“Shit,” Ivan mumbled. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
The drenched man continued toward us, lifting his talons as if preparing to strike.
“It’s not working,” Lea said, lifting her gun to shoot.
“You don’t know that!” I argued. “Give it a minute.”
“Rachel.” Her voice was tight as he moved closer.
“No.” This man didn’t deserve to be turned into a monster. Didn’t deserve to be killed for the grisly fate someone else had forced on him. Maybe that was why I didn’t fully understand Lea’s self-hatred—her vendetta against her own kind.
How could she wipe out an entire race simply because they existed? She was proof enough that just because a person’s warm blood turned cold, they were not destined to prey on the lives of innocent people. If anything, she strove to protect them—even if she saw the deaths of some innocent humans as collateral damage. How did we know none of these villagers could be saved? They were victims, and I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” I told the man as he continued to approach us, blind rage in his eyes. “We only want to help.”
“Rachel.” Lea sounded more panicked.
“No,” I spat.
“I’ll do it.” Antonio’s hand dropped to his side and he lifted his handgun before I even realized what he was doing. The blast echoed off the stone buildings and the man dropped face forward to the ground.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because in this instance, she’s right.”
But the gunshot had set loose a cacophony of moans and shrieks, and doors began to burst open all across the village. Within seconds we were facing close to fifty men and women moving toward us at a slow gait. I could have handled the sight of all of them and more, but a figure in the front made me freeze in horror.
The pack was led by a child. A toddler who lifted the talon that had once been a hand and let out a cry of anguish and anger.
I took a step back, bumping into Lea’s chest.
“Oh, fuck,” Ivan groaned.
I couldn’t agree with him more. My worst nightmare had come true.
CHAPTER 37
LEA
I grabbed Rachel’s shoulder with one hand and held my gun tightly with the other. “Ivan, circle around with Antonio. We’ll give them as much time as we can.”
Rachel’s eyes flicked to mine. Why now?
“Get spraying.” I pointed her in the direction of the shuffling villagers even as I pulled her backward. The twisted creatures lurched after us, slow and uncoordinated. They weren’t exactly what I’d call a success if Stravinsky was trying to create a super army. Terrifying? Yes.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Rachel stumbled, but I managed to keep her upright.
“Contrary to what you think, I have no desire to see them all dead.”
But that wasn’t the reason, and we both knew it. The child lurching toward us was all it had taken for her emotions to crack and spill over into me. I could no more deny Rachel this opportunity for personal redemption than I could have denied Calvin his one last chance.
Hopefully the outcome here would be better.
“How many?” Rachel bit out as she sprayed another man in the face even as I kicked out, connecting with a woman who’d drawn too close. The woman grunted, but didn’t go down. She barely flinched, actually, and I suddenly understood why Stravinsky was making them this way. They were like the zombie werewolves—pain didn’t register.
“Two hundred. Maybe a little more.” The numbers weren’t huge at first, but they could be. And that was the key.
The sheer number of them could overwhelm even the staunchest fighters. If Stravinsky had hundreds of thousands of these creatures at his disposal, say if he released the toxin in New York City, the panic and chaos would be beyond anything the world had ever seen. But the U.S. military wouldn’t want this on American soil. They probably saw it as a way to win the war against the Middle East extremists.
I kept Rachel moving as she sprayed the antidote from side to side. “I’m almost out.”
“Us, too!” Ivan hollered over the unwieldy mob.
“Rachel—”
“I know. I know.” She bit the words out, coating them in bitterness. “This can’t happen again, goddammit.”
I deliberately kept my thoughts to myself. I cut through the straps of the tank on her back as the last drop sprayed into the face of a teenage boy.
“How many did we get?”
I lied. “All of them, I think.”
Hope filtered from her for a brief flash before fading. “You’re a shitty liar.”
We circled around the mob, Antonio and Ivan moving in tandem across from us. A trickle of light slid across the top of the village roofs. Madre de Dios, were we ever going to catch a break?
A cry that lifted the hair from the back of my neck drew my eyes to the center of the mob. The little girl who’d led the group was standing there, human once more, her tiny hand pressed to her eyes. “Al’umm!”
Mommy. She was saying mommy in Arabic.
“It worked.” I breathed the words, unable to believe what I was seeing. The villagers paused as if her cry had drawn them to her. “Oh, fuck.”
I wasn’t sure I could get us both through, but there was no way Rachel would be willing to stay behind. “Stick close, Rachel!”
I slammed my shoulder into the man nearest to me, his hooked beak whipping toward my eyes. I jammed the heel of my hand up into his chin, snapping his neck, holding off just enough not to kill him and leave him as prey and hoping it worked.
“What are you doing?” Rachel screamed at me. She hadn’t heard the child. I purposely covered my thoughts as I struggled with what to do. I could turn around, tell her I had been wrong. Save us both by pretending the people here were all dead even as they walked about us moaning.
But the desire to do the right thing, to save someone so new to the world had bled too strongly from Rachel into me. I couldn’t turn back any more than she could. Damn her and damn us both to hell.
I plowed through the villagers as if they were stick people. A few got jabs in on me, but nothing major. We reached the center of the mob and I scooped the kid up, tucking her under one arm right as two villagers dropped to their knees and swept clawed hands where she’d been.
“Oh my God,” Rachel said. “It worked.”
“Ivan, lead them away!”
“Trying,” he hollered. “You smell good; they like you two.”
Even now he was flirting. Wolves had no shame.
Rachel snorted. “You love it.”
We still had a monster problem on our hands, no pun intended. I held the howling child tightly to my chest and hunched my back. “Up, Rachel.”
She leapt onto my back and I took one deep breath before I rushed into the mob. Bodies bounced off me, and hands ripped at both Rachel and me. Several of the beaks jabbed into my arms, and one landed in the side of my neck, but the pain was minimal compared to most of the injuries I’d sustained over the last few days. We were free of the worst of them in ten seconds and Rachel jumped off. Wobbling, I dropped to one knee. My vision sparkled with dancing lights and I slapped a hand to the wound in my neck, which had closed to a tiny pinprick.
I tried to speak, but the words were at best slurred and they faded into my native tongue.
Venomous, was the only thing I could think.
“Fucking serious? Kid, come here.” Rachel took the girl from me and murmured something to her in Arabic as the cries of anguish and horror around us shifted to shrieks of terror.
“Lea, you have to get up.”
When had I lain down?
“Get up,” Rachel continued, “the antidote is working, but not fast enough. Some people are coming back—”
I’d seen them—human once more but in the midst of the monsters.
“And those who do,” Antonio came into view, “are being attacked by those who haven’t fully returned
to themselves. Silly monsters, they’re harmless. Ugly as—”
“They’re venomous,” Rachel said, and someone, I assumed Ivan, scooped me up.
“Lea, do you need to feed?” Ivan tipped me so I could look at him. I tried to shake my head, but nothing happened. Damn it. I didn’t think feeding would help, but I wasn’t sure what would.
“She’s full up,” Rachel snapped. “Is there any antidote left?”
“Drops.” Antonio shook his pack, and the smallest sloshing noise was audible. Ivan put me down and ripped the tank in half. This was intolerable, being the weakest one of the group, dependent on someone else to save me.
“Welcome to the club,” Rachel muttered. I shot a look at her. I’d never thought of her as weak. She gave me a tight smile.
Slow as molasses in February, but not weak.
“Keep it up, we can always leave you behind,” she snapped, but there was no real heat behind the words. Ivan grunted. “If you two are done.” He held up the bottom half of the broken tank of antidote. Antonio grabbed my head and forced my jaws open. “If it works on the skin, this might make it work faster.”
His gaze stayed fixed on my fangs as Ivan poured the remainder of the antidote into my mouth, making sure to get some on my skin. My throat convulsed, the liquid sticky sweet and tasting faintly like melons, of all things.
“That’s all of it. Now we wait.” Antonio let go of me, dropping me the short distance to the ground so my head bounced a little.
Ivan snarled and the two men were suddenly nose to nose. I glanced at Rachel as best I could. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who sometimes had difficulty getting along.
“Boys,” Rachel snapped. “Perhaps you can have your pissing contest another day? The sun is almost up, and we’ve got to get under cover.”
Lying on the ground, I felt the wolves pounding toward us before I heard them. Werewolves. I all but screamed the word in my head.
Rachel’s head snapped around and her hand came up with a gun. Two shots fired off. Ivan hit the ground beside me, three of the twisted half-dead werewolves on him.
And I could do nothing to help them.
CHAPTER 38
RACHEL
The werewolves had us surrounded, but there were only six this time and they seemed most interested in Ivan. Several were attacking him at once.
I pushed the crying girl behind me as I shot off several rounds, stopping a werewolf that was headed straight for Lea and me while Antonio shot the two who had knocked him to the ground. “I hate these fuckers,” I mumbled as I turned my weapon on one of Ivan’s attackers and fired. But they were moving so quickly it took several shots for me to kill one. Ivan killed another with his bare hands.
That left one zombified werewolf for the men to handle, allowing me to give my attention to another pressing matter.
The little girl clung to my leg, her crying subdued as she watched the werewolves in horror. I pried her arms from my legs, saying in Arabic, “We will keep you safe.”
She nodded, staring at me with terror-filled eyes.
I only hoped I hadn’t lied to her.
I squatted beside Lea, checking for signs the antidote was working. But she remained unmoving, her eyes dull and blank as they stared up into the last stars before dawn. Her reaction to a few simple scratches scared the crap out of me. I thought of her as invincible. I sure as hell didn’t think one of those awkward creatures in the village could kill her.
The moans still filled the night behind us, but screams now joined them. I felt sick to my stomach. I hope Stravinsky’s heart got pierced by a stainless steel beam.
I’m sure he got out. He’s on the loose.
I shot her a glare, letting anger overcome my fear. It was an easier emotion to stomach. “Then you better get your ass off the ground and help me find the son of a bitch. Stravinsky isn’t going to get away with this.”
“So happy to hear you agree,” a woman with a thick accent said in the darkness.
I jumped to my feet and lifted my gun, unsure of what I was aiming at, keeping the child behind me.
Vampire was Lea’s thought.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Antonio pulled out his blade, but I kept my gun aimed in the darkness.
A yelp came from the last werewolf as Ivan ripped the top of its head off and tossed it down in front of him. “Friends of yours?” he asked in disgust.
“My welcome committee,” the woman said.
That surprised me. From what little I knew, vampires and werewolves usually hated each other.
They do. They are pets.
Since these weren’t genuine werewolves, it made sense that a vampire would use them to do her dirty work.
“You’re with Stravinsky?” I asked. “You’ve come to retrieve us?”
“We’ve come for you, but we are no friends of Stravinsky.” She stepped out of the darkness as if appearing out of thin air, and a group of six people trailed behind her. She was gorgeous with long, flowing dark hair and pale skin that reflected the light of the full moon. She wore tight black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt that dipped low enough in the front to leave little to the imagination about the size of her breasts.
The group behind her was similarly dressed—three women and three men—although there was absolutely no doubt of who was in charge.
The leader turned her head toward Antonio. “Cazador, I’ve been looking forward to this day.”
A low snarl released from his throat as his grip tightened on his blade, his gun now in his other hand.
She gave him the sort of smile a mother gives a demanding toddler—a look of forced patience and false humor. “Is that any way to greet your queen?”
“You are not my queen, Elena.” He spat, sending a glob of spittle down in front of her feet.
She bared her teeth and hissed, the sound sending shivers down my spine.
The little girl clung to my leg again, releasing tiny whimpers.
Get your ass up, Lea.
Her lack of a response sent a new wave of panic through me.
Elena swung her gaze to me so sharply, I expected her to have whiplash. “It is true.”
I froze, then forced myself to say, “That Stravinsky is creating monsters? Yes. The evidence is behind us.”
“Yes. They are being dealt with.” She flicked her wrist and gunshots filled the night, accompanied by screams and the cry of the bird creatures.
“You’re killing them?” I asked in dismay.
She looked bored with my question, but she took several steps toward me. “Do you not destroy canines with rabies?” She flicked a glance toward Ivan and grinned. “Do you have rabies, dog?”
“Rot in hell,” he snarled.
Her smile widened as she turned her attention back to me. “You are a curious creature. You show no fear toward me.”
“Should I be afraid of you?”
Her brow lifted into a smirk. “Oh, Lea. You have chosen well with this one.”
I snuck a glance at Lea, more worried than before. She wasn’t speaking in my head.
“She’s dying,” Elena said.
“We gave her the antidote.”
“It’s not working.” Elena gave me a pretend pout, then moved behind me, circling to stand behind Lea. “It’s for humans. Not vampires.”
I sucked in a breath, overwhelmed with panic. I snuck a glance to Ivan, who looked like he wanted to rip someone else’s head off.
“Who are you?” I asked. Both Antonio and Ivan seemed to recognize her, and she had called herself queen.
“Yes, my dear. I am Queen Elena. I have ruled the vampires for two hundred years, and you and I have a common enemy.”
“Stravinsky?” I asked. “Why would I believe that? The werewolves you sicced on us were his creation, weren’t they?”
Her gaze held mine. “We held similar goals once,” she said, her voice soft and alluring. I could feel myself wanting to please her.
“Don’t look her i
n the eye, Rachel,” Antonio shouted.
I cast my eyes down, feeling like an idiot. That was Vampire 101. “Can you save her?”
She laughed. “There is protocol to follow here. I am royalty.”
“Fuck your protocol. Can you save her?”
“Yes,” she said in a satisfied tone. “I can save her.”
I shook my head. “What is the price?” I cast a glance at her, then quickly looked away. “Because I know how the world works, and there’s always a price.”
She moved next to me, trailing the backs of her fingertips down my cheek and my neck, sending a shiver all the way to the base of my spine.
The little girl started to cry.
“You will not feed from her!” Antonio shouted. A scuffle broke out, and it sounded like Ivan was holding him back.
Elena looked amused. “I will do as I please,” she said. “But she will give me her permission.”
“Will you kill me?” I asked, trying not to show my fear. “Or turn me?” I’d drank from Lea recently, which made me wonder if it was a possibility.
She leaned in to sniff my skin, running her nose up my neck until it reached my ear. “No,” she whispered. “I will let Lea have that honor.”
“And if she’s dead?” I whispered back.
“We shall see if she dies.”
“So you’ll save her if I let you take my blood? How do I know you even can?”
She glided over to Ivan and looked up into his face, trailing her hand down his chest. He looked to the side, evading her gaze. “You know I can save her, don’t you, dog?”
“Yes.”
I gasped in surprise. I figured she had been playing mind games.
She gave Ivan’s chest one last stroke, then turned her attention back to me. “I know you distrust me, so as a sign of good faith, I will give her my blood first. I will drink from you when she begins to revive. You will let me.” She flicked her finger toward Antonio. “And he will watch.”
“The hell I will,” he growled.
I steeled my back. “Then do it. Save her.”
“What else do you want?” Ivan asked. “There has to be more. You could force yourself on her and let Lea die.”
Replica (The Blood Borne Series Book 2) Page 22