Evan wiggled and twisted to take advantage of the diagonal space. Her shirt crept up and her side pressed down on the glass. She was stuck.
“Are you okay? We have to hurry,” said Tommy.
The air squeezed tight in her chest. She pressed and wiggled in the window frame.
“I’m stuck!”
Tommy cursed below her.
If she stayed stuck in the window not only was she dead meat, but Tommy was as well. She pushed with her arms and wiggled her torso. The glass shards dug into her sides, cutting into her skin. Blood trickled down her hips. She leaned into the glass shards, cutting deeper. She shimmied again and slipped through the window, landing hard on the walkway. Blood slicked her sides and stained her pants.
“Damn.” Her body stung from her hips to her breasts. She wiped her torso with her T-shirt and glanced around. The floor of the building contained two large military trucks, tables full of guns, and ammunition and crates stacked high all along two walls.
Lou hadn’t been lying when he’d said they were prepared for any attack. She jogged down the walkway but where there should have been stairs they’d been ripped off. She headed back to where she’d started and hopped over the railing. She lowered herself as far as possible, and then dropped to the top of the truck. The vehicle shook beneath her and she slipped as she landed. She slid down the windshield, then bumped over the hood and landed hard on the dirt ground.
Her body ached from the jump, the fall, the cuts, the stab wound to her leg. She lay winded on the cement and wished she were drinking a margarita next to a pool instead of breaking into a weapons building. Not that she’d ever had a margarita. But she remembered seeing a movie when she was a kid. A woman was on a tropical island sipping a margarita, and Evan had always thought that would be the height of luxury. Too bad everything had happened before she’d become legal to drink.
She got to her feet, located the door, and limped to it. She opened it slowly and peeked out.
“Tommy,” she whispered.
There was no answer.
“Tommy—”
A large hand clamped over her mouth and she was shoved inside. She kicked out and tore at the hand when the door was shut and locked.
“Shhh… Evan, it’s me.” Tommy removed his hand from her mouth.
She smacked him in the chest. “Dammit, Tommy, what did you do that for?”
“Shhh…” He held his fingers to her lips. His eyes stayed focused on the entrance.
Someone outside tried the handle and then two people continued a conversation and moved on.
“Sorry,” he said. “I saw them coming right as you opened the door.”
“Let’s move.” The longer she stood the more her energy waned. She headed for the tables of guns and ammo.
“You’re limping,” he said.
“Yeah, well, running, jumping, falling, falling again, and then falling again. All while having been stabbed in the leg only a week ago, tends to leave me a bit sore.” She scanned the dark table and found a revolver with the appropriate ammo. She shoved the gun into her waistband and the ammo into her pocket. Then she grabbed two hunting knives and put one in each boot.
“The big ones will be harder to hide,” said Tommy.
“Then we have to stay small.” She scanned over the remaining guns and picked out two more. Lifting her shirt, she pushed them into her waistband.
“What the hell?” Tommy stepped up to her quickly and lifted her shirt.
“I couldn’t fit through the window.” She lowered the black shirt back over the deep gouges. She looked like she’d been in a wrestling match with a lion. The cuts had stopped dripping but they still oozed.
“You’ll need to tend to that,” he said. “After this I’ll go to the hospital wing. I’ll get as many bags of blood as I can conceal and some first aid supplies as well.”
She headed to another table and looked at the items laid out. She picked up several flash grenades as well as three regular grenades and put them in her waistband.
“William had bags of supplies. Do you know what happened to them?”
“The vehicle was trashed, but if there were bags inside it, I’m sure the supplies were scavenged.”
“Look for black duffel bags. There should be three or four. It’ll save us time if you can just grab those and not have to find all the supplies individually.”
Tommy nodded.
She stared at her cousin. He was a good guy and a sweet kid. Doing this for her meant he’d be turning his back on his own family.
“You don’t have to do this, Tommy. I can knock you out, and you can tell them I forced you to help me when they find you.”
His brows furrowed. “Do you not want me to come with you?”
“No, that’s not it at all,” she said. “I just… I don’t want to be the reason you turn your back on Pop and Peter.”
Tommy licked his lips. “You aren’t the reason. William is. I saw what they did to him.”
“But they’ve done it to others before.”
“Yeah, but I never really saw it until now. I never realized how far we’d fallen and how bad it had gotten. Not till I saw you with him. I tried to deny that Pop had changed. Telling myself that as soon as all this was over we’d be like we used to be. But we won’t, will we?”
“Who knows if this will ever be over. And if it is… None of us can go back to who we were before.”
He nodded. “Then I’d rather go with you. At least I know you’re still trying to do what’s right.”
Evan walked up and hugged Tommy tight. She kissed his cheek. “Thank you, bro.”
“Hey now. Be careful.” He pushed her to arm’s length. “You have explosives all over your body.”
She chuckled. “Come on. We better get back.”
She turned in a circle and spotted a stack of black cases neatly tucked next to the tables. She crossed to them and flipped the latches of the one on top.
She smiled and then laughed. “Well, hello there.”
* * * *
Getting back into the building took much longer than it had to get out. But when they got inside they didn’t return to their rooms. Instead, they took the black weapon cases down to the parking garage. Tommy located one of a hundred SUV’s that would be easy to maneuver out of the garage and they slid the cases into the trunk.
“Now we just need to get the first aid stuff, and get out of here.”
“I’ll go now,” said Tommy. He looked at his watch. “It’s two-thirty. If we can get out in the next sixty minutes, we have a better chance of people not noticing we’re missing until at least seven or eight. Possibly later.”
“I’ll go back to my room and wait.”
“Pack light but take what you want. We won’t be coming back and even if we did, I doubt anything we leave behind will be here.”
Evan pulled him into a light hug. “Be careful.”
He closed the trunk. “See ya soon.”
* * * *
Evan peered down the hallway to her room; there wasn’t another soul in sight. Thus far, she and Tommy had been able to keep out of the view of the cameras. The ones in the larger areas rotated and by timing them, they’d been able to move freely. But the one in her hallway was stationary. The only way to avoid detection on it was to act as though she belonged. Not drawing attention was the best form of camouflage when she was out in the open.
She blew out a breath and walked into the view of the camera. Face passive, gait slow but steady, she headed for her room. To her surprise, the absence of the two guards hadn’t caught anyone’s attention yet. She had to consciously keep herself from glancing at the camera. She pulled her key card from her pocket and slid it into the lock. The light turned green. The door swung inward and the now conscious guards lay hog tied and gagged on her hotel room floor.
She closed the door behind her, the two men shooting daggers her direction. She stopped and glared at them.
“Don’t give me the stink eye. We coul
d have easily killed you but we didn’t.” She walked to the bed, being careful to step over the smaller of the two guards, lifted her shirt, and set all of the grenades as well as the guns and ammo on the bed.
She walked to her wardrobe and pulled it open. There was no suitcase but there was a backpack. She tugged it out. Her mom had gotten it for her on her thirteenth birthday. A black and pink plaid backpack for school. She let out a hiccupped sigh and walked to her CD collection. She pulled out her five favorite CDs. Then she grabbed her favorite scarf, a couple pairs of underwear, T-shirts, and a new pair of pants as well as some sweats. William would need clothes too, but he’d have to wear something of Tommy’s.
Lastly, she went to her small jewelry box and put it inside the backpack as well. She looked around her room at everything she was leaving behind. There was nothing else of value to her. Nothing that couldn’t be replaced.
Nervous energy settled in her bones, and she sat on the bed to wait. She refused to let “what if” scenarios infect her and take over her thoughts. Instead, she went over the plan. She ran it through her mind over and over until there was nothing but the plan. The plan and William’s handsome face.
Chapter 16
William’s eyes burned as he tracked the one remaining human walking around the lab. The one who liked to stick him with needles. He had no concept of how much time had passed since Evan had come to see him. The thirst stormed his brain like a thick dense fog, sweeping over every thought and tainting the air a grayish blue.
The man moved from his station at a microscope to a machine that looked like an oversized microwave. His scent and the pounding of the blood in his veins assaulted William. The man walked back to the microscope and their eyes connected.
“Stop staring at me, leech,” the man spat.
William ground his teeth together. “When I get free, I’m going to kill you first.”
The man snorted and pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose. “When you get free, it’ll be to put your rotten corpse in the furnace.”
William growled low in his chest. Dried blood caked the front of him, making his chest and face itch. The bleeding hadn’t stopped, and it surprised William that he wasn’t dead already.
He slammed his head back on his pillow and howled in rage, pulling on the restraints again and again trying to break them.
“Quiet down over there!” the tech shouted. “Some of us are actually trying to undo the crapstorm your kind unleashed on the world.”
The tech turned up a stereo on his table.
William stared at the white lab coat, picturing it on the floor splattered in blood, and wanted nothing more than to make that happen.
The elevator rang and William’s gaze whipped to it. The doors opened and Tommy stepped out. William would kill Lou and Peter for what they’d done to him and if it would hurt them, he’d even kill Tommy. The pain he’d envisioned inflicting on the two men over the past week burned so hard in his mind he’d been having trouble figuring out whether or not he’d already killed them.
From behind Tommy, out stepped Evan. His heart and mind collided in an avalanche of emotion and conscious.
She peeked around Tommy’s shoulder and stared at William. He bared his teeth, but she held her finger to her lips and then pointed to the lab tech. He tried to concentrate on her miming but the lust in his gut only made him think that now there were three. Three people he could drain instead of one.
No! He shook his head. Trying to hold the thirst at bay was like trying to stop a broken levee with a cardboard box.
Evan. He concentrated on her face. Her beautiful blue eyes and the stubborn yet soft way they commanded his attention. He’d never do that to her.
She whispered something to Tommy, who nodded. The lab tech still had his back to them, his music drowning everything out. Tommy headed with quick, cautious steps toward the tech as Evan made her way toward William.
She parted the clear curtains and her scent slapped him in the face. It made his stomach growl and his fangs ache to taste her, to bleed her, to drain her dry. No! William threw his head back and squeezed his eyes shut tight. No. Not Evan. He wouldn’t do that to her. But the other two…
A warm hand fell on his cheek and his eyes whipped open. The distinct odor of fear trickled up his nostrils.
“We’re getting out of here,” she whispered.
William tried to nod his head, but his eyes latched onto her jugular and the pulling rhythm entranced him.
She glanced at Tommy. William did too. Tommy was sneaking up on the lab tech. Her breath caught as Tommy wrapped his arm around the tech’s throat and cut off his airway. The tech flailed and kicked. His foot connected with the stool he’d been sitting on, and he knocked it over with a clatter.
“Come on,” Evan said. She unbound his wrist and headed for his ankles.
William unbuckled his chest restraint. Every nerve awake and ready to feed. He waited till she finished with his ankles, and then he sprang from the bed.
“William!”
He dashed past her and pushed Tommy out of the way. Before anyone could stop him, he climbed on top of the unconscious lab tech and sank his fangs into the man’s soft flesh. The first gulp of blood gushed into his mouth and coated his tongue. He moaned and sucked harder.
“William! Stop!” Evan cried.
A pair of strong hands gripped William’s shoulders and tried to tear him away. William wrapped his arms around the tech’s torso and continued to drink. Strength rushed through his limbs, and he hung on tighter. Euphoria burst through like an electric blanket and the thirst dissipated slightly. Tommy tried to pick William up and shake him off, but William was too strong.
The blood flow slowed. The tech was almost gone. Just a few more swallows and he’d be finished. He should stop. Let the man go and get the hell out of there. But he didn’t. William gulped down the blood. He deserved every last drop the bastard had to give him. A blow to the kidneys made him howl in pain and release the tech.
He whipped around and spotted Tommy. He bared his teeth and lunged. Evan stepped between them and raised her forearm as a shield. William grabbed it and bit into her wrist. She cried out as he took his first gulp.
“Get off her!” Tommy lunged, but Evan pushed him back.
“It’s okay,” she said.
William sucked greedily from her vein. Her eyes connected with his and softened.
“It’s okay.”
He sucked hard from her weak wrist veins trying to pull out more blood. Evan lifted her other hand and stroked his cheek.
“I know you’re in there,” she said. “I know you can hear me, William.”
He stared at her and continued to drink.
She stumbled slightly but held Tommy back.
“He’s going to kill you,” Tommy said.
“No.” She kept her eyes on William. “He won’t. I know he won’t. I know William. He’s hungry but he’ll stop.”
Stop. Stop. Stop. He blinked several times and stared at Evan. Oh my gosh. What was he doing? The thirst clicked off and William scrambled to remember what he was doing. He licked her wound shut and gathered her in his arms.
“Evan. I’m so sorry. The thirst… the hunger…”
She gripped him fiercely. “It’s okay. It’s all right. But we need to go. We have to get out of here.”
He looked around the lab. Go. Leave. Yes, they needed to get out.
“I have no clothes.”
“Here.” Evan crossed to the dead lab tech. “Help me.” She stripped off the tech’s shoes and socks and then undid his belt.
“We don’t have time.” Tommy watched William warily.
William stared down at the dead man. He’d done that. He’d killed a man. He’d almost killed Evan.
“Go,” he whispered. Guilt ran through him like a stampede of horses.
Evan glanced up as she tried to tug off the man’s jeans. “Yes, we have to go.”
“No.” He pulled her to her feet. “You h
ave to go. I have to stay.”
Confusion played over her features. “You can’t stay. If you stay you’ll die.”
The thirst scratched up his throat again.
“If I go with you who knows how many people will die.”
“But you’ve fed. You’ll be fine until we get you to Chicago.” She searched his face.
He turned to Tommy. “Take her and leave. You aren’t safe with me. Neither of you are. Even now the thirst is starting to build again. I won’t risk killing the two of you. I’m as good as dead anyway.”
Her palm came out of nowhere and smacked him hard across the cheek. William growled and whipped to face her.
Her icy stare was one he’d seen too many times before. “Now you listen here. You aren’t going to kill me or Tommy and you are coming with us back to Chicago. So help me get the clothes off this man and put them on, or I’ll give you a fight you won’t easily win.”
The anger in her voice both frightened and turned him on. Visions of bending her over the lab table and taking her right there flashed through his mind.
He nodded once, trying to keep from attacking her, for blood, for sex. Right then, his body didn’t care.
She threw the jeans at him and he yanked them on. Then he helped her get the T-shirt off the dead man. He slid his feet into the crowded shoes and tried not to be grossed out by the fact that he was wearing someone else’s sneakers without socks.
“We need to go,” said Tommy. “We’ve wasted enough time.”
Evan took William’s hand. “Stay with me.”
He squeezed her hand tight.
The group headed for the elevator but the bell rang and they froze.
“There’s a stairwell this way.” Tommy led them the other direction. They ran for the stairs and darted through as someone stepped out of the elevator.
All three leapt from stairwell to stairwell down the six flights of stairs. When they hit the ground level, an alarm blared through the hotel.
Vengeance of the Demons Page 15