by Dale Mayer
Ian spoke up, "Funny how this all came about. Look at us. We're fighting a war we didn't even know existed, and all because Tessa went to a friggin' movie where her date got kidnapped."
As much as Cody hated to dwell on Tessa's date with Jared, he couldn't deny the sequence of events that had set off this mess. Tessa had fought her parents and the vampire Council, then went and looked for Jared on her own when she couldn't drum up help. In the process, she'd transformed herself from a naive schoolgirl into a classy vamp.
He shook his head, remembering how his blood had fired at the first sight of the mysterious vampire who'd walked so confidently through the vampire Council gathering. Christ, she'd been hot. Every male eye had turned her way. He'd followed her out of the house, questioned her, and then let her go. Only something about her had been hauntingly familiar.
Then he'd seen her signature crab hop up in the trees and had realised the truth. His heart had recognized the true Tessa, but his hormones had been sidelined by her hot new look. His mind hadn't been able to reconcile the two parts. Even now, he was still trying to figure out just who and what she'd become. And he desperately wanted a chance to find out.
He had to find her.
His jaw clenched. He just wanted a couple of minutes alone with the damned asshole who'd snatched her up while she'd slept. She must have been so exhausted after days of hunting and eventually finally finding Jared that nothing could have woken her.
The asshole who did this to her had a surprise coming. Tessa was his, damn it. And he wouldn't let anyone else have her.
He stopped, and Ian slammed into him.
"Hey, what the hell....?" Ian peered around the corner.
Cody shook his head. "Sorry," he muttered, rushing forward again. His own thoughts about Tessa had shocked him. He'd never thought about a girl like that before. At sixteen, Tessa had been his best friend's kid sister – up until now, that is.
They reached the door. It seemed a harmless door, like all the rest. Cody sniffed the air. An odd scent lingered. Someone had been this way recently, but who knew how recently? He jerked the door open.
A staircase. With an excited look at Ian, he started down into the darkness.
*.*.*
David raced up the long white hallway that would take them to the surface with his father and Goran. Jewel had elected to stay with his mom.
"Do you think Tessa could still be here?" he asked. His kid sister had really showed her colors these last couple of days, and damn - he was proud of her. To think someone had taken her now, from right under their noses, bit into his gut like he wanted to bite into the asshole responsible. She didn't deserve this. But then, the thousand or more people suspended like never-ending blood bottles in that warehouse didn't deserve their fate either.
"I hope so. Finding her outside could be brutal."
Glancing up at his father, David asked, "Didn't you put some kind of electronic tracker on us when we were little?"
Serus half laughed. "We tried, but we found it hard to justify the problems the electronics stirred up in your systems. The devices were meant for humans, and your bodies fought the implants. Tessa’s reaction was the worst. Her body kept trying to get rid of it. She went through a bad time until we had it taken out."
He exchanged a grim look with Goran. "Too bad she reacted that way."
They passed through several doors in the empty hallway.
Goran slapped his best friend on the shoulder. "We'll find her. She might even get free before then. She's got gumption, that girl. And she has brains as well."
David grinned as they went through the last of the doors and finally reached the weird garage floor thing they'd found when they'd first arrived. He couldn't help remembering it was Tessa and Cody who'd figured out how the entire floor lowered. He hoped the three of them would be able to figure out how it worked. That would be their last hurdle before reaching the surface.
They studied the mechanism at the far end of the loading area. Both elders looked over David's shoulder.
"How does it operate?" his father asked.
"Cody did something like this." David put his hand on the metal plate and pushed hard. Instantly, the entire wooden floor rose up slowly. He grinned. "Easy."
Within minutes, the mechanism ground to a halt at the top. The windows were so dirty he couldn't tell how much light shone outside. Was it day or night? The three men walked forward cautiously.
Daylight.
Shit.
Tessa lay quietly on her side. Her guards sat at the other end of the room. Every once in a while, one of them would walk over and poke her. She hadn't reacted since regaining consciousness. She needed time. Time to think. To plan. To escape.
She'd seen no sign of her mom or her dad, or David and Cody. She vaguely remembered lying down on a bed across from Jared to grab an hour or two of sleep. The extraordinary physical exertion she'd expended would have dropped a human a long time ago, but not her. Then again, she wasn't exactly human. Neither was she a vampire. Her weird throwback genes had left her suspended somewhere in between.
As far as she could tell, she was alone in this room except for the guards. When she'd woken, only one had been there. A second one had arrived about an hour ago, while she was tossing her cookies. Or she would have been, if she'd had any cookies left in there. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten – another symptom of her mixed heritage. She needed food. If she could find nothing else, blood would do. And she had to have nothing else available for her to drink that.
Now David, her brother, loved blood. In slushies, in coolers, even mixed with juice. Tessa cringed at the memories. Where was David? And Cody?
Her heart hiccupped at the thought of her brother's best friend. Cody, tall and dark like all vampires, was one of the ancient ones. And like his father, he was a flier. His sideways grin and the flash of sheer animal magnetism in his eyes were what had caught her attention. And she didn't even know how or when.
Somehow in this last week, Cody had gone from simply being her irritating older brother's best friend to something so much more. She just didn't know what yet.
But she desperately wanted to.
She definitely didn't want to spend the rest of her life hanging like a side of beef.
The men's voices rose. Closing her eyes, Tessa tried to hear what they were saying. The first voice belonged to the new guy.
"You shouldn't have taken her. She's gonna be trouble."
"She's already trouble. And what was I supposed to do? These interfering SOBs come in like they own the place and grab everyone. I heard one of them on the phone calling in a team."
Tessa gasped softly. He'd been there, where the rest of them were, listening in. She remembered him as being huge. Every time she'd tried to fight him off, she'd felt as if she were trying to arm wrestle a tank. She didn't even know if he was a vampire. Although given the circumstances, he had to be. Or maybe he was that new breed Cody had mentioned – a turned vampire. They had been outlawed centuries ago. Yet, so had attacking humans, for that matter. Thanks to that, the two species had co-existed peacefully for over a century – until now.
"Yeah. See, that's the part I really don't like. I get that they aren't our people," the first man said. "So who are they? Council members? Not our Council members, obviously. And why are they here? How'd they find this place, anyway?"
Tessa's hopes plummeted at the words 'our Council members.' Talk about betrayal at the highest level. Wait until she told the elders.
"Let's ask her, okay? Right now."
An alarming silence fell over the room, followed by scrapes and bangs from the men rising and pushing back their chairs.
Tessa froze, her heart sliding up the back of her throat as they walked closer.
*.*.*
Cody paused in the stairway for Ian to catch up. The steps appeared to go on forever. That they were hundreds of feet below ground gave the flier in him claustrophobia.
It was as if the ground was pressing down on him and the air was thicker and heavier.
"Why did you stop?" Ian peered around his shoulder to see. "Does this thing ever quit?"
"It has to somewhere. I can't imagine why we're still going down. Why would anyone build something like this? You'd think they had enough space all around without carving deeper into the rocks." Cody smoothed a hand over the stone wall next to him, so cold it appeared almost moist. "How deep underground do you think we are?"
"Who knows?"
"Let's keep going. It can't be too much further." Cody continued his mad dash down into the darkness, never more grateful for his vampire vision that allowed him to see through the blackness. "They must be vampires to work down here without lights."
"Or there could be lights. It's not like we looked."
True enough. Ten more minutes of continuous descent left him dizzy. The air had chilled, and he could almost feel a breeze. That had to mean there was access to fresh air.
Then, without warning, the stairs ran out and Ian slammed into him. Cody grabbed the railing, teetering on the bottom step.
"What the hell?" Ian asked peering over his shoulder.
"Exactly!"
Water rushed up against the bottom stair, reaching hungrily for Cody's boots.
"Where'd this come from?" Ian asked.
Cody shrugged. Who knows? Geography wasn't exactly his thing. Did underground rivers even come under that heading? Who cares? Careful to keep his balance, Cody grasped the corner of the wall and stretched around to see what else was down below. Nothing. Only gleaming, rippling water. No movement, no exit. Nothing.
"It looks like this is the end of the road," he said.
"That so doesn't make sense. All this way for water?" Ian squeezed up beside him and looked around, too. "There's some kind of light up ahead. Might be an entrance."
"Why would there be an entrance down here? We must've come down a mile of stairs."
"Not likely." Ian scoffed. "It just seemed that far because we were going straight down. Think about the location of the house above us. It's perched up high on a hill. Chances are, this is even with the ground level before the road starts to climb up. This could actually be an outside entrance or even a bolthole for people trying to escape."
"An exit they could've used to haul Tessa out of here?"
"I doubt it." Ian shook his head. "She's no small child to carry down these stairs. That's a long distance, and there's no way to know how deep this water might be."
Cody's heart lightened. "I wonder if we should walk out in it a bit just to make sure."
Ian groaned. "Feel free, but there's no way I am. Can't you fly down the passage? I'll stay here, and you can just swoop out to make sure we know exactly what we're dealing with."
"I don't know. The place has barely enough room for me to open my wings, much less extend them properly. I'm more likely to end up swimming."
Cody studied the space. He could barely make out the far wall. And the ceiling dropped, so he wouldn't be able to get much height. The water didn't flow, really. It sat. So no force directed it one way or the other.
"I bet water levels have risen, flooding this over time," he said. "I don't think it's very deep. In fact, I'm sure it isn't."
He stepped off the bottom stair into the water.
*.*.*
David huddled inside the doorway and glowered at the rising sun. His inability to endure daylight was a definite downside to his vampire heritage but it was not one that bothered Tessa. Her kidnappers were they human or even turned, would have walked out of here, no problem, while the 'normal' vampires had to wait for darkness to fall. Apart from his jacket to throw over his head, he hadn't been able to scare up anything better. An old nasty looking tarp was crumpled in the far corner, but it had more holes than were healthy for his purposes.
"Well, I'm not just sitting here. They could be counting on the sunlight stopping us."
"Don't do anything foolish. We might have a few limitations, but stupidity isn't one of them." Serus's alarmed tone pulled David back from the door.
He shot his father a disgusted look. "I'm not an idiot, stupid. The house is only a short run away." He stripped his jacket off his shoulders, "With this, I can make the distance easily."
Not giving the elders a chance to argue, David pulled the jacket around his face and bolted from the shed. Dashing across the short distance, he jumped onto the stone staircase and then the porch. Once he had reached the front door, he found it was unlocked. Perfect.
Pushing it open, he bolted inside, and then waved to the other two. "Come on, it's safe."
He didn't think his sister would be here, but who understood the minds of men who could suspend hundreds of humans to form a blood bank? Sure, vampires needed blood, but the old days of going out and hunting down prey were gone. Synthetic blood was cheap, easily available, and tasted better. Just the thought of what humans ate made David's stomach cringe. Everything a human ate affected the flavor of their blood. For every good tasting human, there had to be dozens of fat clogged nasties. He'd take synthetic blood any day.
He walked into the living room and waited for his father and Goran. At least they could search the house thoroughly. It was a vampire lair, and the windows had been blackened so that that all light was shut out.
Pounding footsteps preceded the door being thrown open. Serus and Goran skidded to a stop at the base of the wide staircase. David laughed at them. "You should see yourselves."
"Brat!" His father glared at him.
David's grin widened. "Considering all the traps in this place, I think we should stick together and start at the top of the house and search our way down."
"I'd be flying if not for the damn daylight." Goran stared out of the still-open front door.
"I wish you could," Serus said morosely. "Who knows how far they could take Tessa from here? We might never find her."
"Don't even think it, old friend." Goran wrapped an arm around Serus's shoulders and squeezed. "We will find her."
Serus nodded, tight lipped. "Let's do our part. I don't like leaving Rhia alone down there for too long, either. Upstairs, everyone."
David took the lead. He'd no sooner stepped up onto the first stair, when the front door slammed closed and was locked behind them.
Her eyelids at half-mast, Tessa lay still as the men approached. Trussed up like a fowl for roasting, she couldn't defend herself. Neither had she found a way to loosen the ropes biting into her flesh. Playing dead was a lousy defense.
"It's not like she's going to volunteer any information, you know."
"Don't be stupid, Troy. Of course she isn't. At least, not without a little persuasion…"
His creepy, gleeful voice sent shudders through Tessa. Surely they wouldn't hurt her. She was a baby when it came to pain. She couldn't even put a Band-Aid on herself. Then again...she'd been through nothing but pain these last few days. She cast her mind back to everything she'd been through and realized that the old Tessa had gone. She'd changed, matured, evolved.
These men were dealing with a whole new critter. One even she didn't fully understand.
"You can't bruise her up. You know that. The rules are very strict. Everyone has to be in good health. Bruises kick up the human healing response. We don't want the immune system activated; it turns the blood."
"They can do without this one." He grabbed Tessa with his huge hands and flipped her onto her back. She stayed silent, floppy and let her body roll.
"See, she's still out. She can't answer any questions. How much did you give her, anyway?"
"She never really went out properly. And with all that upchucking she did, I'm surprised she has any drugs left in her system."
For the first time, Tessa noted a hint of concern in the big man's voice. Maybe there was hope for her after all.
That hope was dashed with his next words.
"You'll tell the boss about the
throwing up, right? I didn't do anything to her. You saw that."
"No, I didn't see what you did. Did you give her the right dose? Damn it, Bydron. Did you overdose her? That would explain the vomiting. She's tall, but there's not much meat on her."
"I used the same as I would for anyone her size," Bydron protested. "She's big, Troy. She should have been able to handle it."
"She obviously didn't," Troy snapped.
One of them placed a warm hand against her forehead. If she could have, she'd have giggled. What did her forehead temperature have to do with anything?
"She doesn't have a fever. I’ve already checked," Bydron growled. "I'm not stupid. I know she's warm, but there's no sign of anything else wrong – except she isn't waking up."
A weird silence engulfed them.
Finally, Troy spoke in a calmer tone, "We need to get the specialists here. Let them check her over."
"Easier just to kill her. Way less trouble," Bydron snapped. "That's what I would have done right off."
"You better not let the team hear you say that. They need more donors, remember?"
Tessa wiggled her fingers beneath the small of her back. Her shoulders were now pulled against her spine at an odd angle, but the rollover had done something to the ropes. She could shift her hands a little bit. If the men would just go away and leave her alone, she might be able to get them free.
As if answering her prayers, Troy said, "Come on. Let's find out where the others are. Maybe they can check her out now."
Tessa listened intently as their heavy footsteps retreated, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing. Had all of them left? Or just one of them? She sneaked a look beneath her lashes and discovered they had all gone.
She was alone.
Elated, she sprang into action.