And they couldn’t ask the dead vampires where they were.
“I can’t get inside the cage.” Cael appeared and disappeared all around the small mechanism, his rage visibly growing. By the time he stopped his face was mottled with red. Katarina didn’t bother to watch him. Her eyes were closed, and her hand clutched her bloody wrist.
Cael looked down at the bodies. “They got their heads inside.”
One step behind him, Aiyanna peered down at the gap between the bars near where the bodies lay. It was slightly larger than the other gaps, and more than enough for one of the men or women lying dead to lean inside to yank Katarina’s previously uninjured wrist to their mouths.
Katarina was small enough for it to be plenty of room for her to slide through, something she was probably too hurt to have noticed.
“Give me your wrist,” Aiyanna told her gently. There was no telling what Katarina would do if they startled her. In fact, from the light she’d created and the bodies she was probably responsible for, Aiyanna had a feeling there was more than met the eye when it came to this witch.
Her eyelids still drooping, Katarina slowly scooted over to the edge of her cage and gingerly lifted her arm. Aiyanna took it in her hands and let healing power flow through her—and into a lot more than just Katarina’s wrist.
There was something wrong with the woman, and it went way past the blood loss and lacerations from vampire teeth. It was why she didn’t attempt to fix Katarina’s casted arm, too. She wasn’t certain all the energy would make it to the bone, while it would drain Aiyanna just the same. That something she couldn’t afford right now. Cael would be so proud.
In the corner of her eye, she saw him send a text message out to their friends.
“Pureblood could storm this room any minute,” he murmured, watching the door.
It took a great deal of energy, but Aiyanna finally finished healing Katarina. The moment she released the witch’s arm, the health was slowly leaking from her, like there was a hole allowing her strength to trickle away. What’s wrong with her?
“Let’s get you out,” Aiyanna said, hoping she didn’t sound as confused as she was.
Now that Katarina was stronger, she didn’t need too much help to climb out of the cage. She ran her hands through her blonde hair and brushed off her wrinkled, bloodied clothes.
“That was one of my worst episodes,” she murmured, bemused. “I’ve never become a human lighthouse before.”
Cael pinned her with a hard stare. “It’s the only reason we found you.”
Aiyanna was about to tell her they needed to talk about those episodes once Pureblood was dealt with, but Katarina was too distracted by Vale’s arrival. The werewolf pulled her into his arms roughly, his eyes looking particularly watery despite his frown.
Emmanuel put a hand on the glowing walls. “It’s like the Aequorea victoria.”
“The kelpie speaks gibberish. Fantastic.” Sophia and Heath had appeared in time to hear Emmanuel’s bizarre statement, the latter immediately hitting his foot against the cage.
Heath cursed, while his mate raised a fist to the wall. When she hit it the light didn’t flicker, but the impact revealed cracks in the walls and floors, which disappeared the moment the vibrations ceased.
“Weird,” Sophia whispered.
“Aequorea victoria is a bioluminescent jellyfish.” Emmanuel sneered at Sophia, but his face softened when he looked at Katarina. “This reminds me of their light.”
“Will it kill a vampire?” Aiyanna asked. “‘Cause I think they’re all in this house, building…whatever this is.”
Emmanuel shrugged.
Katarina spat on the dead vampires at her feet as she rubbed her wrist, her mouth twisting. “I hope so.”
His arms around her, Vale kissed her now-healed wrist and placed her hand over his heart. Aiyanna had to suppress a smile at the sight, promising herself that she’d help the young witch with whatever she was going through. Now, Katarina would have the knowledge of a shapeshifter, a kelpie, a coven, a werewolf pack and even the Fey at her disposal. They could solve whatever was wrong with her; Aiyanna knew they could.
The door to the room flew open around the knob, which fell to the floor with a dull thud the moment it wasn’t connected to the wood anymore. Its dead bolt was still extended. Aiyanna almost jumped at the sudden sounds, but she’d known Cael would break down the door sooner than later.
They had evil vampires to hunt down. There’s something I never thought I’d do. Hunt down evil faeries? Sure. But vampires? No way.
The hall was empty, but well-lit because of the light in the walls. There were no ornamentations or tables, and no doors to any other rooms. At the end of the hall was another, perpendicular corridor, and there were voices coming from both ends. Cael, Katarina, Vale, and Aiyanna went right while Emmanuel, Heath, and Sophia went left.
As they walked farther away from the place Katarina had been held hostage, the light didn’t wane. It was good thing too, because Aiyanna was beginning to question whether there was electricity in the house at all. It was so cold, they certainly didn’t have the heat on, and she saw no signs of lights or wall outlets. Of course, vampires could probably see in the dark. What use would they have for lights?
She wanted to kick herself for not asking Christian and his friends about their vampyric capabilities.
“Phoenix, we’re using a lot of resources on this mission,” a woman spoke in a hushed, respectful, voice, but Phoenix didn’t. It was a boon, allowing them to walk closer without being heard—even Aiyanna would have been distracted by the venom seeping from the man’s deafening roar, were she the unfortunate one speaking with him.
“It’s not your place to question me.”
“Of course not,” another man said, censure heavy in his tone. “But we’re curious about why these men and the woman are so important to kill. Few knew they’d left, and those who did never spread the news of their sin because it would have reflected badly on them.”
They rounded the corner, past a set of stairs, right as a massive man with close-cropped light hair lifted another, smaller man over his head. From the way he held the other vampire, as if he were a twig he could snap in two, he was about to break his back.
It wouldn’t kill him, but the healing process would be painful and slow.
The room was filled with rows of chairs, and in most of them sat vampires with laptops or tablets on their laps. They were gaunt, their postures stooped as they typed. Few of them looked up at the man about to die in front of them.
Only the scarily muscular man—Phoenix—couldn’t finish the task. Veins on his arms bulged and he grunted in effort, but the vampire he’d lifted in the air wouldn’t bend. Judging from his Hulk-smash stance, this wasn’t Phoenix’s doing. Cael. His back to them, Phoenix turned with the man still in his beefy hands and smiled with long teeth that had been sharpened to points.
Every inch of him looked deadly. Immediately, it set Aiyanna at ease about the man. No one that dangerous would try so hard to appear that way.
“You’re strong.” Phoenix moved to throw the man, but Cael intervened again, dropping him unceremoniously across the room, making more than a few of the vampires jump. Now they watched with abandon, knowing Aiyanna’s group was in far more trouble than they were.
Aiyanna had the urge to slap each of them and ask why the hell they let themselves work for a man like Phoenix. Nothing beneficial to anyone could come from this man.
“Phoenix—” One of his lackies, a particularly thin woman with stringy brown hair timidly raised her hand, as if she were a student. She shut her mouth with a snap at the vehement look he gave her.
“When we drink your blood, we’ll get that strength you’ve just shown me. Don’t tell me which of you is particular to air—I want to be left guessing. Maybe I’ll taste it.” Phoenix’s grin broadened when he looked at Aiyanna. “I hope it was you.”
Cael growled, causi
ng Phoenix to laugh uproariously. Aiyanna only stared. He’s absolutely crazy.
She was even more confident about her judgment when he raised his fingers to his lips and whistled cheerfully. That was until ten men and women almost as large as Phoenix, with the same short hair and bared, pointed teeth, flooded the room.
Some held guns, while most had knives. Even worse, all of them seemed to have powers not meant for a vampire. Aiyanna didn’t think—she changed into her panther form, which was stronger than her human one, and slashed the throats of every vampire who ran at her or her friends.
Cael disoriented them by flashing around the room, disappearing and reappearing only to slam a vampire through a wall or take their gun and aim it at its previous holder or the ceiling. Aiyanna released a loud, low purr when she saw Cael bend a small pistol in half.
The vampire nearest her, who hid behind the large tablet he held with shaking hands, dropped his only weapon as he passed out in a dead faint.
There was too much of a discrepancy between the thin, fearful Pureblood members and those who were strong and deadly. It went unsaid that no one was to hurt those who were so much weaker—it went against their instincts to harm someone that pitiful, even if they posed a slight threat.
While Aiyanna backed one particularly short—although powerful-looking—vampire against the wall, she kept Phoenix in her peripheral vision as he fought with Vale. His cronies were strong, too strong to be mere vampires, but Phoenix was obviously their most formidable opponent.
The moment Aiyanna dealt her vampire a slash of her claws that sent him to the floor, Raphael and the rest of their group came into the room, followed by more of Phoenix’s men, filling the rest of the space. The thinner vampires pressed up against one another in a sort of phalanx armed with terrified expressions and technology that gleamed against the light from the bare walls.
Afraid those with guns hadn’t been taken out yet, she changed into her human form. She wanted to use her higher point of vision to find any sign of a gun; this would not be a repeat of Tucks.
After he twisted the neck of one vampire all the way around, Cael turned to her, his eyes narrowed.
“Are you okay?” He looked her over quickly, assessing any injuries she might have sustained, before she could answer.
“Of course.” With a wink, Aiyanna gave him a quick kiss. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises, she was in the peak of health. Cael, however, wasn’t. Since he couldn’t change into an animal with much tougher skin than a human’s, he was bleeding in more than one place, especially from a particularly deep cut too close to his throat for her comfort.
Without thinking, she reached out and healed him. She pulled away, satisfied when all of his wounds had closed and he distributed his weight evenly on both feet.
Cael took both of her shoulders in his hands and pulled her to him in what she thought would be a hug.
Wrong.
“Don’t ever heal me in front of people who would exploit you,” he growled into her ear, holding her so close she had to keep herself from gasping.
She was about to snap back at him about how much good he did when he bled out from a neck wound when she saw his face. He was petrified for her, and not altogether unreasonably.
Her kind was known for sacrificing themselves to help others, after all. Not that Cael would ever let me. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet.
“Next time, I’ll be more subtle about it.” She gave him her best, most dazzling grin that only made him scowl at her before he disappeared, popping up across the room to help Vale against possibly the largest vampire here aside from Phoenix. Unlike the majority of his peers, he had powers.
The chairs the weaker vampires had vacated melded together, forming a very lumpy, albeit large, metal ball. It was nothing like the craftsmanship that had been used on Katarina’s cage. Was this the same man who’d made it, with his borrowed magic fading, or did they have other vampires to watch out for?
Aiyanna hoped it was the former, but wouldn’t bet anyone’s life on it.
The better question was, where in the hell was Phoenix? She took a moment to take stock of the room. Katarina, too, was missing, and all of the scarier vampires were engaged with her friends.
So Phoenix had nabbed her again. She fought a sneer. Between the cast and the bites she’d healed for the witch, Katarina was obviously weakened. Super Steroid Vampire Leader chose easy prey. Coward.
Quickly, she took the opportunity to advance on the Vampire Geek Squad. One of them actually screamed at her approach, and another woman hastily shoved her back, bravely taking a place front and center. Aiyanna instantly recognized this woman wasn’t weak. She was just malnourished and probably sorely underestimated.
“How many of you have magical capabilities?” she demanded.
To her surprise, the other woman answered. “We all do. Peter does,” she jerked her head in the direction of the man struggling for control over his metal ball, “and Phoenix does.”
“You made the cage for Katarina.”
The woman nodded. “We were told to as soon as she and that man showed up. They said that if it worked, those of us who did it would have our fill of blood once every other week rather than once every three weeks.”
But Christian said they needed to drink once a week. These vampires were starved more than she’d thought.
“If you can’t get the blood you need, how is it you have magic?”
“That’s the trick,” a man answered, scowling. “It works best the longer it’s in your system without having any other blood, even magical blood.”
An idea occurred to Aiyanna. “If you help us against Phoenix, we’ll get you all out, keep you safe from Pureblood.”
The vampires’ expressions shuddered in unison. Most of them lowered their gazes, but the man watched her angrily. “You won’t help us, and even if you do there’s nothing stopping Phoenix from coming for us just like he’s come for the group that escaped here.”
“We won’t hurt you though,” the woman offered. “Not until we have orders to.”
Aiyanna nodded, wishing she could help them but knowing she’d feel the same way in their situation. Walking quietly, using all the feline grace she had, she slipped from the room confident no one had noticed her leaving.
Her friends could take care of themselves. She wasn’t so sure about Katarina; that poor witch had a bad day.
Having gotten a whiff of Katarina’s unique, citrus-y scent while she healed her, she sought it out to help her find wherever Phoenix had taken her. It was fainter where she stood than down the hall, giving her at least a general direction to walk in. She still had no idea about what sort of building they stood in, and it was getting old.
Even though it wouldn’t hurt Pureblood at the moment, she wanted to rip the boards down from the windows just so she could see the outside world…and where, exactly, she was. Curious, she put a hand to the glowing board covering a window. Her palm came away with a fluorescent tint, as if she’d touched Day-Glo paint. While the glow quickly faded from her fingers, the dark handprint she’d left on the wood disappeared.
Katarina’s scent became stronger, demanding her attention, and she heard Phoenix’s low voice coming from a room up on her right.
“What are you?” he asked quietly. “We’ve drunk from enough witches to know they don’t hurt us.”
“Why don’t you bite me and find out?” Katarina responded sweetly, her voice growing louder as Aiyanna drew closer.
Phoenix didn’t respond, but Katarina emitted a pained yelp that told Aiyanna she wasn’t quite finished healing for the night.
The witch’s scent and their voices had led her to the last room at the end of the hall, straight in front of her. A set of mahogany double doors blocked the two from her view, but the moment she found they weren’t locked she opened them to see Katarina standing with her arms crossed, scowling. A purple bruise was forming around her eye, but otherwi
se she didn’t seem the worse for wear.
Phoenix leaned against a fireplace and regarded Aiyanna, his smile growing at her entrance.
“I can see your aura,” he said, heat flaring in his mud-brown eyes. “I can see the sex there. You want a man like me between your legs, don’t you?”
If he could really see the colors surrounding her, he would’ve seen her revulsion. Only her hard-won good manners prevented her from saying, “Ewww” like she wanted to. Instead, she told him, “Total dickheads like yourself aren’t my type.” She shrugged. “Too bad.”
Faster than she expected, he ran at her, throwing her against the door and sinking his teeth into her neck. It hurt, feeling exactly like she’d expect sharp teeth piercing her flesh to feel, and giving her a new respect for the humans who willingly helped Christian and his friends. One would think vampires would’ve evolved to have a sort of anesthetic in their teeth or something.
She pushed Phoenix away with one hand, and sank her claws into his abdomen with the other…only they got stuck in the material of his shirt.
Was he wearing a bulletproof vest?
He was stronger than her. Trying to move in his hold was like trying to bend an anvil; she wasn’t going to do it with her own physical strength. She wasn’t sure what it would do to her if she changed forms while something impaled her neck, no matter how shallow the abrasion was. She decided she’d use it as a last resort.
A gunshot shot went off in another room, and Phoenix raised his head from her throat to scowl at the door before lowering down to drink again. Before he latched on a second time, Katarina’s pale arm came into Aiyanna’s vision. Phoenix’s eyes were closed.
He never saw Katarina’s wrist lower over Aiyanna’s neck to pull away. He merely choked, leaned back and regarded both of them with an expression of loathing that would haunt Aiyanna forever.
And then he fell over and died, just like that.
Grimacing, Katarina wiped blood off the knife she held and cut the edge of her shirt to make a temporary bandage for the shallow mark she’d made at her wrist.
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