A whimper to her right caught her attention. They turned to the sound almost in unison. Gabriel shone his light toward the corner of the stable, where a new row of stalls began. Priscilla caught a flash of something human in the entrance to one of them.
“Don’t,” a hoarse voice said. “D-don’t. You’ll startle it.”
Relief flooded through Priscilla as she recognized the voice of Tilly Hall. She was alive then. Good.
“It?” Gabriel said, keeping his voice low as well.
“S-snake. There’s a snake,” her voice hitched and rose a little in panic. “It’s a few yards away from me. It hasn’t bitten me yet. Oh God, please help …”
Gabriel kept the light directed at the ground and used the soft sound of her breathing to guide them forward.
Dread washed away the feeling of relief Priscilla had had only moments ago. He’d put a snake near her. How could it have been that she’d been admiring Perry for his courage earlier that night? The Sons were awful, yes, but at least they hadn’t put a pregnant woman in imminent danger of death. The feeling only intensified as a distinctive rattle split the night. Gabriel cursed.
“It’s a timber rattlesnake,” Priscilla said.
“How can you be sure? We can’t see.”
“It’s the only rattlesnake native to this state,” she said. “And it’s very deadly.”
He cursed again. Then he spoke as quietly as he could. “How many are there?” he asked Tilly.
“One, I think,” she said. “I don’t know. I can’t really see …”
“How long have you been here?”
“A few days, I think. But he just put me in this building tonight. He’s going out. He’s going to hurt them.”
Priscilla wasn’t sure who ‘them’ was, and at this point it wasn’t her top priority. “Can you get past the snake?”
“No,” Tilly said. “I can’t. It gets riled when I try and I can’t afford to be bitten. My baby …”
Priscilla’s heart wrenched at the panic in her voice. “Don’t worry, Tilly. We’re coming.”
The rattling increased in tempo as they approached the corner where they’d heard Tilly’s voice.
“Do you know how to stop it?” Gabriel asked.
“No, do you?”
“I’m not sure that action movies are an accurate demonstration on how to fend off snakes,” Gabriel said, so low that only she could hear.
Priscilla swallowed hard. Well, if she had to be bitten to get the snake away from Tilly, so be it. She’d survived a poisoning before, she could do it again. All they had to do was get if far enough away to keep it from Tilly.
Gabriel’s flashlight swept up and found the snake coiled on the ground only a foot away from where they stood. As she watched, it uncoiled, bared its fangs at them, and lunged. Priscilla moved out of the way in time. Gabriel didn’t. It struck, fangs lodging into the exposed expanse of ankle that had been bared by the electric fence.
Priscilla grabbed it behind the head, her stomach doing contortions as the snake bunched and twisted, trying to reach around to strike her. She tightened her grip as much as she could without killing it and carried the writhing snake over to a nearby container. She wasn’t sure what breed was in this tank, and at the moment she didn’t care. She dumped it in and winced when its head struck glass as it tried to bite her as well.
Tilly let out a low sob. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Priscilla strode forward slowly, wary of more snakes. When nothing sprang out of the darkness to strike at her heels she relaxed a fraction. She sank to the ground next to Tilly. She was curled up in a ball, her straw-colored hair damp with sweat and matted on the top of her head. Her eyes glistened with tears. She wasn’t a pretty crier, but most people weren’t. Her cheeks were blotchy and her breath was coming irregularly.
“You’re going to be okay,” Priscilla soothed, stroking her hair. “Gabriel, help me get her up.”
He didn’t answer. It was hard to tell in the light of the flashlight, but he looked paler than usual, which was quite a feat for a vampire.
“Gabriel?” Priscilla asked.
He swayed once and opened his mouth to speak.
Then Gabriel collapsed to the ground, vomiting blood.
Chapter Fourteen
Priscilla was paralyzed, unsure of what to do.
She wasn’t sure when the paramedics would arrive, or if they would arrive in time to help. She couldn’t tell him to run with her to the gates. The only advantage that Gabriel had over a human who’d been bitten was that it would take him longer to die. Vampire blood didn’t circulate like a human’s, and therefore it would take longer for the venom to destroy his heart. But that didn’t mean he was safe. Soon the feeding instinct would kick in and he’d look for the nearest available prey to wash the venom from his system.
That prey would be Tilly, the only living, breathing human in the place. And at nine months pregnant, she couldn’t afford to lose any of her blood. Priscilla took a deep fortifying breath and let go of Tilly’s shoulders.
“Stay here,” she said softly, and propped the woman up against the wall of one stall. Then she scooted across the floor to kneel beside Gabriel. He was wiping his mouth with a disgusted expression on his face.
She was about to do something she hadn’t done for over three hundred years. Not since her maker had left.
“Drink from me,” she said.
Gabriel glanced up sharply. She fought the urge to squirm with embarrassment. Normally bites between vampires held a different connotation. Sharing one’s blood with another vampire was a gesture of trust and intimacy usually reserved for sire and childe. It wasn’t normally something she’d propose, but she didn’t see that she had many options. He needed blood, and she was the only safe source.
“I can’t,” he said hoarsely. “It would be wrong.”
“Do you want to die?” she snapped. She yanked the curtain of her dark hair away from her neck, exposing it to his gaze. “Because I don’t think you’re going to make it to the hospital in Westwend at the rate you’re deteriorating.”
Gabriel hesitated for a minute more. Finally, he straightened up with difficulty. She followed suit, staring up at him. She wasn’t going to budge. She hadn’t taken the snake bite; she could at least take this one. He reached out to her, movements deliberately slow. If her heart had been beating, it would have thumped unevenly when he wrapped a hand around her waist and drew her in.
It was silly to feel anything but panic at this point, but she felt irrationally shy when he pressed her against his chest. It had been so long since anyone had touched her in a non-platonic way. She shivered when he brushed the remainder of her hair away from her neck, and her spine arched just a little when his lips brushed her throat.
Fangs pierced her neck, twin stabs of pain that quickly ebbed into a dull ache. She couldn’t help a small gasp. She hadn’t been fed upon in centuries. She’d forgotten what it felt like to have blood flow out of her, to have a man’s sensual mouth moving against her throat like this.
She didn’t have as much to give him as she’d have liked. Priscilla hadn’t been full in many years, living on only what she had to to get by. It saved time and money. But in recent months she’d barely had enough to sustain herself. Only the indulgence at the beginning of the week kept her from being bone dry. She was suddenly very grateful to Olivia and Gabriel for providing her with blood. Otherwise Gabriel would be dying.
His hand fisted in her hair, holding her firmly in place. She chided herself for enjoying it, even a little.
Not the time, not the time, not the time … she reminded herself.
Finally, after what seemed like ages but was probably only a few minutes, Gabriel stepped away from her, a little flushed and breathing hard.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her own voice slurring a little.
He nodded. “For now. I should be able to move under my own power, at least.”
For the first time since Gabriel had been
bitten, they looked back to Tilly. She was watching them both, wide-eyed, her hands clasped tightly over her distended belly.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to go.”
Gabriel got one arm under Tilly and helped her waddle her way out of the stable. It was a slow process—much slower than it had taken them to get here—but they eventually managed to get her to the gate. To Priscilla’s immense relief, there was an ambulance waiting for them.
Arthur hurried up to them, getting another arm around Tilly when they reached the now-open gates. Apparently, someone had broken the passcode.
“Is she all right?” he demanded.
“I’m fine,” Tilly panted. “I’m just tired. It’s this guy who needs medical attention.” She jerked her head toward Gabriel. “He was bitten by the rattlesnake. He’ll need help. And Priscilla lost blood in there.”
“I’m fine,” Priscilla said, not wanting to go into that little detail at the moment.
“Let’s get everyone to the hospital,” Arthur said firmly. “We can catch up with Perry later.”
Tilly’s expression darkened. “You can’t let him go. He’s going to hurt people. I heard him plan it.”
“Plan what?”
Tilly shook, despite the sweltering summer heat.
“I came over to warn him about the Sons, you know. They’re relentless when they have you as a target. But he already had a plan to deal with them before they can reveal all this to the authorities. He’s got a lot of fireworks. He put most of them in his car and drove away earlier this evening. He’s going to plant them around the compound and burn the whole place down with everyone inside.”
Chapter Fifteen
Arthur wouldn’t stop swearing. Priscilla sat in the back, slightly lightheaded from her impromptu blood donation but otherwise feeling fine. Jack Riggs was in the front seat with Arthur.
“If it’s not one thing, it’s something else!” Arthur exclaimed. “Werewolves and vampires, and assassins, all in my town. And now we have some crazy ex-zookeeper planning acts of terrorism! What’s next? The apocalypse?”
“Can’t rule it out, I suppose,” Jack muttered. “How are you doing back there, Priscilla?”
“Fine,” she forced out. “Dizzy but fine.”
“You did good back there,” he said. “You might have saved his life.”
She took the praise with a nod but said nothing. Jack and Arthur would tease her mercilessly if they knew what the significance of blood exchange was in vampire culture, and she wasn’t in the mood for it right now. To be fair, neither was Arthur, and that made her feel a little better.
“Where are they?” Priscilla asked.
“En route,” Arthur spat. “Vance listened to me and let them go. We’re going to be lucky to beat them to the compound.”
Priscilla still couldn’t believe it. Willis Perry was a displaced and disgruntled man, but was he truly capable of a crime of this magnitude?
Arthur cursed when he turned a corner onto the gravel road and found himself at the tail end of a parade of vans. Someone had driven the Sons’ vehicles all the way to Westwend to pick them up. The people at the beginning of the line were already disembarking, getting ready to file into the compound.
“We have to stop them,” Priscilla blurted.
“I’m aware,” Arthur snapped.
He pulled to a stop and they exited, Jack taking the time to open the back door for her. Arthur began to shout almost as soon as his feet hit the ground, trying to get the attention of Amos Buckley. The man didn’t so much as turn.
A nearby man glared at them. “You said we were free to go. What do you want with us now?”
“We want to save your lives,” Arthur said. “Someone is planning to burn down your compound. You need to get everyone out now.”
The man just stared uncomprehendingly at them. Arthur snorted in disgust and moved on, sprinting toward the front gates. Jack followed.
Priscilla hung back, trying to convince as many people as she could that they needed to stay put. Some listened, but most didn’t. She could only hope that Arthur and Jack would be able to get through to Amos Buckley and that he’d be able to hammer some sense into these sheeple.
She was nearing the end of the line of cars when she smelled it. She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d catalogued Perry’s scent. Maybe she’d done it in order to avoid getting close to him. He always smelled off, like he’d been sleeping too close to an animal. She smelled it again now, and knew he was close. Priscilla stopped in midsentence and stepped away from the woman she’d been trying to convince to flee, sniffing the air around her. She caught the scent and began to follow it.
It led her around the side of the compound wall. She spotted fireworks tucked into the grass next to the wall. She kicked them away, one by one, as she encountered them, getting as many out of contact with the building as she possibly could.
She found him leaning over, placing another firework in a natural gap between the ground and fence that had formed due to erosion.
“Perry!”
He straightened up so fast, he nearly ran into the fence. His eyes wheeled and found her. She glared back at him.
“Come with me now, and no one has to get hurt,” she said.
He shook his head. “They have to. They need to die.”
“Why?” she asked, trying to keep his focus on her face as he took a deliberate step closer.
“They’re killing everything,” he hissed. “Did you know their chapter in New Jersey has been killing an endangered species just because it’s a snake? Barbaric.”
“Maybe,” she said, taking another careful step forward. “But that doesn’t explain all of this, Perry. Why did you kill Absalom? Why take Tilly?”
Perry’s face twitched. “I didn’t mean for her to get involved. I didn’t want it to go this way.”
“I believe you. I do. But I need you to explain. If you tell Arthur, he might be able to classify it as self-defense. We know they were harassing you.”
Somehow she doubted that he was going to get away with this even if he turned himself over right now. Most, if not all, of the animals he held on his property were illegal to own in the U.S. And she sincerely doubted the baboon that’d been used as the murder weapon was naturally aggressive unless provoked. This looked like a clear case of premeditated murder.
“Come on, Perry,” she pleaded, stepping closer. She was only a few feet away now and Perry still hadn’t noticed. “You don’t have to do this. If you do this you’re going to kill a lot of people.”
Perry laughed. “We’re not endangered. There are billions of us. One of us dies, another steps in to take its place. We’re a little like ants that way. Tirelessly keeping on and infesting any space we please.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a sleeve of matches.
“Don’t,” Priscilla ordered.
Perry paid her no heed and struck the match. He held it aloft for a moment in silent triumph and then released his grip on it. Priscilla watched it tumble end over end, almost in slow motion. There was no way she was catching it before it hit the ground and the fireworks he’d littered there. So it left her with only one option.
She hit Perry sideways in a flying tackle, sending them both as far away from the wall as she could manage. It was about six feet after they slid to a stop, but it wasn’t quite enough.
There was a sound like a thunderclap, and heated air exploded all around them. Something far heavier than she’d expected—debris maybe—hit her mid-back, and her world was suddenly on fire. She only had the presence of mind to roll over a few times, stifling the flames before the pain rose to dwarf everything else.
Priscilla stilled with a groan, watching a few fireworks go off in the night sky, painting it red, white, and blue, before she passed out.
Chapter Sixteen
Priscilla was unsurprised and a little displeased to wake up in a hospital bed again. This was a habit she’d be only too willing to break. It just seemed like
crazy murderers were part and parcel of helping Bellmare PD solve crimes these days.
She tried to lever herself into a sitting position again. Other than some soreness, she felt fine. She must have been out for a while to have healed so completely. The last thing she remembered, Willis had been trying to turn everyone into roasted marshmallows.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” Gabriel said warmly. Her eyes wheeled, trying to find him. The crinkling of a newspaper alerted her that he was behind her privacy curtain. He drew it back and she got her first look at him since he’d been carted away in an ambulance.
He was effulgent, practically radiating good health. There was a hint of color in his cheeks, and he looked like he might have gotten some sleep since she’d been out. He was smiling down at her.
“How long was I out?” she asked, trying to swing her legs over the bed. She found herself unable to do so. Ugh, these things again. She was strapped into a pair of leg cuffs that helped to pump blood all over her body. That was why she was sore. It wasn’t pleasant to have blood pumped through you. Normally the human heart did that, but vampire physiology had other ways of disseminating blood and apparently resented being forced to do it the traditional way.
“Not long. A little less than two days. The blood transfusion was really all you needed. That, and a haircut.”
“What?” Priscilla reached up to touch her hair and found that it now ended at her shoulders. For some reason, that upset her more than the soreness or the time she’d lost. Her hair would grow back at a normal human rate. But that didn’t mean she’d wanted an impromptu haircut. “How’d this happen?”
“A piece of burning debris hit you in the back, Priscilla. You’re lucky you didn’t get burned far worse. You lost inches of it in patches. The nurses tried to get it as straight as they could, but you may still want to see a barber.”
Priscilla tried to hide her dismay by asking other, more pertinent questions.
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