Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9

by Mary Hughes

  “Of course. Anything I can do.”

  Luke heard the car squeal in getaway, and his stomach dropped out his bowels. No reason to think it was connected with the children—except for the sear of certainty in his blood.

  He screeched to a halt and closed his eyes to concentrate on the blood scent/taste. Yes, there, at the edge of his perception, were the blood of his blood, hurtling away at a speed that suggested a faster vehicle than an ice cream truck.

  He prepared to blow into mist and rocket after—when what had been one large ping separated into two.

  One of the twins had been left behind.

  “Hell.” Bursting his body apart, he streamed toward the nearest ping, collapsing a moment later to the heart-wrenching sound of weeping children. He ran, his lungs rasping, the rat-a-tat of small hearts tugging him faster.

  Four children huddled near a dark building in an industrial park—lot empty except for a gaily painted ice cream truck abandoned nearby.

  He picked out Ellen Ripley first, then the dark curls of Emerson’s daughter Jaxxie, the light brown fuzz of Steve Johnson’s son and the short waves of Sparta’s boy Tyge.

  “Mr. Steel?” Jaxxie saw him first, her blue eyes shimmering with relief. “Thank goodness.”

  “Uncle Luke!” Ellen Ripley broke from the huddle. “That mean old Owun took her. He took Sarah Jane. I’m scared, Uncle Luke.”

  Luke’s blood curdled. But he kept his voice steady when he said, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll find her.”

  “Owun’s a bad man.” The scowl on Tyge’s little face was an echo of his Spartan father’s.

  Luke wanted to run off in pursuit of Sarah Jane immediately, but first he needed information, then he needed to make certain these children were safe. “Tell me what happened, as quickly as you can.”

  Jaxxie said, “Owun took us to the park.”

  Ellen Ripley nodded. “But when we got there, we saw an ice cream truck.”

  “The driver was smelly.” Jaxxie’s little nose wrinkled in distaste.

  “But he was nice to us,” Ellen Ripley said. “He took us for a ride in the truck and said he’d give us ice cream after.” Her lids lowered a bit guiltily. “We’re not supposed to take rides with strangers, but Owun said it was okay.”

  “Owun,” Tyge growled, putting all his feelings in that one word.

  “It was fun at first,” Jaxxie said. “We all wanted to, except Rorik. But then we stopped here and Owun grabbed Sarah Jane and dragged her to the van.”

  Ellen Ripley said, “We jumped out and tried to stop him, but he threw Sarah Jane inside then tried to throw me in after her.”

  “So I grabbed him,” Jaxxie said.

  Tyge snarled. “He hit Jaxxie.”

  Luke swore under his breath. “Are you okay?”

  “It hurts.” Jaxxie turned her face to reveal a bruised and swelling eye.

  Luke bit back a curse and took a moment to check for concussion or other danger indicators. Nothing immediately threatening. “You were very brave.”

  “I made him let Ellen Ripley go.” Jaxxie squared her small shoulders. “I think he would have tried again and maybe even snatched all of us, but the driver guy yelled ‘Steel’s coming’ and Owun and the smelly guy jumped in and they took off.” She frowned thoughtfully. “The van’s driver—his voice sounded really familiar.”

  “Uncle Luke?” Ellen Ripley’s quavering tone distracted him from Jaxxie. “I escaped, but he got away with Sarah Jane. I should have stopped him.”

  He sought to reassure the children as best he could. “He’s an adult. You couldn’t have done more. None of you could have. Don’t worry, I’ll take it from here.”

  Briefly, he wondered why Owun had used the ice cream truck to bring the children here, and hadn’t simply grabbed the kids right outside the townhouses. Maybe afraid they’d scream and be heard?

  Didn’t matter. What mattered now was following the van before the scent was lost, and getting these children to safety.

  Tapping his earbud phone, he said, “Call Emerson”, then popped the earbud out and handed it to Jaxxie. He didn’t like to leave the children undefended, but with the trail growing colder, time was of the essence. He had to move, but not before calling for backup. “Your father will answer. Tell him to come get you.” Julian would know to get the GPS of the bud.

  The little girl took the small device gravely, then proved she was her mother’s daughter. “Mr. Steel? Go get the bastards.”

  Giving her a quick smile, he turned and opened his senses.

  “He followed her,” Tyge said suddenly.

  Luke frowned over his shoulder at the boy. Time pressing, he almost didn’t ask. But this was Sparta’s boy—every word was important. Luke said, “He, who?”

  “Rorik. Running as fast as he could.”

  Rorik? This was good news indeed. “You’ve done well.”

  As the earbud in Jaxxie’s hand wafted, “Steel?”, Luke snared the scents and sounds of the deepest night, ruthlessly sorting through fading childish adrenaline to pick out the fear of one small girl-child, the burn of an engine, the determination of a boy-child and the eager musk of adult men.

  All headed southwest.

  Luke bounded off, snapping after the scents like a bungee cord. He ran as fast as he could, then faster, pounding the pads of his feet raw. The van’s signature would soon fade and blend with those of other vehicles on the road.

  But the boy’s scent would remain unique—while Rorik could keep up.

  If the boy had been a normal human child, that might have only been a few hundred yards. Certainly he couldn’t have stayed with an accelerating van for long.

  But this was Strongwell’s son—and more importantly, while still in the womb, Rorik had shared the lifeblood of a millenniums-old vampire in a tragedy that nearly killed the boy and had a terrible cost for the vamp.

  Rorik lived but was changed, made something more.

  Still, he was a child. He couldn’t hope to keep up with the van forever. Luke pushed for every ounce of speed he could muster, trying to calm the fears clogging his throat.

  Suddenly Rorik’s scent was gone.

  Luke’s heart skipped, and he screeched to a halt, turning in circles, trying to pick up the scent again, to piece together what had happened. Surely if the boy had lost the van, he’d be nearby.

  No Rorik. Something else had happened.

  Falling face-first onto the ground, Luke breathed deep. Here the boy’s scent was strong; yet inches away it disappeared…almost.

  He leaped to his feet—and the scent strengthened, ever so slightly. Luke crouched. The scent faded. Standing, it strengthened, as if Rorik had taken to the air.

  Shape-shifting?

  But even as it occurred to him, he rejected it. The boy was only five or six. It took a thousand or more years to be capable of shape-shifting. Besides, a better answer had occurred to him.

  Rorik had jumped onto the back of the van.

  “Bright child,” Luke murmured. For the first time his heart lightened and the chill in his blood lifted slightly. He zeroed in on the boy’s distinctive smell wafting in the air, and took off.

  As Luke’s nose sped him along the trail, Rorik’s scent freshened. Without that bright scent, Luke might have missed it when the van’s trail curved south, then abruptly east. He fisted one taloned hand. Gotcha.

  Luke pressed himself to run faster yet and nearly stumbled when a car swerved into his path. Belatedly, he noticed traffic was thickening. He was heading into the Chicago metro area.

  His blood chilled with foreboding, and his breath seemed to steam on the June air. He’d never live with himself if he didn’t find Sarah Jane in time.

  As he ran, he cursed himself. Why hadn’t he gone upstairs to check on the children sooner? Why had he let himself be drawn to Alexis
, to have sex with her, almost as if it were a compulsion…? Deep down he knew the answer—because it wasn’t sex but lovemaking, almost unbearable in its sweetness.

  He knew the answer, but he rejected it as impossible.

  He was almost glad he and Adelaide had never had children. He couldn’t imagine how much worse this would be if that was his child in the clutches of a madman. If her life hung on the slim thread of the speed and smarts of a human boy.

  As the population became denser, both people and traffic, Luke continued to run at speed but hunched over as if he were riding a bike, keeping to the shadows and trusting the imprecise lighting to hide his secret. He’d give his life to protect his family. He’d be damned if he’d let a little thing like the vampire masquerade keep him from his niece.

  I’d give my life for her. It was a price he’d gladly pay.

  Less gladly now that he’d met Alexis.

  The boy’s scent thickened, turned into a parking lot. Still hunched, Luke followed, but even before he caught the glint of a trio of glass office buildings, he knew where he was and the buzz of foreboding became a wail of alarm.

  Marrone’s lab.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I got my shoes, shouldered my backpack and jumped into my car. I’d just turned into the hospital parking lot when my phone rang. “Hello?”

  A voice I barely recognized, it was so dark with pain, whispered, “A-alexis?”

  “Lizelle?” I pressed the phone hard to my ear and listened with all of my being.

  “Th-thank God. At last.”

  “Lizelle, what’s wrong?”

  “John…” Her voice cracked. She swallowed audibly and it sounded thick, dry. “He’s got my daughter.”

  My first thought was AMBER alert. “We’ll find her, Lizelle, don’t worry—”

  “No.” Another swallow. “They’re here. H-he…oh, God. He’s experimenting on her.”

  Lizelle’s terror bled over the phone into my veins. My heart throbbed in my ears and my flesh turned to ice. “What are you talking about?” I wanted to whimper in a corner, to shriek I told you so, to tremble with all the emotions crashing through me like ocean waves meeting a cliff.

  Yet somehow, maybe because I was exhausted emotionally from shrieking and crying at Luke, it hurt less. My insides roiled less. I found it easier to set my feelings aside—emotions running amok hadn’t helped Lizelle before and wouldn’t help her or Una now—and clicked almost seamlessly over to Crisis Time.

  “No, scratch that. Lizelle, where are you?”

  She laughed, a little hysterical. “The hospital that doesn’t exist. Oh, Alexis, you were right.” Her words were punctuated by sobs. “He said he’d help but…he wanted to know about you. About your new boyfriend. I told him I didn’t know anything, but then he…he hurt me more, ways he’d never done before. Not anger, but as if he’d practiced…”

  Good heavens. And I’d thought nothing could be worse than Lizelle going back to her husband? How about that husband torturing her for information about me? Guilt burned my veins, nearly disabled me.

  Feelings just are. I pushed the guilt away and headed for the lot exit. “Lizelle, I’m coming for you.”

  “He says he’s doing it for us,” she whispered. “Says this will help Una and all our children when the new order comes… He’s gone insane.”

  “Can you tell me anything that will help me find you?”

  “He wants you too,” she sobbed. “I think that’s why the phone didn’t work before but it does now. Why he let me keep it. I think—I think he’s expecting you.”

  My heart beat a sharp rat-a-tat, hearing that. But Lizelle needed me. “I’m coming anyway. Where are you?”

  “The hospital that doesn’t exist. The floor doesn’t either, but the elevator stopped with a turn of the key.” Air sighed over the phone, once, twice, as she made an audible effort to control herself. “The sign out front says BlooDrug.”

  “I’m coming.” I stomped the pedal to the floor.

  Luke slid into the deepest shadows he could find outside the office buildings and surveyed the area. At least three security cameras watched, two exterior and one visible through the glass fronting the lobby.

  The parking lot was empty of people, the few dark cars cold and vacant. But in front of Marrone’s tower, at the curb directly in front of the revolving door, was a black van.

  The stink of hot oil and metal told Luke it hadn’t been there long.

  He glided closer, keeping to the shadows and misting the surface of his body as Elias had taught him to confuse the cameras, all his senses on full alert. It took insane amounts of concentration, but Elias had taught him that too.

  As he drew near the parked van, at the edge of his hearing, he began to pick up the beat of hearts inside the building, one in particular that was child-fast but determined.

  Rorik.

  Luke stilled in the shadow of the van, closed his eyes and accessed his blood-awareness. If Sarah Jane was inside, she’d ping on his internal map… Instead, a fuzz of possibilities moved across the ground floor, like an electron’s probability cloud.

  Fists clenched, he opened his eyes. Damn it, Marrone must have discovered a way to interfere electronically or chemically with the blood-scent/taste. Luke hadn’t sensed any vampire deterrents when he’d been in the building earlier, but maybe it was something first activated now.

  Or maybe Owun had injected the girl with an antivampire drug.

  Rage threatened to ignite Luke’s blood. He had to clamp down ferociously on the need to mist instantly to Sarah Jane’s side, to stay beside the empty van, hidden from the cameras, and consider his alternatives.

  Call his brother for backup? No, he’d left his earbud with little Jaxxie Emerson.

  Try to flag down a passing motorist and voice away his or her phone? A good idea, but any conversation would be open to the airwaves. What if Marrone’s techs were listening in? Did he want even the possibility of Marrone knowing he was nearby, of giving up his single advantage of surprise?

  But waiting, hoping that Emerson or Strongwell found Luke’s scent and followed, wasn’t an option. Every second, his and Rorik’s scents were being overlaid with more and more motor exhaust.

  Which left entering himself, alone without backup, against an unknown number of assailants, into the fortress of Giuseppe Marrone.

  Marrone would have the home-turf advantage. If Luke had designed the place, that would mean a Home Alone stew of surprises; exterior electrified against vampire mist and booby traps automatically triggered by specialized motion detectors for objects moving at super-human speeds—and that would be before Luke even got through the door.

  Marrone didn’t have Steel Security’s expertise, but the male did tap the Eastern European equivalent, Steale Programové. And he’d proved himself a cunning adversary.

  Then the fast lib-dib-lib-dib of a boy’s heart made Luke think—if Marrone’s defenses were state of the art, how had Rorik gotten inside?

  Alarms raised in Luke’s mind. Even with defenses aimed primarily at vampires, Marrone would have taken measures against human thieves as well. No matter how extraordinary Rorik was, he shouldn’t have made it inside.

  Unless…

  Marrone had wanted Owun followed here, wanted someone to get in. No, correction—Jaxxie had said the kidnapper called, “Steel’s coming” before they’d driven away.

  Marrone wanted Luke to follow Owun here.

  A chill seeped into Luke’s flesh. Rorik had gotten inside because Marrone had left the building open to Luke. Good fuck.

  All Internet memes aside, it was most certainly a trap.

  But what choice did he have? He had to rescue Sarah Jane. She was inside. Therefore, trap or not, inside was where he’d have to go.

  He blew his body apart and sought the invisible cracks around the doo
r. If he hit a wall of electricity, he’d be seen by the cameras, but if he broke in manually, he’d have the same problem. This way, there was at least a chance for surprise.

  No electrical vampire barrier stopped him. He flowed through the openings, his target an angular planter near the boy’s heartbeat, where a cultivated tree’s shadow concealed him as he reformed.

  Tensed for battle, he collapsed his mist, slowly, making no sound.

  Yet a sixth sense must’ve alerted Rorik, crouched behind the marble wedge of the tree’s planter.

  The boy turned serious brown eyes on him, a hint luminescent in the interior’s half-light. Seeing Luke, Rorik’s tense crouch eased. He pointed toward the elevators.

  Three armed, muscular men, one Marrone’s prow-nosed lieutenant, one carrying a large weapon and one the traitor Owun, moved in tight formation toward the bank, slowed by a small, struggling, kicking bundle of fury wrapped in Owun’s arms.

  Sarah Jane.

  Emotions threatened to swamp Luke—fear, pity, rage. The cocktail burned through him, triggering a wild urge to dash out and slash kidnapper flesh.

  Only three males; he’d kill them all in less than five seconds.

  No, stop. Even if he misted directly to her, a goon could shoot her in the heart or Owun could knife her carotid artery in an instant.

  Also, he’d just misted, after using the technique to blur himself in the parking lot. If he tried to use the form too many times too quickly, the ability would go numb and he couldn’t use it for fighting.

  Luke shuddered, an almost physical tug-of-war inside him between the imperative to go to her now and the need not to be rash. A deep breath, pressed out, slowed his heart. A second filtered some of the acid of adrenaline from his veins. As he cooled, he sent his senses out, listening and smelling, and more problems came to him.

  The elevator was thrumming, obscuring any heartbeats. And Prow-nose’s scent was a rancid wash across the entire area.

  These three goons might be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it was late and all the regular workers had gone home. But who knew how many minions Marrone might have? Hidden inside the elevator, scattered throughout the building, that was part of the home-turf advantage. How many vampire underlings, how many innocent humans simply hypnotized for cannon fodder? He couldn’t tell.