by Anton Strout
Shaking from the loss of sugar in my blood, I could barely hold them. I started crunching down the first roll I managed to unwrap.
Aidan ground his heel deeper into Faisal’s throat, choking him until he stopped moving. I shoved at Aidan, hoping to stop him from killing anyone, but it was like shoving at a stone statue.
“Stop it,” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Aidan said, grabbing one of the other men like he weighed nothing and tossing him across the room. “Don’t you recognize a prison break when you see one? Your Jane came to us. She said they carted you away. Brandon seems to think you’re worth saving.” Klaxon alarms rang into life, drilling straight into the center of my brain. The vampires slowed and winced, their supersensitive hearing overwhelmed by the sound. “Beatriz . . . watch the door!”
Beatriz and several of the other vampires blurred into speed again, heading toward the doorway as guards started to pour in the room. To my surprise, the guards were actually pushing their way into the room, faring well against the vampires as they struggled with fighting off the effects of the sound of the alarm.
“Are you sure they aren’t going to need saving, too?” I asked.
Aidan turned to me and laughed. “And just how much danger do you think we impervious little vamps are in here?”
“Mostly impervious,” I reminded him. “Try to meet me for lunch in the middle of the day tomorrow, why don’t you?”
Aidan gave me a pissy little look.
“Sometimes I fail to see my brother’s interest in you.”
“It’s simple,” I said, not willing to let him have the last snark. “I’ve been there for him while you haven’t.”
“That’s not fair,” Aidan said. “I . . .”
A bloodcurdling scream rose from the doorway and the two of us turned toward it. Beatriz was holding one of the guards by the neck with one hand. Her other was on his left arm, which was bent at an unnatural angle. That was when I noticed a shard of bone sticking out from it, fresh blood dripping from the wound. The guard’s face went white and the scream died only when his eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious in her grip.
“For God’s sake, Beatriz, put him down. Don’t hurt the guards!” I shouted, but they weren’t listening. One of the males of Aidan’s group grabbed the next guard storming into the room and threw him with such force into the far wall that I was sure I heard bones breaking over the alarms. “Aidan, tell them! Those guards are just doing their job.”
“And so are we,” he said. I could feel the disdainful chill in his voice. The look in his eyes had turned to ferocity as he took in the violence of the situation.
“Screw this,” I said, stepping around him and running toward the doorway. “I’ll handle it myself.” Before I could get very far, Aidan appeared before me and I slammed into him.
“Is this how you want things?” I shouted, pushing away from him. “Your lord and master is trying to convince us that you’re not a threat and that you need our help. I was thrown in here because I was defending your right to a peaceful existence, and this is what you give me? Breaking the law and busting up the good guys? Make your people stop.”
Aidan’s eyes cleared and he shook his head like he was breaking free of something. “Leave the guards alone!” he said to the rest of his people. They turned to him, Beatriz included, fangs popped and hissing, but they did as they were told. Aidan glanced at me. “I’m sorry. After dealing with your inmate attackers, the bloodlust is upon us, and fighting that off is not so easy.”
“So I see,” I said. “It’s like chumming for sharks and starting a feeding frenzy.”
Aidan’s face turned dark and angry. “We are not animals.”
A wave of terror washed between him and me, but I fought to keep my cool. “Of course not,” I said, my voice barely audible in the commotion of the room. I looked to the doorway again. The guards were being held off, but since the vampires were ordered not to kill them, the entire battle was at a standstill. “So now what?”
“Now we leave,” Aidan said. “Time to get you out of here. Follow me.”
Moving at his natural speed, Aidan was off to the far side of the room in a shot, pounding at the metal of the wall. By the time I had reached him, he had forced a small hole in the metal and was shoving his hand into it. With an earsplitting sound that rang out over the Klaxon alarm, he tore a section of the thick wall away. He threw it over to the empty side of the room like I would have thrown one of my case files. It landed with a heavy metal clang, screeching across the floor for several feet before stopping.
I moved to the hole in the wall and looked out. We were well above the waterline. I looked down to see the Hudson River several stories below us, and my grip tightened on the edge of the wall as wind began whipping through the hole. We were much higher up in the complex than I had thought.
“I do hope you have a plan after this point,” I said.
Aidan nodded. “I do, but it ain’t going to be pretty.”
“Do tell.” A stronger gust of wind blew in and I stepped back from the wall into the room.
“We’re flying out of here, but . . .”
The pile of unconscious—but hopefully still living—guards at the door was getting higher, but more were still coming, crawling over them. “Spill it!”
“Maybe it’s just better if I show you,” he said. “Stand back.” Aidan stopped talking and closed his eyes. Everything that was human about him melted away, his face turning leathery and gaunt, the veins beneath the surface of his skin showing in gnarled twists. His hands shifted to look like those of someone much older, the nails thickening into hooklike claws. I had seen him slightly vampiric before, but when he was done transforming, he looked truly terrifying for the first time. He looked at me. “I told you it wasn’t going to be pretty.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to remain calm in the middle of all this. “Did you transform or something?”
Aidan actually cracked a smile, making him look more Crypt Keeper by the second. “Funny,” he said. “I have to be like this if we’re going to fly out of here and actually stay in the air. If I don’t transform, I can’t fly very far.”
I repressed the urge to shudder.
“Fly?” I repeated. “If you sprout wings and have to flap . . . If that’s the case, I’ll take my chances diving into the water below.”
Aidan shook his head. “Just grab ahold of my shoulders.”
With some reluctance, I stepped closer to him and, despite my revulsion at the leatheriness of his skin, I wrapped my arms in a sleeper hold around his neck.
“Hold on tight,” he said. “I’m not used to someone ‘sitting bitch’ like this.”
“ ‘Sitting bitch’?” I asked.
“Like the back passenger on a motorcycle . . . ?” he said. I stared blankly at him. “Never mind . . . Just hold on.”
As he leapt out into the darkness of the night, my stomach lurched as the two of us plummeted downward.
“Well, this is very Greatest American Hero,” I said.
“Shut it,” Aidan snapped. “Just give me a minute to get used to the added weight.”
If we died because I had put on the Fraternal fifteen with my short time in F.O.G., it would be a really sad, sad end. Before I could worry any more, the sinking sensation in my stomach evened out and I felt us beginning to rise as Aidan twisted himself toward Manhattan.
Terrified as I was, the whole process of flight was exhilarating. Climbing higher, the sounds of the conflict in the prison faded away in the roar of the wind. I looked back over my shoulder as the floating prison barge faded into miniature below us. Beatriz jumped through the hole in a graceful dive, then shot up into the air and caught up quickly with us. The rest of the vampires came behind her at a distance, and one by one they broke away from the three of us and headed off in all directions. Up close, Beatriz was just as hideous in this form as Aidan, but I figured now was not the time to mention it.
“I’m taking you back to the Gibson-Case Center,” Aidan said.
I shook my head, the wind getting colder and colder against my skin the longer we flew. “There’s one place I have to stop first.”
“Home?” he asked.
“Nope. They’ll be looking for me there, no doubt.”
“Where to, then?” he asked. “No offense, but you’re getting kind of heavy.”
“None taken . . . I think.” I thought for a moment, and then knew where I needed to go. “Can we head over to Eleventh Avenue and Twenty-third? I’ve got a little one-stop shopping to do.”
29
Landing was a lot more jarring than I thought it would be. Aidan had no reaction to his impact with the ground, but his sudden contact with it jarred me, and my grip around his neck loosened. I fell to the pavement in the pool of shadows Aidan had landed us in. Before I could even pick myself up, Aidan reached down, grabbed me by the back of my prison coverall, and lifted me to my feet. Beatriz landed seconds later and by then Aidan had taken the time to tear away the rest of the restraints on my arms.
“Thanks,” I said, and started walking across the street to the Manhattan Mini Storage on the corner, keeping to the shadowy edge of the cars parked along the street. I turned to look back. Beatriz was still standing where we landed but Aidan was right behind me. “What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Coming with you,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m hitting my storage unit,” I said, pointing toward the building.
Beatriz came over to us in a flash. “You really think this is a good time to organize your belongings?”
“Less explaining, more walking,” I said, starting off across the street. At the side of the building, I opened the door into an empty, well-lit foyer leading into the storage facility and reached for the electronic keypad. I went for my wallet, and then paused.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Aidan asked.
“My code for the door was in my wallet,” I said. “You know, the one they took from me when they checked me into jail?”
Beatriz stepped forward, grabbed the door, and shoved inward. The metal of the door caved in, leaving two tiny handprints, but the door snapped off its hinges and clattered off across the hallway behind it.
I sighed. “Must your people always go for the extreme solution? Geez.”
Aidan gave Beatriz a look of disapproval.
She threw her hands up. “What? It got the door open!”
I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “I think I could have gotten us in. Hello, psychometrist here!”
“Fine,” she said. “See if I try to be helpful again.”
I hurried into the storage center and headed down the hall where I had been lucky enough to get a first-floor unit. Although I wasn’t alone, mine was the only set of footsteps I could hear echoing as I walked. I turned to make sure my vampiric honor guard was still with me, and sure enough they were keeping pace.
“Your silence is unnerving,” I said. “Can’t you at least pretend to make some kind of noise when you walk?”
“Sorry,” Aidan said, and in an instant the sound of his footfalls became noticeable. “Better?”
I nodded. “Much.”
I hurried along to my storage unit, thankful for the noise. When I reached the rolled-down metal gate, I punched my code in and the lock on it clicked open. I pulled up the rolling garage-door front of it. “Inside.”
“You want to tell us why we’re here?” Aidan asked.
I pulled the gate down behind us and clicked on the single overhead light in the unit. One wall was covered with shelves, but only a few cardboard boxes were on them. Off to the other side were several garment bags hanging from a pipe.
“I set this place up for just such an emergency,” I said. I pulled a towel down from the shelves and threw it down onto the single table in the center of the room. I pointed to another shelf with gallon camping containers of water.
“Could one of you bring me one of those? I think I’m a little too beaten up to lift it.”
Aidan grabbed it and brought it to the table for me. “So you planned for getting all busted up like this?” He looked a bit skeptical.
I nodded and pulled off my prison clothes, wincing as the pain throughout my body cried out. Using the towel, I soaked up some of the water and began to wash the blood off of me.
“More or less,” I said. “I was a bit of a miscreant a few years back, got into a lot of trouble, and when you do that, it usually comes back to bite you in the ass. My particular trauma showed up a few months ago, under the name of Mina Saria. My dealings with her taught me a harsh lesson about always being prepared. So yeah, nowadays I have a bit of a contingency plan set up for a rainy day. I think this definitely counts as one of those.”
“I see,” Aidan said and went back to standing there in silence.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I can clean up. I’ve got clothes, some money. You can go now.”
“No,” he said, “I can’t.”
“No, really,” I said. “You can.”
“I have my orders,” he said, “and they weren’t just to break you out. I’m supposed to watch over you and bring you back to the Gibson-Case Center.”
I dried myself and fished a shirt out of one of the garment bags, slipping it on gingerly. “I’ll be fine. I’m not even sure I want to head back there anyway. I’ve got to deal with Allorah and the Department. I just need to figure out what to do next. Besides, in a few hours when the sun comes up, there’s not going to be all that much watching over me that you can do.”
Aidan grabbed me by the arm, stopping me. He looked pissed. “Haven’t you been listening to Brandon? You don’t seem to realize the importance you hold for me and my kind. We need to take you back to the castle, both for your sake and ours.”
“Bringing you back there is like granting you sanctuary,” Beatriz added. “The center is like its own sovereign nation. You saw what happened when you and your girlfriend tried to get in there the other night. Your department won’t be able to touch you.”
“But Jane and I did eventually get in, though.”
“Yes,” Aidan said, giving a grin far from saintly, “but I defy them to get through an army of vampires sworn to protect you.”
“Fair point,” I said, then realized what was missing from all this. “Shit . . . my bat. Jane had that custom-crafted for me.”
Aidan gave a laugh. “You mean the one you gave to Connor when you let him and me escape?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I went to the boxes and started looking though them. “I think I have some other stuff in here . . .”
Aidan cleared his throat, the kind of human gesture that just didn’t fit on him. I turned to see him holding my custom-made bat retracted down in one of his hands. “Connor thought you might be wanting this back.”
I walked over and reached for it, but Aidan pulled it just out of reach. “So you’ll come back to the Gibson-Case Center with us?”
I nodded and he handed me my bat. It felt good in my hands, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed its presence until just that moment. Even some of my pain seemed to fade away.
“Excellent,” he said. “It will be much easier to keep an eye on you that way as well.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything tonight.”
“Don’t thank me,” Aidan said. “All in a night’s work.”
“You can thank me,” Beatriz said, chiming in. “I busted my ass getting you out of that floating prison thing tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said, this time to her.
“That’s better,” she said, then looked around. “Do you mind if we get out of here? This place makes me claustrophobic.”
“Don’t you sleep in coffins?”
Beatriz shook her head. “Only the real divas among us. I haven’t been in one since the 1800s.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s get to the castle, t
hen. The sooner I talk to your boss, the sooner I can deal with the D.E.A.”
I reached into one of the other garment bags and pulled out one of my older, more beaten-up jackets. The leather was soft like butter and fit like a second skin, which, given the amount of damage I had taken lately, was a welcome sensation. I slid my bat inside it and walked over to the gate, lifting it. The harsh fluorescents of the outer hallway poured in.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually missing the artificial daylight back at the castle.”
30
When we arrived back at the castle, Aidan and Beatriz shoved the door to Brandon’s chamber open for me and I limped in as best I could. Many members of the vampire council were gathered around the room and so were Connor and Jane.
When my girlfriend saw me, one look at the shape I was in made her burst into tears. She ran over to me before I could reach the gathered crowd and wrapped her arms around me in a hug so tight that many of my recent injuries flared up. I wanted to scream in pain, but the way I hissed out an exhale of breath must have been enough for her to realize she was hurting me. She let go of me and wrapped her arms under mine to support me.
“My God,” she said. “I was so worried. When the Shadower team escorted you out of that Departmental witch trial, I was beside myself. I made Brandon send them after you.”
“Thanks for sending in the V-Team,” I said.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” I whispered before kissing her. The sweet taste of her lips mixed with the salt of her tears.
“My spine can heal later. I missed you.”
Jane put her arm around my waist and brought me over to the rest of the assembled crowd. Connor gave me a smile, albeit a pained one.
“Hey, kid,” Connor said. “Welcome back.”