Twilight Vendetta

by Maggie Shayne

  Devlin was struggling to hold onto the wild vampiress in his arms. Fortunately, she was too weak to fight him effectively. “We’ll come back for them. I swear it.”

  “They’re humans,” she said. “I thought you didn’t help humans.”

  “They’re innocents,” he told her. Then he nodded at Roland. “The window?”

  “My pleasure.” Roland drew back a fist and smashed it.

  Devlin said, “Rhiannon’s outside. I saw her. And the Sevens.”

  “Hell.” He jumped through the broken window, regardless of having only one leg. Emma gathered her father before he could object and followed. She hit the ground, dropping her dad. He sprang upright. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  Emma looked back at the window in time to see Devlin and the rack of bones and madness he’d plucked from a box, springing through. Unlike Emma, he didn’t drop his charge.

  Then suddenly, they were bathed in spotlights, and bullets peppered the ground all around them. Emma lunged toward her father, placing her body between him and the shooters, who were apparently high above them, shooting downward. There was no cover, and too much distance between them and the fence. That they hadn’t been hit already was nothing less than a miracle.

  As she ran toward the fence, she searched frantically for any sign of Roland and the woman who’d come to rescue him. Rhiannon. And when she spotted them, she gasped. They were pinned down in front of the building, its official sign their only cover, and that was meager. Snipers were shooting all around them, and there was no way they’d ever make it to the fence.

  And then suddenly, the gunfire stopped. Rifles came flying down from the roof of the huge building as if their owners had thrown them away. Emma had reached the fence. The ground was shaking under her feet like an earthquake.

  “Dammit, what the hell are they doing here?” Devlin shouted.

  Emma followed his gaze, to see the two teens she’d met in captivity standing just beyond the chain link, directly in the line of fire. Sheena was moving her arms, miming the act of smacking an invisible person’s face, and staring at the roof. Every time she did that, another weapon flew from that rooftop.

  She’s doing that, Emma thought. Just like she did it to me. Telekinesis.

  Wolf stood beside Sheena, his eyes closed, arms at his sides with his palms open and front-facing. The DPI building was shaking hard, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought he was probably the one responsible for the earthquake.

  “Hold on, Dad,” Emma said. She wrapped her arms around her father’s waist and pushed off, leaping over the fence, landing, dropping her father behind the nearest tree, then racing to Wolf almost in one motion. She moved like the wind. Like a blur of motion. She grabbed the boy. “Stop, Wolf! There are still captives inside!”

  He blinked his eyes open, but they had a faraway look in them. Devlin sailed over the fence with the madwoman in his arms then, depositing her behind the same tree with Emma’s father, and appearing at Emma’s side in a flash.

  Wolf said, “I can’t stop until we save them.”

  “We’ll get Rhiannon and Roland,” Emma said

  “Not them. Them!” Wolf’s eyes were fixed on some spot within the fence. Emma turned. So did Devlin. There, on the front lawn of the building, between the fence and the boulder, stood three little kids. Maybe first graders. Six or seven-year-olds, a girl and two boys.

  Devlin swore and went to lunge forward, but Emma put a hand on his arm as the children seemed to shimmer and then vanish.

  “What the–” Her eyes darted toward the sign where Rhiannon and Roland had been pinned. Almost as soon as her gaze fell upon them, they wavered and disappeared too.

  She heard them, though. She heard them leaping the fence, landing outside it, and then running. She heard Rhiannon’s voice, speaking mentally to her and Devlin. We have the children and we’re clear. Get yourselves out of there. There’s a barn ten miles north on Highgrave Road. We have supplies and shelter there. Do not be followed.

  “They’re safe,” Wolf whispered. “They came here to help save Roland. I can’t believe they would do something so foolish!”

  Emma didn’t know how he knew any of that, but clearly, he did. They drew near the tree where she’d left her father, but he wasn’t there.

  “I told him to take the woman and keep going, just in case. We’ll catch up,” Devlin said.

  Emma had no idea what she had just witnessed. And was about to ask when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh, like a red hot blade. Quickly, she looked down, even ran her hand down the length of her jeans, expecting to feel blood. And yet, there was nothing.

  And then Devlin stumbled a few more steps, and fell face first to the ground. And she realized the pain she’d been feeling was his.

  He’d been shot, and he was bleeding badly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emma fell to her knees beside Devlin, took hold of his shoulders and rolled him carefully over onto his back. Blood soaked one leg of his jeans, and she saw more, pulsing from a tear in the denim. “You’re hit,” she said. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  He didn’t answer. Sheena said, “What do we do? Will he die?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Emma told her. She was amazed at the calm sound of her voice given the roiling going on within her, but Sheena sounded scared half to death. “You two, take a look around,” she said, giving the kids something to do besides stand there gawking at Devlin’s bleeding thigh. “Make sure we haven’t been followed.”

  They’d been traveling fast through the woods away from DPI, but they hadn’t got far enough to be safe from pursuit. And yet, she didn’t feel anyone following them, which was just odd.

  As the kids jogged away, Emma ripped the hole in Devlin’s jeans wider, better to see the wound. The blood was the color of mulberry wine in the darkness of the night. Precious, beautiful. Stuff of Life. She pressed her knee onto his massive thigh, just above the bullet hole, ignoring his grunt of pain, then ripped one of the sleeves from his shirt. She twisted her makeshift tourniquet around his big thigh so tight that it wrung a gasp of pain out of him. Then, and only then, did she figure it was tight enough.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but her voice was shaking now. There was no more holding it back; this riptide of emotion was sucking her breath away. “I don’t want to lose you.” Emma dared a look at his face, not wanting to see his pain in his eyes, but not able to deny it. She had to see his pain, had to feel it. His eyes were dulled by the force of his agony. His intense gaze had gone weak, like he was fading. His skin was lighter than she’d ever seen it. “You’ve lost too much blood,” she told him.

  “Most of it leaving a clear trail to us, I’m afraid.”

  “And yet they aren’t following.”

  He frowned and searched her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  She looked behind them, shook her head. “If I’m not picking up on them and the twins aren’t either, then they aren’t there. I sent them out to scout around, but I can’t help thinking this was too easy, Devlin.”

  “DPI does nothing without a reason,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “You’re thinking maybe they let us go...on purpose?”

  She shrugged. “Us, or maybe it was Roland they were allowing to escape. Either way...I don’t like it. I hate to admit I’m scared, but–”

  He reached for her, clasped a hand to the nape of her neck, and stared hard into her eyes. The intensity of his gaze scorched her soul. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to get your father and you’re going to head back to the island, and nothing is going to stop you. I promise, you’ll make it.”

  Emma searched his eyes, saw a promise there, and also a kind of cold resignation that sent a chill down her spine. He didn’t think he was going to survive this.

  “The kids?” he asked, as his head thumped to the ground, and his eyes went soft and hazy. “Get them out of here.”

  Emma looked in the direction they�
��d gone. Wolf, Sheena, come here please. It hit her momentarily, that she’d called out with her mind, not with her voice, and she’d done it as naturally as she was still breathing. She wondered how long that old habit would last, and watched as Devlin’s chest moved up and down in short little bursts. He was panting in pain. She guessed some habits died hard.

  Wolf and Sheena appeared from the woods, walking slowly and keeping their eyes and senses attuned behind them.

  “Anyone following?” Emma asked.

  They both shook their heads. Wolf said, “Maybe they all went after the others.” Then he went very still for a second, as if listening for some distant sound. And then he said, “No, Nikki says no one’s following them either.”

  “That’s just bizarre,” Emma said. But it didn’t matter. She had to focus on their immediate needs. “Okay, listen up. I need to stay with Devlin until he gets his strength back. I want you to do something for me. Will you?”

  Sheena nodded. Wolf said, “Depends on what it is.”

  “I want you to find my father and that female vampire Devlin rescued. Did you see them when we brought them out?”

  Both of them nodded. It hit her how typically teenager they seemed. Oh, they were more, stronger, better, but in so many ways, just teens. Testing their limits. One trying to please, the other trying to rebel.

  “They headed that way,” Emma said, pointing. “I’d like you to find them, and take them with you to where Rhiannon and the others went. It’s a barn about ten miles north. Devlin and I will try to get there before dawn. If we don’t, just wait for us and keep my father safe. We’ll be there the following night. Will you do this for me?”

  Sheena looked at Wolf. Wolf nodded. “Yes.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re going to do it if you’re not. Be honest with me. I know you were raised to think of yourselves first, and I’m fine with that. I won’t be upset. If you don’t want to do it, say so and I’ll find another way. But if you tell me you’ll do this, then do it. Really, really do it. It’s important.”

  Wolf tipped his head to one side. “We’re going to join the others anyway,” Wolf said. “Nikki, Ramses, and Gareth are with them.”

  She lifted her brows. “The children I saw at The Sentinel.”

  Sheena said, “They’re our...they’re Offspring, like us.”

  “They’re your family,” Emma said. “The man in the woods, the one I’m sending you after, is my family. My only family.”

  Sheena nodded. “We’ll get him.” Then she looked at Devlin, lying so still on the cool forest floor. A big fern hung over his head like a weeping woman. “Will he live?”

  “If I have anything to say about it, he will. And I do.” She had to tear her eyes away from Devlin to look into Sheena’s, then Wolf’s. She had to believe they would do what they promised. But as hard as she stared, she just couldn’t tell. She couldn’t read them. “Go on, now, before those DPI maniacs finish shaking off the shock of what just happened and come after us.”

  The two nodded and dashed into the forest without a backward glance.

  Emma leaned over Devlin. “Can you walk?”

  “Anything’s possible,” he said.

  “Then let’s get you up and find a good hiding place a little farther away from the blood trail you left.” She reached down for him. “Just in case.”

  “Yeah, better safe....” He clasped her hand and let her help him get upright. And then he leaned on her and hopped on his one good leg through the forest. “Now I know how Roland must feel,” he muttered.

  They traveled uphill, because something told Emma that was the way to go. She didn’t know what was telling her that, some sort of extra sense she hadn’t possessed before. There were so many of them to explore and examine and dissect, so many new abilities that she wanted to push to their limits. This was all new to her. All...radiant. All miraculous.

  But she’d been in full-on crisis mode ever since she’d been changed, and she still was. There hadn’t been time to play or explore her new self.

  “There will be, though,” Devlin said. And she realized she’d been thinking very loudly. “You’ll live forever. At least for centuries. As long as you can stay a few steps ahead of DPI, and you will, there will always be more time.”

  She was having trouble walking, because she couldn’t wrestle free from his eyes long enough to watch where she was going. She’d forgotten again that he could hear her inner dialogue as if she was speaking it aloud unless she blocked. And she had no reason to shut him out. He was...he was a part of her. His blood ran in her veins.

  He heard that, too. She knew by the flare of awareness that briefly overshadowed the pain in his eyes.

  “You’re hurting,” she said.

  Devlin nodded. “We’re almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  He shrugged, staring ahead. “To whatever safe haven you sensed up here.”

  “You sense it, too?”

  “The pain’s pretty much blotting out everything else. But I’ve glimpsed something a couple of times. A rusted metal roof. It should be just over the next ridge.”

  “Who knew there was this much wilderness here, of all places?” she asked, casually pulling his arm around her shoulders and wishing he’d lean on her more than he was. The forests in upstate New York were different from the ones in Oregon. The trees were smaller here, and the woods denser, harder to traverse. There seemed to be more undergrowth and briars, and fewer easy paths to take. Then she saw the roof he’d mentioned, rusted tin with a stovepipe sticking out of it. The shack supporting the roof was made of wide unpainted wooden planks, gray with age. It bore a single window with four panes, none of them broken, despite the shack’s obvious age. There was just one door, made of the same slabs of aging wood as the rest of the place.

  They hurried closer, Emma ducking out from under Devlin’s arm to run ahead. He called her back, but she ignored him and opened the door, which resisted only a little. Once she got it open she looked inside, her night vision better now than her daytime vision had been before the change.

  Devlin was hopping up beside her before she could finish her inspection of the place. There was a large tank of some kind, old and rusted, with valves and spouts, and a metal pipe that twisted around in a spiral. There was what looked like a fire box underneath, with a square cast iron door.

  Devlin said, “I think this is a moonshine shack.”

  “A what now?” Emma asked.

  “It’s for making whiskey.”

  She went farther inside, noting the undisturbed litter on the floor, the rust on the machine. “Doesn’t look like it’s been used in a long time.”

  “No, and I don’t sense any sign of human presence here. Your instincts were good.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded, coming inside to join her. Emma swept a spot clean with her feet, then she sat down and held up a hand for him to join her. He lowered himself carefully down beside her, then leaned his broad back up against the wall, good leg bent, bad leg stretched out in front of him. It was bleeding again.

  Emma re-adjusted the tourniquet. She had to lean in close to get the right grip. Then she pulled the thing so tight he moaned. God, she wished she could ease his pain. She decided distracting him from it might be the best she could do for now, and there was plenty on her mind distracting her, so she decided to share.

  “You say my instincts are good,” she said. “I’m not so sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve been thinking more about this. And I think we’re right to suspect that they let us go.”

  “You’ve thought of something more?” He grimaced, a hand reflexively reaching for his thigh, then he stopped it and put his hand on the floor.

  She nodded. “Rhiannon and Roland were pinned down with almost no cover. Those snipers on the rooftops would have to be the worst shots on the planet to not so much as nick one of them. And the kids...the little Offspring, they were standing right out in th
e open at first. Is it reasonable to believe that a dozen trained shooters with high-powered rifles couldn’t have hit one of them?

  He nodded. “I noticed it too, but presumed they wouldn’t want to destroy the Offspring. They’ve invested a lot of money and time into creating them. They want them, but they want them alive.”

  “Okay, so what about the vampires, then? What about Roland and Rhiannon? They didn’t hit them. Or me. They hit some of those...those other beings, though. The Shifters? I felt flashes of pain, and I smelled blood just inside the forest.”

  He nodded. “I did, too. I felt one of them run by me just as I was hit.”

  “Maybe he was the target. Maybe they were deliberately letting the vampires go. No one followed us, no one shot at us, and no one came into the woods to track us. I think they let us go, Devlin. I’m sure of it. I just wish I knew why.”

  “We’ll deal with their reasons later. We need to keep our focus on our mission.”

  She closed her eyes. “Our mission.”

  “Reuniting you with your father.”

  Emma felt a smile pull at her lips. “You kept your promise. He’s free and I’ll be with him again tomorrow.”

  “Tonight,” he said.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re in no condition to keep moving, Dev. I thought we’d stay here, spend the day. Your wound will heal while you sleep and we can move on at sundown.”

  “Rhiannon isn’t going to wait that long.”

  “Well, then why did you let me drag you up the mountain to this shack?”

  Tipping his head to one side, he said, “Because I need blood. Your blood. And you know what happens when I drink from you.”

  She lowered her head, tried to roll her eyes a little, but her heart wasn’t in it. Devlin pushed her hair off her cheek. “You know what happens,” he whispered, “When I sink my teeth into your perfect, salty skin and taste the power of your blood. Maybe it’s because it’s my blood all mingled with your own energy, making something new. Making it better. Bringing it to perfection just by virtue of its hostess. I live in you now. And when I taste you, all I want is....”