Night Unbound

by Dianne Duvall

  Tracy tightened her hold on Lisette’s hand. “Anything?” she whispered.

  Lisette shook her head. Zach hadn’t said a word since the cesarean had begun, and Lisette didn’t dare distract him. She didn’t know how large a role he played.

  Icy fear abruptly breezed through her like a winter wind.

  Lisette stopped breathing.

  Not her fear. Zach’s.

  The babe isn’t breathing, he told her.

  Lisette’s eyes burned as tears welled.

  “What’s happening?” she heard Ami ask, voice trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” Marcus asked in clipped tones. “Is the babe okay? Why isn’t she crying? Shouldn’t she be crying?”

  “Roland. Sean,” Seth bit out.

  Jenna turned her face into Richart’s chest. Richart wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

  Tears slipped down cheeks as Marcus repeatedly asked about the babe, each question growing more frantic than the last.

  Ami began to sob softly, her questions growing weaker.

  “Roland,” Seth pressed.

  “I’m trying,” Roland snapped.

  “What’s happening?” Darnell asked, face still hidden in his hands. Like the other mortals present, he couldn’t hear the terse comments issued in the infirmary. He knew only that Ami’s cries had ended.

  Lisette could barely swallow past the lump in her throat. “The babe isn’t breathing,” she whispered, almost afraid that saying it aloud would make the horror more real. “Roland is trying to help her. Sean, too, I think.”

  Krysta buried her face in Étienne’s shirt. Étienne buried his in her hair and clutched her close.

  Moments passed, so long and filled with tension that Lisette wanted to scream.

  Then the high-pitched wail of an infant broke the silence.

  Lisette’s breath escaped in a whoosh. Tears blurred her vision and spilled over her lashes.

  Several others breathed sighs of relief. Heads dropped back against chairs.

  Darnell raised his head, his eyes red and full of moisture.

  “She’s okay,” Roland said in the infirmary, his voice full of relief and exuberance. “She’s okay. She’s breathing on her own now. She’s okay.”

  “The baby’s breathing,” Lisette told Darnell and the others.

  Some of the tension left the room.

  Some, not all. They had yet to learn if the babe were infected with the virus.

  “You hear that, Ami?” Marcus murmured, elation brightening his words. “She’s okay.” He laughed. “And listen to her work those lungs!”

  Lisette smiled through her tears. The poor babe sounded pissed.

  “Ami?” Marcus said, the jubilance draining from his voice. “Ami, sweetling?”

  Everyone tensed.

  “Ami?” Marcus called, his panic palpable. “Why isn’t she responding? What’s wrong with her?”

  “Dr. Kimiko,” Seth said.

  “Ami, can you hear me?” the doctor asked. In a lower voice, she said, “The incisions aren’t healing. Are you still blocking her regenerative capabilities?”

  “No,” Seth answered.

  “Is she bleeding internally?”

  “No.”

  “Her pulse is thready. Are you trying to heal her?”

  “Yes. I’m pouring as much strength and energy into her as I can,” Seth said.

  “As am I,” David added.

  “And I.” Zach said.

  Minutes ticked past. Minutes during which the babe’s cries quieted to snuffles. Since the doctors were occupied with Ami, Lisette assumed Roland and Sean were cleaning up the baby. Wrapping her in a warm blanket. Doing . . . whatever it was that doctors and nurses did to newborns.

  “Ami?” Marcus repeated, his voice choked and barely climbing above a whisper. “Come on, sweetling. Don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me. Please.”

  “The incisions are starting to heal,” Dr. Kimiko announced. “Her pulse is getting stronger.”

  “Her blood pressure is improving, too,” Melanie murmured.

  Lisette conveyed the latest to the Seconds present.

  More minutes.

  More knees bobbing up and down.

  More nail chewing.

  “She’s stable,” Dr. Kimiko announced.

  “Seth?” Marcus asked.

  “I think Ami has slipped into her healing sleep,” Seth told him.

  “You think or you know?”

  A pause. “I think. If she has, it’s different this time, perhaps because we depleted her energy and kept her from healing long enough for the babe to be born.”

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seth,” Zach said, a faint reprimand.

  “She’ll be okay,” Seth insisted, “if I have to feed her energy twenty-four hours a day until she wakes up. She’ll be okay.”

  Seated at his desk in network headquarters, Chris Reordon rubbed eyes that burned from fatigue. He’d pulled too many all-nighters lately, trying to help Seth track down whoever the hell was betraying the Immortal Guardians. Now one of the vampires had admitted to leaving the area he was allowed to roam at headquarters and had stolen high-tech equipment, so Chris had to watch last night’s surveillance video to see what else the young vamp might have gotten into.

  Dragging his hands down his face, he eyed with longing the cushy seven-foot sofa that had been his sleeping place more often of late than his bed at home. He looked at the clock.

  No. He needed to get this shit done, so he could fill Seth in as soon as Seth finished helping Ami. Another concern.

  Sheldon, of all people, had been thoughtful enough to text Chris and send him updates. According to the last, the babe was breathing (it had been a long damn wait for that text after Sheldon had texted him that the babe wasn’t breathing), but Ami had slipped into what Seth and the others hoped was a healing sleep and remained unresponsive.

  Seth continued to try to revive her.

  Chris forced himself to refocus on the computer screen. Nearly the size of one of the large-screen televisions every sports fan dreamed of owning, it bathed his office in faint blue light. A sleek desk lamp provided a small circle of sunny illumination in which his trusty notebook and pencil rested.

  Multiple windows divided the monitor’s screen, each offering video surveillance footage from the cameras on sublevels four and five. Chris touched the space bar on the keyboard and set all of the videos into motion.

  He had feigned anger earlier when the young vampire had admitted his deed, but it had just been for show. Since Cliff, one of the first three vampires ever to reside at network headquarters, had made this his home, he had won Chris’s respect. Descending into madness was a harsh price to pay for a stupid mistake made in one’s teen years. And Cliff had succeeded longer than any of the others in staving off the insanity. The young man had a will as strong as iron. Courage, too. And honor. Chris couldn’t help but like him.

  Did Chris like that Cliff had flagrantly disobeyed the rules and stolen from the network?

  No. But Chris sure as hell admired the kid’s reasons for doing it. And the tracking device Cliff had planted would provide them with invaluable information. Chris’s tech team already worked on tracing the newbie vampire’s return to what they hoped would be the vampires’ lair.

  Chris was curious to see what the lair of such well-trained vampires would comprise.

  He grunted when the footage he sought finally rolled around. “There he goes,” he murmured, scribbling the camera number and video time code in his notebook.

  Biting into an apple, Cliff strode down the hallway toward the open door of Melanie’s office and headed inside. Anyone not specifically looking for it would have missed the barely noticeable blur that shot from the room a few minutes later.

  Chris turned his attention to the camera focused on the elevator doors and rewound the video several frames. Dr. Whetsman stepped off the elevator and greeted Todd and the
other guards. At the last possible moment before the elevator doors slid closed, Cliff swept inside. A couple of guards looked around with a frown, but most hadn’t noticed the breeze the vamp created as Dr. Whetsman distracted them with his latest bitch fest.

  Millisecond by millisecond, Chris was able to piece together and track the shrewd vampire’s progress as he sped through the fourth sublevel to the room the techies used to store the expensive toys they designed for immortals, Seconds, and network guards.

  The kid was smart.

  By all appearances, Cliff had only taken two tracking devices (one of which he had returned to Chris earlier), then had gone right back to Melanie’s office on the fifth sublevel. But Chris couldn’t afford to take chances. He needed to be certain. So he grasped the hot, steaming mug of coffee he hadn’t noticed his assistant place at his elbow, downed a few scalding gulps, reached for the sandwich she had also thoughtfully provided, then continued to watch the video.

  Hours ticked by as he scoured footage from all five sublevels, then moved on to the ground floor.

  The texts from Sheldon stopped around sunrise. Still no change in Ami.

  Chris couldn’t bring himself to ask about the baby. Was the little one infected with the virus? Was she vampire?

  Something caught his eye in the footage provided by the camera aimed at the large granite desk. The guards seated behind it cleared every employee who entered and exited the building, ensuring no one who didn’t belong got past the foyer.

  The big bite of sandwich Chris had taken nearly flew out of his mouth.

  “What the hell?” He rewound the video. Played it forward in painfully slow increments. Gaped at what it revealed.

  Shoving the sandwich plate aside so forcefully it skidded across his desk and tumbled to the floor, Chris wrote furiously in his ever-present notebook.

  Two hours later, he sat back and stared at the computer screen.

  He needed to talk to Seth, but—last he had heard—Seth was still pouring energy into Ami, trying to heal her or revive her or whatever it took to get her to open her eyes. David probably was, too.

  Picking up the phone, he dialed Darnell’s number.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey. How’s Ami?” Chris asked.

  “Still unresponsive,” Darnell said, voice grave. “Seth said she didn’t even rouse when Melanie put the baby to Ami’s breast to see if she would nurse.”

  “The baby’s . . . okay?” Chris forced himself to ask.

  Darnell lowered his voice to a whisper. “No fangs or glowing eyes, if that’s what you’re asking. And Roland said he couldn’t smell the virus on her.”

  “What about Seth or David?”

  “They can’t either, but”—his voice quieted even more—“they’re both exhausted. I don’t know how they’re even still conscious. They haven’t stopped pouring energy into Ami since her labor began.”

  Shit.

  “What’s wrong?” Darnell asked when Chris went silent.

  “I need to talk to them.”

  “Can you do it here?”

  “Can I use your laptop?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then, yes. Hey, did the baby nurse?”

  “Tried to. Ami’s milk hasn’t come in. But Melanie said that’s normal, that—for human women—it can take three or four days.”

  Which didn’t necessarily mean Ami’s milk would follow the same timetable or come in at all. It sounded as though they weren’t even sure Ami would live. “Okay. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Zach.

  Zach’s eyes flew open.

  Curled up beside him in bed in the quiet room they had claimed for the day, Lisette slept deeply.

  They hadn’t made love before retiring. Both had felt too drained: Zach drained of energy and Lisette drained emotionally from the hours of worry and anxiety that had gripped her as Ami had labored. Instead they had clung to each other, absorbing the peace and comfort it brought them.

  Zach, Seth repeated in his head.

  What?

  Meet me in David’s study.

  Zach glanced at the clock beside the bed. Only an hour had passed since he and Lisette had drifted off to sleep. Sighing, he gently lifted the arm Lisette had thrown across his chest and rested it on her side, then tried to ease out from under the thigh she had draped over him. He swore as he grew hard from the sweet contact.

  Lisette slid her arm back across his chest and scooted closer. “What are you doing? Don’t go.”

  “I have to. Seth needs me.”

  She lifted her head.

  Zach smiled.

  Her long raven hair, loose and tangled, obscured most of her face. Her adorable features contorted in a frown as she batted it out of the way and peered up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Is it Ami?”

  “I don’t think so. He told me to meet him in the study.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  With great reluctance, Zach slid out from under her and stood beside the bed. “Go back to sleep.” He leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to her lips.

  “Hurry back,” she murmured, and dropped her head onto his pillow, hugging it to her chest.

  Zach brushed a hand over her hair, then donned a pair of pants and slipped from the room.

  Across the hall, Roland Warbrook eased from the bedroom he and Sarah shared, his feet bare like Zach’s, his hair tousled from sleep.

  The two men shared a look.

  Roland had never apologized for choking Zach with a piano wire when he, Sarah, and Lisette had captured Zach and interrogated him. But Zach didn’t hold it against him.

  “Infirmary?” Roland asked. Apparently he had been summoned for a different purpose.

  Zach shook his head. “David’s study.”

  They headed upstairs.

  Roland continued on to the infirmary. Zach turned into David’s study.

  Darnell waited within. “Hey.”

  Zach nodded.

  When Darnell motioned to one of the chairs in front of David’s desk, Zach sank down in the comfortable leather and unashamedly eavesdropped on the infirmary.

  “What’s up?” Roland asked.

  “David and I need to meet with Chris. Would you sit with Ami and feed her healing energy until one of us returns?”

  “Of course. Has there been any change?”

  “No. Get some blood in you first to strengthen you.”

  “Do you want me to bring some for you and David?”

  “I’ll take some,” David said.

  “None for me, thanks,” Seth refused.

  Several minutes later, Seth and David strode into the study.

  David looked as he always did, but walked with slower steps and bore an air of fatigue.

  Seth . . . looked like shit. His shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Dark circles had once more found a home beneath his eyes. Lines of strain bracketed his mouth. His skin bore a sickly pallor. His cheeks seemed hollower.

  “Zach,” Seth greeted him. He even sounded tired.

  “How long do you intend to keep this up?” Zach asked. Unlike David’s, Seth’s strength and energy couldn’t be restored with a simple blood infusion.

  “As long as I can.” Seth sank into the chair beside him.

  Sighing, Zach held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bullshit. You’re expending energy like there’s no tomorrow. Teleporting all over creation to rescue your precious Immortal Guardians on top of that will totally deplete you.”

  David paused beside Seth’s chair and rested a hand on Seth’s chest.

  Seth gasped and gripped the arms of his chair. The lines in his face smoothed out. The dark circles vanished. Color returned, not quite healthy, but certainly healthier.

  Relaxing once more, Seth stared up at David. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  David shrugged and patted Seth’s shoulder. “Neither did I. I really didn’t expect it to work.” He started around the desk and s
taggered.

  Seth jumped up and gripped David’s arm to steady him. “Darnell.”

  “I’m on it.” Darnell hurried from the room.

  Zach watched Seth guide David to the comfortably worn chair behind the desk.

  David boasted more power than Zach had realized if he could replenish so much of Seth’s energy that soon after losing his own and needing blood.

  Darnell rushed back into the room, bearing bags of blood he piled on David’s desk.

  Chris entered on his heels, a battered-all-to-hell leather briefcase in one hand and a cooler in the other. He frowned when he saw David sink his fangs into a bag of blood. “Everything okay?”

  Seth nodded. “What’s in the cooler?”

  Chris set the cooler on the desk and opened the top. Zach and the others leaned forward to peer inside.

  Lined up in neat rows were over a dozen plastic bags, each roughly the size of a soda can, full of white liquid.

  “What’s that?” Darnell asked.

  “Breast milk,” Chris replied.

  Seth’s eyebrows rose. “Whose breast milk?”

  “Jasmine Harris donated it. She works in medical at the network.”

  All stared at him.

  “And she just happened to have some breast milk on hand?” Zach asked.

  “Of course not. A couple of months ago I consulted her about newborn babies’ needs. She’s a doctor and a mother, so I figured she would know best. Turns out she’s still breastfeeding her toddler. I like to prepare for every possibility. So I asked her if she would be willing to donate some milk. She said yes without even asking for whom. So”—he waved a hand over the cooler—“voilà. And there’s more where that came from, should you need it.”

  Zach looked at Seth. “He really does think of everything.”

  Seth nodded.

  Chris turned to the door. “Linda?”

  Linda, a friend of Melanie’s and another doctor from the network, poked her head in. “Yes?”

  “Would you please put this in the fridge?”

  Smiling, she entered.

  The men all smiled and nodded to her as she took the cooler from Chris.

  After she left, Chris leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I knew Melanie and Dr. Kimiko were probably resting and assumed you guys wouldn’t feel comfortable helping Marcus get the baby to latch on every two or three hours when it’s time to feed her.”