On his right, Yuri swore.
On Bastien’s left, Stanislav swallowed audibly. “Are any of those ...” He shook his head. “Are any of those immortals?”
“I don’t know.” Bastien pulled out his phone. As he dialed, he eased forward, eyes alert, and tried to identify faces. “I don’t smell any of them, but with so much blood ...”
“I have never seen the like,” Yuri muttered, voice tight.
“Stay sharp,” Bastien warned as Chris answered.
“Are you there?” Reordon asked.
“Yes.”
“What do you see?”
“Death.”
“No one’s left standing?” Chris asked tightly.
“No. What happened?”
“Roland, Marcus, Lisette, and Étienne are down, hit with a drug delivered via darts from an animal tranquilizer pistol.”
Bastien frowned. “Drugs don’t work on us.”
“Well, they fucking do now!” Chris snapped. And Bastien heard the unspoken accusation: they worked now that Bastien had put Montrose Keegan on it. “They’re all out cold, barely breathing. We haven’t been able to revive them even after blood transfusions.”
“What about the others?”
“Sarah is okay. Wounded, but not drugged.”
Bastien was surprised by the intensity of the relief that struck him with those words.
“Richart is missing. He teleported from the clearing just before Sarah left. She had to carry both Roland and Marcus and thought Richart might be coming here for reinforcements or going to get you, but ... We don’t know where he is. If he is. For all we know he teleported right back to the battle.”
If he had, Richart must be amongst the decaying corpses, Bastien thought, perusing them with dread. “And Ami?” A heavy silence followed. When Sarah began to weep in the background, Bastien’s hand tightened around the cell phone. “Reordon, what happened to Ami?”
“I don’t think she made it.”
Bastien closed his eyes as raw pain prodded him. Not Ami. Please, not Ami, who had always been so kind to him. The only one who had reached out to him instead of judging him and finding him lacking.
“Tell me,” he demanded hoarsely.
Yuri and Stanislav prowled forth, circling the clearing as Reordon related Sarah’s last contact with Ami.
“If the drug can do this to immortals and drop vampires instantly, I don’t see how Ami could have survived it,” Chris said. “And, even if she did, she was surrounded by two dozen vampires and faced their king the last time Sarah saw her.”
Bastien pried his eyes open and forced his feet to carry him forward.
Humans didn’t deteriorate within minutes when they were killed. If Ami ...
He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat and couldn’t.
The freshest bodies—located near the center—weren’t even bodies. They were pieces. It looked like whoever those pieces had belonged to had either exploded or been ripped apart with a violence only a maddened vampire could deliver.
The odor of putrefying flesh overwhelmed him, blotting out all else. Unable to smell her, he examined the gore carefully for anything that might distinguish her. Green eyes. Red hair. Pale feminine flesh.
Only mouldering, withering vampires met his gaze.
“I don’t see her,” he told Chris, feeling no relief. If she wasn’t here, the surviving vampires had claimed Ami either to transform her and make Ami a vampire or to use her as a blood bank and a toy they would feed on and torture at will.
“I don’t see her either,” Stanislav announced.
“Nor I,” Yuri added.
“Wait.” Stanislav halted his slow perambulation. Eyes narrowing, he examined the trees near him. “Here. She came this way.”
“I’ll get back to you,” Bastien told Chris. Ending the call, he crossed the clearing in one leap. He could see the dirt stirred by small footprints where Stanislav indicated, her blood on the leaves.
Bastien shoved his phone into his pocket and plunged into the trees.
He had to find her before the other vampires got their hands on her. If he didn’t ...
She would be lost to them in more ways than one.
“What the hell is this?”
The voice, full of alarm, swooped out of the darkness and lured Ami toward consciousness.
“I need to stash this here for the day,” the vampire king said, calm now.
“What? Are you crazy? Who is that? Is she ... is she dead?”
“Not yet.”
Her head pounded with every heartbeat, perhaps because she was hanging upside down over someone’s shoulder. At least, she was until he slung her forward and dropped her like a bag of bird seed onto a hard surface. The ache radiating outward from her forehead magnified as the back of her head ricocheted off the table. Old habits arose and helped her hold back a moan.
“What happened with the immortals?” the first voice asked.
“They slaughtered my men.”
“All of them?”
“Those I didn’t kill myself,” the vampire king said with a shrug in his voice. “Roland and Bastien brought reinforcements. One of them could jump like that guy in that movie.”
“What movie? What does jump mean?”
“Jump. Like in Jumper, where the guy would be in New York one second and Paris the next.”
“He could teleport?” Excitement took hold of the first speaker, raising his voice. “Are you telling me one of the immortals could teleport?”
“Yeah, and it really fucked things up. He killed vamps left and right. They had no warning. He’d pop in, kill one, then pop up somewhere else and kill another. They never saw him coming. And when I finally got a bead on him and tranqed the fucker, he jumped away with two other immortals. After that, some immortal bitch ran off, carrying Roland and Bastien.”
“What about this woman? Who is she? Is she an immortal?”
Through the fuzz clinging to her mind, Ami tried to identify the vampire king’s friend. He bore no voice she had heard before, but was clearly someone the vampire king worked with.
The elusive Dr. Montrose Keegan perhaps?
“No, this is Sarah.” The venom contained in the vampire king’s voice made Ami shiver.
“The human woman who fought beside Roland Warbrook?”
“Yeah. I thought I would take a page from Bastien’s book and use her as bait.”
“And you brought her here?” The man sounded both petrified and appalled. “Are you crazy? They’ll come looking for her!”
Would they come looking for her? Did they even live?
Despair struck hard alongside fear that the drug Marcus and the others had been injected with might have killed them.
Marcus. The thought of losing him wrought more pain within her than any physical torture she had ever endured. If that drug killed him ...
“Don’t shit your shorts,” the vampire king said. “They won’t come looking for her until tomorrow night. And, since they have no idea where to begin, I’ll have plenty of time to come back and get her.”
“Why don’t you just take her with you now?”
“Because I want her to be in one piece when I kill her in front of Bastien and Roland. That ain’t gonna happen if my men get their hands and teeth on her.”
Ami surreptitiously uncurled her fingers and felt the table beneath her. Cold. Metal. But lightweight. Not like the other.
“What did you do to her?”
“Tranqed her.”
A pregnant pause followed. “And she’s not dead?”
“No. Her heartbeat is all over the place. Slow one minute. Fast the next. But she’s still breathing.”
Terror tended to have that effect on her. Thankfully, they seemed to attribute it not to her waking, but to the drug.
“She should be dead,” Montrose said, his voice rife with bewilderment.
“She isn’t.”
“She will be soon. No human can withstand that dosage. You’v
e seen what it does to vampires.”
“Well, it took several of the darts to take down each immortal.”
“Several?”
“Yes.”
“She should be dead.”
“She isn’t fucking dead!” the vampire roared. Glass shattered, accompanied by loud crashes.
Ami started, then risked cracking her eyelids open enough to peer through her lashes at her surroundings.
A lab. She was in a lab. She hated labs.
A pudgy man of average height cringed against one wall as the vampire king succumbed to another raging temper tantrum and overturned a desk, a table covered with beakers and medical equipment, and a trash can marked with a hazardous materials symbol.
Montrose emitted a swine-like squeal of fear as the vampire swung around and leaned in close, spittle dripping from his fangs.
“And she’d better not fucking be dead when I return tomorrow night,” the king growled.
“Th-the drug is too strong. I can’t—”
“You will do whatever you have to do to keep the bitch alive.”
Trembling, the man stared up at the vamp with wide eyes.
This must be Montrose Keegan. He was human, had his own lab, worked with vampires, yet feared them.
Satisfied that his orders would be followed, the vampire swept from the room.
Montrose slumped against the wall for all of ten seconds, then took off after him, tripping through the door then up what sounded like a full flight of stairs.
As soon as he left, Ami opened her eyes and sat up. The vampire had dumped her on a steel gurney, standard hospital grade with no manacles or other forms of restraint. The lab encircling her was sizable and possessed an impressive array of equipment, some of which the mad vampire king had destroyed. If the vampire flew into such rages often, it was no wonder Montrose had had to replenish his funds.
Swinging her legs over the side of the gurney, Ami hopped down and looked for a window through which she might escape. There were none. Nor were there any exterior doors. The only way in or out was through the hallway and up the stairs Montrose Keegan had just traveled.
Was this another basement lab, like the one he had kept during his work with Bastien?
Voices rumbled above. Ami should have been able to hear them, but the drug muddled everything. She also couldn’t call for help telepathically and worried that no one would hear her even if she could. Seth and David were in Ecuador, most likely unreachable. Étienne and Lisette, the only other telepathic immortals in the vicinity, had both been incapacitated by the drug. Or worse.
Don’t think like that. The immortals aren’t dead. Marcus isn’t dead. You just can’t sense him because of the drug.
A door slammed upstairs. Had the vampire left?
Ami hurried to the closest table and searched the various tools upon it for something she could use as a weapon. She grabbed a pencil—it would do in a pinch—but kept foraging. Moving on to some drawers, she slid them open as quietly as she could.
Score! Scalpels. With one in each hand, she tiptoed to the lab’s entrance and peered down the hallway. It was just long and wide enough to fit a washer, dryer, and folding table, confirming her belief that she was in the basement of a house. The cement stairs on the far side rose to a landing and open door.
Ami crept forward, eyes glued to the doorway.
Wood creaked above her as footsteps crossed the ceiling, accompanied by a great deal of muttering.
One by one, she scaled the steps, glad they weren’t wood so no squeaking would give her away. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest, feeling twice its normal size. This was her only chance. The house—or whatever this was—sounded empty, save herself and Montrose, and there was no telling how long it would remain so. The great vampire king might send some of his flunkies over to keep an eye on her.
Ami paused on the landing. Her legs trembled as a wave of weakness engulfed her. Foul nausea assailed her. Gritting her teeth, she leaned against the wall for a moment and drew the back of one shaking hand across her damp forehead.
Just get it together and go, she ordered herself.
Straightening, Ami took a step forward.
A shadow filled the doorway.
Montrose Keegan’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Oh, shit!”
Ami sprang forward, seeing the revolver he raised too late. A report pierced her ears. Fire burst into life in her stomach as the smell of gunpowder filled the air.
Doubling over in agony, Ami stumbled backward, stepped into dead air, and fell.
Sharp edges slammed into her back, her head, her hip as she tumbled down the stairs. A bone in her left forearm snapped and broke through the skin just before she rolled across the basement floor and crashed into the washing machine.
Tears streamed from her eyes as she curled into a ball and drew her broken arm close. At the top of the stairs, Montrose said something, but she couldn’t make out the words over her own silent screaming. Her breath came in pants, each one feeling like a knife digging into the bullet wound in her abdomen. Blinking hard to clear the moisture from her gaze, she looked around.
Montrose, pale as milk, began to descend the stairs, his hand clutching the gun in a death grip.
Ami had lost the scalpels on the way down, but could see one resting on the last step. Her broken arm pressed to her stomach, she scrambled forward on her uninjured hand and scraped knees and grabbed the weapon. Montrose hurried down toward her. As she rose, more loud reports sounded. One, two, three, four.
More pain exploded in her torso like concussion grenades detonating. Her breath left her lungs as she staggered backward, struggling to remain on her feet. Another report. More agony.
A metallic taste filled her mouth. Black clouds suffused her vision, roiling and wavering in and out. Six shots, she thought dimly. Six shots. He was out of bullets.
Sinking to her knees, she fell backward to the floor and clung tenaciously to the scalpel.
Montrose approached her warily as she choked and coughed and tried to draw a breath. “What are you?” he asked in a high, agitated voice.
Ami strained to speak. “H-h-human.”
He shook his head. “No human could withstand this. No human could have survived that drug.” He pointed the gun at her, either too rattled to realize he had no bullets left or hoping to bluff her into thinking he did. “Are you immortal?”
She shook her head, unable to form another word.
He leaned over her, reached for the scalpel.
When his hand was only inches from hers, Ami lunged upward and buried the scalpel in his stomach.
His eyes bulged. His finger squeezed the trigger convulsively, producing a series of clicks as the hammer fell on one empty chamber after another.
Montrose dropped the gun. Staggering back, he stared in horror at the metal instrument protruding from his paunch.
Ami moaned and rolled to her side, then drew her knees up under her and retrieved the gun.
“Help me!” Montrose cried, staring at her with growing hysteria.
With the aid of the stairs, Ami managed to gain her feet. Dizziness heaved the room around her up and down, side to side. While Montrose pleaded for her aid, she tottered forward and slammed the butt of the gun against his temple.
The scientist dropped like a stone.
Ami tumbled after him, unable to maintain her balance. Weakness sifted through her, numbing her lips. Darkness threatened.
As she struggled to breathe, to find the will to rise again, one word sounded in her mind over and over again.
Marcus. Marcus. Marcus.
Voices.
Taut. Frustrated. Angry. Concerned.
Marcus struggled toward them, feeling as though he were swimming in a sea of viscous tar. He could sense the surface somewhere above him, but it felt as though hands held his ankles, preventing him from reaching it.
A name teased his ears and pierced the blackness.
“Ami,” he murmured hoarsely.<
br />
The voices ceased, then flowed anew in a jumble of urgent words.
What had happened? The last thing he remembered was being folded over Sarah’s shoulder and forced away from Ami, who had been left standing in the center of the clearing, wounded and bleeding, surrounded by vampires. “Ami,” he said again and managed to kick free and surge toward the surface, toward consciousness.
Had Richart been with her? Marcus thought he remembered Richart’s being with her. Surely he had teleported her to safety.
“He’s coming around!” a woman called eagerly.
Gentle fingers peeled back one eyelid.
Light as bright as a thousand suns pierced Marcus’s pupil and pounded his head like Thor’s hammer. Moaning, he reached up and shoved the hand away. His limbs felt weighted, clumsy, as though he were encased in a full suit of plate armor.
“Marcus, can you hear me?” Darnell asked.
“What happened?” he rasped.
A collective sigh rippled through the room.
“Can you open your eyes?” the woman asked. Not Sarah. Not Lisette. Who?
“Too bright.”
“Dim the lights,” she ordered. A flurry of movement sounded. “Okay, try it now.”
Cautiously, he opened his eyes. Darnell, Chris Reordon, Yuri, Stanislav, Bastien, and a human woman he had never seen before clustered about his narrow bed. “Where am I?”
“The clinic in David’s place,” Darnell said.
David’s place had a clinic? Was the woman a doctor then? From the network?
“What happened?”
“The vampires have a new drug,” Chris said, “and managed to tranq everyone but Sarah with it.”
Marcus leaned up on an elbow with a groan. Through gaps between the bodies surrounding him, he saw Étienne, Lisette, and Roland stretched out on beds like his. All were unconscious. IV tubing fed blood into the veins of the two younger immortals. Similar IV stands stood near Marcus and Roland, but weren’t currently in use. They must have already been transfused enough to heal their wounds.
Sarah sat beside Roland, holding his hand and staring at Marcus with glistening eyes.
Why had he awakened if the others hadn’t? “Drugs don’t affect us.”
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