Then she smiled, realizing she had just used what Rhiannon had called sarcasm. She hadn’t understood it when the ancient vampiress had explained it to her, but she thought she did now.
She handed a fork to Wolf. “Let’s eat so we can get to the Sevens and see what’s got them so upset.”
Wolf took the fork and repeated her earlier words back to her. “They have names, you know.”
Apparently Wolf understood sarcasm too.
Devlin and Emma crouched in the tall grasses and weeds outside the DPI building, far enough from its fence to go undetected. They had avoided every camera and motion sensor so far thanks to Emma’s keen eyes and remembered research. He didn’t think it was necessary, but she pointed out that they couldn’t be sure DPI hadn’t developed some way to detect vampires with those cameras. She was smart, Devlin thought, looking at her there in the darkness. The night wind stroked her hair as if it couldn’t get enough of its silky softness. She was smart and sexy and beautiful. Stubborn and persistent.
As he watched her, unable to take his eyes away, he asked the question he’d kept himself from asking ever since witnessing her furious attack on their captive DPI thug. “Would you have chosen the Dark Gift, Emma? If you’d been given a choice?”
She was quiet for a moment. Crickets chirped and insects buzzed. Far in the distance, an owl hooted twice. Then she whispered, “I honestly don’t know. But I know this. If I hadn’t, it would have been a mistake.” She shrugged. “My father used to tell me that things have a way of working out in our favor, if we just get out of the way and let them. I have to believe this new life is my destiny. And since I was hemming and hawing about choosing it, the choice was taken from me.”
“That’s an interesting theory.” He was studying her face. Her beautiful face, and almost on its own, his hand moved to push her hair off her forehead and tuck it behind her ear. “They still hurt you. And that’s not going to be allowed to stand.”
“Hobbs will pay. But right now, we have other goals to see to. We’ve got to get inside, find my father and get him out.”
He nodded and returned his attention to The Sentinel. There was very little in the way of shrubbery to use as cover within the perimeter of the tall fence surrounding the place. However, there were cars in the parking lot.
He looked at her, nodded once, and they took off at top speed, jumped the fence, and flashed from one vehicle to the next fast enough to avoid detection.
Then they moved closer, right up to the stone block wall on the building’s left side. So close no one could see them, even if they happened to look out one of the tinted windows. The two of them pressed themselves up against the cool, rough stone.
The only open door, according to their surveillance of the building from all sides, was a loading dock in the rear where trucks routinely came and went, maybe to bring prisoners, or take away bodies. They headed that way, moving again in a flash of motion, slowing only when they neared a motion sensor or camera, and then belly crawling below the range of its eye, just in case.
As they neared the end of the building’s left outer wall, Devlin felt something and held up a hand. They both halted and stared at each other. There’s another vampire here. Close. As he spoke to her mentally, he looked around the rear corner, ducking back quickly. Do you feel it?
Emma nodded.
One vampire, Devlin went on. Very old, very powerful.....
I think they’re on the other side, right at the corner, Emma told him.
It’s Rhiannon! Devlin felt her presence only briefly, but there was no mistaking the powerful energy signature of the great Rhiannon.
When Emma looked at him again, her eyes were wide. She too, knew the name. Her years of snooping–research, as she called it–would have garnered her access to many of the stories associated with one of the elders of their kind. One of their leaders, though that bit had always chafed Devlin somewhat.
The loading dock is in the center of the rear wall. I didn’t see or sense any humans near it, Emma said.
Again, he nodded. Then focusing on Rhiannon, he tried to open the blocks around his mind just enough to make her aware of his presence. He didn’t dare speak with her, just in case there were psychics or devices within, trained to pick up on vampiric telepathy. Speaking to Emma was easy, as they were so close and so strongly linked that they could communicate with barely a ripple in the ether around them.
Together, he and Emma edged along the back wall of the building toward the loading dock, which was little more than a large overhead door, currently closed. Pavement wound around the building and vanished beneath the door.
It was hard to tell what they would find inside.
As they crept nearer the overhead door, a truck came rumbling around the corner and the door began to rise. There was no cover they could take. If the truck passed by them, they would be seen. There was no choice. Emma knew it, told him so with her eyes, and at once, they took off in a burst of speed, diving beneath the slow rising door, skidding on their bellies beneath it, then pushing fast again, into the darkest shadows within.
There they stopped, shoulder to shoulder, crouched, alert, ready.
Two armed guards stood on either side of the door, one of them frowning a bit, but then shrugging and returning to his duty, watching the truck trundle slowly in. It stopped briefly in the still-open doorway, while the guards checked the driver’s ID, looked in the front and then in the rear of the vehicle, and finally, stepped back to let him come the rest of the way inside.
One of the guards, dressed in the familiar black fatigues common to DPI militia, keyed a radio and said, “We’ve got two prisoners for Level Three.”
“Condition?” came the reply.
“Unconscious and bound. They won’t be any trouble.”
“Intake Team en route.”
He clipped the radio to his belt and waited, occasionally looking across the room. Devlin and Emma looked too, and spotted what appeared to be a set of elevator doors.
He met her eyes and nodded.
Eventually, the doors slid open, and two men in lab coats exited, pushing two empty gurneys ahead of them.
Emma and Dev burst into speed while the others were focused on removing two new prisoners from the back of the truck. They dashed across to the elevator, then waited on either side of it, backs pressed to the support columns that flanked the thing and provided cover.
Moments later, the two lab coats were pushing their gurneys back across the floor. The truck driver was backing his rig out. The overhead door was lowering. The elevator door was opening.
The gurneys rolled into the elevator. Devlin thought, We need a distraction, Rhiannon. If you’re still out there–
They have Roland. Get him out. Rhiannon’s message came through loud and clear, and within another heartbeat, something exploded–one of the truck’s tires, he thought. The guards reacted, running outside, and he and Emma lunged into the elevator, each grabbing hold of one of the men, snapping their necks and letting them fall to the floor as the doors closed. The car was already in motion by the time the dead men hit the floor. They’d already pushed a button. S-3.
Emma stood there, staring down at the lifeless body that lay at her feet. “Oh my God. Oh my God....”
“We didn’t have a choice, Emma. I know it’s difficult, but we’re out of time.”
Moving rapidly, he peeled the lab coats from the limp bodies, putting one on, and handing her the other. ID tags were already pinned to the lapels. Then he shoved the bodies through one of the ceiling panels onto the top of the elevator car. All the while Emma stood there, wide eyed, staring at the floor, stunned that she’d taken a life.
It took mere seconds, because of his preternatural speed, for Devlin to move the bodies. And then he finally had a chance to glance down at the unconscious prisoners on the table. Two women, identical in appearance, light brown hair, long and lush, beautiful features relaxed in sleep.
They were not vampires, nor Offspring
. They were not BD-Exers, nor even members of The Chosen. And they were not human, either. He met Emma’s eyes to see if she was wondering too, but only saw tears in them for the man she’d killed. He hated that she’d had to do it.
Then the car stopped, the doors began to slide open. Devlin looked at Emma, and she quickly dashed her eyes dry. Neither of them had any idea what awaited them on the other side.
“Something’s wrong.” Sheena and Wolf stood outside a tall fence Sheena could tell was electrified just by the way the fine hairs on her arms rose when she got near it. Within the fence was a large building made of reddish blocks. Light from within barely shone through the dark windows, just enough to give them a tarnished amber glow.
“Why would three seven-year-old Offspring be here?” Wolf asked.
“Look, Wolf.” Sheena pointed at the logo on the front of the building. A shield with the letters DPI on its face, clutched in the talons of a fierce looking bald eagle.
They knew the symbol well, recognized those three letters readily. They’d seen them often enough. That symbol was stamped on the cages of their former prison. It was stamped on the water bottles they were given each day there. It had been painted on the ship itself and just about everything on board.
DPI was the name of the people who wanted to keep all of the Offspring in cages and train them to kill vampires.
Wolf looked at her. “Why would the Sevens come here?” Then his face darkened. “Do you think Roland and Rhiannon brought them here to be handed over to those–”
“Why would the vampires free us just to give us back?” she snapped. Then she thought hard. “No, DPI is our enemy. And it’s the enemy of the vampires too.”
Wolf was searching for the young ones, and his eyes widened when he sensed them. “They’re near the fence. I think they’re going to jump inside!”
Just as he said it, alarms started screaming. Search lights flashed on from the roof, sweeping the grounds. Sheena pointed, “There! I see them, they’re running toward that building. And they’re alone!”
“Where?” Wolf followed her gaze.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. “They...they disappeared.”
“Come on, we need to get them out of there before they’re caught.”
Sheena waved a hand, turning all the cameras and motion detector sensors completely around, so they faced away from the fence. Then she and Wolf jumped easily and raced toward where they’d seen Nikki, Gareth, and Ramses.
Before the elevator doors finished opening, some kind of alarm went off, a deafening, intermittent blast. A mechanical voice like Siri’s evil twin, poured from unseen speakers that seemed to be everywhere. “Security breach. Execute Omega Protocol. Security Breach. Execute Omega Protocol.”
Emma saw people racing toward the elevator, toward her. She looked at Devlin, wide eyed.
Nowhere to go but forward, he told her, and shoved his gurney out of the elevator and over to one side, making room for the stampede of people to get past them. Emma did just as he had, moving to the other side, out of the way. No one paid them much attention as people dressed just as they were, began crowding to get into the car.
One of them did, though. He grabbed Emma’s arm. “Didn’t you hear? This place is going into lockdown. All lab techs to the safe room.”
Emma stared into the young man’s eyes and said, “We can’t very well just leave these two loose. We’ll be right behind you.”
“You’ve got like three minutes.”
He ducked into the crowded elevator car. The doors closed on him at the same moment other elevator doors were closing on other groups of white-coated DPI scientists. The elevators shot upward, and the alarm stopped sounding.
The silence that ensued was almost worse than the noise had been. Emma let go of the gurney, and looked down at the beautiful young girl who lay upon it. “She’s not a vampire, Devlin.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know what she is.” He pulled Emma away from the gurney and close to his side. They moved deeper into the dimly lit rows of cells, which had steel mesh that resembled super fine chain mail instead of bars. There was a row to the left and another to the right. Most of the cells were empty. But soon they reached one that wasn’t. A young man stood beyond the mesh, watching them. Looking at him through the screen was like looking through a thin veil of fog.
Emma felt instantly threatened. Tiny shivers danced up her spine. “We’re friends,” she said. “We’ll get you out.”
Emma, our goal is your father. Devlin’s eyes were taking on a hint of red glow. He too, felt the threat of this creature, whatever he was.
My father wouldn’t want me to leave an innocent behind, Emma replied.
Devlin didn’t like it, she could tell, but he said to the prisoner, “What are you?”
“You don’t know? You can’t even tell?” He blew air through his nostrils in what felt like derision. “I know what you are. You’re vampires. The beings everyone’s so afraid of, though I can’t see why.”
“They said they’d help us, dumbass.” It was a female voice, young and strong. Emma hurried to the next cell and saw her shape beyond the screen. She had a massive head of hair flowing over her shoulders and down her arms.
“I’m Tara and my brother is Tomas. If you get us out, we’ll help you escape.”
“I’m Emma, and they’re holding my father here. He’s a mortal. Do you know where he might–”
“We can talk later. We have minutes, I’m telling you,” Tomas said. “The control panel by the elevators turns off the electricity. Shut it down and we can break through the–”
Devlin flashed over and back before Tomas finished the sentence.
As Emma looked on, Tara arched her back, tipping her head up. Her shoulders bent inward, and her elbows backward. She dropped to the floor. Her hair seemed to be moving all on its own as her body contorted in ways that had to be painful. There were popping sounds as if her joints were pulling apart. And the shape of the girl behind the screen was changing.
My God, my GOD, Devlin, they’re....they’re....
Shifters.
You didn’t tell me such things existed!
I didn’t know, Emma.
Suddenly a low, powerful growl came and a large set of claws tore through the mesh like it was butter. And the girl started speaking inside Emma’s mind.
“Dev?”
“Yeah?”
“She’s talking to me. Can you hear her?”
“No,” he said.
“She’s saying the vampires are held just above us on Sub-Level Two. She can only assume mortals would be a level higher, on One.”
“So what’s on Four?” he asked, looking down as claws tore through mesh.
“I don’t think she knows.”
“Let’s go,” he said. “Those two on the gurneys are theirs. They’ll take care of them.” He grabbed Emma’s arm and ran for a stairway door she hadn’t spotted before, while the shifters were still ripping the mesh of their cells apart with the claws of some animal she couldn’t identify.
Emma wondered why DPI didn’t keep them in barred cells, like the ones she and Devlin had been in. Maybe they could shift enough to squeeze between them?
Her mind was whirling but she kept on going, racing up the stairs to the next landing, even as she heard footsteps coming down. Devlin smashed the door right off its hinges and they both dashed onto Sub-Level Two to find rows of cells like the ones below, minus the mesh. These had bars on them. Black, iron bars, not the shiny ones that had been on the cells back in Oregon. They must count on the electricity to keep the vampires from breaking out, instead of whatever new metal had been used to build the cells at Luperno.
Immediately, they felt the presence of vampires. Devlin called out, “Roland! Where are you?”
“Devlin?”
He sounded weak, his voice coarse. Emma let Devlin go to him while she searched for the control panel and found it, just where it had been on the level below. She threw the sw
itch. “Power’s down!” she shouted, racing back to see Devlin and a dark, cloak-wearing, one legged vampire, prying the bars apart from either side. Up and down the rows, others vampires were doing the same.
Emma said, “Help them. I’ve got to get my father.”
“Emma?” It was a dear, beloved voice from back near the stair door. She turned, stunned, and saw him there.
“Dad!” She ran to him and wrapped him in her arms, hugging him so hard he grunted, reminding her of her strength. “God, Dad, you’re so thin. What have they done to you?”
Vampires were escaping their cages, racing past them like blurs of color, swooping through the door and up the stairs. Her father shook his head slowly, backing up a step with his hands on her shoulders, staring at her. “You’re...you’re....”
“Yes. I am. I’m a vampire. It wasn’t by choice, but that doesn’t matter. I swear to you, I won’t disappear like Mom did. I won’t.”
He hugged her again and said, “Come on, girl. We have to get out now. The guards are all outside. Apparently a group of Offspring and a vampire are keeping them plenty busy out there and–”
“Offspring?” Devlin asked, his eyes going to Emma’s.
Roland said, “There’s a vampiress in the cell at the very end. Completely mad, I’m afraid, and barely alive. She might not survive, but we have to get her out.”
“Wait here,” Devlin said, then he blasted to the very end of the rows of cells and Emma heard crashing as he smashed through a door. “Hell, she’s in a box!”
Emma’s heart contracted in pity. There was more smashing, more crashing, then the terrible snarling growls of a wild creature who didn’t know it was being saved.
Devlin returned with what looked like a skin sack full of bones in his arms. Tangled, matted hair so dirty its color was impossible to identify.
“Let’s go.”
Roland had to put an arm around Emma’s shoulders and hop up the stairs.
They reached Level One and everything in Emma wanted to go in and see if anyone else remained in the cells there. But there was also a window on this landing, just at ground level.
Twilight Vendetta Page 22
