by E. S. Moore
“I’ll be back before he knows I’m gone.”
Eilene stood with her arms crossed over her chest, looking terrified. It was enough to make me second-guess myself, but in the end, I was determined to get this done and over with as soon as possible. Waiting around was no longer an option, if it ever really was.
I crossed the room and gripped both of her arms. They felt like brittle twigs in my hands. I held her as tight as I dared, looked deep into her eyes so that she knew I was going to do my damnedest to keep her alive, and then I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.
Some of the strength seemed to bleed out of her at that. She pressed her forehead against my own and by the way she shook, I knew she was crying.
“It will work out,” I told her. “I promise you, you’ll see her again.”
She nodded and I stepped away. Levi would only be downstairs for so long. I might only have an hour, maybe two, which really wasn’t that much time at all, considering I really didn’t know where I was going or what I was walking into. I just prayed I wasn’t wasting my time.
“See you soon,” I said before I turned and hurried out the door.
I hoped I’d be able to find this building when I saw it. All I had were general directions with nothing so much as description of the place. Was I looking for an old house? A barn? A gigantic laboratory that all but screamed that something devious was going on inside?
I started at a slow jog across the yard in a westerly direction. I wanted to keep away from the road, knowing if someone saw me, they’d let Levi know through the link. If he thought I was trying to run away again, he’d lock me up for good and there was no way I’d be able to stop him.
I’d only gone about a mile when a stitch in my side caused me to slow. I was so used to my old body and its ability to go almost indefinitely, I actually checked to make sure I hadn’t been shot before realizing what it really was.
I slowed my pace, gritting my teeth against the pain. I refused to stop and let Levi catch me, so I moved at a brisk walk instead. I really wanted to run through the cramp, but I didn’t know what would happen if I kept pressing. I wasn’t going to do anything to damage this body.
I kept the road in sight, but stayed well back from it, choosing to use the scenery to block me off from view. Each house I passed, I slowed long enough to make sure no one was watching before giving it a wide berth and continuing on.
Leaves rustled ahead. I instantly dropped into a crouch behind a tree. At first, I saw nothing, but then a head bobbed into view. The man was dressed plainly, walking in a zigzag pattern. He didn’t look like he was trying to get anywhere. I wasn’t even sure he was aware he was walking at all. His gait was more of a staggering stumble than a natural walk. Sleepwalking maybe?
I watched as the man vanished behind a patch of trees. I waited another good minute to be sure he was gone and then started forward again.
Twenty minutes passed and I started to wonder if perhaps I’d passed Levi’s building. I continued on for another five before I finally saw it. It was one of those big sheds farmers often used for all of their machinery. The doors were closed, but I didn’t see a padlock on them. It didn’t mean much considering the doors might have actual locks on them, but it was reassuring nonetheless.
A long gravel driveway led to the front of the building. There were no cars out front, nor were there any moving down the road I could just barely see past the trees. As far as I could tell, the entire place was empty of life. There were no guards, no cameras within view. All I would have to do was sneak in, look around, and get out before Levi realized what was happening.
It was too easy. A clock ticked in my head, warning me that every second I spent away from the house was one more second Levi might realize what I was up to and come after me. I made a slow circuit around the building, not rushing despite the mental clock. Just because I didn’t see a camera or a guard right off, didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
Yellow tin siding wrapped around the outside of the shed. The roof was a white tin, meaning it had to be nightmarishly loud inside when it rained. The big white door out front appeared at first to be the only entrance. I eventually found a smaller door on the far side, hidden by drooping tree branches.
“Okay, Kat,” I said, speaking aloud to calm my nerves. While I was the same person inside I always had been, this body reacted differently to fear. I was sweating profusely and my hands trembled as I held on to a low-hanging branch. It was practically the only thing that kept me from turning around and running home.
I closed my eyes and fought against the fear that tried to overwhelm me. Now was not the time to freeze up. I’d walked into far more dangerous situations than this in my time, especially if this place was as defenseless as it appeared. This should be cake.
Yet, despite that knowledge, I couldn’t make my feet move forward. I was held to the spot by fear, trapped only a few yards away from my goal. The fear was like a living thing. It pushed against me, urged me to turn around and run. Every time I imagined myself moving forward, the fear only seemed to press harder against my mind.
And that’s when I got it.
The fear wasn’t natural. Nothing in Delai was. I didn’t know if it was Levi’s connection with Sienna’s body that was causing it, or if it was something else, something placed on the building itself, but I was positive it was something that could be defeated.
I ground my teeth together and took a step forward. I didn’t have Beligral’s Sight any longer, yet I could almost see the nimbus of fear surrounding the building. It was better than a security system or a guard. It would warn off anyone who dared approach, forcing them to be elsewhere without knowing why they were so frightened. No wonder no one else was here to watch over the place.
I took another step forward. The fear pushed against me. It nearly sent me tumbling over backward as if it were accompanied by a strong gust of wind. The closer I came to the building, the worse it got.
Another agonizing step forward and tears started rolling down my cheeks.
I started thinking of all the people I’d leave behind if I died. Ethan and Jeremy would sit at home with vampire Sienna, wondering if I’d ever return. Keira and Nathan at Doctor Lei’s, waiting for that moment when I’d help break Jonathan out of his funk for good.
And then there was Jonathan himself. He was the man who had finally broken through my shell, forced me to see what I was really doing not just to me, but to everyone around me. Without him, I’d probably already be dead.
And now, he needed me.
“I. Will. Not. Break,” I growled. I took another step forward. It felt like I was trying to walk through molasses. I pushed my way forward, my determination not to fail the people I’d left behind propelling me forward even though every fiber of my being wanted to turn and run.
The bubble of fear popped. Relief washed over me. I staggered forward and fell against the side of the building, breathing hard. Sweat poured down my face and back. I pressed my forehead against the cool metal siding and took a few moments to simply breathe. It took a full minute for the trembling in my limbs to stop.
Tick tock, tick tock, went the clock in my head. I’d waited long enough.
With a quick glance behind me to make sure the wandering man hadn’t roamed my way, I grasped the doorknob in my hand. I tested it, almost positive I’d find it locked. I met no resistance as I pushed the door open.
I hesitated a moment on the threshold, peering into a darkness my human eyes couldn’t pierce. This was it; my last chance. If I failed here, Eilene was going to die.
With a deep breath, I pushed away the last residual vestiges of fear, and stepped inside.
27
Very little light spilled in from the open doorway. The room as a whole was dark, and without my vampire sight, I couldn’t see a damn thing. I blindly batted at the wall and was rewarded with the feel of plastic. I flipped the switch and with a buzz, the lights warmed up and flickered to life.
“H
oly fucking shit.”
Levi’s building was the closest thing to a genuine lab I’d ever seen. Sure, I thought of Ethan’s basement workshop as his lab, but it had nothing on this place.
Rows of tables filled the room. On every single one of them sat some sort of test tube or vial or electronic device. There were microscopes and Bunsen burners, thankfully unlit. There were machines that were so alien to me, I couldn’t even begin to fathom what they were for.
I stood dumbly there, staring at the immenseness of it all, before realizing I was on a time limit. I closed the door behind me and locked it before I stepped farther into the room. It was the sort of place where you’d see three or four scientists in white lab coats working diligently at each table, but there was only me at the moment. I didn’t think anyone but Levi was ever allowed in here.
I’d taken all of three steps into the room before I realized I wasn’t exactly right about the last.
A dozen metal tables lined the wall to my far left. Sheets covered what lay atop them, though it wasn’t too hard to figure out by the shapes they made that there were bodies beneath.
“What have you been doing in here?” I whispered, needing to break the silence of the room. The lights still buzzed overhead, but it was otherwise the only other sound in the building. My voice echoed back to me, sounding hollow in the big room.
While I wanted to check the various tables and machines in the hopes of finding something I could use against Levi, it was the bodies I found myself drawn toward. I’m not sure what that said about me, other than the fact I was curious as to how they’d died. Were these people Levi had failed to “cure?” Was it people he killed because they wouldn’t accept his ministrations and tried to flee?
The thought of them simply being victims of his various tests crossed my mind and my step faltered. These people very well might have been loyal to him, but had been chosen out of hand, so Levi could experiment on them.
The thought made me angrier than it should. The people of Delai were little more than shells of who they once were. Even if I did manage to save them once the town was no more, I doubted they’d be able to go back to their families and their old lives. Chances were good they’d need someone to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Their link with Levi might be the only thing that kept them from drooling into their Cheerios every morning.
My footfalls echoed on the hard concrete floor as I approached the tables. I flashed back to when I’d been down in the Luna Cult Den basement, staring at a body lying upon a similar table. That wolf had been crucified by the Left Hand, tortured while he’d still been alive. And then his throat had been cut, left to bleed out in agony, awake and aware as his life slipped away.
I ripped back the sheet of the first table, half expecting to see the same pained face, but instead found myself staring down at the face of a young girl. She couldn’t have been more than ten. Her features appeared peaceful, her still body lifeless and completely drained of blood. She was so pale, she was practically white.
I shivered, though the room really wasn’t that cold. How she hadn’t started to rot, I’d never know. There was no scent, no indication, outside of sight, that she’d ever truly been alive. I touched her arm to be certain she wasn’t an extremely lifelike mannequin of some sort. The skin was hard now, but definitely had once been alive and vibrant.
Anger built within me, but it was nothing compared to what I’d have felt if I’d been in my old body. If I’d seen this while I was a vampire, I wouldn’t have been able to stop the rage. I would have torn this place apart, destroying everything Levi had worked for before going after the beast himself.
As it was, I could only stare at the lifeless corpse. I didn’t know this girl, didn’t know how she got here, what she’d been when she was alive. Had she been a vampire, turned far too early, too young to understand how to live as a monster? Even the evilest of vampires rarely turned the young. They turned rabid far too often, unable to control the monster inside them. It was rarely like the movies where cute little kids turn into sinister killers who draw their prey in by pretending to be innocent and scared.
I pulled the sheet back over her face and moved on to the next table. This time, I uncovered a middle-aged male. I felt an odd sense of relief at that. I don’t know what I would have done if they’d all been kids.
Each and every body in the room had been drained of blood, but none of them held the telltale bite mark of the vampire, nor were their throats slit. I checked each to be sure, partially curious to know if I’d recognize someone from my time in Delai, or if they were all strangers to this place, drained for some unknown reason.
I didn’t recognize anyone, which was both a relief and a concern. Did that mean Levi was drawing others to his town, only to murder them when they got there? Remembering what he’d done to me that first night back, I pulled a sheet back on a dead woman and checked her arm. Sure enough, there were tiny holes where he’d drawn blood.
Could you actually drain a corpse like that? I found it unlikely, but I had no other explanations.
I turned away from the bodies, certain I’d learned all I could from them. I moved toward the tables in the middle of the room. Hopefully there I’d find something that would explain why he’d drained the dead. I prayed they’d died naturally and then he’d used their corpses for his experiments, not the other way around.
I walked down one of the rows of equipment, stopping only long enough to peruse what lay atop the tables before moving on. Nothing made sense to me. I wasn’t a scientist. I left that sort of thing to Ethan and his demon.
What I didn’t get was why Levi needed all of this stuff. He was an angel. Couldn’t he just whip up whatever it was he needed? Then again, what did I really know about angels and demons? They had some mystical abilities, sure, and they were as powerful as all hell, but maybe there were some things they couldn’t do without the aid of equipment like this.
And that gave me hope. It told me Levi wasn’t all-powerful, that perhaps there was some weakness I could exploit that would not only end his reign here, but also destroy him for good. Beligral might not have told me about a weakness, not because he didn’t know of one, but rather, he didn’t want me to know how to destroy his kind out of fear I would use the knowledge against him.
I paused at a table with blood bags lying upon it. They weren’t sitting in ice, and like I noted before, the room wasn’t all that cold. Did that mean Levi planned on coming back here soon? Or was he doing something else to the blood that stopped it from spoiling?
Beside the blood bags were what I took to be the vials of Sienna’s blood Levi had taken the other day. There were other empty tubes beside those, as well as a couple of empty syringes. I picked one up and sniffed. A pungent odor caused me to jerk back. My eyes watered as I set it back down. It hadn’t been blood in those tubes, though I was clueless as to what they might have held.
I glanced toward the bodies against the wall and frowned. I’d never questioned Levi about where he’d gotten the blood for his blood bags. I’d always just assumed it had been donated. Could he have drained these people here in order to get enough blood to feed his latest monster project? If so, why keep the bodies lying around? And why take so little of Sienna’s blood?
I picked up one of the blood bags and turned it over slowly in my hand. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I just knew there had to be some clue that would help me understand what the angel was doing here.
And then I saw it. It was so small, I almost missed it. If I hadn’t been looking at it so closely and if the lights hadn’t been so bright, I wouldn’t have seen it at all.
At the very top of the blood bag was a hole. It was so tiny, none of the blood oozed out, even when I squeezed the bag. I glanced down at the empty vials, at the needles and syringes filled with my blood, and things slowly started to come together.
Levi was mixing Sienna’s blood into his blood bags, along with something I couldn’t identify, but why? What poss
ible benefit could her blood have? Has he done something to the girl that would make her special in some way? Beligral thought so. Levi kept her just as close as he did the woman who summoned him. It only made sense that she was far more special than he let on.
I set the blood bag down and stepped back. I did a mental check over myself, trying to feel anything that made Sienna different, some twinge in the back of my mind, maybe a quicker heart rate, a strength in the muscles that pointed to something supernatural.
But there was nothing. I wasn’t used to this body, let alone being a Pureblood. This was a new experience for me, so if there was anything special about her, it was hard to tell. All I really noted was the absence of my old vampire senses and strength. How in the hell was I supposed to know whether she was normal or not?
Files. What I needed were files.
I abandoned looking for anything on top of the tables, knowing it would only add to the mystery. The machines meant nothing if I didn’t know what they were used for. I needed something I could understand. Call me stupid, but damn it, I wanted it spelled out for me.
I scanned the room, walking slowly up and down the aisles, searching for a file cabinet or a desk with a drawer. Why an angel would need to keep files on his victims, I didn’t know, but hey, if he did, I wanted to find them. There were no papers upon any of the tables I could see, meaning if they were inside the building, they’d have to be hidden away.
At first, I saw nothing. Silver tables lined the room. It was almost too much. My eyes kept glazing over or focusing on what lay atop them.
And then finally, I saw the drawer. I’d almost missed it because it was the only table in the place to have one. It was at the very center of the room, damn near right in front of me. It was the table in which Sienna’s blood vials had lain.
I hurried back to the table and yanked the drawer open. I feared it would be locked, but like everything else in town, it wasn’t. Apparently, Levi wasn’t afraid of someone breaking in to steal his secrets.