Deliver Me from Darkness: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors
Page 23
Hold on, mon chaton. With all that he was, he reached out to her, soothing her into her slumber. I’m coming.
And when he got there, Christos was going to die.
It was Logan’s question, a solid minute of silence later, that broke him from the haze of residual pain and anger. “Where is she?”
He looked up, meeting his friend’s questioning gaze in the mirror. He cleared his throat, swallowing blood. Damn, he’d bitten himself again. “It looks like some sort of mining operation. The cavern she’s in has been dug out somewhat, but the entrance has railroad ties that suggest it leads back into a man-made tunnel.”
“Coal mines,” Valin said from the passenger seat.
“What?”
“We’re well into Pennsylvania. There are a bunch of abandoned coal mines in the western part of the state. It’s the perfect place for an army of vampires and demons to hide out.” Valin shook his head. “Fuck. Of all the luck.”
“What?”
“Have you ever driven through the back roads of western Pennsylvania?”
“No.”
“They suck. And they don’t go in a straight line. The closest mine I know of is probably going to take us another two or three hours to drive to.”
Roland’s blood chilled to ice. “She doesn’t have two or three hours.”
Silence sucked up the tension in the car. Roland worked on taking deep breaths, working through his fear. Valin was right. The road they were on now was running northwest along a ridge of mountains on their left, but that was after having gone north for a while after having originally been going southwest. It was more than infuriating. Every single time they switched directions it seemed like the distance between them and Karissa was increasing, not decreasing. Overall that wasn’t true, but as the crow flew, he knew they could have been there by now. If it hadn’t been daylight outside, even if he could have been blessed with some frigging rain, he could have used his vamp tricks to be across the many mountain ridges that were forcing them off their path.
His hands fisted, cutting and digging, cutting and digging until the scent of his own blood permeated the air around him. The pain, barely a shadow of what he’d felt coming from Karissa over their link, eased his churning guts and allowed him to think more clearly. He couldn’t go out. Logan couldn’t magically transport their car over the massive ridge on their left, but there was someone…“Go, Valin. You’re the only one who can get to her in time.”
“And if she’s not at the first mine? Or the second? There are dozens of these mines in the general direction you’re suggesting.”
“Damn you. Does the fact she’s a Paladin mean nothing to you? Do you hate me so much you’d let her die because of our bond? Please. You have to try.”
Valin tapped the dashboard, his mouth twisted as he contemplated. Roland was about ready to beg again, or, perhaps more likely, reach through the seats, grab him, then pummel him until he agreed when the bastard finally spoke.
“Pull over, Logan.”
Logan looked sharply at Valin but pulled off onto the shoulder.
Valin threw open his door, marching out of sight around the car. A second later there was a pop and the trunk lifted, sunlight bathing the previously dark haven. Roland hissed, pulling his blanket over as much of himself as possible. From the front Logan swore as he bolted out of the car. Valin started to reach inside the trunk.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Logan demanded, slapping Valin’s hand away and lunging for the tailgate.
Valin raised an arm, preventing Logan from closing the trunk again, and stood with his other arm outstretched toward Roland. “Come on, vamp. I’ll cloak you.”
“What?”
“Do you want to save your woman?”
“Fuck you. You know I do.” Even with Logan and Valin’s body shadowing him, his skin was burning. A slow tingle and sizzle that meant he was already lobster quality wherever his skin was still exposed.
“Then get out. I’ll cloak you.”
***
Valin fell out of the Shade, forming with a cloud of particles into his human form beside Roland. He reached up, swiping the sheet of instantaneous wet locks out of his face and tossed them over his shoulder.
“Rain. I hate rain.”
“I love it,” Roland said from where he crouched down beside the Paladin. Not only did the rain make it possible for him to be out in the open while it was still day, but it did wonders to cool the heated skin on his face and hands. Even with Valin cloaking him, he was able to feel the sizzle of the sun on his face. Of course, in order to see where he needed to “leap” to next, Valin had to thin the veil of darkness he created for Roland to see through.
“Yeah, but rain is harder to sift through. Makes traveling in the Shade difficult.”
“Kind of sucks.”
“Not to mention this is a cold rain. I think my balls are trying to hide somewhere in the vicinity of my small intestine.”
Without a word, Roland pulled Valin’s T-shirt and jeans from his rolled up blanket and passed them to Valin, then donned the blanket again as an added precaution. Knowing his luck, the rain would break and the clouds would miraculously part in a beam of heavenly light. Bad for the two vamps standing a few meters back in the mine shaft, but worse for Roland crouching out here.
Valin yanked on a pant leg, then the other, as he nodded at the vamps. “Think anyone will notice if they go missing?”
“They’re Christos’s, so yeah.”
Valin sighed, planting his hands on his hips despite the fact he’d yet to zip up. “That sucks.”
“Finish getting dressed so we can go kick some ass, would you?”
“Why?” Valin started pulling the pants off again. “I’m just going to have to take them off again.”
Roland twisted around to look at him head-on. Valin winked. “How would you like to be invisible?”
Of course. When Valin was in his particle form, he was all but impossible to see, unless he let you see him. It was probably safe to assume the same went for anything within Valin’s circumference of influence—like the vampire he’d encircled. “Invisibility is handy. But not if it means slicking up with you again.”
“Ah, poor Roland, your masculinity being threatened by hanging with me?”
“Shit no.”
Valin’s lips curled up saying, “Suck it up, vamp,” just before he twisted into darkness.
***
Gabriella screamed a soundless scream, straining against the thick leather and metal manacles that kept her anchored to the granite wall. She was fully healed. Had all her strength back, and yet, for the life of her, she couldn’t break through a couple measly bindings. What the hell?
Most of the van ride was a blur. The agony the sun wrought on her was enough to blur the edges of her memory. She remembered Christos sliding the bloody finger in her mouth. And though she’d instinctively swallowed, she remembered that she’d somehow managed to resist leaping onto the curly-haired woman and sucking her dry. She also remembered how a little while later, as they’d driven out of the fog, how the van had pulled over, the back doors cracking open, and Christos ordering she be tossed outside into the full effects of the burning sun.
She’d screamed, clawing at the doorframe, then crawled on hands and knees across the ground as she searched for a bush or something. Her already taxed body hadn’t been able to take the stress and she’d passed out—and woken here. Perfectly healed, perfectly healthy. Someone must have picked her up off the ground before she could burn to a crisp and fed her the blood she needed to heal. Who that was, why, or whose blood she’d been given, she didn’t know. Didn’t care. Only thing that mattered was getting free, finding Roland’s woman, and getting them both out of this mess. Problem was, the only thing she knew how to do was the second. Whether she’d had a mere drop or a full IV bag of Curls’s blood, Gabriella now had the ability to track the woman down. Blood called to blood. Gabriella, Roland, and Curls were now as tigh
t as family.
She only hoped that she’d be given the time to make that Disney dream come true.
***
“I think you might want to tell busybody Calhoun about this,” Roland whispered into the Paladin’s ear as he shifted to get a better look into the huge cavern before them. Filled to bursting with vampire, merker, and demon, he was shocked to see that no bloodshed had occurred. The three groups, though on the same side, were not known to play nice without their masters there to keep them chained. Roland had spotted Ganelon right away among the masses, and as Lucifer’s right-hand man, he could probably control both merker and demon, but Christos was blatantly absent. Not good. Roland liked his enemies close, and not knowing where the troublemaking vampire was, was driving him nuts.
Close. The vampires would not amass unless Christos was around to call them to order.
Valin shook his head. “Can’t. Distance, time in the Shade. The connection is lost. He obviously can’t locate me now, and I can’t seem to get a bead past all this rock to fix it.”
The corners of Roland’s mouth pulled tight. “The other Paladin need to know what they will be facing if they come here.”
His only answer was an extreme sort of silence.
He squeezed Valin’s shoulder. “I want you to head back to the surface. Hopefully it’s just these walls interfering with your projections and you’ll be able to warn them.” He looked back down into the cavern. “I’ll find Karissa and bring her out.”
“You’re good, Roland. But without me here to cloak you, you’re not invisible.”
“True.” Roland pulled his old Paladin blade from the sheath on his thigh, the etched metal glinting in the faint light. “But with this I don’t have to be.”
Valin eyed him, eyed the blade. “You know, I think our problem always was that we are both cocky bastards.”
“Probably.”
“All right.” Valin stood. “I’ll meet you topside. But if you’re not out in twenty minutes, I’m coming back in after you.”
Roland watched Valin sift, the curl of dark cloud zipping back up the tunnel as the Paladin’s words echoed in his mind. Twenty minutes, and Valin and the other Paladin would come in after him. Why didn’t that make Roland feel any better?
***
Valin was almost to the entrance of the mines before he finally drew a bead on Calhoun. Only it wasn’t Senior, but the son. Good. Might be easier that way. Logan would know how to arrange the help of the other Paladin without the end result being a knife stuck in Roland’s heart. And damn if Valin wasn’t starting to wonder if all that animosity they’d shared in the past was a situational thing rather than a true dislike.
No worries. Something to ponder later…if Roland found his bond mate and they got them both out. Because if that didn’t happen, then Roland would not be anyone that Valin would want to know.
Valin settled his mind and tapped up against Logan’s shields. There was a moment of wary hesitation, but then the other Paladin opened a pathway.
<
Logan ignored that. <
<
<
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A second voice answered, “I think it’s just that—crap.”
<
“Sure you’re not just saying that because you weren’t chosen to receive the gift?” from the first.
The other grunted in reply. Valin took that as a maybe. Trying to keep his mental voice tight and direct he “whispered” a reply to Logan. <
There was a slight hesitation before Logan replied, equally quiet and direct. <
<
Logan’s fury needed no medium. It was like acid in a raw wound as he mentally hissed, <
The conversational vamps walked past the opening where Valin hid. Thank the Father they weren’t merker, otherwise they might have overheard his little mental conversation with Logan, or at least known it was going on and that someone who shouldn’t be there was. The way things were starting to buzz, it was going to be short of impossible to get both Roland and Karissa out. He could only spread himself so far, especially when moving. <
<
<
***
Roland slunk into the oddly shaped cavern, his eyes honed in on the figure on the makeshift table, but his other senses—both vamp and Paladin ones—searched the dim corners. It was hard to concentrate on a possible trap though when Karissa lay on that table. Unconscious, barely breathing, and stained with her own blood. His very being howled with fury, but he remained silent as he finished the sweep for enemies with his eyes as well.
Confident they were alone, he raced across the room, his hands immediately going to the bindings that held her arms obscenely out to the side. Bruised arms. Cuts. Wounds that suggested she’d been poked multiple times with a needle. And her torso—someone had taken a blade to her there as well, her shirt slashed open where the sharp metal had bitten into her in long, jagged streaks before being wedged beneath the lowest rib.
“Karissa,” he choked on her name. No, it was tears he was choking on. He was crying. He’d found Karissa, but it was too late. He didn’t need to be a healer to know that it was too late.
Chapter 24
<
What the hell was that? The mind voice had been feminine in nature, but he was quite sure it hadn’t been Karissa. And since there were no other female Paladin, that left merker.
Great. They knew he was here now, unless this one was alone. In which case, given the properties of the stone around them, the merker probably hadn’t warned anyone else. She probably only called out because she’d overheard part of his conversation with Logan and, not able to find him, was now trying to lure him to her.
Well, wasn’t this her lucky day. Valin was in the mood to oblige. Only he wasn’t about to roll over and play dead.
Reversing direction, he headed back closer to the surface, sending out a well-shielded probe. The merker tried to grasp on but slipped off, her frustration evident in the smack of the rebound. Temper, temper. It did give him a direction though. The next time another tunnel intersected he veered off. This tunnel was heading upward and within moments he was slithering through a set of plank wood that boarded up the opening to the tunnel.
Once through, he stopped, taking in the dilapidated building. It was a warehouse of sorts, and inside were the rusted out remains of more than one coal car. There was also something else in the room, namely the woman who’d been bashing at his shields. She was chained up along the far wall, a gag stuffed into her mouth, but she was not defeated. Her eyes flashed with fire as she jerked at the leather and steel manacles around her wrists. There was something odd about her, besides the fact that she was not a merker. Something in the tilt of her eyes that reminded him of someone.
Even though she couldn’t know for sure he was there—he was still in the Shade—he felt another brush of her mind as she tried to penetrate his shields. He wasn’t that great a fool. Still, she had him deathly curious. Who was she? And why was she chained up here in this building?
He slipped closer to her, then coalesced into his human form. Her eyes widened, the black pupils all but obliterating the emerald green irises. Before he could decide whether it was the abruptness of his appearance, or t
he fact that he was naked, the pupils constricted back to normal.
Tough cookie.
He reached up, pulled the gag out of her mouth.
She worked her jaw and swallowed. “Thank you.” She jerked at the manacles. “Now let me out of these.”
His gaze traveled to the manacles. “Why? So you can feed on me?” He’d seen her pretty fangs when he’d pulled the gag out. “Any vampire worth their salt could get out of those. Fact that you can’t says you must be hungry.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not hungry. But if I were, I certainly wouldn’t want blood from the likes of you.”
“The likes of me?”
“You’re one of the Paladin bastards who like to turn their backs on their own. I wouldn’t lap at your vein if you were the last red-blooded creature in the world.”
He folded his arms across his chest. Forget the cookie. There was nothing sweet about this one. He took another long look at her, studying her from head to toe before returning to her face. What was it about her eyes?
She jerked her bindings again, screeching an inhuman shriek. “Come on! The woman doesn’t have much time left.”
His arms dropped to his sides. “What woman?”
“The Paladin woman, you idiot! She’s dying.”
“How do you know?”
She turned her face away, mouth pinched, forehead bunched up. A wave of heat spread through Valin. As if of its own accord, his hand shot out, latching around her throat. “Did you feed off her?”
“Not by choice,” she gasped through his bruising stranglehold.
Her eyes darted to the side. He followed her gaze to the discarded IV bag that lay empty and wrinkled upon the dirt floor. Ah, crap. So Roland wasn’t the only vamp out there who didn’t like his status in life. He looked back at her again, took in the softness of her skin, the slightness of her adolescent curves. The poor girl couldn’t have been much past puberty when she was turned.
He dropped his hand, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. How many others had treated her thusly? Had she experienced anything other than abuse from those she interacted with? Judging by the fact that she had to be force-fed, he somehow doubted it.