by Kate Serine
“Not the entire time,” Ian admitted, without volunteering any additional information.
Luckily, I had my ghostly little spy to fill me in. “They kept him in one of the cells upstairs at first,” Amanda informed me. “But during one of the starvation periods, he was able to break out of the room and killed two of the agents who had beaten him every day, trying to bring him into submission. The bastards! They had it coming.”
Couldn’t exactly disagree with her there.
“We’d hoped to have an off-site facility up and running by now,” Ian continued. “But we’re having issues with our contractors. But then, I imagine you know all about that, don’t you?”
“You think you had trouble with the Pigg brothers before . . .” I muttered, letting his imagination fill in the blanks.
A wretched, bloodcurdling scream suddenly split the air, making even Ian start and send a concerned glance toward one of his flunkies.
“Who else are you keeping down here?” I demanded, my skin creeping with unease as the hissing and wailing grew more insistent.
“Just a few of our other guests,” Ian said with a shrug that wasn’t nearly so nonchalant now.
“It’s the women Vlad was forced to turn,” Amanda informed me. “They keep them here until they release them ‘into the wild,’ as they call it. They just turn them loose and hope for the best. They don’t give a shit what happens to them—or anyone else!”
Beatrice . . .
My head snapped up at the sound of Vlad’s voice.
Amanda apparently heard it, too. “He feels you approaching,” she murmured. “He knows you’re coming.”
My brows came together, and I shook my head, confused. “But I thought—”
“Sorry?” Ian interrupted. “What was that?”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Never mind.”
“It was his voice you heard,” Amanda assured me, apparently understanding where my thoughts were tending. “He had bonded with you through the blood of the woman you bit in the alley. You had taken in his blood, connecting you. But he couldn’t really draw you to him without tasting you, so I acted as his physical surrogate.”
“Beatrice. . . .” came the eerie hissing from beneath the tightly bolted doors, the many voices slithering toward me in a terrifying chorus. “Beatrisssss. . . .”
I shuddered. Apparently, Dracula wasn’t the only one who knew I was coming. I heard Ian chuckle and sent an irritated glance his way. “Looks like you have quite the welcoming committee,” he drawled, finally coming to a halt in front of one of the doors. He jerked his chin at one of his agents, who produced a pass card. He swiped it through the scanner at the side of the door, and I heard the heavy thunk as the bolts on the door slid away.
Ian pulled open the door with more than a little effort and swept his arm. “Shall we?”
“After you,” I replied, forcing a polite smile. “Really, I insist.”
He pressed his lips into an angry line, his faux cordiality vanishing instantly. Then he grabbed my forearm and shoved me into the dark room.
“Welcome, my dear,” came a hoarse voice, reminding me of the sound aged, crumbling parchment made as one turned the pages. The words were followed by a labored wheeze. “I’d stand up, but . . .”
The light from the hallway filled only a small area just inside the door, not providing any illumination within the room. I squinted into the darkness, searching for Dracula, but my vision was inadequate to penetrate the blackness. I felt Ian standing close behind me, could feel his eager trembling as he waited to see what would happen now that I was so close to the infamous vampire.
“Come to me, Beatrice,” Dracula rasped. “You are the one I want, the one I need. . . .”
Amanda hovered near me, her fingers an icy vise where she grabbed my arm with nervous anticipation, the chill penetrating my bones. “Oh, God,” she breathed, her voice choked with sorrow. “He’s even worse.”
I edged closer to the voice, my heart pounding so loudly, I knew Dracula could hear it. He would feel each heartbeat like a timpani vibrating in his own blood. I knew this because I could feel the increase in his heartbeat pulsing in mine.
But as I edged closer, went deeper into the darkness, I instinctively knew that the connection we shared was a tenuous one—a phantom of the real, a shadow of what Dracula shared with his other victims, of what he’d shared with Amanda before he had murdered her in a moment of panic upon realizing he’d actually turned an Ordinary.
The image of that moment popped into my head as if I was looking into Vlad’s eyes and reading his final thoughts, accepting atonement for his sins. He was dying. The starvation, the imprisonment, the beatings and torture had taken their toll, leaving him a desperate, pathetic shell of the man he’d once been. He was clinging to life, clinging to hope that he would be rescued—that the Agency’s madness could be put to a stop. And I was the one he wanted to do it. The one he needed to do it.
I knew it as surely as I knew we were not alone in the darkness.
Ian sensed it at the same moment and jerked a flashlight from his pocket, flipping it on. “What the fu—”
The startled curse died on his lips as the first vampire lunged forward, her fangs dripping with saliva when she let forth a furious hiss. Ian’s flashlight flew from his hand, clattering to the floor and spinning wildly, the eerie strobe effect as it spun revealing easily half a dozen vampires, crouching along the wall, their sunken eyes glowing red with each pass.
Holy shit!
Ian’s terrified scream snapped me out of my stupor. I bolted toward where I’d seen Dracula, hoping like hell the vampiresses wouldn’t come after me, too. I heard the hurried footsteps of the other agents rushing into the room and their startled cries when their flashlights illuminated the carnage.
I dropped to my knees in front of Dracula and took his face in my hands, turning his gaze up to mine.
“Beatrice,” he breathed, attempting a smile that was pathetically weak. “You came to me.”
I nodded, tugging frantically at the heavy iron chains that secured him to the wall and floor. “Yep, but your girlfriends are righteously pissed. So now would be a really good time to give me some of that vampire mojo of yours.”
His eyes rolled in his head. “Amanda. . . .”
As soon as he said it, I glanced up to where the spirit was standing beside me. In a blur of movement, she rushed toward me. I felt a jolt of energy, a surge of power, as she took control of my body. Ignoring the chaos and cacophony of hissing, slurping, and screams behind me, I grabbed the chains binding Dracula and yanked, pulling first one and then another from the wall, freeing his hands.
I had just taken hold of the chain binding his ankles together when Dracula’s arm went around my neck. With a growl, he jerked me off-balance and onto the cold floor. My heart jolted with panic until I saw him lash out, ripping away the throat of one of his own creations.
The vampiress fell back, grasping at her neck as blood spurted through her fingers.
As more agents rushed into the room, shouting and firing at the errant vampiresses, Dracula gathered me into his frail arms and dragged me close to his chest, snarling wildly as some of the agents edged cautiously toward us, their guns trained on us. And I wasn’t entirely sure if they’d mind putting a few bullets in me if it meant weakening Dracula enough to subdue him again.
Where the hell was Gideon?
As if on cue, the fairy suddenly appeared before us, his powerful fist nailing the nearest agent with a bone-crushing blow. Then there was a rapid pop, pop, pop and corresponding bursts of light. My head snapped toward the sound, tears of joy and relief filling my eyes.
Nicky.
He fired off another couple of rounds, knocking back two of the vampires, then jerked a stake from his weapons belt and sent it flying. There was a loud screech as the stake hit its mark. Nicky spun around just in time to catch Freddy the Ferret taking aim at the center of my
chest. Nicky didn’t even hesitate. The loud report of his gun made me flinch at the same moment Freddy’s head snapped back.
Nicky didn’t wait to see Freddy drop before he rushed to me, snatching me from Dracula’s hold and gathering me into his arms. “Let’s go, doll. There’s more of these crazy bitches comin’.”
“Wait!” I cried as he tried to drag me toward the door through the path Gideon was plowing with his fists. When Nicky gave me a puzzled look, I hurried back to Dracula, who was far too weak to follow. The vampire’s chest heaved as he struggled to breathe, his cheeks growing more sallow and sunken even as I looked at him.
“Go,” he said, shaking his head. “Save yourself, Beatrice.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not leaving you here with these assholes.”
He brought his hand up to cup my cheek. “Then free me from this dark prison.”
I swallowed hard, surprised to find tears blurring my vision. I didn’t know him—not really. And what I’d known of him was far from complimentary. But no one deserved to go through what the Agency had done to him, no one deserved to be a pawn in their sick, sadistic games.
“Trish!” Nicky barked. “Let’s go!”
“Please,” Dracula pleaded, his eyes boring into mine. “Free me.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Nicky, who was unloading his Glock into the chest of a statuesque redhead. Gideon had armed Nicky to the teeth just like I’d instructed when I’d asked him to rescue my love and come back for me. I darted forward and snatched one of the stakes from Nicky’s belt, then dropped down to my knees.
Dracula closed his eyes and nodded. I lifted the stake, then drove it down, but with a blur of motion, Dracula caught my wrist, and his eyes snapped open. “Tell Red I am sorry. For everything.” Then his grasp shifted and he yanked my hand forward, driving the stake through the center of his chest.
He gasped as his eyes went wide. I heard Amanda’s strangled cry of sorrow and an arctic blast filled the room, forming ice crystals on every surface.
Time to go.
This time when Nicky grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my feet, I limped after him, glancing around to see where the hell Gideon had disappeared to. As we made our way to the hall, a black mist suddenly appeared and took shape.
“What the hell is going on?” Nate demanded over the chorus of hissing and shouts and gunfire as the vampiresses continued to attack their Agency captors. “I got a call for at least two Tale dead—maybe more.”
“I’ll explain later,” Nicky assured him, gripping my hand tighter in his own. “Get the souls and get the hell outta here, Nate.”
Nate gave a terse nod, then was gone.
Nicky glanced up and down the hall, trying to figure out which way to go. “Shit.”
“This way,” I said, tugging his arm. “There’s an elevator down this hallway.”
My stomach dropped in horror as Nicky half dragged me down the hall and we saw all the doors open wide, the cells’ inhabitants gone. Although I still had no freaking clue how the vampiresses had ended up in Dracula’s cell before we’d arrived, the open doors certainly explained the number of vampires now running amuck. I hobbled along beside Nicky, my injured leg slowing me down.
We’d just reached the doors to the elevator when a searing pain tore into my shoulder, throwing me back into the wall. I heard Nicky scream my name as he caught me up and fired off a couple of rounds toward my assailant.
Startled and gasping in shock, I turned my head toward where Ian stood with his gun still raised, completely unaffected by the two bullet wounds in his chest. Ian’s throat had been torn open and blood stained the entire front of the white shirt that had come untucked from his struggle with his attacker. His lips dripped with blood and his eyes were wild—and glowed red as he lowered his head a little between his shoulders and hissed.
“Fuck me,” Nicky breathed. He scooped me up into his arms and rammed the elevator button with his elbow. When the doors slid open, we ducked inside and Nicky punched the button to close the doors. “Hang on, doll. Just hang on.”
The doors slid closed at an agonizingly slow rate as we watched in tense silence, but before the doors could meet, Ian appeared before us, fangs bared. Nicky raised his gun and pulled the trigger, but it clicked, the magazine empty. Suddenly, Alex McCain appeared behind Ian, his arm going around the agent’s neck.
“Go!” he grunted, dragging Ian from the elevator. “Get outta here!”
Nicky bolted forward and slammed his fist against the button to close the doors. And before they met, I caught a glimpse of McCain getting flung against the wall.
I sighed and let my head rest against Nicky’s shoulder as my adrenaline left me. “God, I’m tired of getting shot,” I murmured, knowing that unlike last time, I didn’t have a vampire and his ghostly girlfriend around to heal me up ahead of schedule.
Nicky dropped back against the wall and kissed the top of my head, but he didn’t say a word. He just tossed aside his gun to grab another Glock from its holster and waited. I could feel his tension in his muscles as he held me and I knew what he was thinking. This wasn’t over yet. We had no idea what the hell would be waiting for us when those doors opened again.
When the elevator jolted to a halt, I said, “Give me a gun.”
Nicky gave me a tight-lipped nod and handed me his Glock as the doors began to slide open. Then he set his jaw and squared his feet, ready to fight to the death if it meant getting me out of there. As if reading my thoughts, he tightened his arms around me and murmured, “At any cost.”
My arm came up, aiming the Glock at the opening. At the same instant, a dozen rifles clicked as the men waiting outside chambered a round.
“Hold your fire!”
I nearly sobbed with relief at the sound of a familiar voice. “Oh, God,” I moaned, my voice thick with tears. “It’s Al.”
“We’re coming out!” Nicky yelled, carrying me out of the elevator, his steps slow and wary.
As we came out, I glanced around, surprised to see how many FMA Enforcers dressed in SWAT gear filled the hallway. And on their knees lining one wall were easily two dozen Men in Black, their hands handcuffed behind them. I guess Al had taken his stand after all. And he’d had some outside help. As I looked on, Gideon appeared with two more agents, each held in a punishing headlock in the crook of Gideon’s powerful arms.
Gideon inclined his head to Nicky and me in a slight bow, then shoved the agents at the Enforcers, who quickly clasped handcuffs on them.
“I need to get her to the hospital,” Nicky barked, his steps growing more rapid now that the Enforcers were sure of our identities.
“I’ll drive them.” I glanced toward the person who’d spoken. Alex McCain. He was bloody, and his clothes were torn, but he was somehow still alive. He jerked his chin at Nicky as he strode toward us. “Looks like you could use a doctor, too.”
“No way in hell!” I yelled. “This son of a bitch is a traitor!”
Al and McCain exchanged a look. “I’ve been working as a double agent, Trish,” McCain confessed. “Al needed some eyes and ears inside. And he knew he could trust me.”
I glanced at Al to confirm what McCain had said. “But . . .” I shook my head, growing woozy.
Nicky hefted me up and held me a little closer against him. “How about that ride now?”
But before Nicky could take a step, Gideon muscled his way toward us. “I got this.”
He wrapped his arms around us, and the next thing I knew, my lungs were gasping for air in the Tale ER. The moment we appeared, a nurse rushed toward us, calling out orders that were just a jumble of words to me. Nicky was saying something to me, murmuring softly, lovingly, as they put me on a gurney, but the words sounded far away, distorted. And then I was drifting, weightless, and my world went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Nicky?” I called, my mouth dry.
I felt a slender, cool hand grasp mine. “Nope, sorry, you’re stuck with me.”
<
br /> I chuckled a little, still groggy from the fairy dust the doctor had given me, and turned my head, trying to focus on my friend’s saucy smile. “Hey, Red.”
“About damned time you woke up,” she said through her relieved grin. “My ass is killing me from sitting in this chair.”
“How long have I been out?” I asked, frowning.
“Three days,” she informed me. “You’d been through a helluva lot.”
Tell me about it.
“Sorry you’ve had to wait so long,” I told her, pushing up against the pillows so I was sitting.
She shrugged. “I’m just glad it’s not me for a change.”
“How is everything now?” I asked, glancing toward her belly.
Her hand smoothed lovingly over her basketball-sized bump. “Max is doing great now. No problems at all.”
“Max?” I said, grinning.
“Short for Maximus,” she explained. “Turns out that was Nate’s name . . . you know, before. He thought it might be better to change his name when he took on his assignment with the Tales.”
“I like the name Max,” I told her, nodding. “I think it’ll suit your little guy. He’s definitely a little warrior.”
“Thanks to you,” Red said. “Seriously. Thanks, Trish. For everything.”
“I’m sorry about Dracula,” I told her, meaning it. “If there’d been any other way . . .”
She nodded. “I know.”
“He said to tell you he was sorry.”
She sighed. “Nate tried to collect his soul, but it was already gone. Looks like he’s a ghost now.”
I laughed a little at the irony. A ghost. I had no doubt that he’d be well taken care of in the spirit world by the phantom who loved him, who had done everything in her power to rescue him from the darkness that had imprisoned him. I just hoped now that they had each other, they’d leave me the hell alone. “Good to know. And Ian?”
