by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
A strange bell, swinging back and forth.
Camille pointed at Reveka’s waist-bound rope. “Maybe,” she said to Reveka, “we can loop that over her head and give a big tug?”
“Don’t you know how to lasso?” Sarge asked, crossbow still targeted at the dingdong vampire.
Camille shrugged. “Living in Texas didn’t make me a rodeo queen or anything.”
Reveka started to play rope-a-dope with the dangling creature, leaving Camille free to help Lucia, who had a bum shoulder because of a vampire’s rough play, then Ana, who had an ugly leg gash visible under the rip in her bodysuit. All of them restrained and drugged each creature in turn. Soon, they had three in captivity.
Three live vampires who could lead to a cure for the disease.
“Griff?” she asked, bounding down the stairs from Ana’s restrained vampire, wanting to reassure herself that he was there while things were mellow and looking good.
For an insane second, she wondered if the UV wand had posed any threat to him. Sarge had planted all that doubt in her mind about the captives being as bad as the vampires.
Well, Sarge could kiss her grits.
She found her boyfriend craning his neck to catch a glimpse of her. He seemed mystified, and even though it broke her heart, she couldn’t blame him.
This wasn’t his Lady Tex with her Bugs Bunny scarves, her hair flying free in the London breezes.
But Camille could be that girl again. Just as soon as—
A deafening buzz shattered the near silence.
When Camille looked over, Reveka was in mid-rope throw. However, the hanging vampire had either awakened or stopped fooling them with her lack of movement.
Damned clever monster. It zoomed off the ceiling, making a beeline for Ana.
“Watch—!” Camille yelled, her breath running out as she started forward.
Unfortunately, the woman hunter had relaxed now that her vampire was contained. Big mistake. Ana, the only married Vasile peasant, had been in a daze staring at Griff and the other man—God, Camille hadn’t even checked to see who it was—with a fearful glaze covering her eyes.
Almost as if Ana’s own husband, who was safely back in their wooden Vasile home, could’ve been one of these men.
At the sound of Camille’s shout, Ana jerked back to reality.
But Sarge had already fired at the attacking vampire.
In the time it took for his arrow to travel, the ball-gown vampire zapped down and yanked Ana upward by the leg, attaching her mouth to Ana’s wound. In a second of blurred motion and screams, she slurped blood, then fluidly cut her own lips with a fierce claw as she spun Ana upward, seeking the villager’s mouth. With a frenzied kiss, she forced Ana to drink her blood.
From her spot, Camille shuddered as Sarge’s arrow found a target in the vampire’s arm. The creature lifted her mouth away from Ana’s lips, screeching in that death wail.
Damn him! Now that the other females were under sedation, Sarge was feeling free to murder. After all, the drugged strigoiaca couldn’t turn the female team members into vampires while knocked out.
He was clear to kill without immediate consequences.
At one point, Sarge had told Camille that his arrows were tipped with holy water, and it was evident from the way the vampire was writhing and caterwauling. Her scream tore at the insides of Camille’s ears.
The vampire dropped Ana’s limp form down the stairs.
First, her arrow-spiked arm began steaming, disappearing. In seconds, her entire body smoked, wilted. Evaporated.
For a divine moment, the ball gown floated in the air by itself, as if a body still held it up. Then it collapsed onto the stairway, hollowed into nothing.
Before Camille could process the fleeting sight, she was on Sarge, thrashing aside his gun and pushing at him with all her might.
The adrenaline was still in her system, so her shove was aggressive, sending him crashing against the side wall.
“You son of a bitch,” she yelled.
He nodded toward Griff and the other male. “You’re just lucky I didn’t aim for your boyfriend first. I told you, Howard, all of these things are—or will be—beyond help.”
This time Camille flew at him, slapped him soundly across the face.
Smack!
The force of it stunned both of them.
For a man who’d almost had his arm torn off today, Sarge looked truly wounded. His scruffy cheek reddened with the imprint of her hand. She wanted so badly to take the slap back, to make him see how important it was for her to hold on to Griff.
“You don’t get it, Howard.”
Tears pulled at her throat. “And I never will.”
He didn’t say it out loud, but she knew he could’ve.
You understood pretty well when it came to slicing up wolves today.
“Believe it or not,” Sarge said, stepping away from the wall, his gaze a hard plea, “I’ve kept a vampire or two alive in my day—if they could help exterminate the worst of them.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He sighed, defeated.
“Let me put your friend out of his misery before the nightmare really happens. Because it always does with vamps.”
Frustrated, Camille drew his bowie from her belt and pounced forward, touching the tip to his throat, willing to do anything to stop him.
He didn’t seem to care. “You never gave the knife back to me. Shouldn’t that tell you something?”
“Now’s not a good time to irk me, Sarge.”
“Ah. So, now you’ll knock me out? Are you and Dr. Grasu through with me?”
A pitiful cry from the other side of the room answered for her heart. And it took her a second to realize that it wasn’t her body responding at all.
It was Ana.
As they both fixed their gazes on the new vampire, Camille kept the knife to Sarge’s throat.
Ana was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, staring at her hands, looking just as human as can be, but with blood running from her mouth, her leg.
Clutching her chest, she said, “I am burning inside.”
Please, no, Camille thought. This isn’t happening.
Reveka and Lucia, who’d been gathering the three unconscious vampires, watched, just as helpless as their boss.
“She’s turning,” whispered Sarge.
He moved away from the wall, and Camille knew exactly what he wanted to do.
“Hell, no,” she said, horrified, putting more pressure on the blade at his throat. “We’ve got them under control. Ana won’t be a problem.”
That didn’t stop him. He shrugged his crossbow to its resting place on his back and took the stake out of its holster. “I’ll be decent about it and drug her first so she doesn’t feel a thing. Lucia?”
The woman jumped, then let her hand fall to her side.
“Sedate Ana,” Sarge said.
“No,” she said to Lucia. Then, to Sarge, “We’re winning. We don’t have to paint the room with their guts. Let her stay alive so I can take her back with the others.”
Lucia still didn’t fire her dart gun.
Clutching the stake, Sarge started walking away. “Who said we’re going to keep the others alive?”
Desperate, Camille mirrored his stride, increasing the pressure of the knife again until blood trickled down his throat from the broken skin.
“Dammit, Camille.” He dropped the stake, grabbed her wrist with that good arm, spun her around in a lock, jamming her arm between her shoulder blades and squeezing until she dropped the knife.
He couldn’t use his bad arm. That’d cost him.
Dropping to her knees, she held back a wince and twisted out of the lock to catch him off balance, spinning, kicking, sweeping his legs out from under him.
He crashed to the ground, rolling to his back, hindered by his shredded arm.
In one smooth, adrenalized motion, she got him in a kasagatame hold, slipping her arm under his neck, drawing her knees cl
ose to his shoulder, grasping her inner thigh with her hand, whisking his arm under her armpit.
Continuing the flowing hold, she slicked her hand down his arm until the blade of her wrist bone met his trachea, then drove downward, choking him.
“I will not let you do this,” she said.
He strained against her, driving to his side, trying to escape the hold. But he was coughing, face reddening.
Bastard. He wasn’t going to stop.
Someone else must’ve known it, too. A hand grabbed her dart gun, loaded it, then pressed it to Sarge’s neck.
Thunk.
Out of breath, dizzied, Camille turned to find Griff, who’d crawled to her rescue. Holding back her sadness, she pushed Sarge down, waiting until he passed out, meeting the accusation in his gaze.
I warned you, she thought.
By the time he’d relaxed, Griff had crumpled to the ground again, breath heaving, eyes narrowed. They watched her as she reached out and hesitantly brushed a lock of his dark hair away from that beautiful face.
Side by side with the sleeping Sarge.
There couldn’t have been more of a difference between the two. One was a killer.
The other was her savior.
Chapter 12
Inside one of the two Huey helicopters that Camille’s fortune had secured for the mission, she finally gave in to months of exhaustion.
They were just about to take off from the dawn-soaked Humvee site, where the four captive vampire bodies had been loaded into UV coffins after being airlifted from the castle with the rest of them. From here, the Humvees would drive the coffins to Bucharest while her team flew to different destinations.
On the floor next to Griff, Camille sank against the wall, dropping a rucksack filled with hunting devices.
It was done.
She slid a gaze to her boyfriend. He was huddled in a lightweight Gore-Tex jacket, refusing to touch her.
Why?
It was almost as if they’d just met, personal-space bubbles intact. Strange, but it made sense somehow. He’d been traumatized. She needed to be patient, to nurse him back to the way things had been before that night.
Her heart clenched. Still, she’d expected more emotion from him. Had he fallen out of love with her during the year they’d been apart?
The thought hurt, because her love had only gotten stronger.
She touched his jacket, imagined his arm underneath the material. His painfully thin arm.
“I’m taking you to Bucharest,” she said.
He nodded, went back to hunching and watching her with that hesitant disbelief she’d noticed back at the castle.
After Sarge had been knocked out, Camille had radioed Bea to send Hueys to help transport the five unconscious bodies: Sarge, Ana, the three other vampires. Their fighting area hadn’t been far from a decent spot for the choppers to land, thank goodness, so they hadn’t needed to drag the bodies a great distance. And, since the Hueys’ doors had been removed in anticipation of a speedy evacuation, load-up had been mercifully simple.
Petar Vladislav, the other captive, had needed to be carried, and Reveka had taken him under her wing as if he were a lost child, promising to get him back to his family in Juni. Of course, he’d be examined by Beatrix first, when the other chopper reached Vasile.
As of a minute ago, when Camille had checked the other Huey, Reveka had been rocking Petar against her ample chest, cooing to him. Lucia had been holding her arm, favoring the shoulder Ashe had already healed while she stared into space.
Grieving for Ana and Delia.
Right now, back in Vasile, Bea was breaking the bad news about the two woman hunters. But there was hope for Ana in Bucharest at the lab, Doc would tell the villagers. She and Camille would cure Ana and the other strigoiaca using their scientific theories and the captured vampires.
But doubt was beginning to seed in Camille’s mind: the superanimal wolves. Sarge’s holy-water arrows. The vampire disappearing into the air like steam from a teakettle.
How could she explain these with logic? The science and order she’d always embraced? The excuses she’d clung to so she wouldn’t have to face the unknown?
Griff lifted his head again, dark curls covering most of his gaze. He hadn’t talked much. Hadn’t smiled. Camille yearned to see those slightly messed-up British teeth.
“You remind me of a dog that’s been kicked around,” she said.
He paused. Slowly held out one arm.
Elated, she took a cleansing breath. “Griff, I’ve missed you so much.”
Throat tight, she snuggled against him and his Gore-Tex jacket, wrapping her arms around his painfully thin torso.
This was where she belonged now.
Home.
He squeezed her to his chest, rested shaking fingertips on her upper stomach. If Camille hadn’t known better, she would’ve said he was going to push her away.
But he didn’t. They just sat in silence, breathing against each other.
Then he bent close to her ear. “Bath,” he murmured, voice hoarse.
“Shh. Don’t talk.” She couldn’t care less about his eau de dungeon as long as she had him against her again.
He plucked at her bodysuit, and she knew what he was asking. How had she gotten this way?
Still holding on to him, Camille sat up. Griff tried to back off, but when she pulled him closer, he looked away.
Take it slow, she thought. Let go a bit.
Reluctantly, she relaxed her hold, gave him some room. “After you were taken I wanted to run after you. Ms. Godea stopped me. She convinced me that it’d be useless, that having a plan would be smarter, seeing as we’d just been beaten soundly by the strigoiaca. She introduced me to a professor in Bucharest, Dr. Beatrix Grasu.”
Griff was closing his eyes, his throat working. What was he battling? Emotion?
As she continued, she held his hand, and he clamped on to the grip.
“You’ll adore Bea as much as I do. She’s really a scrapper. She came from a small, superstitious village and educated herself right out of poverty. Her whole life, she’s been fascinated by vampires, researching the lore. But she’s also studied animals, diseases, anything that could explain all the tales. When I came to her, she believed my stories about the strigoiaca, offered to teach me everything she knew. I learned. I trained. I hired teams of men, hunters, to find you, to bring you and the strigoiaca back alive so we could put an end to their sickness. But when the others didn’t succeed, I took over.”
“You wanted the Girls alive?”
She couldn’t see his face. “We wanted a cure. Without specimens, we thought we wouldn’t be able to help any survivors or overcome the disease so future generations wouldn’t have to deal with more attacks.”
Throwing caution out the window, she skimmed her hand behind his head, guided him to her shoulder. His mouth settled in the crook of her neck, and she shivered at the touch of his lips against her skin. His warm breath rasped against her, tickling her with overwhelming need.
He parted his lips, blessing her with a soft kiss.
She groaned, then spoke into his ear. “The strigoiaca even have a chance of getting better. It’ll take a little time to experiment, but—”
He pulled her closer to him, his mouth opening against her neck.
“Griff.” She made a soft sound of pure need.
His body stiffened. Pushing away, he fled to the back of the chopper, hand over his face, trembling.
His primal reaction tore at her. “What the hell did they do to you?”
His head reared back, and he looked ready to howl with anguish. Then he fisted his hands, recovering, rested his head against the wall.
“I thought I’d never see you again if I didn’t…” His voice twisted to a stop.
In the back of her mind, she heard the chopper engines warming up, then the blades, slapping her with every thrash of movement.
She wasn’t letting him go again.
Determined, s
he crawled over to him, but he held out an arm, halting her.
And this was how Sarge found them—with the man she loved pushing her away.
As Sarge and Ashe stood in the Huey’s entrance with one of the UV coffins, he saw the captive cowering in his corner. Saw Camille on her hands and knees, a stricken look on her face.
A few days ago, he’d have loved to see Juni’s “huntress” humbled. But now…
Not so much.
“Checked for fangs?” he bellowed over the engines, wind from the wash of the rotors blowing his hair on end.
Not waiting for an answer, he and Ashe quickly maneuvered the cargo into the chopper. She leveled a halfhearted glare at him, sank against the wall, then checked out the coffin.
It was for her boyfriend. Just in case.
Instead of commenting on his symbolic slam against Griff, Camille yelled, “Good morning.”
He could’ve ripped into her for disabling him for the second time in two days. But Sarge knew he didn’t have to. There were splinters of guilt in her irises.
Ashe gave Sarge a shove into the chopper, then followed him in. They both pushed the coffin next to Camille, then sat opposite—what had Ashe said his name was? Pretty Boy? Oh, no. It was Griff. That’s right.
The comforting smell of metal, canvas and oil greeted Sarge, and he relaxed. Hueys. This vanilla ride was no technologically superior Pave Low chopper—the kind that used to shuttle him to and from Delta missions—but it was in his comfort zone anyway.
He settled into his seat, glad he wouldn’t have to drive his Jeep today. Ashe had hired a Vasile man to get the vehicle back to Bucharest. There Sarge was supposed to get medical treatment for his arm, something more than Ashe could provide at the moment.
Sure, his friend had performed some healing spells and used his special herbs and crystals on the torn skin, but that hadn’t done any good for what was really ailing Sarge.
As the chopper lifted off, he watched Camille and her boy toy. It wasn’t the homecoming she’d expected, was it?
Good.
Yeah, he was a bastard for thinking it, but Sarge couldn’t help himself. Somewhere along the line, he’d gotten a little attached to Howard—just a sexual thing, of course. She was spirited, would be amusing for a short time before he went on to his next job.
