Twilight Vendetta

by Maggie Shayne

  They reached the bottom, and she tried to see everything without being obvious. There was a long narrow hall with closed doors off either side. Most of the doors didn’t have windows. At the end of the hall they reached a T, and that was where the cells began. They went left, though there were cells down the right wing as well.

  She glanced inside every cell, hoping and praying to see her father. She saw, instead, the wild tangled hair of the teenage girl who’d been shot point blank only to come back to life and kill her attackers. She sat on the floor in a corner, staring at nothing. She did not look at them as they passed, but Emma got a very good look at her, recalling her face the way she’d seen it before, lax, eyes closed, bathed in the glow of that van’s taillights. Emma wondered if Sheena knew this was Devlin being dragged past her or that he had come to rescue her. A few empty cells, and then they passed the one that held the boy, her male counterpart. Wolf. He lay on his cot, pretending to sleep. She could tell he was only pretending, by the way his eyelids moved.

  The cells were tiny, cramped, and miserable. The bars, not black, but shiny as polished chrome. And still, no sign of her father. Just the two teens, though there might have been others down that left wing of the hall, and she wondered if that was where her father was being kept.

  A few more steps brought them to another empty cell, and Commander Hobbs pulled a walkie from his belt and said, “Open Seven.”

  There was a loud, electronic buzz, followed by the clack of metal locks springing free, and then the cell door slid slowly open. They dragged Devlin inside, and as they passed through the open, barred cell door, she glanced down at where it would meet the solid wall when it closed again, searching for the locking mechanism. Metal teeth stood wide open, ready to accept the tongue of the door. They would clamp down on it when it closed.

  Inside, the commander just dropped Devlin, letting him hit the floor hard. She had no choice but to do the same, and tried not to wince visibly when his chin pounded onto the concrete.

  Commander Hobbs had lost interest, apparently used to treating his underlings like pieces of meat. He turned around and stepped out of the cell, Emma doing so right by his side. “Guard the cell, soldier,” he said. “Report in the minute he wakes, and use extreme caution.” He was limping away down the hall as he spoke, not even looking back at her. She eyed the open cell door, and contemplated how she could keep it from locking when it closed again. Hobbs reached for his walkie. He was almost to the corner now. She had a metal barrette in her hair, underneath her helmet, but if she pulled the helmet off and he looked back, he would see that she was a woman and not one of his men. She hadn’t spotted a female in the entire bunch of them. Hobbs pulled the radio off his belt, lifted it to his mouth. Two steps before the corner, he said, “Close Cell Seven.”

  The whir came, the cell door started to move. Hobbs clipped his walkie back onto his belt. He pivoted around the corner. Emma whipped off her helmet, tore the metal barrette from her hair, and jammed it into the lock’s open teeth as the cell door banged her hand. She clenched her jaw to keep from howling in pain. The mechanism immediately clamped down on the barrette and the door stopped moving. There was barely an inch gap in the cell door, and she had to twist and pry to get her hand free of it. She did, then rubbed her knuckles, wondering if any of those tiny bones in her hand were broken. Damn, it hurt.

  Okay, it was done. But that was barely a beginning. How was she going to wake Devlin? And once she did, how was she going to get him out of here? And how could she open those other cells?

  “You have a talking box too, don’t you?” asked a female voice.

  Emma frowned, turning in the direction it was coming from. Then she walked that way, careful not to let her borrowed and way-too-big boots tap the floor very loudly, but hurrying at the same time.

  Sheena stood near her cell door, her hands on its bars. Emma stood in the hall facing her, only inches between them. The girl’s hair apparently hadn’t been combed since her stint in the ocean and whatever other torment she’d been through. Her face was as smooth as a wax figurine though. Flawless skin, dark enough to indicate a mixed ancestry, and vivid blue eyes. Electric blue. If she’d seen this teenager on the street, Emma would’ve suspected her of wearing color contacts. But that was clearly not the case.

  She held Sheena’s eyes, and found it hard to believe she was some kind of genetic experiment. She looked so normal. Beautiful, but normal. “Were you speaking to me?”

  “Yes. You were asking how you could get the other cell doors to open. Some of them are already open, but you want to open his, yes?”

  “And yours.”

  Sheena frowned, seeming puzzled by that comment. “You are wearing the same clothes as the crows. But you are not one of them.”

  “No. I came here with Devlin to get you out.”

  Those blue, blue eyes blinked twice. A look of surprise came and went. “I thought he was captured, like we were.”

  “He came here to get you and your brother out. He surrendered himself when it seemed like the only way to get inside.”

  There was movement from a few cells down. The cruel bastards had intentionally put empty cells between these unusual siblings. Then the boy spoke. “Why would a vampire do that? It makes no sense.”

  “Why do you say so?” Emma asked, moving so she could see the boy. He was almost a carbon copy of the girl, only taller, and his hair was shorter, though not very short. It curled around his neck and ears, and fell onto his forehead. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter why. He’s here, and so am I. We’re going to rescue you as soon as I figure out how. And my father, too. Have you seen him? My father?”

  The boy frowned. The girl called, “We do not know what that means. Father.”

  For just a moment, Emma’s heart squeezed tight. And then she tamped down the rush of sadness for these poor children who had never known a parent, and said, “He’s a human, older than me, taller than me, quite thin. He has dark hair and he wears glasses.” She made circles with her fingers and held them over her eyes in case they didn’t know what glasses were, either. Of course only Wolf could see that, so she moved to Sheena’s pen and repeated the gesture. “Glasses.”

  Sheena nodded. “I saw him. They asked him questions in a white room with a long table. But they didn’t hurt him as they did us. They took him someplace before you came.”

  “They hurt you?”

  The girl only held Emma’s eyes.

  “You could...what? Sense him?”

  “I could hear him, in here,” Sheena said, tapping her head with her forefinger.

  “Just as you could hear me, asking how I was going to get you all out of here, even though I didn’t speak the words out loud.”

  “Yes. I hear you, in here.” Again she tapped her head. “And I answered you in a voice even you can hear. You have a talking box.” At that she nodded at the walkie on Emma’s hip, part of the uniform she’d borrowed. She still had the rifle as well. It hung across her back with its sling crossing her in front. And she would use it if she had to. “Use it to tell them to open the cages.”

  “They won’t open the cages unless the commander tells them to,” Emma explained.

  “Then say it like he does,” Sheena said. And then she opened her mouth and said, “Open Cell Seven,” in precisely the same voice the commander had used. It startled Emma so much she just stood there gaping.

  “I can’t do that,” Emma said.

  And like a flash, the girl’s hand snapped out between the bars and snatched the walkie from her hip.

  “Wait, Sheena. Not yet, I’m not ready yet for–”

  “Open Cell Nine. Open Cell Eleven,” she said in the voice of Commander Hobbs.

  Shit, he was probably still close enough by to–

  The metal clanked and the cells opened slowly. Sheena darted out the minute there was enough space to do so and so did Wolf. Footsteps came running.

  “That way,” Sheena called, and she and Wolf raced down the hall
the opposite way, going right past Devlin’s cell.

  “Wait!” Emma lunged after them, getting a grip on Sheena’s shirt tail. “You can’t just leave him! He came here to save you–”

  Sheena whirled, flung out an arm, and Emma felt as if she’d been pummeled, even though the girl never touched her. Something had hit her. She went flying into the open cell across from Devlin’s, smashed her head on the back wall, and dropped to her knees. The cell doors were closing. She tried to get up. Her head swam. Booted feet stampeded. She reached for the cell door just as it clanged closed, and its evil locks snapped together. She was caught.

  Chapter Eight

  Emma didn’t wake up until she heard Devlin calling her name. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. She did know that she was still in the closed cell, minus the clothes she’d been wearing. Most of them anyway. She’d been stripped down to her own black tank top, and the cargo pants she’d borrowed from the unfortunate Ruis. Everything else was gone. The helmet, the flak jacket, the rifle, the utility belt full of ammo. Gone.

  The boots were still on her feet. Whoever had taken the rest hadn’t seen fit to pull them off, much less pick her body up and put her on the cot in her cell. They’d just left her on the floor where she’d fallen. She thought of the cell phone in her boot. Had they found it?

  Another shout from Devlin drew her out of her self-assessment, and dizziness washed over her like a wave. Through squinting eyes she saw him in the cell across from her, gripping the bars and shaking them. “Emma! Emma, talk to me, dammit. Emma, wake up. Emma–”

  She held up a hand. “I’m good, I’m fine.” Pressing both hands to her head she added, “But what I wouldn’t give for an Advil.”

  A sigh stuttered out of him, and she realized he’d been all but breathless as he’d been calling her name. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, so there was no reason for that. Unless he had panicked.

  Lifting her head, she looked at him. His face was pressed to the bars, and he was staring at her in between them, his pupils pinprick sized.

  “Did you think I was dead?” she asked.

  “I could feel you weren’t dead.” He closed his eyes. “But you were so still for so long....”

  “I’m fine. I hit my head when I was thrown in here, but I’m fine now.” She wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Her head hurt, and her roiling stomach might be from fear or hunger or exhaustion, but it might also be because she had a concussion. But it wasn’t her first, and it wouldn’t be her last. If she survived this, anyway.

  Right then, she just wanted to distract him from his fear for her. Odd, how good it felt to see him that concerned on her behalf, to the point of panicking when he couldn’t rouse her. Did he get that way every time she was in trouble? Was it a vampire/Chosen thing? Or was it something more?”

  Getting slowly to her feet, she went to the cell door, gripped the bars like he was doing. “These bars are made of something...different,” she said, to get his mind to calm down and focus on something else. “Have you noticed? It’s not steel. It’s not iron. I don’t know what it is. But I don’t think you can break it.”

  She saw him looking at the metal of the cells for the first time, noting its high shine, touching the bars to feel them instead of just shaking them.

  “We’re going to get out of here, you and me,” she told him. “The kids already did.”

  His head came up, brows arched. “Sheena and Wolf?”

  She nodded. “I want to talk, but I don’t know if they’re listening to us somehow. Can you tell?”

  He nodded and seemed to sharpen his focus. His eyes fell closed. Then he said, “No. They can’t hear us. There are no listening devices in the cells, and no one in this particular building. They’re probably too afraid to stay here at night when there are prisoners. Cowards.”

  “That works to our benefit, then.” She looked at his face. She did that a lot. He was the most attractive man she’d ever seen. Did everyone see him the way she did? She wondered about that. Was he really that good looking, or was it just because she’d fallen in love with him the first time she’d seen him? The first time she remembered, anyway, at seventeen. “Why did you surrender yourself?”

  “It was the only way to get inside.” He closed his eyes as he said it, as if he was afraid she would read too much in those ebony depths if he left them open.

  “And you thought I had already been captured?”

  “Yes.” He blurted it almost as if he hadn’t meant to. His eyes popped open, and he said, “And I knew Sheena and Wolf were in here.”

  “And my father.”

  “Yes, him too.”

  “So you surrendered yourself to get to them? Even though we’d agreed that if our first attempt failed we would retreat, make another plan, and try again?”

  “Things changed.”

  “Because I was taken. Or so you thought.”

  He lowered his head. “I know where you’re going with this, Emma. You’re one of The Chosen. I have no choice but to help you when you’re in trouble.”

  “No vampire does,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  “And yet the others managed to get away.”

  “I ordered them to.”

  “But if they had no choice, that wouldn’t have mattered. Would it?”

  He said nothing, so she went on. “I think you surrendered yourself because you care about me.”

  He closed his eyes again, turned away from her, paced to the back of his cell. “Tell me what happened after I was tranquilized.” He took a seat on his bunk and waited for her to fill him in.

  She drew a long, deep breath, then blew it out slowly. Okay, fine. Back to business, then. “I was dressed as one of the crows. Stole the outfit from an unconscious crow. I got inside by passing as one of them, helped Commander Hobbs carry you in, actually. We walked right past the cells that held Sheena and Wolf. Sheena saw the commander order your cell door open on his walkie talkie. Then he ordered me to stand guard at your cell and he left. Sheena called me over to her cell and before I knew what she was up to, she snatched my walkie off my belt, and using a perfect imitation of Hobbs’ voice, she ordered her cell and Wolf’s opened.”

  He frowned. “And it worked?”

  “It wasn’t an impression. It was like she recorded him and then just hit the playback button. It was eerie, Dev. But yes, it worked. The cells opened, and the two of them ran for it.”

  “And left us here to fend for ourselves,” he said. He came back around to the bars again.

  “They’re kids. They were scared. Interestingly, they went that way,” she said, with a nod toward her left, Devlin’s right. “Which tells me there’s an exit in that direction.”

  He held her gaze. “I can’t feel them anywhere nearby.” He looked at her. “I can’t feel your father, either, Emma.”

  Emma’s heart cracked on those words. “The kids thought he’d been here, but had been moved.” She lowered her head, cleared her throat. “At least they got away.”

  “And how is it you didn’t get away with them?” He tilted his head. “Don’t tell me you stayed for me?”

  “Don’t swell your head, Devlin. I grabbed hold of Sheena as she passed, and she spun around and knocked me into this cell so hard I hit my head, jangled my brain a little. She did that without laying a hand on me, I might add. She’s got some kind of…power. Or something. I couldn’t get out before the cell door closed again. Then I guess I passed out. I don’t remember much else.”

  “I do,” he said softly.

  She blinked, met his eyes, and held them. “Tell me.”

  “They came in, found you in the cell. I was just coming out of my drug-induced stupor. I couldn’t believe it was you.” He shook his head and she could see the stunned devastation in his eyes. “They stripped off your riot gear, stuck you with a needle and left you there. Sedation, I presume. I felt the daylight coming on, and I can only assume we’ve both been out ever since.”

&nbs
p; “I see. So did they mess with your cell at all?”

  “A woman in a lab coat came in, took several pints of my blood,” he said. “I was weak, slipping in and out due to whatever drug they gave me. Otherwise I’d have killed her.”

  “Did she do anything to your cell door?”

  He frowned, and she thought he was trying to remember. “It slid open on its own, closed again the same way. Why?”

  Emma shrugged. “There’s a chance it might not be locked.”

  He sprang to his feet so fast it startled her. “What do you mean, not locked? I’ve been shaking it for–”

  “Well, yeah, but shaking isn’t opening. Go on. Try the cell door.” She gave a quick glance back up the hall, but saw no one.

  Devlin went to his cell door, and she knew he was feeling doubtful. But he gripped the bars, and very gently, tugged it to the left. The door slid open. “How the hell–” Then he bent and peered inside the receiving end of the lock. “There’s a hair clip in there.”

  “My barrette,” she said. “I managed to jam it in there as the commander was leaving, just before the door closed all the way. I can’t believe it worked.”

  He looked at her, and she flashed him a smile, feeling awfully proud of herself.

  He didn’t return the triumphant grin. “But your cell is locked...truly locked,” he pointed out.

  “But yours isn’t. You can go. I mean, sure, there are probably guards on this building, but you can move faster than they can even perceive. By the time they raise their weapons, you’ll be over the fence and gone. Find Wolf and Sheena, get them to safety. Let the others know what happened.”

  “You can’t possibly think I would leave you here alone.”

  “Dev, I wouldn’t leave with you even if my cell was wide open. My father is still a prisoner. I need to find him. I’m not leaving until I do.”