The screaming stopped, her body instantly going limp. Staring into her face, my stomach curdled. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, practically a child, and that, I knew, was against the Vampire Council’s edict.
Whatever was going on here, once they found out, all Hell would break loose.
The low sound of a cry of pain caught my ears once more and I crawled away from the dead vamp and back over to the body on the ground. There was blood everywhere, but I knew instantly by his blond buzzcut that it was Anthony.
His thigh was ripped open, the blood oozing from the ragged-edged wound in a steady trickle. He would bleed out, unless I did something to stop it, and fast.
I felt my magic inside me, felt it coiled and ready for my command, but I had no idea how I was supposed to command it. I’d lived my life with the belief that I had no powers, that I was little more than a burden to the coven I was a member of.
And now, suddenly, I was supposed to have faith that I did have magic? Well, it wasn’t so much faith as I had proof that the magic was within me.
God, it was all starting to sound a little too much like a cutesy kid’s movie.
Anthony stared up at me, his eyes rapidly beginning to glaze over. He was going to die, bleed out, as I stared at him, too afraid to do anything. I might not know how to use my magic, but I did know how to do basic first aid and if that was all I was capable of offering him right now, then that was what I would do.
Ripping away my Kevlar vest, I grabbed my athame and ripped away a strip of material from my shirt before wrapping it around his thigh above the bloody wound. Tearing another strip of my shirt away, I pressed it into the wound and tried to hold the ragged edges shut.
All I had to figure out now was how I was supposed to get him out of here.
I couldn’t leave him alone and, despite being strong, I wasn’t strong enough to carry the dead weight of Anthony through the warehouse.
“Morgan!” Graham called out to me, his voice cutting through the dull light that slowly filtered through the warehouse ceiling.
Was it getting brighter?
“Morgan!” he called again, and I opened my mouth to answer, but Anthony’s hand slapped across my lips effectively silencing me.
“Don’t. They have a mimic. It’s how they tore us apart so easily,” his voice was strong and steady, but his words sent a shiver down my spine.
What the hell was a mimic?
I nodded my head slowly to indicate I understood exactly what he was saying to me and he let his hand drop away slowly. I could see the fear in his eyes, eyes that were brighter than they had been moments before.
“What’s a mimic?” I asked him, leaning in a little closer to him so I could keep my voice as nothing more but a whisper.
“I’ve never seen one, but I have heard of them; but they’re old, really old, the kind of shit that used to exist long before they ever created the Preternatural Force, long before monsters were even known throughout society.”
His words triggered something in the back of my head, but it was faint, almost like the impression of a memory that had been wiped clean.
“Why is it here?” I said, adjusting my hand on Anthony’s wound.
He winced slightly and sucked in a low breath through his teeth. “Careful,” he warned, adjusting himself beneath the pressure I was putting on his thigh.
“Anthony, why is the mimic here?”
“I don’t know. I presumed it was working with the vamps, but I don’t know why it would. They normally attach themselves to power, real power, and those vamps, while creepy as Hell, they’re not powerful.”
I couldn’t argue with him on the creepy as Hell diagnosis. They really were; I’d never heard of vamps eating their victims, it was utterly unheard of. Blood was the only thing they were normally interested in and yet I had witnessed it with my own eyes.
“We need to get out of here,” Anthony said, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Have you got your radio?”
He shook his head and gestured to a pile of broken plastic and wires. “She broke it; she was just toying with me. What about yours?”
I looked down at the floor sheepishly and shook my head. “They broke mine too. They’re trying to get us alone, corner us.”
Anthony nodded, “Did any of the guys get out of here?”
I shook my head, “I don’t know, you’re the first one I’ve come across alive.”
“Those bastards, I’m going to kill them for this.”
I didn’t answer him, there was no point. The wounds he had were the kind to take you off the Force permanently, but that wasn’t my call to make.
“Well, we still need to get out of here. If you can give me a boost up, I think we could manage to sneak out.”
“Anthony, I can’t carry you, you’re too heavy and too hurt to move.”
He stared up at me in confusion. “Look, I know I’m hurt, but I’m not dying. I can walk. I just need you to give me a hand.”
I opened my mouth to tell him just how injured he was when he rolled onto his side and up onto his knees.
My shirt was still wrapped around his leg in a tourniquet, but the blood had stopped pouring from the wound and the edges looked as though they’d begun to knit back together.
I stared at until Anthony finally cleared his throat and gave me a pointed look.
“Can we please get a move on? I don’t want to be here when they decide to do more than send a mimic after us.”
I didn’t argue with him; instead, I hopped to my feet and swung his arm up and over my shoulders. His arm was wide, like a thick tree branch, and it took all my strength to plant my feet and take his weight as he pushed up onto his feet.
We staggered forward into the grey dark that surrounded us, our pace slow and methodical. It was all we could guarantee.
Chapter 31
We passed by the body of the first vamp I had taken down and my pace increased. I could hear voices up ahead, lights and the sound of weaponry being geared up.
Stepping into the ring of light that surrounded Graham and the other Elite officers, I paused, my lungs refusing to cooperate as it took all of my might to keep Anthony on his feet.
Graham saw me first, the relief that filled his eyes making me feel somehow lighter. I’d been so certain that he hated me for keeping secrets from him, that my refusal to tell him what had happened to his daughter had damaged our fragile work relationship.
He crossed the floor and moved beneath Anthony’s other arm, taking the bulk of the weight from me. I sucked in a deep breath, allowing my lungs to fill with the crisp air that flowed in through he wide open warehouse doors.
“I thought you weren’t coming back out, when I couldn’t contact you on the radio….” He trailed off and helped me walk Anthony over to the waiting medics on standby.
“Yeah, it was broken in one of the scuffles; the place is crawling with vamps. I think we’re going to have to send in an extermination crew.”
Graham’s face went pale, a stark contrast between his skin tone and the black of the Kevlar vest that sat high up around his neck. He motioned for me to step away from the other men so we could talk privately.
“We don’t send them in, in case there are civilians. How can we guarantee we won’t be killing innocent…?”
I cut him off with a shake of my head, “Graham, whatever is in there is far from innocent. They’re vampires, but different; I watched one of them rip into Anthony.”
“That’s what vamps do, they’re vicious,” he said, scrubbing his hand across his face.
“Not like this, I watched the vamp tear into him like he was a prime rib steak and they hadn’t seen food in a month. They’ve gone feral or something, I don’t know. All I do know is that whatever is going in there, we need to stop it before it spreads.”
“I hope you know what you’re asking for, here, Amber.”
He used my first name again. I was beginning to notice a pattern.
He used my first name when he thought I needed to be treated with kid gloves, when he wasn’t sure I was really paying enough attention to what he was saying and I needed to be stopped, forced to listen to reason.
Well, in this instance, he was wrong. I’d seen them; I’d seen what they’d done to Joanna, and it had been far from normal, but now I’d seen it firsthand. Perhaps if I hadn’t, I would have been just as sceptical as Graham was acting now. But he was the one who needed to understand the truth. He needed to trust me.
“I do….” I trailed off, my gaze tracking Graham’s expression as he suddenly cocked his head to one side as though straining to listen to something only he could hear.
I tried to listen along with him but I couldn’t hear anything; there didn’t seem to be anything to hear. And yet, Graham stood stock still, his eyes fixated into the darkness.
“What is it? What can you hear?”
“You don’t hear her calling me?”
“No.” I shook my head as a feeling of dread washed through me. “Graham, stop listening to it, it’s a mimic….”
But it was as though he couldn’t hear me at all.
He took a trembling step forward and I grabbed his arm, halting him in his tracks.
“Graham, listen to me,” I started to say, but he looked at me with pure anger and impatience.
“It’s her, it’s Jess; she’s alive, Morgan, she’s really alive.”
“No, she’s not, what you’re listening to is a mimic.” Of course, I couldn’t be sure that it was a mimic. It was entirely possible that it really was Jessica calling out to her father. But no matter what it was, the thing that was calling to him wanted only one thing, and that was to spill his blood.
“I need to go to her,” he said, attempting to jerk out of my grip.
“Graham, no, it’s not Jessica; she’s gone, she’s a vampire!”
My words had their desired effect and he paused long enough to glare back at me. “She’s what?” he asked, the beginnings of his heartbreak mirrored in his eyes.
“She’s a vampire. I saw it, I saw her….”
“Where, where did you see her?”
“In a vision; she was with the vamp that killed Joanna Sidwell, the one that took Christina.”
Graham shook his head; the shock on his face wasn’t something that could be faked and I wanted to reach out to him, to apologise. I should have told him sooner, then maybe….
“Daddy!” A voice pierced the air, wet and gurgling.
Graham’s eyes went wide and wild and before I could stop him he’d jerked free of my grip and was racing across the floor to the girl I’d seen in the pictures hanging in his apartment, the girl I’d seen hold Christina back as her lover snapped Joshua’s neck.
She clutched at her neck, but the blood gushing from between her fingers was unmistakable.
It was a trap, it had to be a trap.
“Get everyone else out of here!” I ordered to the men, watching the scene unfold.
They stirred as though roused from a sleep and suddenly launched into action.
Following Graham across the warehouse, I raced into the darkness after him. The only thing guiding me through the darkness was Jessica’s incessant calling for her father’s help and Graham’s steady pace as his boots hit the cement floor.
“Graham!” I called out to him, but he disappeared around the side of a large grouping of containers and then the calling stopped.
Picking up my pace, I swung my pump action shotgun down from my shoulder and gripped it hard. The silence had converged once more and now I couldn’t even make out the steady pace of Graham’s progress.
Just like before, it was the silence that made me nervous. Nothing was supposed to be this silent, not even the grave.
Creeping around the edge of the containers, I peered ahead, my eyes making out Graham’s crumpled form on the ground, his daughter bent over his body.
“Get the hell away from him,” I said, stepping out from my observation point.
Jessica glanced up at me, her beautiful face marred by the blood that had been smeared up onto her chin. Someone had slit her throat…. Not that it really mattered; she was a vampire, the amount of damage they could sustain and still survive it was astounding.
But then, that came with the territory of already being dead.
Her eyes met mine and there was nothing, no pull of power.
Just nothing.
It was eerie; I’d never met a vampire that didn’t have some sort of pull to its gaze. Granted, I hadn’t met many vampires, but this was a whole other ball game.
“He’s not dead, yet,” she said, her voice hoarse, no doubt from the long slit that ran across the front of her throat.
“Why are you doing this? He loves you; even though you’re a vampire, he’d still accept you as you are….”
She shook her head and stared back down at her father, there was a tenderness in the way she stroked her fingers through his hair, but when she returned her gaze to me, her gaze was that of a predator.
“No, he wouldn’t. He says he would but really….” She trailed off.
“So what are you going to do to him? I presume you have a plan.”
“I can’t do anything to him, even if I wanted to; he’s not mine to touch.” There was a strain in her voice that I hadn’t detected before, almost as though she was fighting against something.
“I don’t understand,” I said, answering honestly. I didn’t understand, her words didn’t make any sense. She’d lured him out here for a reason. Whatever that reason was, well, she had to know.
So why was she being so coy about it all?
“We want you, and if you’re good and do as you’re told, then he gets to live.” There was definitely a strain to her voice now, almost as though the words that were coming out of her mouth were not her own but someone else’s.
“Who is we, Jessica?” I said. If I could get her to crack then maybe I could figure out just what was going on here.
“It’s not time…” she said, dropping to her knees next to her father’s unmoving body.
“Jessica, don’t you dare, that’s your father! Don’t you touch him!” My voice went high as I moved in towards her, the shotgun aimed squarely at her chest.
She glanced up at me and snarled, the way an animal would when its hunt was interrupted. Her fangs were fully extended and she’d dug her fingers into the cement in the floor, leaving little indentations that proved just how strong she was.
“Mine,” she snarled and dropped on top of Graham; I settled my finger on the trigger and suddenly the world shifted around me before going completely black.
Chapter 32
My stomach rolled and I swallowed back the bile that crept up the back of my throat. Hurling whilst wearing a black hood over the top of my head didn’t feel like the best plan.
Bile crept up the back of my throat once more and I gagged.
Something had happened; there was a reason I felt like someone had decided to electrocute me before dragging me through the bushes, backwards, after a night of heavy drinking.
Hungover didn’t begin to cover how I felt.
My hands were bound behind me, the ropes burning against my skin the way salt burned in an open wound. What was happening?
I let my fingers brush back and forth on the ground; the grass was soft, if a little long, and I seemed to be propped against something hard and cold.
My stomach fought to rebel again and I moaned to myself.
I would not get sick. I refused.
I’d look like a right idiot if I managed to allow myself to get kidnapped only to vomit all over myself. It wasn’t something I would live down at the Elite if it happened.
Memories washed back over me: Graham on the ground, unmoving, and his daughter Jessica watching him … no, scratch that, salivating over him.
I’d started to pull the trigger and then nothing. Well, nothing until now, wherever now was.
I shifted against the ropes
and winced, the pain momentarily blinding me as they cut even deeper into my wrists. What the hell were they made from? It cut like razor wire and yet felt like rope.
“She’s awake.”
I recognised the voice instantly. The vampire’s tone wasn’t something I would forget in a hurry, especially as he’d been the one to try and kill me in my apartment. We hadn’t spent much time together and yet, with the visions I’d had of him, I couldn’t help but feel as though I knew him personally.
“Take the hood off her so,” another voice said. This time, it was female, and there was nothing familiar about it.
The hood was yanked from my head and my eyes struggled to adjust to the scene surrounding me. Christina sat across from me, her eyes wide and filled with terror; the gag in her mouth had rubbed the sides of her face raw and I could just make out the tracks of her tears on her cheeks. She still wore the nightdress she’d been wearing the night they took her.
She, too, sat on the grass, propped against an old and crumbling tombstone, her legs out in front of her and bound at the ankles. She watched me with large, expressive dark eyes and I felt my chest constrict with her panic.
“It’s going to be all right, Christina, we’re going to get you out of here,” I said, my voice low and soothing.
Something wrapped its fingers in my hair, jerking my head backwards, forcing me to look up into its eyes. Jessica stared down at me, the blood dried onto her chin and face—but the wound, no doubt self-inflicted, was gone, the skin unmarred as though it had never even existed.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said, sneering down at me.
“I don’t intend to,” I said, keeping my tone flat and emotionless despite the pain her fingers wrapped in my hair caused.
She released me with a snarl, allowing me to continue surveying the scene. Graham was propped against a tree, his body tied in place with the same rope I imagined was wrapped around my hands, it was thick enough, and certainly coarse enough, to be the same. But he wasn’t moving and he wasn’t conscious.
A Grave Magic: The Shadow Sorceress Book One Page 16