Nightshade's Bite (Blood Wars)

by Zoe Forward

  “No!” Michael slammed his fist on the table.

  Blay’s eyebrows rose. “You want to be up close and in person with her again.” Blay leaned back in his chair. “That sounds like a smart plan for the werewolf that can barely keep his dick in his pants over her. I’ll do it.”

  “I need to do this.”

  “Fine but admit you like her.”

  He sunk in his seat. “I’ve got it bad for her. There. I said it out loud. But her biting… What about her biting me?”

  Blay sobered. “With Arie, she was able to mentally manipulate others, and she had superior personal mental control. She was able to will herself not to bite. To resist. So, for us, it worked. Kiera doesn’t have that ability. She’s an empath, which means she’ll hook into your feelings and needs. It makes it triply dangerous for you two if you get naked. Vampires want to bite. It’s genetics, biology…whatever. It’s going to happen.” His eyes lowered. “You can’t fully bond with her. I’m sorry. You should never be naked with her. If she bites you, she’ll die, and it’ll be your fault.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kiera pushed the communicator deep into her ear canal as she readied to exit the car into the night. “Are we live?”

  “Gotcha loud and clear,” Finn replied. “For the last time, let me to go in instead of you.”

  “You’re going to impersonate the vampire whose ID we swiped?” She snorted out a laugh.

  “I can do the job as well as you my own way. I don’t like the variables we can’t control inside the facility. Last time we—”

  “I got this.” So one vamp took her off-guard, sliced her shoulder, and landed her on her ass in Paris. So what?

  “The ID card is in the outside pocket of your purse. It hangs around your neck. Do you remember your new name?”

  She examined the plastic ID before draping the lanyard attached to it around her neck over the nurse uniform. “Samantha Baptiste.”

  “She goes by Sam. Remember, she’s French, but everyone speaks English at the facility. Don’t smile at the ID check station at the entrance. Sam isn’t a person who’d be friendly with the guards.” A sigh came through the communicator. “I’ve got a weird feeling in my gut about this. It’s not a good feeling.”

  A shiver ran through her. Finn’s gut feels usually proved correct. She examined the picture on the ID again. Her reflection in the visor mirror looked little like her, not with her wearing heavy makeup and the fat suit. She called forth her inner magic to cast an aura about her that made her look more like Sam. “I’m going in.”

  She pressed the number on her cell phone that’d been tempting her for hours. Chills skirted down her spine when Michael answered with a clipped, “We ready?”

  She’d connected with him the last night, telling him their plan to rescue baby Grace was a go. He and his people were in the area, but they hadn’t been face-to-face yet.

  “It’s beginning,” she said. Meaning, see you in an hour.

  “There’s something—”

  “Can’t talk right now,” she interrupted, not wanting any sort of personal minutia broadcast for Finn to hear.

  “I’ve got to tell you that—”

  She hung up before he finished. Rude, but she could talk to him in private an hour from now. Hard to believe it’d been less than twenty-four hours since she’d dropped him off at the tunnel. Her stomach clenched, thrilled at the prospect of seeing him in person again.

  Head in the game.

  The brick walkway toward the two-story cement block building with a pharmaceutical company insignia on it had oddly spaced steps that were a little bit too wide for two paces but too big for one. The green-tinged concrete needed a power wash. In contrast, the landscaped grounds around the steps were pristine, right down to the edged grass and newly planted flowers. On paper, this place produced herbal supplements. Off paper, it was one of the most secure vampire-owned facilities in Europe. She’d never tried to breach its walls. But she’d never had a reason until now.

  Doing this was for the baby, she reminded herself. And maybe a little bit for Michael, who she couldn’t quit thinking about. She was like a juvenile obsessed over her first crush to the point she felt it might take an exorcism to rip him from her brain and fantasies.

  Inside, two vampires, heavily armed, sat at a massive marble front desk surrounded by a bevy of security monitors. The desk restricted access to two electronic doors behind them. She focused to calm her beating heart and nodded as she scanned her ID on the electronic gate. Vamps would detect any physical sign of fear. A hand swipe removed sweat from her brow. God, she was hot in this costume that added ten sizes to her frame.

  The guards gave her a cursory, disinterested once-over. In disguise, she was a non-entity to them. They’d gauge her low risk.

  The gate rose. She handed the security guards her purse, which they ran through an x-ray and handed back. The next door granted easy access to a hallway with her pass. After this, it got trickier.

  Three lefts, down one floor on the elevator, two rights, and a left. After that, security went to maximum. She sent Finn a text to alert him of her location. Adric would upload her retinal scan, hopefully already had, and take down cameras in the top-secret part of the facility. Seven minutes to get the baby and get out. Her reflection in the stainless-steel doors startled her. With the blonde wig, fake nose, and enormous bosom, she didn’t look anything like herself. She smiled, liking her new appearance. Newer-generation vamps with more human dilution in their genetic make-up weren’t cookie-cutter size six, five-eleven with big boobs like those who made up the elite, the ones Viktor and the Foundry exalted. Kiera, however, valued imperfection. It created a more noteworthy person.

  She reached the last door, the one that should lead into the nursery.

  Text came in: Go.

  She scanned the ID and leaned in for the retinal scan. It green-lighted. The door automatically opened.

  Inside, she found one nurse and a security guard standing over a crying baby. Both glanced up at her, surprised. She’d made her appearance similar enough to Sam’s to get through front door, but she wouldn’t pass in here. They worked side by side with Sam every day and would recognize Kiera as a fraud because her face wasn’t a perfect match. She was also taller than Sam. She lunged forward and pushed a syringe of sedative into the neck of the guard. After just a split second of surprised hesitation, the nurse came at her swinging an IV pole. Kiera ducked, swiped the nurse’s feet out from under her, and deployed a second loaded syringe into her arm. The woman staggered and fell in seconds.

  Kiera scooped up and cradled the crying baby. “Shh, shh. I’m here to get you out of here, Grace.”

  The baby quieted at the sound of her voice. Kiera’s heart melted at the terror in the poor child’s expression. She was such a tiny baby for eleven months.

  “Sweet pea, you’re going to have to trust me. Things will sound scary for a few minutes.” Kiera put the baby back in its crib to peel herself out of the top part of the bodysuit. She removed a fake baby from between Sam’s enormous boobs and positioned the doll in the crib beneath the blankets. She put Grace into the pouch over her breasts inside the suit. Now things were tight and heavier, even though the little baby was smaller than she’d anticipated. Not easy to move fast or breathe well. The baby wiggled in the space and complained.

  “Shh, shh. I know it’s dark and hot. I need you to be a big girl and be quiet for about five minutes. I wish there was another way.” Calm down. The baby would pick up on her anxiety. A few breaths and mental review of the escape plan helped.

  The baby quieted. Kiera planned to exit out the rear of the building, which had different guards. In the elevator ride up, she’d spritzed herself in sterile alcohol to mask the odor of the baby. Any vamp in this building would be sensitive to wolf smells.

  “Oomph,” she muttered as the baby head butted her re
al boobs. “Easy there, little one. I know you feel cramped.”

  As soon as she stepped out of the elevator, Adric screeched in her ear, “There’s a hiccup. Do not, I repeat, do not go out the rear right now. Go to the restroom up on your right and wait.”

  She ducked into the restroom and locked herself into a stall.

  An alarm sounded, high and shrill.

  “Fire alarm,” Adric said in the communicator. “In five seconds, exit the bathroom and follow the crowd out. I started a fake fire on floor three. Get in your car and leave. You might want to act disoriented.”

  “Got it.” She did not need acting tips from Adric.

  Rooms were emptying. Startled, confused vamps surrounded her. En masse, they exited with guards directing them to the dark courtyard lit by several streetlamps. She headed for the steps.

  “You there. Stop!” A guard pointed at her.

  “I need to get my inhaler out of my car, sir.” She put a hand on her chest and wheezed. “This has stirred up my nerves.”

  Another guard yelled for her interrogator to get his attention.

  “I can’t breathe.” She wheezed, sucking in air.

  “All right. But make it fast. We have to check everyone back in once they get the fire stopped.”

  She waved as she moved down the stairs and crossed the parking lot at what she assumed might be sixty-something times Sam’s regular pace, feeling a wash of relief when she finally ducked into her car. Thank goodness, she wasn’t the only one leaving. Although she wanted to peel out of there at top speed, she followed a few other cars moving at a tortoise’s pace out of the lot and onto the main road. Then she hit the accelerator.

  “I’m out. On the highway,” she said as she peeled off the fake nose and wig with one hand.

  “You’ve got maybe ten minutes before they figure out the baby is gone,” Adric warned.

  “I’ve got to stop and get the baby out of this dress and into the car seat.”

  “Don’t stop. Drive. I’ll try to delay by jamming the door to her room, but that’ll only stop them for an extra few minutes.”

  “Did you figure out why they were keeping a baby?”

  “Unclear. Looks like they planned some genetic experiments.”

  She dialed Michael. It went to voicemail. “I’ve got her. Driving south. Meet at the rendezvous. I’ll call if anything changes.”

  She pulled the dress and bodysuit away from her body to glimpse the baby, who stared up at her. Sweat plastered the baby’s thin blond hair against her scalp. “Almost there, sweetie. I’m sorry you’re hot.”

  “They’re on to you. Sorry,” Adric reported. “They found Samantha in her house. I don’t know how, but they’re on your trail.”

  Another twenty minutes to the Dunkirk Bridge. Michael should be ten minutes beyond. She said, “Call Michael. Tell him to meet me at the bridge.”

  Her heart pounded hard as she accelerated to well above 150 kilometers per hour. The car wasn’t designed for sharp curves at this speed. What she wouldn’t give for something built to corner. The sedan was affordable and forgettable. Within a few miles of the bridge, based on her phone’s GPS, Adric reported again, “Satellites indicate they’re closing in, and they’ve called in the helicopters. Damn it, you’re not going to make it.”

  “I’m here. I’ll be on foot.” She pulled over just before the bridge and got out. Dew coated the grass, but there was no light. Dawn wouldn’t break for another hour. No one would see her as she peeled out of the fat suit, which she shoved back into the car. She detached the carrier from her body and maneuvered a quietly fussing Grace into her car seat. She walked her over to a large tree and put her on the ground.

  “You gotta trust me, baby. I won’t leave you.”

  Returning to the car, she hopped in and accelerated, aiming the car to hit the rail. She jumped out seconds before it burst through the rail at almost the midpoint of the bridge. Asphalt ground into her left arm and leg on landing. Stinging pain. But she pushed herself upright, buried the pain, and ran back for the baby. She unbuckled the baby and chucked the seat into the river.

  How’d they find her so fast? She checked the baby.

  Of all idiocy… What an amateur mistake for her to make to leave the tracker on the baby’s ankle.

  “I should’ve noticed,” she muttered as she cut off the tracker with the knife she kept in her pocket, a gift from Finn for oh-shit moments. She’d had to use it more often than she liked this past year. She chucked the tracker over the bridge’s railing into the water and took off at a run, clutching Grace to her. Light as she was, the baby might have slowed a human woman down, but the extra few pounds didn’t affect Kiera’s vampire speed.

  There were a few houses in the distance. A helicopter buzzed toward them overhead, its searchlights projecting long beacons into the dark night. She ran past the first house and then the second but settled on the white storage shed behind the third.

  She dialed Michael. Ring. Ring. Ring.

  He needed to pick up the phone.

  All she could do was leave a message, telling him about the shed and the helicopters.

  She cradled the baby. “You’re such a good child. Please be silent for another few minutes. Please.”

  The baby made an “oh” noise and nuzzled into her chest. Poor thing might be hungry. Her small cry of distress broke her heart.

  “I won’t let them have you again, little one. I swear on my life.”

  The helicopter landed in the field across the road. Her hypersensitive ears picked up the sound of running feet outside. She steadied her gun on the door. One last call to Michael. “They’re here. I’m going to hold them off as best I can, but I only have one back-up magazine in my gun. Please hurry.”

  …

  Don’t let us arrive too late.

  His damned phone hadn’t picked up when she called. It didn’t work well when on the helicopter.

  Michael tore through the three vampires creeping around the house at the address Kiera indicated in her second-to-last message. He left a wake of bleeding dead. The vampires’ positions suggested they were organizing an attack on the shed out back. The instinct to run ahead of his guys who were clearing the area and find her beat at his mind. It shattered his composure. Oh hell, he’d lost it the second they stepped off the helicopter into this war zone.

  Chill. His boys were as good as he was, if not better. After all, he’d trained them. He didn’t want another scathing lecture from Bryan about the need for the group to protect their leader. Following the last time he’d been in combat, he’d promised to fight smart, fight as a team, and allow the ones he’d trained to take the hits first. Too many depended on him. Too many needed him.

  It took every ounce of his concentration and strength to keep the war cry tangled in his chest bottled up. He needed to get to her and see the baby. The thump-thump of his heart was for fear they were both dead. Or captured.

  If either of them died, he’d return to wherever they’d incarcerated Grace and kill every single vampire. Then he’d personally decapitate Viktor. The strength of his anger rocked him to a point his vision clouded. This was new, and it was all Kiera’s doing.

  The shed’s door hung open. The stench of vampire blood was too strong for him to detect Kiera or Grace. He signaled to Bryan to flank him and directed the rest of his team to check out the abandoned-looking house. He pushed inside, which was illuminated by the light of a refrigerator, the door of which sat askew. More than ten bodies lay scattered, most shredded beyond recognition by a shotgun. He quickly decapitated a vamp whose arms were still moving. Bryan ended two more. Blood dripped from the walls. As he neared the refrigerator, he heard the chuck-chuck of a shotgun being loaded.

  “One step further and you’re dead.” Her voice came out hoarse and from the right. Smart. Strategic advantage to be in the corner.

&
nbsp; “Don’t shoot. It’s me, Kiera. We’re here.”

  He pivoted but couldn’t make her out in the dark. Where the hell was Grace?

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  Bryan crowded in behind him, shining a flashlight. “Is the baby alive?”

  The beam swung into the corner.

  Michael died a little at what he saw. His heart and breaths stopped, his brain ceased, and his blood froze in his veins.

  Kiera rested in an uncomfortable-looking sprawled sit. She dropped the gun. Her head lolled against the wall behind her. Blood covered her face, seeped from her mouth and from…every fucking where.

  Her voice was now barely a whisper. “Michael…”

  Blood dribbled over her nose and dropped onto her chest. Her hand went to her face, moving slow as if it took every ounce of strength to wipe away the streak of blood.

  Kiera was dying.

  He listed and caught himself against the wall. His mind kicked into gear, and he pushed himself upright. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Stay with us.” He crouched beside her and shook her gently, but she didn’t respond. A tiny noise came from behind her. He saw a small foot kick out. She protected the baby with her body. Holy hell. From the look of it, she’d been sprayed several times with bullets. The fact one of Viktor’s assassins hadn’t killed her spoke of her skill. She fended them all off.

  Don’t you dare die.

  Bryan bent down, moved Kiera out of his way, and scooped up the baby, giving little care for Kiera. “We’ve got to go. More are coming.”

  “Move!” he snapped, pushing Bryan to the side. He lifted Kiera to cradle her against his body.

  “Sir, we have to leave.” Bryan pressed the communicator in his ear. “Squad boys are on the way. Why are you taking her? What would we do with her? Let her leech friends have her.”

  “No.”