“She’s being held in a derelict building. An old hotel where a clan of vampires are staying.”
Jess frowned. “Did they speak Italian?”
“Yes.”
A cold slash of fear drove into Jess’s heart. She turned to Sampson. “I’ve been attacked by foreigners lately.”
“I killed the man who’d started to do horrible things to Terry, but that didn’t help her,” James said. “I’ve ruined everything. I ripped out the man’s throat and drank his blood, Jess. He didn’t have a chance against me. Now, neither does Terry.”
“Oh, James,” Jess said, pressing one hand against the glass in front of his hand. “We’ll save Terry and Sephina.”
James irises changed before her eyes; bled black, until all that was left was the remnants of his damned soul. He’d reverted quickly. “They’re better off where they are. Let me go to them!” he screamed. Within seconds he’d returned to the savage beast she’d dragged down here. What she would be without Regent’s prayers.
“Thank God, we got some information out of him before he reverted,” Sampson said.
Fear invaded her. Her friend, her trusted friend. He was lost to them. And Britt was dying again—if he wasn’t already dead.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Twelve
Hands on his hips, Sampson’s white lab coat flared below the waist outside the autopsy room. “Who in Hades is that guy in there with Britt? And how did he get us to just leave the lab? We’d never leave a stranger alone in the vampire forensic lab! Full of highly sensitive data!”
Jess rubbed one hand across her eyes. “He made Britt insensitive to pain without drugs, too. Did you see how he seemed to be able to control his mind?”
“I did. And the more I think about it, the more I believe he’s able to hypnotize people very easily. We’ve both been duped, Jess.”
“So the conversation we just had with James wasn’t real? All in our minds? Why’d the hypnosis wear off us, then?”
“Mass hypnosis, maybe? He was in a hurry and didn’t get us under as deep as he’d hoped.”
Jess stared at the lab door then tried the knob. It was locked so Sampson tried his key. It didn’t work. She slammed her hands against it hard enough to leave impressions in the cold steel. “Open this door right now!”
No answer.
“Open this door!”
Still no response.
She wrenched the doorknob counterclockwise, then ripped it off and pushed the door off its hinges with minimal effort. The door flew inward and smashed onto the floor.
“Keep going, I’m right behind you,” Sampson said.
Both Britt and Zeke turned and looked at them in surprise when they ran over the flattened door and burst into the room.
Jess screeched to a halt and grabbed Sampson’s arm at the sight before her. “Is this possible?” Not only was Britt in a sitting position, but the spike had been removed and there was a white gauze bandage taped over his bare, muscled chest.
Suddenly, she realized Britt was staring at her with a look on his face she hadn’t seen since he’d returned from the dead. Pure recognition!
“Britt?”
“Jess! I thought I’d lost you forever. Or at least I was lost forever. How’d I survive the vampire attack?”
“We don’t know, Britt.” She turned a suspicious eye to Zeke. “We were hoping to get some information from your friend, though.”
“Hypnosis again,” Sampson whispered under his breath, knowing she’d be able to hear him. “That’s the only thing than can explain Britt’s sudden recovery. He couldn’t have been as badly injured as we thought.”
“But he was injured before we ever talked to Zeke. He didn’t have a chance to hypnotize us.”
Sampson cleared his throat. “Damn. This just isn’t possible. There’s no medical way he could have removed that spike and stitched Britt inside and out in such a short time.”
Britt raised one arm and tensed his shoulder, touching the bandage on his chest wall. “Hey, I’m fine, you two. Don’t look so stricken. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, apparently.”
Jess gauged the stranger with a practiced eye and came up wanting. He gave nothing away in body language. “Listen Mister …”
“Please, my name is Zeke.”
“How’d you do this? How were you able to repair Britt in such a short time, and why does he remember all of a sudden?”
Zeke smiled at Britt and put a hand on his shoulder. “The first time he was … injured, I had to block some of his memories until he recovered physically. He was in so much pain at first that having all of his memories flood back at the same time that his body needed to heal would have caused sensory overload.”
Sampson stepped forward. “That doesn’t explain how you were able to accomplish reviving him in the first place. He was dead. I’ve also seen his DNA. It’s not normal. What would cause that?”
“I’m in the process of putting a patent on my medical breakthrough so I’m not at liberty to share the information with you,” Zeke said calmly. “Suffice it to say, Britt has been a success story.”
Sampson didn’t look any more assuaged than she felt. He obviously didn’t believe what he’d just been told any more than she did.
“How did he survive this time, considering that he had a monster hole in his chest?” Jess added, moving closer to Britt but not touching him, even though her black heart wanted nothing more.
“I don’t know how he did it, Jess, but I’m feeling much better.” Britt raised one hand and looked at his fingers while he flexed and spread them out.”
“What about James? How’d you make him regain humanity once he was totally over the edge?” Sampson leaned forward. If he got much closer he’d be poking the big guy in the chest.
Zeke looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, folks, but I can’t answer your questions right now. In fact, I have another urgent engagement.” He touched Britt’s shoulder again then turned to leave.
Without warning, Jess felt dizzy, then unable to move. Zeke was beside her now and she didn’t remember how he got there. She couldn’t move her head, but from the corner of her eye she could tell Sampson and Britt weren’t moving, either. They were frozen in the same pose they’d been in a second ago.
Zeke leaned down toward her ear. She managed to slant an angry look at him. At least she hoped it was angry; her face felt like marble.
He smiled. His teeth were beautiful and white. Very straight. His aquiline nose was perfect, as was every tiny pore on his face. He blinked and his lashes shielded his very blue irises before his lips hovered over her left ear.
“Trust Britt, Jess. He is the only one who can help you. What’s coming is the worst part of vampire legend. You’ll be in a battle for your lives, and maybe even a battle for humanity itself. I’m here to help in the best way I can.” He leaned back and looked into her frustrated eyes. “Even if it’s hard to wrap your brain around it.”
She managed a weak grunt, but nothing more.
“Before we can move on to the next step. You have to accept him. He can’t do this alone. No matter how strong you think he is—how strong he thinks he is—his ability to save you, to save everyone, will depend on you.”
“You’re not making sense.” Wait! Did her lips move? She was sure they hadn’t, so how had she spoken?
“I’ve done my job, Jess. Now you have to do yours. If you accept, you might be awarded a gift that you’ve never dreamed possible.” His voice faded from her mind like a song in its last drifting bars, and she realized that she hadn’t spoken aloud, but he’d heard her anyway.
Jess blinked and cursed beneath her breath. Looked around the lab. Zeke was gone. “Where’d he go?”
“Who?” Sampson asked, suddenly animated again.
“What do you mean, who? That big frigging behemoth, Zeke, who hypnotized us. Made us act like his damned puppets.”
Sampson’s head nudged back and his face scrunched into a curious fro
wn. “Huh? You’ve lost me, Jess.”
It was then she noticed that Sampson wore gloves. In one hand he held tape and the other a bandage. He leaned over and placed a piece of the gauze on Britt’s already partially bandaged chest. “There you go, Britt. Good as new.”
“Thanks. Don’t know how I let that vamp get the better of me. Next time I’ll take my backup blade. The one you made especially for me.”
“Good. I don’t want to see you back here again in need of repairs.” Sampson’s voiced slowed, and he frowned and looked around the room. “Don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have stitched you up here. This place could be contaminated with heaven only knows what, considering the dead body on that gurney.”
Jess’s mouth gaped. “Sampson. You didn’t stitch him up. Zeke did.”
“Who?” Sampson cast a worried glance in her direction. “Are you feeling okay, Jess?”
She leaned against the gurney, and jumped when Britt’s warm hand reached out and wrapped her hand in his.
“Tell him, Britt. The man who brought you back from death itself.”
“Death! Dear heaven Jess, I couldn’t have died from that little cut on my chest. It wasn’t even very deep.”
He pulled back the bandage and she saw a slim gash that had been stitched. Not possible. That incision should have been major.
“While you’ve got that bandage off again, let me spray you with extra antiseptic. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Sampson retrieved a needle from a nearby drawer. “I think I’ll give you a tetanus shot while I’m at it.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Britt said, jumping off the table after the injection. He strode toward Jess, wrapped his arm around her shoulder and squeezed, just as he would have done before his death. Just like the old Britt.
Was she going crazy? It sure seemed like it. No matter how misguided, she tried not to melt into Britt’s embrace, to thank God for second chances. “Neither of you remember a tall blond man?”
Britt swept one large hand across Jess’s forehead. “If you could have a fever, I’d think you had one right now.”
He leaned down and his caring blue eyes pulled her gaze into his, warming her without even trying. If anyone could give her a fever, he could.
What had Zeke said? She was up for the fight of her life? But to win it, she had to accept Britt. She had to help him. And Britt needed her.
Sampson put his tools down and pulled off his gloves. Then he pushed his glasses up onto his bald head and approached Jess slowly, his eyes assessing her clinically.
Only too aware of what that look meant, she heaved an angry breath, “I’m not sick, and I’m not crazy! That man was a hypnotist. He’s given you both false memories or something.”
“Hypnosis doesn’t work like that, Jess. You know that. Even vampires can’t create a sustainable false memory in anyone’s mind. At least not that quickly.”
She raised her head and stared at the ceiling tiles. “I’m not crazy. It happened.”
“We’ll figure this out, find out who he is,” Britt said, without needing proof. He instantly believed her. How could she not adore that about him.
“What about James in the holding cell? How do you explain what he told us?”
“There was no one in the holding cell last time I looked,” Sampson said, looking more disconcerted than ever.
“Follow me.” Jess made it to the flattened door faster than they could, so she had to wait for them to catch up. If they didn’t remember anything else, shouldn’t they question the door being on the floor? They both stepped over it and neither of them made a comment.
Stepping into the hall, she told herself it would only be a matter of seconds before they realized she was telling the truth. If they didn’t remember James being in the cell, they’d certainly get a shock when they saw him there. Just a few more steps and she’d have proof.
“Why would we put James in a holding cell?” Britt asked.
They’d see. She raced to the cell and held out an arm to indicate where James was being held.
“Jess?” Britt said, eying her worriedly.
Her jaw dropped. James was gone. He’d gotten away. But at least the door to the cell was ripped off its hinges. Not supposed to be possible, but it proved James had been here.
“Now that is strange. What is going on here?” Sampson said as he went to the door and stared down at it, then frowned at the twisted hinges on the doorframe.
“Just like I told you. It was James. Terry and the baby have been kidnapped. James knows where they are. In an abandoned hotel somewhere.” If what he’d told her had even been true.
“Lord, that doesn’t narrow things down much. Do you know how many abandoned buildings there probably are? It could take way too long before we find the right location,” Sampson said, looking worried that he’d forgotten something to crucial.
She knew exactly how he felt. Too long for us to have any reasonable hope of finding Terry alive. “I’ll have the team work on that immediately. We can’t do this search alone.” She quickly dialed her cell phone, and when her call was answered, gave orders for every abandoned hotel in the city to be checked out. She hung up and looked at Sampson and Britt. “They’ll phone us immediately if they find the hotel.”
Something Zeke had said bothered Jess. He’d mentioned sensory overload. Was that why Britt didn’t remember the terrible pain he’d been through when he died? Or the massive spike through the chest an hour ago? None of it made any sense. Besides, why should she believe a tall blond hypnotist with amazing sleight of mind abilities?
Was that how Zeke had been able to accomplish all the things she’d seen him do to date? Who was he? Where did he come from? What the hell was happening?
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Thirteen
Jess pinched the bridge of her nose. Regardless of not knowing what the hell was going on, she still needed to find her friends. If it were possible, she’d say she had a headache. “Shit, I wish I knew where to look for Terry.”
“What about James’s place?” Britt suggested.
She placed one hand on Britt’s chest, avoiding the slash that had somehow become a minor cut. She felt his beating heart, strong and sure. If no one remembered Britt had died, what about his DNA? Had it changed again?
Accept Britt. That thought returned. Everything depended on her ability to accept him, to believe in him.
Okay, she’d follow Britt’s lead. It’d be a start, at least.
“Wait! Before we go, Sampson, I want you to take a blood sample from Britt.
“Why?” Sampson asked, eying her with even more concern.
She looked around the office. “Just to make sure he didn’t get anything nasty when he was stitched up in the autopsy room.” She was grasping for a valid reason. After what had just happened, she wanted to find out if his blood had changed again.
“Right. Good idea.” Sampson rubbed a hand over his bald head and looked at the floor. Jess knew he couldn’t understand how he’d been so stupid as to expose Britt’s open wound to a decaying body and whatever germs were still viable in the room.
“What about Britt’s height?” she said as innocently as possible.
“What about it?” Sampson asked.
“Does he seem a little taller to you?”
Sampson frowned at Jess. “No. Does he to you?” His voice sounded skeptical and slightly worried for Jess.
“Maybe a little.” Hell, maybe a lot!
“What made you ask that question, Jess?” Britt said.
Jess looked at his feet. “You used to wear flatter soles, I think. You know how precise my abilities are, I just didn’t notice the heels on your new… boots.” At least she’d thrown in a suggestion that sounded plausible, but now that she contemplated it, he really did have motorcycle boots on with a fair sized heel. Maybe it really was why he looked taller. Dear God, she needed help, but who had the credentials to psychoanalyze a vampire with a partial soul?
Britt remained quiet while Sampson drew his blood. At the same time his attention seemed to be riveted on her.
“Done,” Sampson said. “Britt, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Vamps don’t carry human diseases so you’re not likely to end up with anything dangerous.”
Britt squeezed Sampson’s shoulder and Jess watched relief lessen the tenseness in the worried man’s shoulders. “Let’s go then,” he said in his usual calming voice.
“Sampson. Try to reach Regent at the Rectory, will you? If you get through to him, ask him if everything’s okay and let me know ASAP, please.”
“Right.”
Jess went back to James’s cell and entered it. Tried to find any trace that James had been here. As a vampire, her olfactory senses were heightened. She should be better than a bloodhound, but there was nothing to find. No residual scent. Had James truly been here? Was she crazy? She eyed the broken door and knew she remembered the truth. Almost as if breadcrumbs had been left for her to follow.
Britt patiently watched and waited for her. Just like the old Britt. The tough cop who was her Lieutenant. On the job he was the ultimate in professionalism and strength.
She thought for a moment. “Show me your chest,” she said.
He grinned. “I’ll show you just about anything, but this isn’t the time or the place.”
“I need to see your cut.”
“What cut?”
Okay, had everything changed again? Did he even have a cut anymore? How was any of this possible? Only seconds ago Sampson thought he’d stitched him up. Now Britt acted as if he’d never had a cut, let alone a gaping hole in his chest.
She made an exasperated sound at the back of her throat. “Let me see.” Without asking again, she grabbed his shirt, ripped it open, sending buttons flying onto the floor.
“Okay, honey, hold on. I’ll do the honors. He unbuttoned the last couple of buttons and pulled his shirt out from his pants.
“God damn it!” Jess stared at his unblemished, unbandaged chest. There wasn’t a mark on his perfect pectorals.
She leaned her back against the wall and slammed her forehead into her arm. She had to be going insane!
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