Vermilion Lies

by L. D. Rose

  “Yeah, for now.” He removed a bilateral shoulder rig from his pack and slipped it on over his hoodie. After shoving a few magazines in his sweatshirt pocket and both SIGs into their holsters, he zipped up the bag, tossed it on his back, and alleviated her of his rifle case. “But we’ve got to go.”

  For a split-second, he wondered if she’d known about the attack, if she’d somehow been a part of it, a niggling worm of doubt slithering beneath his skin and leaving behind its slime of suspicion. But he didn’t have time to mull it over, because the windows detonated with gunshots, bullets punching through the glass and spraying crystalline shards everywhere.

  Cindy yelped and Dax tackled her to the floor with him. An answering burst of flames bloomed in the dark, lighting the night on fire as Blaze spat a string of furious obscenities from beyond. Scampering across the carpet, Dax urged her out of the room first and shouted, “Get to the Corvette,” as they both tumbled down the stairs.

  Dashing madly toward the front door, Dax caught up with her, blocking her exit and shielding her in the outer stairwell. Keeping her behind him with his gun raised, they slowed in the vestibule, the busted door creaking on its hinges in the ocean breeze. Sidling up to the jamb as they both pressed against the wall, he peeked outside, finding a silent night out on the street.

  Cindy’s body remained in sync with his—the tension in their muscles, their brisk heartbeats, their shallow breaths in constant rhythm. She followed his lead as he stepped over the threshold, pushing the door open while it groaned with discord.

  The Corvette awaited them patiently, gleaming under the silvery moonlight. A silhouette of a Jeep Wrangler hunkered behind it, the matte black paint reflecting the darkness rather than the light. The muted noise of battle almost lulled Dax into a sense of security, but he knew better. Situations like these were the most dangerous, when everything appeared serene and quiet, but the air congealed with a suffocating sense of foreboding.

  The path to the Mako was clear, the street empty, the ocean reverberating in the distance as if encouraging them to run. Apparently, the leeches had launched the attack from the back of the complex, but Dax remained wary as they both crept out onto the walkway.

  “Stay close,” he murmured, sparing Cindy a glance over his shoulder. She nodded tightly, her pitch-black eyes dilating. Tucking his hand in his sweatshirt pocket, Dax found his keys, bracing himself before he unarmed the car. The Corvette replied with a few cheery beeps and flashed its lights in greeting. Cursing, he picked up the pace as they raced for the doors in case anyone heard them.

  Dax tossed his rifle and bag in the back, and Cindy had already hit the leather seat before he landed in his. The doors slammed shut as he shoved the key in the ignition. The Mako roared to life with a sound that never ceased to give him chills as he kicked the clutch and shoved the gear into first. Hesitating, he eyed the Jeep in the rearview mirror before looking back at the complex, scanning every dark corner of the premises. A slow-growing dread solidified in his gut like concrete at the thought of leaving Blaze to fight those motherfuckers alone while he sped off with a vampire of his own.

  C’mon, B. Get out of there.

  Dax’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, leather squeaking beneath his fist as the oiled, musky scent of classic car pervaded his senses. Every cell in his body hummed with the urge to get out and help his brother, no matter how much shit he’d get for it later.

  Cindy’s voice stroked his ears, fear lacing her sultry tone. “What’s wrong?”

  Dax gritted his teeth, swallowing past the dry husk of his throat. “I can’t leave him.” The words came out rough, ragged from the panic constricting his chest like a python. The last time they’d separated like this, Blaze ended up in an underground torture chamber for seven months without a shred of light in sight. “I don’t want to lose him.”

  Again.

  Silence stretched taut for a beat, and as Cindy opened her mouth to respond, Blaze appeared at the edge of the neighboring property like an answered prayer, a fiery freight train charging through the night. A wave of bullets followed in his wake, gunshots popping like firecrackers as a few pelted into the bulletproof frames of both cars.

  “Go,” Blaze bellowed, the command so loud it shook the Corvette’s windows. “Now!”

  And as relief flooded Dax to the point of near trembling, he hit the gas, throttling the pedal just as Blaze reached the door of the Jeep. With a final fuck-you to his pursuers, his brother set off an explosion of fire behind him with a flick of his wrist. Dax snapped the Mako into second gear, then third, the Corvette eating up the tarmac with a squeal as it skidded past the dead traffic lights.

  Cindy held on for dear life, her grip white-knuckled on both the door handle and the seat, neither of them having fastened their seatbelts. They vanished into the abandoned, winding roads of Jamestown, zooming straight for route 138 west.

  Dax was tempted to slow down and wait for Blaze, or at least glimpse the Jeep behind him, but when The Prodigy erupted from his cell phone in the depths of his backpack, he let out a whoop of laughter, whacking a hand against the steering wheel. He looked at Cindy and she smiled, her fear palpable but easing, her eyes reverting to their almost-human state.

  Without asking, she turned and reached into the backseat, fishing the phone out of his bag, the call ending but returning at full force after it went to voicemail.

  She handed him the shrieking, vibrating device and he answered with a swipe of his thumb.

  “Holy motherfucking shit.”

  Blaze’s laughter rumbled over the line and Dax was never happier to hear it. “Next time I tell you to go, you go, dumbass.”

  Dax grinned. “Fuck you, you know I don’t follow commands. Did you incinerate the place or what?”

  “Almost. Too bad I couldn’t watch those assholes fry. Are you okay? The girl?”

  Dax spared Cindy another glance as she watched him anxiously, clipping on her seatbelt. “Yeah, we’re fine. Thanks, man. We wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  “Story of your life.” He chuckled. “I don’t think they tailed me but keep gunning it. Let’s meet at Clinton Crossings and we can hash out a plan.”

  Gratitude warmed Dax’s heart, chasing out the last remnants of dread and instilling him with determination. They were going to work this out somehow. “Hey, I’m glad you’re all right, bro. Seriously.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental on me, Frosty. You know I can’t stand that shit.”

  Dax grinned, picturing the scowl on his brother’s face. “Fine, I won’t sing you a love song then.”

  “Please don’t.”

  He laughed, unable to help himself. “All right. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  “Adios.” And Blaze hung up.

  Cruising onto 138 west, Dax finally relaxed in his seat as he dropped the phone into a cup holder. Pitching a heavy sigh, he eyed Cindy again as she stared out at the long stretch of road, her face tense and pale. When he offered his hand across the console, her throat worked while she studied his palm, as if she were summoning the courage to take it. After the space of a few heartbeats, she reluctantly threaded her cold fingers with his and he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “Why did you bring me with you?” she murmured, still regarding their joined hands. “You could’ve left me behind.”

  Dax fixed his eyes on the road, the mark on his neck pulsing to life. She’d had countless opportunities to kill him and she hadn’t made a single move—not without his permission, anyway—her actions proving she wasn’t the monster he’d once believed her to be.

  Christ, she was more compassionate than some of his own siblings.

  “I don’t leave anyone behind.” He tried to muster up a better response, something, anything, but his voice failed him. He gently feathered his thumb against hers, hoping it w
ould reveal more than he’d said. The thought of leaving her hadn’t crossed his mind once, not once, and that in itself spoke volumes of how he felt about her.

  Jesus, he was fucked.

  “I heard everything,” she added. “Outside. Between you and Blaze.”

  Her words hooked his gaze, her expression fragile, vulnerable. “You shouldn’t have brought me. You’re risking your life, your family’s trust. Everything you’ve worked for.” She looked down at her lap, as if in shame. “I’m not worth such a price.”

  “Hey.” He squeezed her hand again, a sudden lash of anger striking him at her self-deprecation. “You’re not some fucking trophy to be bought, do you understand me? You’re goddamn priceless and don’t you forget it.”

  Her eyes connected with his, filling to the brim, her lips parting at his words. The rock in his throat swelled to the point of asphyxiation, but he managed to speak past it. “We’re in this together now. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out. We’ve got to at least try, right?”

  She inclined her head, chin quivering, but she blinked back her tears.

  God, this was a heartbreak waiting to happen.

  “One step at a time.” He forced a smile. “First step, stay alive. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

  She held his hand tight, so tight, as if she never wanted to let go. Her mouth curved sadly, sending another pang to his chest. “Okay. One step at a time.”

  After the Mako glided onto I-95 south, they both sagged in their seats with exhaustion, the post-adrenaline crash leaving them spent. Abandoned cars littered the highway, with small cordoned-off pile-ups dispersed throughout the infinite expanse of asphalt. Unlike Boston and most of the New York tri-state area, humans had simply deserted this part of the coast after the Insurgency, deeming it a lost cause. Although the interstate was still accessible, the haunting scenes nevertheless drove visitors away.

  Not that anyone really visited each other anymore.

  When they neared the Connecticut state line, coming up on the Hopkington/Westerly exit, Cindy piped up in a groggy voice, “Where are we going?”

  The density of derelict cars had thickened. Dax slowed from his ninety mile-per-hour pace to a measly seventy. “New York. New Rochelle with a pitstop in Clinton.”

  She stiffened in her seat, straightening. “New York?”

  He glanced at her curiously but concentrated on the road due to the dramatic increase in obstacles. The exit and overpass loomed ahead. “Yeah.”

  After a moment of silence, she uttered, “Dax. I have to tell you something.”

  “Hold on.” Shadows shifted in the distance and he flipped on the high beams. Given his fatigue, he was probably hallucinating, but were those people?

  The lights sliced through the darkness, bright and glaring as they swept over the road and reached as high as the oncoming overpass. At that heart-stopping instant, Dax realized they were being bottlenecked, and when his gaze scaled to the overpass, he noticed the bodies swinging from their nooses.

  Dozens of them. Fresh, eviscerated, and still dripping blood and entrails.

  “Fuck!” He pumped the brakes as soon as the spike strip uncoiled across the highway, a barbed black vine of destruction.

  But he was too late.

  The Corvette rocketed over the strip’s teeth and all four tires blew out. Dax lost control of the car at the abrupt change in traction, spinning blindly across the highway. Cindy screamed as the Mako hurtled into a ditch, tossing them around like dolls, the high beams revealing a snapshot reel of horror before the car smashed into a tree trunk.

  The steering wheel crushed Dax’s ribcage, punching the air from his lungs. His forehead slammed into the windshield just as the glass shattered from the impact of the collision, his retinas bursting in a pyrotechnic display of whites, grays, and reds. His brain still didn’t circuit the pain, even as his body flung back in the seat, his spine whiplashing violently while the back of his skull cracked against the headrest. His senses dulled to barely conscious, black ink blotting his vision, his body terrifyingly numb as the volume on reality turned way down.

  Cindy wasn’t screaming anymore.

  Blood. Metallic, pungent, filling his mouth and clogging his throat.

  Then the pain hit, the excruciating wave of agony tearing him in half before oblivion mercifully submerged him beneath its depths.

  FOURTEEN

  Cindel swallowed the bile rushing up her throat.

  Her heart and head pounded viciously, her neck and chest aching beneath the cross strap of the seatbelt, but it managed to secure her in place. Dax, on the other hand, met a worse fate, and now he remained unconscious and bleeding. Panic tied her belly into knots, but his pulse throbbed faintly in her ears, his breath tattered but present, a cloud of black smoke drifting into the car. The music continued to play, almost mocking in its cheeriness, a raspy male voice crooning about being shaken all night long.

  Her vision blurred and she blinked, struggling to focus both her sight and mind. Dax needed help and she had to get him out of the car before it burned or exploded like she’d read in so many books.

  Grasping her door handle with a tremulous hand, she tugged on the metal, and the door popped open with remarkable ease. The driver’s side had taken the brunt of the damage and even her seatbelt readily unclipped. Vertigo seized her as she stumbled out of the Corvette, shards of glass sprinkling from her lap to the ground, the night bobbing and weaving on its axis. Another wave of nausea struck her in the gut and she steadied herself on a nearby tree, biting back the urge to retch.

  Warm liquid trickled down her temple and landed on her cheek, cooling along her skin. She raised her fingers to wipe at it and came back with blood. Her heart drummed a rapid tempo against her ribcage, adrenaline still surging in her veins, fear clamping down on her spine with icy claws. She had to save him.

  Or he was going to die.

  Without warning, a strong hand grabbed her arm and roughly yanked her away from the tree. She tripped, nearly crashing to the ground, but another grip snatched her wrist, a vampire on either side of her. Temhota. Their ash and incense scents invaded her nostrils, and they were clad in the black uniforms she knew all too well, their shadowy forms looming over her. Both men dragged her across the dead grass onto the asphalt, practically carrying her toward the overpass.

  When the stench of rotting blood and excrement hit her senses, she looked up at the suspended bodies, strung over the stone bridge like slaughtered pigs in a butcher shop. Horror sprouted in her chest, and the more she stared, the more it grew, until realization swiped the fog from her mind with startling clarity.

  Victor. Dangling at the center. The girls lined up at either side of him, all swaying in the wind like macabre ornaments.

  “I thought Caldre wanted to keep them.” The low note of a dreadfully familiar voice jerked her attention back to Earth. “But it seems their purpose was to deliver a message.”

  When he emerged from the tree line into her periphery, Cindel choked on her breath, the air knocked from her lungs as if he’d kicked her in the stomach.

  Jacques.

  He smiled, slow and wicked as recognition lit the coals of his eyes. Short, pale blond hair, porcelain white skin, tall and lean and far more frightening than she’d remembered.

  A ghost from her awful past.

  “Hello, Cindel.” The satisfaction etched into his face was undeniable. “I knew you were alive.”

  “Jacques,” she barely whispered, her voice raw from screaming as she fought the iron grip of his men. “No. Please.”

  He closed the distance between them, stalking toward her like a nightmare come alive. “Look at you.” His gaze dropped then lifted in an elevator-like motion. “You changed your hair, your clothes, your life.” He pushed a hand through her black strands, half-fal
len out of her ponytail. She yelped when his fingers suddenly fisted against her scalp, wrenching her head up and forcing her to regard the morbid garland of her cohorts.

  “If it weren’t for me, you’d be hanging there with them,” he growled in her ear, his breath hot and his words razor-sharp, a tempered rage cutting his tone. “You should’ve never left us.”

  “Alek,” she grated out, her eyes sliding to meet his. “I left Alek. Not you.”

  Out of nowhere, the back of his hand smacked across her face in a brutal slap. A kaleidoscope of color burst before her eyes and her head hammered in protest, the sting of the blow setting her teeth on edge.

  “Liar, liar,” he hissed. “And what of the hybrid?” Grasping her chin hard, he bared his fangs, fair features twisted with fury. “Did you enjoy fucking him or was it only to survive?”

  “Jacques,” she gasped beneath his painful grip. “Please—”

  He hit her again, harder this time. Her knees buckled and she almost crumpled to the ground, held up only by his sniggering men. More blood streamed down her face, warm rivers now, flowing into her eyes. Fear throttled her, an all too common paralysis disabling her bones, a suffocating helplessness sapping her will. She bowed her head, submitting, surrendering like a beaten dog—

  “Don’t you fucking touch her!”

  A feral roar ripped into the night before gunfire erupted in every direction.

  One of the men holding her captive dropped with a gurgling yelp, blood spraying the air around her. The other released her and dove for cover, shouting for everyone to get down. Jacques snagged her by the waist, hauling her up in front of him like a shield before the muzzle of his gun landed on her temple, his body pressed to her back. She writhed in his grip as the rat-tat-tat ceased, bullets pinging off the adjacent cars and tearing up the tarmac.