by Mary Hughes
“Let me try Aiden’s cell.” I parked her call and contacted the number I’d gotten only last night.
It went immediately to voicemail. My blood chilled.
I clicked back to Elena. “His phone is shut off. What do we do?”
She heaved a disgruntled sigh. “Nothing we can do. The Museum Campus is Nosferatu’s territory. And while I may not trust the ancient Iowa fucker, I’m not going to deliberately entangle him in a war. We’ll just have to wait and see, and hope we can pick up the pieces.”
I hung up. Wait and see? Not if Aiden was in danger. I’d promised not to follow him but screw that. This might be life or death. I left work and ran home, grateful I was plainclothes so I wouldn’t have to go inside to change. I jumped in my car and headed for the Museum Campus.
I drove past the Shedd Aquarium three times before sanity kicked in. What was I doing? I had no idea where he was or if he was even really in trouble. Only my gut prodded me and when was Ruffles gut instinct a good thing?
I left Lake Shore Drive, hooked west onto city streets and headed home.
And drove past a parked truck emblazoned with DAWN TRUCK LINES.
Crap. Was my Ruffles gut feeling more than gas this time? I slowed to a crawl, checking my rearview. Nobody in the truck’s driver’s seat. In the passenger’s—a blaring beep made me jump. A dark sedan zoomed angrily around me.
I got the impression of a Thuggoh cap zipping past. Eloise’s goons were here.
Well, hell. Ruffles luck was actually good for a change? I followed the sedan. It pulled into an alley and stopped. I parked at a discreet distance and followed on foot. The guy with the Thuggoh cap and a red-haired man entered through a row of townhouses. I crept in behind.
The redhead was talking. “The others are in place. Remember, our job is to block Blackthorne’s escape. Leave him to the boss to capture.”
Capture? Crap.
They went to the basement where they ducked down behind a desk…and didn’t come back up. Cautiously, I followed. A hatch lay open, a scary invitation. But damn it, Aiden had given me his personal phone number. Asked me to call him by his first name. He needed me.
I climbed in. No ladder, no bottom. I swallowed hard, pressed my feet against one side, my back against the other, and wriggled down using pressure only. Sounds athletic but I was more Ruffles about it than Bond. I slipped several times, goosing my heart rate stratospheric.
Thuggoh hissed, “Who the fuck is there?”
I lost it, falling from the hole, flailing—splatting on top of the redhead, knocking him out. I scrambled to my feet. The light from above was barely enough to see Thuggoh draw his gun. I spun a hook kick into his head. He went down.
I was zip-cuffing the goons when the alarm sounded.
Things happened quickly then. Thwipping like an Indiana Jones movie. A distant woof shaking the air. A klaxon. A fire door slammed down behind me, cutting off my escape, nearly cutting off my cute glutei. It also cut off all light. I fumbled out my penlight and switched it on.
The tunnel stretched before me, empty. Gun fist atop my penlight fist, I tiptoed forward. Feet rang ahead of me, too far for my beam to catch, a fast trot overlaid with the hissing glide of a stumbling walk. Going left to right. The adrenaline eating my veins urged me to hurry. But this was a vampire’s lair. I forced myself to proceed with caution.
An eternity later my beam caught a chamber entrance. I nearly stumbled into it before I heard her.
Eloise.
Damn it. If she saw me before I could get off enough shots to punch her heart…I smashed the point of the penlight into my jacket, nearly goring my solar plexus. I froze, not even breathing, though my heart continued to hammer until my ribs felt like dust. As the seconds passed without me getting dead or dismembered, I took a cautious breath and opened my ears.
“I was young. Helpless. You knew that.”
She was monologuing. Her distraction probably saved me. I turned off the penlight, muffling the tiny click with my jacket, then I peeked through the doorway.
Her shadowy form moved in a circle—courtesy of a red exit light above me, I could see. Again I had a moment of recognition. She was small and quick like me, although a bit more graceful with a better haircut.
“Why did you abandon me?”
Left alone like me too, but without a mom and brother to adopt her. Sympathy swamped me.
Then I saw what she circled. Or who. My breath froze.
Aiden lay helpless at her feet, a nasty open wound in his chest, the tip of a stake just visible in the wound, as if he’d tried to pound it backwards. Pale, not breathing. Shock and fear poured ice into me. It was physically painful for me to see him like that. Sympathy died.
She was nothing like me.
“We were partners, Aiden. More than partners.” As if she hadn’t done enough damage with the stake, she waved a throat-slitting knife.
That wasn’t for capture. She was going to kill him.
Where were his friends? His backup? No one here to stop her.
I was his backup. I slid my hands together, dark penlight and gun pointed at her form, my thumb set to click on the light so I could target her heart.
I paused. The light would also reveal my location. Could I squeeze off four shots before she stopped me?
My hands dropped.
But if not the gun, what? Bellow like Jonesy? Criminals didn’t respect my authority, much less vampires. Berserker rage? It had saved me once, but hurt someone I loved. Besides, even my dark side might not stop a creature depraved enough to deliberately kill her friend.
Circling, she passed a big green tube resting on the ground. She raised her blade, flashing red, over Aiden’s prone body. “I’ll make this hurt.”
A horrible anger blazed through me. I ran into the chamber and snatched up the tube—some part of me had filtered “bazooka” but at that moment all I knew was weapon—big one. I barely fit it to my shoulder before I fired.
It exploded front and back. My ears rang.
Eloise dropped, half her ribcage gone. I didn’t know much about vampire healing, but hopefully she wasn’t recovering from that any time soon.
Aiden didn’t move.
He was dead. My diaphragm took a head-on collision with an iceberg. I couldn’t move.
His eyes slit open on me.
He was alive. I dropped the tube and ran to him. Aiden’s irises slid to his side before his lids shut.
Telling me the stake was priority. I jumped over him and fell to my knees, wrapping both hands around the silver stake. I drew on every bit of strength I had and pulled.
It came free unexpectedly. I landed on my backside, the bloody stake glued to my fists. I shook it off like slime. It thumped to the ground. Breathing hard, I recovered my sanity and realized I’d thrown away a weapon. Gingerly I picked it up again, moving my Glock to my ankle holster, and tucked the stake in its place.
A muffled crackling pulled my gaze to Aiden. His ribs were visibly straightening under his weapons vest. He started breathing and his skin flushed red before fading to its normal hue. By the time he blinked and sat up, the only things visible from his fatal wound were the holes in his jacket and vest.
“Thanks.” He twisted to me and lifted his cuffed hands. A light glowed. “Button.” He rasped it.
I pressed a thumbnail onto the recessed button and the glow died.
He exploded into a cloud of mist. The cuffs dropped to the floor. The mist pillared, rising into an erect column before imploding into Aiden. Immediately he staggered.
I leaped to my feet and caught his arm. Blurted, “You should have trusted me.”
“What?” He didn’t look too good but he straightened from me.
I hadn’t meant to say it but once started I realized how important it was. “You should have told me about this. Trusted me to ha
ve your back.” I glared at the broken form of Eloise on the floor, a little less broken than it was a moment ago.
He barely glanced her way. “I fight my own battles. Let’s go.” He slid his arm around my shoulders. I wrapped mine around his waist. We stumbled for the exit.
We did, together; he talked big, but he wasn’t up to walking on his own, though the only thing that mattered now was getting him to safety.
We got less than a yard.
“The fuck?” Four big males swarmed the doorway, three vampires with the bat insignia on their arms and a tattooed human—pointing a machine gun at us.
Aiden pushed me aside as the human opened fire. I shouted but Aiden shimmered and the bullets ripped mostly empty air. A couple knives clattered from Aiden’s mist to the ground.
His hand appeared around the gunman’s throat. He’d misted behind the guy. The firing cut as Aiden lifted him. A twist and toss threw him across the room. “That’s for daring to aim a gun at her.”
My heart warmed until, in a fast, coordinated attack, two vampires grabbed his arms and the third hacked a knife into his neck.
Aiden twisted but it was already done. Blood oozed around the embedded blade, black in the red light.
The vampire pulled the knife free. Jets pulsed from Aiden’s neck.
Ignoring his pumping lifeblood, he threw off one of the pair that held him. The vampire hit the wall and slid to the ground, groaning.
The knife-wielding vamp was winding up for a second chop. As the spurts ebbed, Aiden blocked the attack, but he was pale and slow—and the knife-wielding vamp was already winding up for a third strike.
I was Aiden’s backup. Even untrained against vampires, I was better than nothing, but only if I didn’t freeze. I grabbed the stake from my holster and, thanking everything I knew that I was a Meiers Cornersian and had played darts at Nieman’s, I threw as hard as I could at the vampire’s skull.
The stake sank, point-first, into the vamp’s ear. He screamed and dropped to the ground.
Aiden pivoted with a fist to his remaining captor’s face. The vampire crumpled and fell.
But Aiden was in a bad way because instead of following up, he bent over, panting. The vampire he’d punched started scuttling away.
Without straightening, Aiden whipped out a blade and shooped. He groaned then did the same to the knifing vamp. Badly wounded and still worth ten of them.
“What is in that knife?” I said. “Tiny lasers?”
“Incentive.” He glared at the vampires. “How dare they threaten you?”
“Exactly how I feel about you. Let’s take Eloise and go…? Damn it.”
The first vampire had recovered. He scooped up Eloise and darted out. I got an arm around Aiden and we limped after them.
By the time we reached the earthen tunnel it was open, but Eloise and her vampire were gone. Aiden muscled me up the hole by sheer willpower. I spewed into the office, amazed at his strength but more amazed at how dirty I was.
He leaped out after me. “You will never do that again.” He grabbed my shoulders, undermining his tough-guy stance by leaning on me. “Do you hear me?”
I gaped into his angry black eyes. “I just saved your life. Twice.”
“What if those vampires had seen you alone? What if Eloise had seen?” His face constricted as if hit by pain. “She’s insane. And I was lying there, helpless! I couldn’t have done a thing. She’d have sucked you dry…” He trailed to a whisper then swallowed visibly.
“Right. Would this be before or after she sliced your head off with that silver knife?” A shiver wracked me. I’d nearly lost him. My stomach hollowed out at the realization. I shook my head. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
He almost yelled some more. He wanted to. But I tugged and he stumbled against me, and I gripped him tightly and we dragged each other upstairs. If I had my way we’d never let go.
My only thought was to get to my car and get away. So I was surprised when we hit the night air and he stopped.
“What?”
“A friend was here. I must find him.”
“Can’t Ric take care of himself?”
If he was surprised I knew about Ric, he didn’t show it. “Normally. But he was injured.” He looked away, his expression reluctant. He didn’t like whatever he had to say next. “Please, I…I need your help.”
Any resistance melted. “Of course. Where do you think he is?”
He shut his eyes. When they opened they were bright red. He pointed east. “That way.”
“Back inside the townhouse?”
“No.” He hobbled south along the alley. At the sidewalk he struck east. Despite his wounds, he set a quick pace.
As we crossed the street, I caught sight of Nosferatu’s brownstone, nose jutting at the north corner of the block. “Why didn’t you take down that house of horrors while you were in there? I felt enough firepower under your jacket to take out Pluto.”
“No time.” He was moving more smoothly with each step. “But even if I could have shot the walls, collapsed the tunnels, Nosferatu is old. He’d have survived to start a new nest. Worse, it would be built with all the latest.”
“That would be awkward.”
“Besides, Mace and the rest…they’re only following orders. Orders of a madman, but I feel sorry for them. I was in their position once. There.” He stopped at the edge of Lake Shore Drive and stared east as if he could see across all the lanes, the beach and the whole of Lake Michigan. “Stay here.”
“I’m not…”
He was already dodging across. He hopped a short fence and guard rail, ran across more lanes, then vaulted the east fence.
Stay here, right. Who was whose backup? As he dove into the water of Lake Michigan—around a chilly thirty-five degrees this time of year—I clambered over the first barrier and played my own dodge-’em.
Aiden swam toward a dark blotch bobbing in the glistening water. I was looking for broken sections of fence to get through when he burst from the water and waded out, Ric hanging limp in his arms. He jumped the fence, laid Ric on the small strip of dirt and checked his friend with frantic hands. “Broken bones—not healing. Damn.” He opened Ric’s jacket and shirt to reveal red, swollen skin punctured by small arrows, the flesh around them puckered and raw-looking. “None of his wounds are healing. I need to get him out of here.”
“Your car or mine?”
He blinked and seemed to see me standing there for the first time. “I thought I told you to stay back.”
“You asked for my help, Aiden.”
“Our deal.” He briefly closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. So, my car?” I could see him consider the macho, going-it-alone option, despite everything. This male did not trust easily.
He lifted the broken, handcuffed body and stood. His arms shook. I knew how much it cost him when he said the word I hadn’t expected him to say. “Yours. We need to gather his mate from my truck first. Then I can try to help him while you drive.”
“Right.” Turning from the gut-wrenching sight, I led the way. “What happened back there?”
“Eloise wanted me to fight Nosferatu for her. Then she blasted him in the chest. Even with a new heart, the old bastard will take a while to heal that.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “He’s her father.”
“That woman has serious Daddy issues.”
He barked a laugh that devolved into coughing. “Yes.”
We got to my car. I opened the back door and Aiden slid Ric in. As the blond’s body passed me, I smelled the sweet sting of rot. “So which hospital—”
“This is beyond a human hospital. Vampires heal anything, but he isn’t. We need experts.” He gritted his teeth as he got in behind Ric. “Synnove first. If she’s awake maybe she can help him. If not, we’ll
take him to Strongwells.”
“Okay.” I started the car and drove off. “Maybe they can help you capture Eloise too.”
“No.” He released a breath. “Sorry. I’ve already asked too much for their help.”
We stopped at Aiden’s truck to retrieve Synnove. She was still unconscious, but Aiden assured me she was sleeping off whatever drug they’d given her and her vitals were strong. She’d be fine. We strapped her into the front seat and headed for Meiers Corners. I said cautiously, “Strongwells wouldn’t jeopardize your independence.”
“Maybe not them. But they’re Alliance. Their boss… He was born when bartering was brand-new. You don’t make a deal with him without being eventually sucked dry. I’ll ask Strongwells for help healing Ric, but I’ll clean up my own house.”
He was so brave, so tragically alone. For reasons I didn’t quite understand, his safety had become as important to me as my own family’s.
I was his backup. Eloise had hurt him, had hurt people he cared about. She wasn’t getting away with that. As I drove, my jaw firmed and I sat straighter.
“Don’t,” came from the backseat. “Leave Eloise to me.”
“What? I wasn’t…” Even I heard the feigned innocence in my voice. “All right, why?”
“Because however determined you are, however good you are…” He paused and reluctantly added, “And you are good. But you’re also human. Humans can’t hold their own against vampires any more than cats can fight dogs.”
Aiden was pretty savvy. I should listen to him.
But Elena fought vampires, and she mentioned training. If I trained for it, like I’d trained to become a cop, if I became stronger, faster and less Rufflish…well. I had the motivation. All I needed was the know-how.
“Elena?” he said.
I thought he was reading my mind but a glance back showed he was on the phone. “I have a casualty. Ric’s not healing. Can I…?” He listened then blew a sigh that was heavy with relief for the reserved male. “Thanks.”