“Insurance.”
Before I could ask him what he meant, Silvio reached out, scooped me up into his arms, and headed toward the door. The bag of knives hanging off my wrist smacked against his hip, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Turn the knob for me, then relax, like you’re still riding high on the drug,” he said. “We’ll get a lot farther a lot faster that way.”
I tucked the knife in my hand up the sleeve of the coat, then did as he asked and went slack in his arms. Silvio put his back into the door, pushed it open, and left the lab.
He stepped back out into the drug den. Some of the addicts perked up as Silvio walked past them, but when they realized that he wasn’t Benson with a fresh hit for them, they sank back down onto their pillows and slid deeper into their despair. Two guards had been posted at the bottom of the stairs, and they frowned as Silvio stopped in front of them.
“Where you are going with her?” one of the vamps asked.
“Upstairs to get her cleaned up. She threw up all over the lab,” Silvio said in a bland tone. “Boss’s orders. He has special plans for this one.”
Both of the men winced at the words special plans, but they stepped aside so we could pass. Silvio climbed the stairs, still holding me in his arms.
“I hope you had a nice, tall glass of blood for breakfast,” I said. “You’ll need the energy, what with all this lying and backstabbing you’re doing.”
“Giant’s blood, actually,” he replied. “Two big glasses. I like to plan ahead. I thought that I might need a bit of extra strength today.”
“Are you saying that my ass is heavy?” I drawled. “Why, Silvio, I think I’m insulted.”
He huffed, although it sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Silvio reached the top of the stairs, turned right, and started moving down a long hallway. We passed room after room, all of them furnished with white couches, chrome lamps, and glass tables. Everything was sleek, chic, and polished to a high gloss, but no photos, books, magazines, or knickknacks of any kind adorned the furniture. I’d been too drugged earlier to pay much attention to my surroundings, but the inside of Benson’s mansion was very much a reflection of his lab and his own personality—cold, clinical, sterile.
The drug den and the lab were in the center of the mansion, and shadows cloaked the interior like demons about to break free from the walls. Or maybe that was just more hallucinations brought on by Burn.
But the guards were very real.
Vampires were stationed at the end of every hallway, all of them armed with guns and cell phones. A few of them stopped Silvio long enough to ask where he was taking me, but he gave them the same cleanup answer as before, and they let us pass. But the farther Silvio walked and the more guards he spoke to, the faster his steps became, until his wing tips were bang-bang-banging like a drum on the floor.
“Slow down,” I hissed. “You’re practically running, and running makes people suspicious.”
“We’re on a tight timetable, Ms. Blanco,” Silvio snapped back. “In case you haven’t guessed.”
We glared at each other, but he did slow his steps enough to keep me from griping at him anymore.
Silvio turned into another hallway, and I spotted a set of patio doors at the far end that weren’t being guarded. Through the glass, I could see the green expanse of the lawn outside. My heart lifted.
Silvio let out a relieved sigh. “Almost there—”
“Hey, Silvio!” a high feminine voice called out behind us. “Wait up!”
His steps faltered. His mouth pinched into a frustrated frown even as his eyes locked on the doors up ahead, and he debated whether to make a run for them. But he knew as well as I did that that would send all the guards racing in our direction, so he stopped and turned around.
A vamp came jogging up the hallway to us.
“Yes, Joan?” Silvio asked.
Joan stopped and waved her phone in the air. “I just got a text message from the boss asking where she is.” She jerked her head at me. “Benson wants to know why the two of you aren’t in the lab. What are you doing all the way over here?”
Silvio stiffened. “Beau wanted me to get her cleaned up.”
“Yeah, but why didn’t you just dump her in one of the tubs in the bathroom close to the lab like usual?” Joan frowned. “What are you doing, Silvio? You’re not . . . actually . . . helping her—”
Before she could finish her thought, I palmed the knife hidden up the sleeve of my stolen lab coat and lashed out with it. I’d been hoping to catch the vamp in the throat, but she saw the glint of the weapon and jerked back at the last second. My knife only sliced across her breastbone, but that was more than enough to get her to stop asking questions.
Joan screamed and staggered back, clutching at the wound I’d opened up on her chest. Her head cracked against the wall, and she dropped to the floor, unconscious.
“Now you’ve done it,” Silvio muttered.
“What?” I sniped. “She was a second away from figuring it out anyway—”
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Joan’s scream must have been louder than I thought, or the vamps had better hearing, because footsteps started pounding in our direction. Silvio cursed, turned, and ran toward the doors.
But he wasn’t quite fast enough.
A vamp stepped out of one of the rooms at the end of the hallway, his gun already drawn. When he realized what Silvio was doing, he snapped the weapon up and took aim. I reached for my Stone magic, even though I didn’t have enough of it to harden my body, much less protect Silvio and me from the bullets that were going to start flying in our direction—
Pfft. Pfft.
The vampire dropped to the floor, blood leaking out of the two holes in the back of his skull. Silvio skidded to a stop.
Outside on the patio, a hand smashed through the rest of the glass on the door, then reached through, unlocked, and opened it. A second later, a familiar figure appeared—one that could have almost been . . . me.
I blinked, but it wasn’t another hallucination.
She was dressed all in black, from her boots to her jeans to the long-sleeved T-shirt that she wore underneath her vest. Even her gun was black. So was the silencer attached to the barrel. She wasn’t wearing her detective’s badge, and the only bit of color on her was the silverstone primrose rune that glinted in the hollow of her throat.
Bria lowered her gun and smiled at me. “Hey, there, big sister.”
For a moment, I was stunned into silence. Then I found my voice again. “Bria? What are you doing here?”
Her grin dimmed. “Saving you. If it’s not already too late—”
Crack! Crack!
A vamp appeared at the opposite end of the hall. Silvio hunkered down, but the bullets went wild. Bria stepped forward and raised her own gun.
Pfft. Pfft.
She dropped the vamp with two shots to the chest, but shouts rose up from deeper in the mansion, growing louder and louder as more and more guards headed in our direction.
Bria looked at Silvio. “Can she walk?”
“She’s going to have to,” he said.
He set me down on my feet and passed me over to Bria, who grabbed onto my waist with her left hand. I sagged against her, but I managed to stay upright, even though the bag of knives still dangling from my wrist swung and rattled every which way, making it hard to keep my balance. Bria started dragging me toward the doors, but Silvio didn’t move to follow us.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You have to come with us—or you’re dead.”
He shook his head. “There are too many guards. You need someone to lead them away from your location if you have any chance of escaping.”
His mouth pinched, his shoulders slumped, and sorrow sparked in his gray eyes. “Take care of Catalina for me, okay?”
“Silvio!” I hissed. “Silvio!”
But he had already started running in the other direction, back into the
heart of the mansion, toward Benson and the rest of his men.
“Come on, Gin,” Bria said. “He made his choice. Let’s make sure that it counts.”
I nodded, and we headed toward the open patio door. I managed to stay upright, but my legs were weak, my steps slow and clumsy, so Bria ended up doing most of the work. She maneuvered herself outside through the opening, but my bare foot caught on the the dead vamp’s leg, and I did a header through the door and onto the balcony. My skull cracked against the ground hard enough to cause white stars to flash before my eyes, while the knives in my bag clank-clank-clanked together, sounding as loud as gongs to my aching brain. All I wanted to do was lie there and kiss the cool, smooth stones under my face, but Bria wasn’t about to let me give up.
“Move!” my sister ordered, reaching forward and hoisting me to my feet again.
Crack! Crack!
Gunshots zinged outside after us, shattering the glass in the other door. I staggered to my left, out of sight of the hallway, and clutched a stone column for support. Bria threw herself down, then rolled over onto her back, aimed her gun, and waited—just waited.
A few seconds later, two vamps crashed through the doors. Bria shot them both in the chest, and they went down screaming. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed my arm, and pulled me toward the balcony steps.
“Move!” she ordered me again. “C’mon, Gin! You don’t want to die here, do you? You know you want to come back later and kill every single one of these bastards!”
I grinned, despite the fact that my head was still spinning from my fall and my legs threatened to buckle with every step I took. She knew just what to say to motivate me.
I let Bria lead the way, while I focused on holding on to her hand and just putting one foot in front of the other without stumbling. If I fell again, the vamps would catch up to us and swarm all over us.
Bria yanked me down the steps, across another patio, and out onto the lawn. Behind us, more and more shouts rose up, as guards poured out of the mansion and gave chase. Staccato crack-crack-cracks of gunfire split the air, kicking up dirt and grass around us, but Bria didn’t hesitate, and it was all that I could do to keep up with her. A stitch throbbed in my side, sweat streamed down my face, my legs wobbled like a newborn calf’s, and my bag of knives slap-slap-slapped against my body, but I forced myself to stumble forward. If I stopped, we were done for, and I’d be damned if I was going to be the cause of Bria’s death. Not when she’d risked herself to rescue me. So I sucked down as much air as I could, ignored all my aches and pains, and staggered on.
A vamp stepped out from a cluster of trees in front of us. He raised his gun and took aim, but instead of stopping and doing the same, Bria tightened her grip on my hand and kept running straight at him. The vamp’s fingers curled around the trigger of his gun—
CRACK!
This gunshot was louder and sharper than all the rest, and the vamp went down without a sound, given the bullet that had just ripped through his neck. I grinned. Finn was working his own kind of magic with his sniper rifle.
More of those loud, booming cracks sounded, and the guards realized that someone besides Bria was shooting at them. They dived behind the benches, bushes, and trees that dotted the lawn, trying to see where the shots were coming from, but they wouldn’t find the source of the commotion. Finnegan Lane was one of the best snipers around, and he would have picked a perfect perch, someplace where Benson’s guards had no chance of shooting back at him.
While Finn took down as many of the guards as he could, Bria kept running, pulling me along behind her like a mother with a wayward child. All I could do was follow where she led me. But I didn’t care where we were going, as long as it was away from Benson and all the drug-induced horrors inside his mansion—horrors that made me shudder even now, despite the fact that we were running for our lives.
We kept moving, and I realized that we weren’t heading toward the street that fronted the mansion or to any sort of waiting vehicle. Instead, Bria was dragging me to the very back of Benson’s estate, which butted up against the Aneirin River. But I didn’t have the breath or energy to ask her where we were going.
Finally, we reached the river and the simple stone bridge that arced over it. Bria pulled me out into the middle of the span, then abruptly stopped. I stood there, swaying from side to side like a tree about to topple over, while Bria guarded our backs, taking the time to reload her gun. Above the faint click-click-clicks of her checking her weapon, I heard something else. Something low and steady and quickly coming this way. I frowned, wondering at the rumbling sound.
Was that . . . a boat?
Bria finished with her gun, then turned back to me. “Here! You have to climb over the side!”
She helped me hoist one of my legs over the railing, then the other. She hopped over too, so that we were both standing on the edge. With one hand, Bria held on to the side of the bridge, and with the other, she gripped her gun. In the distance, more guards appeared on the lawn, all of them with weapons, all of them heading in this direction.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Finn took out as many of the vamps as he could with his sniper rifle, but at this point, there were more of them than even he could shoot. Some of the guards broke off and headed away from the mansion, no doubt to try to find his sniper’s nest. But I wasn’t worried. Finn would be packed up and long gone before they ever found his location. So I focused my attention on staying upright and holding on to the side of the bridge with my weak, sweaty, trembling hands.
“Get ready!” Bria yelled at me, grinning a little. “Our ride’s almost here!”
I nodded, but she didn’t see me, since she was already turning back and firing at the guards who were racing toward our position.
That low rumbling grew louder and louder. I risked a glance back over my shoulder, looking for the source of the sound. I squinted, and something zoomed into view in the distance on the far side of the bridge, up the river, but closing fast.
A white speedboat with blue and red racing stripes.
I blinked, but the image didn’t melt or vanish into thin air, so I knew that it was real. The speedboat zipped up the river as easy as you please, and I realized that this must be Bria’s escape plan. Instead of risking getting caught on a Southtown street by Benson and his men, she’d chosen a less obvious but much quicker getaway route. I nodded in approval, even though the motion almost caused me to pitch off the bridge and fall into the water.
Bria heard the boat too, and she holstered her gun and grabbed my hand. More shouts rose up from the guards, who were sprinting toward us. And with the blood they drank and the extra speed it gave them, the vamps were closing fast. Another thirty seconds, and they’d be at the end of the bridge. They could easily shoot and kill us from there.
“Here we go,” Bria said, her voice lost in the continued cracks of gunfire, as she eyed the rippling water below us. “One . . . two . . . three!”
She yanked me off the bridge with her.
22
For a moment, the sensation was the same as the Burn drug—that airy feeling of flying, flying high. I laughed at how good it felt to just be . . . free. My head snapped back, and all I could see was the blue, blue sky, dotted here and there with marshmallow clouds, just like in my hallucinations.
But then gravity took over, the way it always did, sucking me back down to earth and reality. My head dropped, along with my body, and the rush of air tore away the rest of my crazy, cackling laughter. Instead of a pit of imaginary fire, the dark and very real surface of the Aneirin River thirty feet below zoomed up to meet me, the water ready to close over me in its cold, deadly embrace.
And then the boat popped into view.
It was the same speedboat I’d seen before, and it slowed so that it was in sync with Bria and me and our downward plummet. This time, I didn’t have to worry about falling, because someone was there to catch me—Owen.
He was standing at the back of the boat, a
long with Xavier. Bria’s feet hit the ledge at the very rear of the vessel, her arms windmilling as she tried to find her balance, but Xavier reached out and grabbed her before she tumbled backward into the water. I actually landed square in the center of the boat, almost right on top of Owen, who reached out and took hold of me, keeping me from slamming face-first into one of the leather seats. The impact jarred me from my bare feet all the way up to my knees, before shooting up my legs and through my hips and back. Bones crunched together in my right ankle, making me yelp, and the bag of knives hanging off my wrist slammed into my side hard enough to bruise my ribs.
“We’ve got them!” Xavier yelled. “Go! Go! Go! Go!”
The engine roared, and the boat started picking up speed again, racing away from the bridge. But the vamps who’d been chasing Bria and me weren’t ready to give up. They skidded to a stop on the span, took aim with their weapons, and started firing at us. The bullets plop-plop-plopped into the water all around us. Xavier pulled the gun from the holster on his belt and returned their fire. So did Bria.
But one vamp was a little quicker and braver than all the others. He hopped up onto the bridge railing, then leaped off, trying to launch himself far enough out to land in the boat with the rest of us. His legs pumped, like he was riding a bicycle in midair, and he reached out with one hand . . .
And landed in the river three feet behind us.
The resulting splash sprayed us all with water. I laughed again as the cool, wet drops trickled down my face.
“Get us out of here!” Owen yelled. “Now!”
The engine whined, louder and harder this time, and the boat picked up more and more speed as it zoomed away from the bridge.
The sounds of gunfire faded away, drowned out by the powerful motor, and I knew that we were finally safe. I laughed at that too.
Owen helped me sit up against the side of the boat, his hands stroking my sweaty, tangled mess of hair back away from my face. Worry darkened his violet gaze. “Gin! Are you okay?”
I finally managed to get my crazy chuckles under control enough to smile at him, although the expression was more of a grimace, given the shooting pains in my ankle. “Never better.”
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