by Trina M. Lee
“Do you think it’s the wrong address? Or a false call?” My money was on the latter. How well did Smudge know every one of her sources?
Obeying the speed limit, I coasted past the gas station at the address we’d been given, not a person in sight. We rounded a slight bend in the road ahead and came upon a barricade of FPA vehicles parked across the street. A second set of vehicles were lined up behind the first, making it impossible to blast through.
“Motherfucker,” I swore, having no choice but to stop. “They laid a trap for us. What the hell do we do?”
As we slowed, a few more cars pulled up behind us. We were blocked in on every side. Putting the car in park, I turned off the engine but made no move to get out. Half a dozen Feds approached us, heavy guns at the ready. About ten more agents lingered behind them, crossbows raised and aimed.
Unperturbed, Ghost caught my chin gently in a hand, turning my face to his. Stroking his thumb over my jaw, he said, “We survive. We have a choice now. Fight or let them take us.”
We’d been told to never let the FPA take us. Although we hadn’t been specifically told it would be better for us to die first, it had been implied.
“Nova will shit a brick if we go willingly. Not to mention The Circle.” Aware of the FPA agents now shouting at us to get out of the car, I reached for the door handle. I would not die in this car.
“Fuck The Circle,” Ghost hissed. “It’s our asses on the line. We’re making this call. If you want to fight, we’ll fight. But going willingly might be the easiest way to get out of this alive. Either we fight them now, or we fight them later when we break the fuck out, but there will be a fight, doll. You choose when it happens.”
The image he’d painted terrified me, but with the armed men and women surrounding us, ready to rip us from the car, I had no time to choose. One thing was certain: we’d only win a fight with these odds if I bled. A lot.
While I struggled to decide, Ghost destroyed both of our phones with a surge of power, ensuring they were rendered useless if they ended up in the wrong hands. Before the Feds could get any closer, Ghost threw open his door and raised both hands. It was enough to make them stand back and see if we’d surrender. Having no choice, I got out too, holding my hands where they could be seen.
The FPA weren’t worried about any weapons we might have. It was our magic they feared.
“On your knees. Now,” a burly Fed with a heavy beard barked. “Or I put a bolt in your heart.”
Crossbow bolts proved efficient for killing vampires. Straight up bullets hurt like hell but didn’t kill us. The old stake through the heart thing was pretty much true. Thick, long, and deadly, the Feds had come packing. No tranquilizers this time.
Ghost eased around the front of the car, so I was in his sight, and went to his knees as instructed. He slid me a look, a brow raised in question. He wanted to play this the smart way. I could see it in his dark eyes. The Circle of the Veil would kill us if they learned we didn’t even put up a fight.
But a fight meant death. That was promised by the faces of all the agents present. Hard, angry expressions, fingers on triggers, my demise surrounded me on every side.
Bleed now or surrender. I had no other choices and only a second to decide.
I could create a gash with a fang, let the blood run out. Blow them all away. Somewhere deep within, I desperately wanted to. The urge was so sinister and unwelcome that it left a bitter taste in my mouth, making me recoil. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the control, and I suspected that the part of me where the blood magic dwelled didn’t want me to master it.
“Any sudden moves and you die.” Another agent barked.
When neither of us made any effort to fight, we were each surrounded by Feds who pinned us face first to the ground while securing our hands behind our backs. The sound of so many heartbeats reverberated loud in my head. Panic rose up as the first cuff was slapped on my wrist.
When Nova had wanted me to try this during an interrogation exercise, I’d almost lost my shit. It hadn’t been my finest moment. Of course this was exactly why he’d wanted to cuff me. To prepare me in any way possible.
Still nothing could replicate the real thing.
I expected the panic to grip me now, as it had then and every time Remington had forced me into submission using any means at hand. To fight back the rising fear, I searched for Ghost, catching a glimpse of him through a cluster of FPA bodies. He didn’t fight. Just like when Nova wanted to cuff him, Ghost allowed it. Welcomed it even.
Feeling my frantic stare, he met and held my gaze. How he could be so calm in the face of such uncertainty?
Sucking in a deep breath, I followed Ghost’s lead. I trusted him to know how to keep us alive. Despite the well of rising alarm choking me, I let them slap cuffs on both wrists, dampening my power. We might have stood a chance if we’d opted to fight, but the odds had been stacked against us. Still, as the Feds roughly jerked us up and threw us into an armored car, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would make it out. Would Nova come for us? Or leave us to whatever fate the FPA had in store?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Crammed into the large boxy vehicle with FPA agents on each side of us, I stared straight ahead, acknowledging nobody. Aside from uttering threats to remind us not to try anything—not that I could—they didn’t talk to us either.
Next to me, Ghost pressed his thigh against mine, reassuring me more in that subtle touch than in anything he could have said. I didn’t so much as glance his way. Needing to stay focused, I stared at the hard metal wall opposite me, ignoring the Feds who sat there with weapons ready.
This was fucked.
In my head I did the alphabet backward to keep from thinking about the handcuffs holding me. They might contain my blood magic or fire it right back at me, so why was I so tempted to find out if they could?
By the time I finally managed to get through the entire alphabet without making a mistake due to nerves, we were pulling up to the abandoned hospital the FPA used as their base. Rumor had it that the hospital was haunted as hell, abandoned for good reason. Stories surrounding the place included the torments of patients and their lingering, pissed off ghosts.
Yet none of that bothered me nearly as much as the living humans with their weapons and poor decision-making skills. If any of them were smart, they’d be anywhere else right now. Although perhaps that could be said of Ghost and me as well.
The van backed up to a side door and stopped. We were roughly jerked out by too many people grabbing for us at once. Gritting my teeth, I willed myself to rein in my temper. The panic wasn’t the only thing that set me off; the Feds I’d baited for Nova found that out the hard way.
If these people found out I was responsible for that, I was as good as dead. Or worse.
The hospital building was in rough shape, not only on the outside but the inside too. Ghost was tugged along ahead of me by four gun-toting agents with two following. I was shoved along behind him, given the same security. They weren’t taking any chances.
We entered into a dimly lit atrium that smelled of must and a decade old layer of dirt. One set of stairs led to the upper floors, and a stairwell went down to the basement. We didn’t take either set.
Instead Ghost and I were dragged into a caged elevator. It took us down.
Underground didn’t feel like a good thing. Now I met Ghost’s pensive gaze, searching him for any sign that he felt we should do something to stop them from taking us further. He merely winked before turning his attention to the elevator door and whatever it might reveal when it opened.
A hallway lit with retina-searing fluorescent lights ushered us into a maze of creepy FPA wonders. As we were jostled along, I noted the layout of the halls and which way we turned at each intersection. A building this large required several stairwells to get up and down. Or out.
We had to get the fuck out.
As the agents pushed us down one bright hall and then another, I tried to make note of ev
erything I saw. We passed a closed off room that stank of chemicals and fear, a lab of some kind.
Dear God.
My relief that we hadn’t gone in there proved short lived. The next hall we turned down, forced along by barked commands to move faster, was filled with cells. Prison cells. They didn’t let me close enough to look through the small barred windows in the heavy metal doors. Maybe I couldn’t see any occupants, but I could feel them. A few vampires lurked inside, their energies despondent. An anguished howl broke out at the end of the hall, so at least one werewolf.
My body crawled with unease. That familiar panic threatened to rise.
The ghost of a crying woman drifted out of the wall in front of us. She never seemed to notice our large group trudging toward her, though her presence added to my anxiety. Weeping softly, she disappeared into the wall on the opposite side.
I sensed great unrest here, but there was something else too. Beyond the building and its sad, dead occupants, the land beneath us thrummed with something dark and deep. Otherworldly. I felt it sniffing at me, like a dog sticking its face right in my crotch. It didn’t try to communicate with me even though I got the feeling it could if it wanted to. With Feds dragging me down the hall toward God knew what, I couldn’t exactly initiate a conversation with this… thing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t my problem. Not right in the moment.
Then it slipped away as fast as I’d felt it.
Ghost cocked his head, like he sensed it now.
We rounded another bend and entered what I quickly identified as an interrogation room, a large one made to accommodate several people at once. Immediately fear gripped me, and I dug in my heels. Several steel chairs filled the room, all of them complete with heavy duty shackles. A tray littered with torture implements stood off to one side, gleaming wickedly beneath the green-tinted artificial lights.
“Now you want to start fighting?” The woman gripping my arm laughed. “I’d save your energy if I were you. You’re going to need it.”
“Unless of course,” a man on my other side chimed in, “you just start talking. Tell us everything you think we want to know. Act civil, and we’ll treat you that way. Act like a monster… Well, same deal.”
Ghost surprised all of us by saying, “What do you want to know? I mean, make it worth our while, and maybe we can work something out here.”
My jaw dropped. Was he really going rogue here or was this just a game to him? If he had something in mind for this situation, he hadn’t shared it with me.
They stopped short of shoving us into the chairs. No doubt I would not be allowing anyone to force me into one of those things. The cuffs were the extent of my ability to cope right now. Shackled to a chair and tortured for information about a secret supernatural society that I didn’t even ask to be part of? Hell no.
“Who do you work for?” The burly, bearded guy towered over Ghost, trying to intimidate with his size, because that’s really all he had to work with.
Unfazed by the agent getting in his face, Ghost gave a lazy shake of his head. “We don’t work for anyone. See, that implies that we’re here willingly. But we didn’t volunteer for this shit.”
What in the flying crap was Ghost doing here?
The Feds didn’t believe him. They turned to me for confirmation. “We don’t work for anyone,” I heard myself say, spewing shit at random. “In fact, we were minding our own fucking business harming absolutely no one. What’s your reason for bringing us in?”
“You’re a vampire. That’s all the reason I need.” Beardo nodded toward the tray of bloody tools. “We’ve got a guy who’s really handy with those things. Unless you’d like to meet him, I suggest you start giving me something.”
Walking the fine line between fear and rage, I waited to see how Ghost wanted to do this. He’d thrown me a curve already. In the back of my mind, I just kept asking myself how they’d known our location so precisely? How had they known we were out there at all?
For a heartbeat of a second I wondered if Ghost had just led me into a trap. Maybe he was some FPA mole planted at Mayhem House. Maybe he was just as bad as Nova, luring me into a dangerous situation to feel out my powers.
Not a single part of me believed that. First, Ghost didn’t strike me as the type. Also he’d fought by my side when we intercepted the prisoner transfer. He’d stayed behind to get me on my feet when the dust cleared, despite it being a risk to himself. Something was definitely amiss at Mayhem House, but it wasn’t Ghost.
He slipped a tiny wry grin my way.
Beardo didn’t miss that. Brow furrowed in deep lines, his hand strayed to the stun gun on his hip. It was tough to peg his age with the beard, but I’d put him at late thirties to early forties. Like everyone else present, he had a hero complex. He really thought we were the bad guys.
“What do you want from us, man?” Ghost sounded annoyed, not at all afraid. “Seeing as you knew just how to find us, I’d say you already know what you want us to tell you. Or at least, you think you do.”
“That so?” Beardo pulled the stun gun from his belt and twirled it in one hand. Nodding to his peers, he barked, “Put them in the chairs.”
This had gone too far already, and we’d only been here a few minutes. We never should have let them bring us inside. How were our odds any better in here? We had a few less agents surrounding us since entering the ramshackle building but still a dozen or more.
My hold on the calm, controlled front I forced was slipping. If they put me in a chair, if they did things—
No, that would not be happening. Even if I had to kill every person in this room, I would not face torture at the hands of these government scum.
Their world was not ours. Considering they did a shit job of handling human affairs, it astounded me that they believed they had a right to get involved in ours. We had The Circle of the Veil policing our every move, and that was more than enough.
Jerked toward the closest chair I couldn’t do much with my arms trapped behind me, but panic didn’t give a shit about that. It went wild. No thought, just instinct. Using fangs, I bit into my bottom lip, spilling enough blood to fill my mouth. If the power ricocheted back at me, I’d have achieved nothing other than making myself look like an idiot. Of course rational thought didn’t factor into moments of fight or flight, even if the reward outweighed the risk.
My blood magic bubbled up, blasting through my body, seeking a way out. The power found the barrier in the cuffs around my wrists and blasted right through it, obliterating their magic wards.
After that it was nothing to snap the cuffs off completely.
Rounding on the shocked agents, I threw both hands up, using a telekinetic push to fling them away. They flew in various directions, crashing into each other and overturning the equipment tray.
Wisely Ghost started for the door, hands still cuffed behind him. I followed hot on his heels. If we were lucky enough to get a head start, agents could still swarm us in mere seconds.
“This way.” Turning right as we left the room, Ghost darted down the hall, then veered left down another. We moved much faster than the humans scrambling in chase, but they’d certainly already called for backup.
After turning down another hall that ended in a morgue of all damn things, we ducked into a utility closet. Ghost turned to hold his wrists out to me. “Care to work some of that badass magic and get these things off me?”
“What? I can’t. I mean, I don’t know how I did that. I panicked.” Despite my lack of confidence, I reached for the cuffs binding his wrists.
“You think you’re a mess, Blaze, but what you have is unique, something nobody else has. You’ve gotta stop fearing it and start using it. Come on. You can do this.” Lowering his voice as the sound of shouts drew closer, he said, “We can’t be here when the sun rises. The more time passes, the less chance we have of leaving by then.”
Using the tip of a fang, I pricked a small hole in the tip of finger, wary of letting too much blood flow. Then I gra
bbed the cuffs holding Ghost bound, and with another splash of blood magic, broke the spell on them. The lock clicked, and Ghost slipped the cuffs from his wrists, dropping them to the floor.
A slight wave of dizziness hit, and I had to grab hold of the wall to steady myself.
Ghost gripped my shoulder, turning me to face him. “We are getting out of here. Mark my words, baby girl. But a lot of that is going to count on you. I’m gonna need you to really bring it. You’ve got this, ok?”
I had to get out without losing my entire shit. We were trapped inside a large scary old building filled with nutjob humans who didn’t want us to leave. The ghosts and the strange spirit that dwelled here didn’t even register on my radar. They weren’t the threat here.
“Ok.” I nodded vigorously, finding myself encouraged by the calm in his dark eyes. “Just promise me that when things get ugly, you won’t let me hurt you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
GHOST
Looking back on the night I first met Blaze, I didn’t doubt for a moment that it was kismet. Even though we’d gone our separate ways after our back-alley encounter, I knew I would see her again. This wild beauty held a secret in her blood, a power like nothing I’d encountered.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m just a ghost, remember?” Seeing the fear in her enchanting blues recede, I treated myself to a handful of her ass as I nudged her toward the closet door. The sound of voices coming in our direction cut off. They’d turned another way. “It’s now or never.”
Gripping the doorknob tight, Blaze turned it slowly, edging it open. Maybe we shouldn’t have surrendered and come willingly. Surrounded as we’d been, I’d gone with my gut and raised my hands. My gut had never failed me yet.
The thing about haunted buildings, especially those with as much unrest as this place, they had a way of drawing the attention of bigger, darker entities. Such as the one that dwelled within the land. I could feel it lurking like a shark swimming beneath our boat, ready to rock us over at any time, should it so choose.
