Fern stood above her, all eight legs like a moving, spiky cage, and this time it didn’t frighten her. He sprang at the rest of the guards and spoke in her mind, one word, urgent — Go!
Emma closed the distance to the entrance and hit the release pane, the door slid open with a scrape and a hiss. She had time to look back, notice how the tip of one of Fern’s legs flopped loose and nerveless, then she squeezed through the gap and hit the corresponding panel on the other side of the door to close it.
Blackness engulfed her. Silence reigned. Fern, I’m through, get away from them.
They’ll come after you , he sent back.
Shit. She started running. If you get yourself killed, I’ll be so fucking pissed. I’m serious, lead them away and lose them, whatever you have to do. I don’t want you to kill them, and I don’t want you dead either, so do it!
You’re giving me a direct command. Fern’s mental voice sounded frustrated.
Yeah , she sent, I am. I order you to save yourself and not kill them. Give me a head start and then get yourself safe, you got that?
Fern swore in a language she didn’t understand, and she felt him turn, galloping from the chamber. Their minds were still linked when he changed; she felt it and tripped, slapping her hands out onto the stone step in front of her. Heat slammed through her and for a moment she was white with it, deaf and blind, cocooned and burning.
It left as suddenly as it had seized her and she blinked, her vision full of white splotches. She was so going to tell him to warn her next time.
He sent her a brief, apologetic mind-shrug, and then projected the image of him changing again, but this time he meant something different. Emma didn’t have time to reply before the touch of his mind winked out of existence, mental silence slamming down on her with the shock of being alone inside her own head.
He had taken the smaller form — the guards would never find him now. She took a deep breath and started running again, wishing for shoes and a sports bra.
Her calves went first, muscles on fire from sprinting up the uneven steps, and then her thighs took the brunt of it. The soles of her feet smarted sharply, scraped raw. By the time she reached the top landing she’d vowed to join a gym and make the stair machine her very best friend if she lived through the night. She sagged against the wall, lungs burning, skin hot and sticky. She raised a shaking hand and pushed the release panel.
The hallway beyond was deserted and dark. Glass littered the floor, the ceiling lights smashed, or shot out. Red emergency lights lit the dusty haze instead. The plasterboard walls were riddled and torn with bullet holes, proof somebody had risked using a gun in such a confined space.
Who had done this? If Alan had done it, then he and whoever was with him hadn’t gotten any further.
He might even be dead. Maybe, probably, she was too late.
She picked her way over the debris, glass and splinters and crumbling plaster spiking her bare feet, heart thundering, adrenalin rushing cold and sickening through her bloodstream. She wished she had a gun, something. She’d feel safer with a gun, but it was a lie; there was nobody out there in the Roadhouse she was willing to shoot. Except maybe Seshua, if Alan was dead.
Gunfire roared somewhere ahead, the sound like the world’s biggest goddamn popcorn maker. She froze for a second. Then it died, and she sprinted down the rest of the hallway, through the door to the backstage room, into the service corridor behind the bar, stifling a cry as her foot came down on a shard of glass. She didn’t dare look at it; if she did it would only hurt more. She didn’t think, she just hit the door at the end of the hallway limping, and grabbed the handle and pulled.
Smoke hit her in the face and she dropped to all fours. Chaos; the stage on fire, tables and chairs lay scattered and demolished, bodies lay sprawled and obscured by the debris. Some of them moved, some didn’t. The pool table lay canted onto its side in front of the stage to her left, dragged or thrown there, and figures crouched behind it, obscured by smoke and dust haze.
She thought she glimpsed Alexi’s pale face before a machine gun roared again and her heart nearly stopped. Sparks showered from the area above the stage as the gunfire took out the huge bank of suspended lights. The bank of stage lighting gave one deafening pop and the whole lighting grid crashed to the stage, burst into flames as heat and electricity caught the flying sparks.
Somebody screamed and Emma turned to the bar at her right. Ricky stared at her from behind the counter, mere yards away, his face white with shock, like he couldn’t believe he was seeing her. She stared dumbly back.
“Emma,” Alan called out. His voice cut through Emma like a cold blade. She stood up.
“Em, no!” Ricky’s voice broke as he yelled at her, and she fought hard not to run to him, fought to ignore him.
There was movement from behind the fallen pool table near the stage. Emma glimpsed Alexi before his machine gun roared again and the muzzle flare blinded her.
She flinched, resisting the urge to drop. There was only one way to stop them firing. She swallowed, breath shallow, mind going calm and quiet and white as she realized she was going to do something that went against every shred of instinct and common sense she possessed, simply because she didn’t know what else to do.
She darted from the safety of the doorway and cleared the end of the bar, Ricky yelling behind her, the sound of smashing glass and more shouts. She stepped away from the end of the bar, mouth suddenly dry as toast, putting herself at the very edge of the floor — so fucking close to the path of gunfire, so stupid, this was such a bad idea —
A harsh male voice cut through the silence. “Get the fuck away from here!”
Emma glanced towards the pool table, and clearly saw Alexi’s face; he crouched at the end of the table, gun cradled in his arms, hair hanging messily about his face. His yellow eyes burned at her from across the room like two lamps in the dark.
“Emma,” came Telly’s voice from behind her. He sounded quiet and wary. She almost didn’t recognize his voice for it. “Please, get behind the bar. You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
She turned her head to look over her shoulder. Telly’s face was a pale blur out of the corner of her eye, barely visible above the counter of the bar, but his presence even at such a distance eased something tight and cold inside, just a little. It almost made her want to listen to him, do what he said.
But she couldn’t.
She moved finally into the center of the Roadhouse’s main floor, into their direct line of fire.
“Emma.” Alan’s voice rang out again, bringing her gaze around to the direction of the entrance where fallen and broken furniture, along with an enormous vintage pinball machine — its lights dead now — formed a blockade. Alan was hunkered down, one sliver of his face visible from behind a heavy wooden table that was hiked up over one end of the machine. The long muzzle of a rifle rested next to his face.
Of all the weird shit she’d witnessed so far, the sight of Alan with an assault rifle was definitely up there with the best — or worst.
“Alan?” There were questions in her voice that words didn’t even begin to cover, and his answer fell short of them all.
“I’ve come to get you away from these people,” he said calmly. “I’ve come for you.” He inched forward toward the end of the sheltering table, making more of his face visible. His eyes were drowning pools in the dim light, the rest of his face drawn with worry and focus. “I can get you out of here. Back to safety.” She took an involuntary step forward, captivated by the beseeching expression on Alan’s face. “That’s the way,” he said, voice pitched low. “Come to me.”
“Em, don’t!” Ricky yelled a split second before somebody roared with fury behind her, and the sound of furniture smashing somewhere off to her right followed it. The roar sounded like Seshua. The thought made her pause, broke her concentration, and she realized she’d been staring at Alan, about to go to him, and she didn’t know why.
She swallowed pa
st the salty taste of adrenalin and tried to speak without letting her voice shake. “Alan, you don’t understand. You’ll only get yourself hurt here. I don’t need rescuing. I’m okay, you have to get out of here, or they’ll kill you.” She started to turn towards where Alexi and Seshua had taken cover, started to tell them she wanted them to let Alan go, but she never got the words out.
Something smashed into her. For a second she thought she’d been shot — and then, in the moment between when she staggered and then caught herself, she realized it wasn’t a physical blow. It was a command, a compulsion, and it hit her mind like being hit by a truck.
COME TO ME NOW!
Fear drove the air from her lungs in a hard huff. Dawning horror and confusion boiled up inside, fought with her traitorous nerves and muscles and bones as she turned to Alan. His face was a mask of fierce concentration and rage, and where before his eyes had been deep pools of shadow, now they shone like the eyes of an animal. Cold and alien. He straightened slowly, to his full height — and Emma cringed away, because she felt the pull, the weight of his mind on hers, and it was vast and awful. She resisted, but her mind was sticks and straw and brittle weakness beneath the colossal strength of his. Like being crushed, like dying.
“What are you?” Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. She stared at Alan because she couldn’t look away; it was all she had in her just to stand fused to the spot. Looking away would be impossible, made her tired just thinking about it. Everything but his eyes disappeared, and the world bled to static, unanchored white.
Somewhere far away she thought she heard people shouting. Trying to get a clear line of fire on Alan. Couldn’t, because of her. She was in the way, and she was too close to him — if nothing else, he could shoot her before they could shoot him.
And she believed he might do it. He had come for her, but he hadn’t come to rescue her. He wasn’t the man she’d thought she knew; he was something else, something capable of swallowing her mind and obliterating everything that made her who she was. She might be confused, but she wasn’t stupid, she could see the truth when it was shoved in her face: the despair that sucked at her was the stuff of nightmares, and Alan was the one doing it to her. And that made him a nightmare — the worst kind of nightmare, the kind that wore the handsome face of someone you cared for.
Emma’s knees wobbled, but they locked before she could fall, and she knew it wasn’t her doing. He wouldn’t let her fall over and give the king’s men a clear shot. She began to shudder with the sheer effort of standing still, of not moving toward him.
He swore, determination blazing in his face. “Stop fighting me,” he ground out between clenched teeth, voice quiet in her ears and deafening in her head. “Stop fighting me and the pain will go away, Emma.” His luminescent eyes narrowed, and a chunk of his smoothly styled hair fell loose over his forehead. Emma wanted to beg and scream, her muscles shrieked with the effort of standing still, yet the only sign of Alan’s exertion was one disturbed lock of hair.
“He’s got her mind,” Seshua called out, and his voice felt like glass breaking on Emma’s fragile skin.
Be quiet! She wanted to scream at him; she needed to concentrate, she couldn’t handle anything else. Her world had narrowed down to the feel of her mind being slowly, slowly peeled away from her body like skin and she had to hold on, couldn’t let go, she’d never make it, she could feel it shredding anyway, oh god please please please PLEASE —
Three things happened almost simultaneously: Fern’s voice speared into her mind like an arrow through an apple, somebody to the side of Alan opened fire, not at Emma but at something to her right, and then Telly slammed into her.
His body was hot and wet. She felt like she’d been thrown against a wall, only the wall had been thrown against her.
Emma, reach for me! Fern thrust his mind into hers and Alan’s hold on her burst. She grabbed for Fern mentally as Telly’s arms wrapped around her and for a moment they were both airborne; then they hit the ground and skidded, and machine gun fire roared over their heads. She glimpsed Alan’s form, dancing violently like a shaken marionette, then Telly covered her face with his chest. She turned before his body could suffocate her and saw Seshua and Alexi, out in the open, advancing across the floor of the Roadhouse and firing their weapons over and over again, spraying the air above her and Telly with bullets that rent the air in a deafening barrage. As she watched, Alexi jerked and blood erupted from his chest but he kept moving forward. Telly began dragging her further away in an awkward half crawl with her body still pinned beneath his.
“Telly, what the fuck’s going on?” She couldn’t hear her own voice; she felt him grunt, and then she registered the feel of hot, thick fluid running onto the side of her face. She pressed hands to his chest and there was suddenly so much more of it, coating her hands, running down her arms. He was bleeding — a lot .
“I can crawl on my own!” she screamed, couldn’t hear her own voice over the gunfire and the ringing in her ears. “You’re bleeding, get off me, you’re bleeding Telly, get the fuck off —” She scrambled sideways and tried to push him away and he ignored her, hooked an arm beneath her armpits and hoisted her the final few feet to the wall. A half demolished table provided a little cover, and Telly wedged her underneath it, shielding her.
She finally got a look at him and couldn’t move for a second, couldn’t speak. Terror burst up her throat and lodged there. His torso was bare and raw and red; it looked like he’d cuddled with an industrial sized cheese grater, his chest and abdomen full of torn bullet holes. Heavy arterial blood jetted out of him. He should have been dead, would be any minute, dear Sweet Jesus fucking Christ in heaven —
He caught her chin with strong fingers and wrenched her gaze from his chest. She met his eyes and found them clear, steady, alive.
“I’ll heal .” Miraculously, she could hear him, his voice like a bell cutting through the underwater rush of her tortured eardrums, such stark contrast to the cotton-wrapped deafness that it sounded like his voice was in her head. She started to glance down at his chest, and his fingers bit further into her chin. “Emma, I’ll heal, got it?” Pale eyes bored into hers, and she nodded. If he said he would, she had to believe him, if only because she couldn’t handle the alternative. She reached up and gripped his wrist like a lifeline.
“What is he?” Her voice came to her, muffled, like it belonged to someone else. She looked over Telly’s shoulder as she said it. She couldn’t see Alan, but he and his men were still shooting, a deadly spray of covering fire that sounded to her like popcorn. Only Seshua was still visible, behind the bar now, his broad shoulders and head just far enough up over the counter of the bar to allow him to keep shooting.
Telly shot a look over his shoulder, angling his body in the way of Emma’s. “You won’t believe me, hon.”
“Try me.”
“You won’t understand —”
“Just tell me!”
Telly groaned, breath shallow. “He is Aneshtevannir.” He muttered something else in a language Emma didn’t recognize. “All of them are, save for one.”
Emma flicked blood-drenched hair out of her eyes. “I don’t understand — what —”
“Soul-eaters, Emma. Blood drinkers . They’re vampires!” Telly snarled, then let his head drop back against the wall, eyes closing. Emma gaped, but she never got time for a reply; somebody landed heavily on the floor next to Telly.
Telly’s eyes flew open. He scrambled out of their hiding place and shoved the woman in next to Emma. She said something in another unrecognizable language, clutched at Telly, then at the two boys whose faces appeared in the gap made by the table where it leaned against the wall. The boys crowded the woman and then saw Emma, and the woman’s gaze followed theirs.
She met Emma’s eyes and froze, her face a mask of terror and shock. “Llamadora ,” she said, and burst into tears. “Have you seen them? Where are they?” She grasped Emma’s wrists. “Please, my girls, do you know where they
are?”
Emma might have asked who she was talking about if the intermittent roar of gunfire hadn’t fallen abruptly, deadly silent.
A handful of heartbeats later, she heard Anton call out, and her pulse leapt into her throat.
“Is anybody out there? Anybody alive?” Anton’s voice was wary, like he didn’t know who’d been left standing, friend or foe. Somebody grunted, and then Anton murmured, “Thank God.”
The woman beside Emma let her go. “Move,” Emma said. The woman blinked at her. “Damn it.” She slithered out the narrow opening on her own side of the hiding space, pushed away chairs and debris, and crawled out to find herself at the edge of the floor, closer to the overturned pool table than she’d expected.
“Emma!” Telly growled and made a grab for her, but she slid out of reach and looked around, and at first it didn’t make sense. She couldn’t see anyone through the smoke and dust and flickering lights.
Then the smoke thinned, and shock washed through Emma in a cold, cleansing wave.
Seshua perched on the end of the bar in a crouch, his chest heaving and his hair wild, and Alan was like a broken doll in his grasp. The king had one arm wrapped around Alan’s neck. Alan’s legs dangled bloodied and useless, feet scraping on the floor in front of the bar. Seshua looked like the enormous jungle cat he was, in everything but form, and Alan his prey.
Alan lived, but he didn’t move. Blood pooled in an ever widening circle at his feet. His legs bent at the wrong angle, looking boneless, but the shattered legs weren’t his only wound. His shirt looked black beneath the suit jacket.
Several guards formed a semi circle around the end of the bar, one covered Seshua from behind the bar, and the others all had their weapons trained on the place where Alan’s men had taken cover.
“Come out of your hiding place, or he dies, and you follow him.” Seshua’s voice was a terrible, thunderous growl.
Three men emerged from behind the wreckage, weapons by their sides. One was huge, bald and olive skinned. They were smeared with soot and blood, but they looked normal, human. Except for the heavy artillery they were carrying, and the size of the bald guy. And the look in his eyes.
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