her eyes water.
“It should be safe. It’s dispersing in the open space,” Lucien said to her.
She still hesitated before pulling her sweater away from her mouth. “I’ve found a door,” Ronan said from inside the room.
Abby stepped back into the room and surveyed the bodies. “This is where they were taken from?”
“Most likely,” Ronan replied from where he stood with his hand wrapped around the edge of a door on the other side of the room.
Beyond the door was a set of stairs. Lucien moved to go down them first, but Ronan held him back. “Keep an eye out for cameras.”
Lucien nodded before descending the stairs. Ronan gestured for Saxon to follow, then her and Aiden. Abby’s noise wrinkled when the scent of mildew and the decaying aroma of death and garbage hit her like a punch in the face when she began to climb down. Lucien and Saxon exchanged a look as they stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Above her, she heard the grating sound of another door being broken.
Looking back, she saw dim rays of light around the door’s edge from where it had been propped at an angle. Aiden pressed closer against her back when Ronan climbed down to join them and moved forward to stand at the front of the group. Out of instinct, she took hold of her brother’s hand and grasped it within hers. He glanced at her before squeezing her hand and releasing it.
“There,” Lucien said and pointed at something in the hall.
Before she could blink, Ronan vanished. She heard a wrenching sound and then he reappeared and dropped a camera at the foot of the stairs. He stomped it beneath his boot and gestured down the hall.
He tore more cameras from the walls as they moved beneath the earth. The stench of death and garbage grew with every step she took through the old sewage or water system winding beneath the surface of the town above them. She forced herself not to inhale as she followed the pull of Brian within the convoluted tunnels, leading them unflinchingly onward when they came across a branch within the concrete walls surrounding them.
She’d expected the concrete to be cool to the touch, but the circular tunnels kept the heat pressed against her. Sweat trickled down her brow and back as she walked. Little illumination pierced the confines, and most of it came from the holes the tree roots had created when they’d broken through from the surface above.
Arriving at another door, her heart beat faster as her hands rested against its smooth surface. Brian was close, so close she could almost feel him beneath her fingers again, almost smell his woodsy, evergreen scent. Her hands frantically searched for a way to open it as frustration swelled within her.
A hand rested on her shoulder. Feeling out of control with her desperation to get to him, she snapped her fangs at it. “Easy,” Ronan cautioned and nudged her away from the door. “I’ll find the entrance.”
Abby couldn’t stop shaking as she waited impatiently for him to search the door. A click sounded before it began to swing open. “What did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Be prepared.”
Aiden grabbed hold of her shoulders and pulled her back when something rushed at them from the shadows.
* * *
Brian jerked and thrashed against his bonds; Drake laughed as he watched the horde of twenty or so vampires descend on Abby and the others. It was the first chance he’d gotten to see her again since she’d left the gas room. He’d caught only a glimpse of her before she was swallowed beneath the rush of vampires.
“Abby!” he bellowed as fresh terror and strength streamed through him.
Drake glanced back at him when metal squeaked and bent, before turning away as if nothing more would happen. A fresh wave of dizziness assailed him, causing him to pant for air as he fell back against the table. He had no idea what they’d given him, but he couldn’t shake its lasting effects.
In their cells, Declan stopped pacing, and Killean tilted his head to listen. Declan approached the thick glass wall of his cell and rested his hands on it.
On the video of Abby and the others, three of the vampires from the initial rush flew back into the hallway, all three of them missing their hearts. A handful more followed behind them.
From beneath the crush, he caught a glimpse of Abby’s blonde hair as she wrestled against the vampires grasping and tearing at her. A punch connected with her cheek and she staggered backward. One of Brian’s metal bindings popped open when he lunged forward. They’d hurt her; they were hurting her. He wouldn’t allow it.
Straining to break free, another restraint popped open. Drake waved a hand absently at him as if trying to shush him while his gaze remained locked on the screen. “You know,” he murmured, “I didn’t find the other twin overly appealing, but there’s something about yours… She’s such a little fighter. The things I’ll do…” Drake’s voice trailed off as he licked his lips.
“Fuck you!” Brian thundered.
“You mean I will fuck her.”
One of the bonds on his thigh gave way beneath the swell of blood and power rushing through him. Not his sweet Abigail, not the woman he loved more than he’d ever dreamed possible.
The realization hit him harder than a punch in the nose. He’d never thought he could be capable of loving someone again. He’d believed the ability to love had been destroyed with his family, but she’d made him capable of it again with her determination, strength, and the life she radiated. Somehow, through all the depravity and death within him, she made him so much more. She made him better. She accepted him for what he was, and she wanted him despite everything he’d done in his long, bloody existence.
Though there had been none so far, he expected guilt to swell forth with the realization of his love for her, but it remained buried. The guilt and hatred that had driven him every day of his vampire years had been drowned out by Abby’s tender touches, her soft kisses, and her passionate spirit.
Looking back, he questioned if he’d still been in love with Vivian all these years or consumed by his guilt and self-hatred over his failure to keep his family safe. Sometime over the decades, he’d begun to move on from his love for her without realizing it. He’d been a fool for not seeing his love for Abby sooner, for not acknowledging everything she’d come to mean to h
im, and now they could die without her ever knowing it.
“So much spirit,” Drake murmured when Abby plunged her stake into the chest of a vampire and grabbed another by his hair. Jerking his head back, she sank her fangs into his neck and tore his throat out.
His sweet, determined, seductress was as savage as she was loving. She’d believed she was as capable as he was of violence, and she was. And she’s capable of it for me.
Abby kicked her victim away as the crush of vamps pushed them from the hallway and into the room from where the vampires had originally sprung. Abby was buried beneath the horde again. The loss of her sent a fresh burst of adrenaline rushing through him.
“Guards!” Drake didn’t bother to look away from the monitor as another clamp broke away from Brian’s thigh. “I would drug you again, but I want you to watch everything I do to her.” Maliciousness gleamed in his eyes when he glanced at Brian. “I think it will be fun.”
Two guards stormed into the room as Brian heaved against the bonds again. “Hold him,” Drake commanded.
He bared his fangs at the men who seized hold of his shoulders and slammed him against the table. His muscles swelled as he thrashed against the table.
“That’s it, love,” Drake murmured.
Brian’s eyes shot to the monitor as Abby broke free of the pack and staggered into the massive room that opened up behind her. Five vampires circled her as she edged around the sofa in the sitting room someone had established in the middle of the tunnel system. She grabbed hold of a small lamp and threw it at one vampire, who ducked to avoid the blow. Using his distraction, she leapt onto the couch and over the back of it.
The vampire nearly collapsed beneath her when she landed on his back, but he managed to keep himself upright. Before he could react, Abby used her fangs to tear a gash across his neck. Blood sprayed the room and her as she jumped away from him. One of the other vamps grabbed her wrist. She spun and smashed her fist into his chest, tearing his heart from him and stomping on it.
The Vampire Awakenings Bundle: Books 1-5 Page 142