by Dale Mayer
This place was as good as any to start looking. She closed her eyes and sent out a silent probe.
Cody? Cody, can you hear me?
There was nothing in response.
With a shrug, Tessa slipped up to the back door and tested the handle. It turned easily under her grip. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open. It moved soundlessly. The interior was dark. And quiet.
She closed her eyes briefly, wondering about the wisdom of going in. But if her friends were here, then she had to find them.
Groaning at the lack of choices, she slipped inside and flattened herself against the first wall. She couldn't hear anything over the pounding of her heart. She tried to calm her breathing, but the raspy air came out of her mouth so loudly, she knew anyone close could hear her. Vampires had incredibly sensitive hearing amongst other things.
She gave herself another few seconds and a firm talking to. Then she switched on both sets of visions to allow herself to see anything and everything as she crept from one room to another.
Each room was fully furnished, but empty of signs of life. There were no books, papers, dishes – dirt, even. There were no items of clothing or obvious signs of comfort. There were pictures on the wall, however.
After quickly checking that the room was empty, she walked over to the pictures and searched the faces. She moved from one picture to the other. She didn't recognize any of the vamps. And they were vamps. Not that she needed that confirmation at this point.
They didn't resemble any she'd met over the blood farm mess or through her associations with her father or the council. Her father would most likely recognize some of them.
She spun around as another thought occurred. Did they have cell phones here? She walked the walls looking for cords, chargers, any type of phone or some way to communicate. Even a laptop would be helpful. Actually, totally helpful.
She searched the whole downstairs.
Again, there was nothing.
Not wanting to, but knowing that she had to, she slipped up the stairs and checked out the second floor. There was the same anonymous look to the bedrooms as there was to the downstairs. She checked out the closets but there were no clothes, no bedding, and no signs of habitation. For all intents and purposes, the house was empty – and had been for a long time.
She walked through to see if there was anything useable. A shower would be nice. A change of clothes would be great. Hers were bloodstained, sweat-stained, and showed more skin than she was comfortable with at this time. A nap would be even better, just a short power nap to recharge. She was used to those. Having a family that lived all night and attending a school that operated all night, she was used to twenty-minute power naps to recharge.
Could she chance it?
She sat down on the side of the bed, suddenly more tired than she could remember. She stared down at her torn, dirty clothes – so fashionable, so-o-o very long ago.
Running a weary hand through her hair she realized she needed a plan, a way forward. She'd found shelter. That was a start. And what about the rest?
She didn't know what was next.
With the idea of rest and recuperation foremost in her mind, she went back through the closets and bedrooms, searching for any items of clothing left behind. She found a shirt forgotten in the closet of the smallest bedroom. It was in the closet on the back shelf, in black, of course. She went to the bathroom and turned a tap, hoping for water. It trickled out. Not enough for a shower, but enough for a wash and a drink.
Food would be a lost cause. This was a vampire holding. Blood only for consumption. And if no one had been here in a long time, there'd be no blood either.
She hated blood, but necessity being what it was…she'd check in a few minutes. First, maybe she could remove a layer of dirt. The vamps would smell her coming at this rate. She found an old towel below the sink and took a moment to clean up. The water was cold. She forced herself to do a good job regardless. Pulling on her new shirt, she checked out the mirror. Not fashionable, but she'd had enough of that at this point. Feeling much better, she ran her fingers though her hair, then tugged it back into long sections, which she quickly braided into a single plait down her back.
Feeling more energized and in control than she had been for days, she folded her discarded shirt into as small a bundle as she could, stuffed it in her coat pocket, and went back downstairs.
She'd been lucky so far. Maybe it would hold for a little while longer.
Tessa stood outside the house, searching the darkening sky. No sign of life in any direction. Could the owners be absent, or had this place been deserted? And if so, why?
It was dark enough for her fellow vamps to be out, at least in the shadows. Some of the weird new vamps also traveled in daylight. Or, rather, half light.
Still, she couldn't hear anything.
It was that complete absence of sound that bothered her the most. There should be birds, wind, the rustling of small animals. Dogs, even. Here, there was nothing.
It was as if someone had swept through the village and stolen away everything that was alive.
Except for her.
That she couldn't see any energy tracks was another issue. She'd been so sure her group had landed here. If there was some underground method of traveling between houses or out buildings then she'd have to check each of the buildings for her friends' energy signatures. That could take all night. She didn't have the time and neither did they.
Not wasting any more time, she slipped through the trees at the side of the property and moved on to the next house. The doors were locked and the windows shuttered. It was as silent as everything else. There was no residue of energy anywhere. It was cold and lifeless. She moved on.
Five houses later, she turned to face the way she'd come, reassured by the energy trail she'd left behind. She wasn't imagining the lack of vamps or people. She was alone. Determined to check every place, and scared that she might not find what she was looking for, she ran across to the next house. This one was tucked up against another hillside. Why? She didn't get that thinking. Sure, you could land on the hill and walk in through the upper balcony, but did that help in any way? In wintertime, the snow would pile up or avalanche on top of the house. In the spring, the runoff from the melting snow would run into the house.
She shook her head and approached warily.
Things that didn't make sense to her didn't mean they weren't built that way for a reason.
She jumped on to the front porch. The front door was locked. Descending the stairs slowly, she did yet another check on the sky and walked around the corner of the house. It was literally built into the hill. As in, she couldn't see the back of the house for the dirt cascading down around it.
How bizarre. It was almost as if the hill was eating the house. A landslide must have come down recently.
She couldn't see any other door. To be sure, she walked around to the other side. Again, there was no way in or out. If there had been, they would have been covered by the slide. She turned to leave and move onto the next house.
And then she stopped.
Something made her turn back.
She backed up so she could see the rooftop and realized she should be approaching this from another direction.
She jumped to the top of the roof. She made it so smooth and so clean, it surprised her. She'd figured she'd be too tired, but she could feel her vamp heritage pulsing through her veins, reminding her that these movements were natural and instinctive.
It had taken no more effort to make that jump than it had to walk the path from one house to the other.
And it shouldn't too.
She was a vamp and a good one.
She laughed and spun in a circle on the roof and nearly fell down.
She wasn't alone.
*.*.*
Jared walked through the house, alone and lonely. Yet the house was full. An ordinary looking home from the outside, there were s
everal full-time residents and staff, loads of bedrooms and several common rooms, plus the usual dining room – extra large, with an almost commercial looking kitchen and laundry. That was to be expected, given the nature of some of the medical issues.
Still, while he was surrounded by people, he'd barely spoken to anyone except the officials, and they showed no signs of leaving him alone. Worry knotted his insides. A mess of people had gone missing from the blood farm. People who'd come to rescue him hadn't returned safely to their families. They'd all left in different vehicles with so much laughing and excitement…and yet horror. He'd seen them briefly but had been taken away by the authorities. He didn't know who had left with whom, or which vehicles had come or gone. In fact, he knew very little. And that pissed him off.
The officials seemed to have no idea of who was missing and who wasn't. There could be five missing or fifty. The police weren't going to give him the details.
He ran a hand over his face, a fine tremor rippling down his spine. How could this have happened? It was such a massive operation. Was life as the humans knew it about to end? Was it Armageddon in a form no one had seen coming?
Hell. That was enough to stop him from sleeping ever again.
And so far he'd only spoken with human authorities. Had any of the many young vamps gone missing, too? Or were only humans targeted? Though why they'd want vamps, he had no idea. From the bits and pieces he'd gathered from Tessa's family and friends, he understood they'd found several vamps hanging in the blood farm alongside the humans but connected to a separate machinery system.
He doubted authorities of either species had any idea how big this operation was, or how dangerous to their current ways of life. He'd seen the vamps in action. These people hadn't.
Then there was Tessa. He'd borrowed another resident's phone to make several calls today. Sam was dealing with a new amputation of his right arm and didn't mind sharing. Since his aunt's visit, Jared hadn't been able to get Tessa out of his mind. He'd tried to call her several times. He'd also called several of his buddies. No one had heard from her…or about her.
In fact, many were just learning about what he'd been through in spite of the police attempts to keep a lid on this whole mess. As if. There was no way to keep this quiet. It was too big.
He worried about the kids he'd met after his escape. He knew them all on a first-name basis, but that was it. In the craziness last night, he'd been separated from them before having a chance to grab their cell phone numbers so he could stay in contact.
Once again, he felt disconnected from everyone.
If anything had happened to Tessa after all she'd gone through to save him, well…
He shuddered. That couldn't happen. She had a lot of supporters and protectors, though. He had to trust that they'd look after their own. Like Cody. Thinking of how incredibly big and dangerous Cody had appeared, his mind soured. And how protective he’d been to her! Cody hadn't left Tessa's side once they'd all met up again.
He cheered up, remembering it had been him she'd come running to.
They needed time to just be kids. To go out for a meal, hang at the mall, or even just sit in the hallway at school and talk. They'd both been through so much. And they really didn't know each other that well – yet.
He still couldn't believe she was a vamp. Now that he'd seen her with her vampire family, he didn't doubt it, but that wasn't the same as reconciling the two parts of Tessa in his mind
"Hey, Jared. The cops are here again. They have more questions."
Damn.
He turned to face the two men standing in the doorway. Humans, yes. Cops? With the look on the one man's face…hell no. At least, not cops who were on his side.
*.*.*
Cody led the group through the door in the back of the room. He studiously ignored Xana, who was half leaning on Jewel. She'd woken up and had refused to be left behind. He shrugged. So what if she came? He couldn't in good conscience leave her behind.
But he wanted to. And he hated that he still cared enough to want that. She was a bitch. She'd done him wrong and that should be the end of it. She'd treated all males the same – like possessions to toss around at whim. But right now, she was as much a victim as he was. She didn't deserve his animosity. He'd have to try harder to be nice.
The rooms appeared to continue around like a train set, and were possibly laid out in a circle. He wondered if they just kept opening doors and walking through them, would they end up at the first place they'd been locked in. A sobering thought. With a warning glance at the others, he swiftly opened the next door. There was one bed in it. The room was also shorter than the others. If this were a hospital, it would be a private room for some big shot. He walked over to the single man on the bed who had tubes running into his arms, the same as the others. Only this man was hooked up to two other machines. What the hell?
"It's Councilman Trondjent!"
Jewel's shocked whisper had them all surrounding the bed to view the man they'd last seen in the vehicle taking them to safety.
"That means he wasn't in this mess after all. He's a victim, too."
David's harsh voice broke in. "Even worse, he's another of the ancient families. They want more from him than they do from the others."
"But for what?"
"I hate to say it, but his genes."
Everyone turned to stare at Ian. It was Cody who cautiously asked, "Genes?"
"As in the genetics that make up his line. That's the only reason to be interested in him. If they're doing any kind of research, genetic manipulation or gene therapy – then they’ll need his DNA."
David motioned to the big machines at the side of the councilman. "How and what these are for remains a mystery."
"Did they do something like that to my mother then?" David asked, anger and a hint of fear in his voice.
"They might have. Or they might not have had time." Cody walked over to study the machine. "What should we do for the councilman? Unhook him? Or leave him?"
"I vote we leave him," said Xana softly.
"Or kill him to put him out of his misery," Ian said. "I know which one I'd prefer after having been in his position once already."
"As much as I don't like it, I think it's too dangerous to unhook him from everything. He looks to be at a different machine," David said, moving down to the next door. "The best thing we can do is to leave him to be rescued later."
Cody saw the sense of that, but… He glanced back at the door they'd just come through. "If we unhook all the others and wake them up, we'd get some help on our side."
The three men stopped and looked at each other. Then, they turned to look at Xana.
She straightened, flung her long hair back over her shoulder, and glared back. "What does that look mean?"
"If they could recover as fast as you, we'd have a lot more allies to fight this war with," Cody said slowly, assessing her color. She'd always been stunning, like a diamond that glinted in the moonlight. For a while, like every other male vamp, he'd been taken in by the shiny new toy. It hadn't taken him long to realize Xana was like her mother. She called the shots in a relationship, and when she left, it was only after making sure the male was in shreds.
Recovery hadn't been easy. David had been a big help. And after Cody had finally seen Xana for what she was, he'd recovered faster. He was still angry, but he was also sad for her.
She was a bitch and had been raised by a bitch to be the top bitch. He couldn't wait for mother and daughter to duke it out. It would be worth the popcorn to watch it happen. But the male in him wanted to make sure he wasn't on the same continent when it happened.
Still, she was a product of her upbringing and he could understand that.
Cody added, "Think about it – they are big, old, and are going to be majorly pissed when they wake up. They also have connections we don't have. They would be a huge asset."
"But how long until they are aware enough to help?" David
argued. "We're still missing Tessa, and who's to say our parents even made it out."
Jewel winced. "We could split up—"
"Hell, no." Ian jumped in. "We stay together always from now on. Look what happens when we split up."
"And yet Tessa is still not with us, even though we were all together in that vehicle." Jewel took a deep breath and said, "I know that we might have been singled out for special treatment, but she's even more special. They aren't going to have her in a generic room full of vamps with a needle in her arm like the others. She's going to be like our esteemed councilman here, under special observation."
Cody sucked in his breath, hating the image of Tessa lying cold and unprotected while these assholes did whatever they wanted to her. "Then we move forward. Check that she isn't here. Then we come back and wake those guys up."
David, his tone grim and dark, said, "To hell with it. See, if we unhooked them all now, they'd have some time to wake up – so when we came back, they might be of some value." He reached out and squeezed Cody's shoulders. "She's my sister, and my parents are likely to be here, too. I want to go forward. But we have to be sensible. We can't do this alone."
Cody fought for reason and control. But he didn't want to. Finally he swallowed an oath, and strode back the way they'd come. "Five minutes. We'll rip those tubes out and leave. That's all the time I'm giving this."
Ian ran behind him. "Let's hope that's enough."
He reached the door before Cody and opened it.
And came to a dead stop.
"Oh, shit."
*.*.*
Arriving at the blood farm, Serus sighed with relief at the number of vehicles sitting in the driveway. "This looks good."
"Does it?" Goran stared at the mix of human and vampire cars. "Can we trust that these people are here to help?"