Jakob shrugged. “It’s a risk, but any escape attempt is a risk likely to end in our deaths. I’m not going to hide that fact from you. He will have all exits guarded. My hope is that there will be fewer guards below ground than above.”
“Worth a shot,” Rhes said. Sarah seemed about to speak, but abruptly changed her mind and closed her mouth.
Jakob continued. “I believe we passed through at least four security doors in the process, which are made of metal and require a key. I won’t be able to break them down.”
“Don’t need to,” Sarah told him.
“No?”
“Aros has a key.”
“I … don’t think he is likely to part with it,” Jakob said.
Sarah blew air upwards through her pursed lips. “You can take that patronizing bullshit tone elsewhere, Jakob. I’m not an idiot. He leaves the keys in his desk.”
“You sure, hon?” Rhes asked.
“I heard him drop his keys into the drawer the night he got us out of there. Remember when we stopped in his office? Left side, top drawer. Heard him open it, heard the keys drop, heard him close it.”
“Did you hear anything?” Jakob asked Rhes.
“No, but I was probably distracted, and anyway I don’t hear like she does. I’m not sure you hear like she does.”
“I assure you—” Jakob began, and Sarah interrupted him.
“I assure you that you don’t need to use your ears like I do. Whether they’re better or not doesn’t matter. Look, I know what we’re planning here. I know the stakes, and I’ll put our lives on what I heard. That’s where he put his keys.”
“What if he moved them?” Rhes asked.
Sarah shrugged. “What if we open the first door and he’s standing behind it with an army of guys, waiting for us? We’re trying to escape from a lunatic vampire who’s probably going to murder us all. I don’t think there’s any safe plan.”
“Good point,” Jakob said. He was smiling slightly, amused and impressed by Sarah’s decisive manner. “My apologies for the ‘patronizing, bullshit tone’ in my voice.”
Sarah made a shooing gesture with her hand. “Whatever, forget it. Help us get out of here and get somewhere safe, and all is forgiven. I just want this shit done with. I want to go home, find my daughter, bury my dog, put new locks on my door, and never deal with another vampire again.”
“A reasonable list of desires,” Jakob said. “Very well, then I will—”
He was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening, and footsteps in the hallway. Aros emerged from the front foyer into the living room.
“It’s impolite to enter without knocking,” Jakob told him.
“It’s my house,” Aros replied, and the tone of his voice told them that he was in no mood for frivolity. Jakob looked unimpressed but made no reply.
“Can we help you with something, Aros?” Sarah asked after a moment, and Aros turned to look at her.
“I thought perhaps we should finish our earlier discussion,” he replied. “The time of change is coming. We are in the final hours, now. Soon, there will be no more Eresh, no more Ashayt, no more Ay’Araf. They will convert or die and we, the Burilgi, the horde, will be transformed. It has been told to me, and I have foreseen it. The Lady Eresh herself has come to me as I sleep. She speaks into my ear and tells me of her blood and its powers. One will arise. That is what she says to me.”
Jakob stirred but said nothing. Aros glanced at him, giving him an ugly grin.
“The humans will continue to move through their days and sleep through their nights, unaware, providing my people with the services we desire, just as they’ve done for you and your aristocrats for centuries. They will be what they have always been: unwitting fools whose only purpose is to toil, to serve, and, when their usefulness is at an end … to die.”
“Enough, Aros,” Jakob said.
Aros turned fully to face him and pointed toward the door. “Get out. Your guards are waiting to take you back to your room, but I wouldn’t worry about spending much time there. I do hope you’ve made the most of your last moments on earth.”
Jakob shrugged, stood, looked at Rhes and Sarah. “May we meet again,” he said.
“Hopefully soon,” Sarah replied. To her left, Aros snickered.
“Good luck, Jakob,” Rhes said.
Jakob nodded, and to Rhes’s surprise, left the house smiling. Aros waited until he was gone, and then spoke Sarah’s name. She turned toward him, head slightly cocked, listening.
“Let me make you more than what you are,” Aros said.
“I like what I am,” Sarah replied, but Rhes could hear the doubt in her voice. So could Aros, and he laughed.
“Don’t lie to me. You hate what you are. I can make you something better, and you know it.”
“I … you’re the one who’s lying,” Sarah said, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“You know I’m not. I’m sure you’ve asked Jakob, and I’m sure he’s confirmed the power of the blood. I can give you your sight back, make you whole again.”
“She’s already whole,” Rhes said. He was resting his hand lightly on Sarah’s leg and could feel the tension in her body.
“Is she? Think of how he would look, Sarah. Think of how it would feel to see him for the first time, to see his smile, to look into his eyes with your own.”
“Don’t you fucking use me against her like that!” Rhes snarled.
Aros glanced at him, then back at Sarah, unperturbed. “He is angry with himself because he can’t sacrifice his own happiness for yours, even though he knows that he should.”
Sarah’s jaw was clenched tight, her head tilted down.
“Baby, that’s not true. I’m trying to keep you from making a mistake,” Rhes said.
Sarah took a harsh, shuddering breath, suppressing a sob, and said, “I want to see you!”
Aros gave Rhes a savage grin and said to Sarah, “I can give that to you.”
Sarah drew in another hard breath. She was visibly shaking now, and Rhes realized that in another minute at most, he was going to lose her. Sarah was going to give up, give in, accept the offer. He had underestimated just how thoroughly she hated her blindness and how desperate she was to be rid of it. He was going to lose her unless he did something, and so he did the only thing that he could think of, leaning in next to her and putting his lips to her ear.
“He’s not telling you something,” he said. He kept his voice low and even, not trying to keep his words from Aros, but simply trying to help calm Sarah.
“What?” she asked, her voice miserable.
“There’s nothing at the end of his road but the dark.”
“You know nothing abou—” Aros began, and Rhes whirled to face him.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut the fuck up and let me talk, or kill me now and see if she goes with you after that.”
Aros glowered at him, and in that moment Rhes understood that there was no longer any possibility that the vampire would let them go. Unless Sarah chose to take his offer, Aros would have them killed as soon as he had Two in his grasp. This was certain, and their only chance for escape had just walked through the door and out to his seeming death.
Well, fuck it then, Rhes thought, and turned back to Sarah.
“I’m going to finish whether he likes it or not,” he said. “I love you. I love you more than anything else in the whole world, but I can’t follow you if you choose to go with him. I won’t. That road doesn’t go to our house. It doesn’t go to Molly or to raising a family. There’s no baby at the end of Aros’s road and no normal life. There’s just years and years of looking out into the dark.”
“A prospect you’re faced with in either case,” Aros said. The black humor had left his voice, and he seemed to be growing tired of the game. “This is the last time I will offer, Sarah. I can fix you. He cannot.”
Sarah sighed and leaned the side of her head against Rhes’s shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was tired and hoarse,
filled with a terrible resignation.
“Go away,” she said to Aros. “Just … go away. I don’t want to be fixed. I want to spend whatever time I have left with my husband, even if I’ll never get to see him. Go away and leave me alone.”
It was Rhes’s turn to give Aros a savage, triumphant smile. The vampire’s eyes narrowed, but after a moment any emotion seemed to leave his face, and he shrugged.
“Your loss,” he said with an air of supreme indifference and, with that, he turned and left the house.
“Baby, I—” Rhes began, and Sarah turned and pressed a hand to his mouth, her jaw clenched tightly shut.
Rhes wanted to tell her that he understood: she had done this for him. She had chosen him over the very thing that she wanted most in the world. He wanted to tell her that he knew what it meant, this thing she had given up, and that he was thankful, but Sarah didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t hear it, he realized, not right now.
Without another word, he put his arms around his wife and held her. Sarah pressed her face into his chest and stood like that for a long time, her breathing slow and deep.
* * *
The building in which Jakob had been housed had once served as a dormitory for soldiers, and it was approximately a sixty-yard walk from the row of townhouses where Rhes and Sarah had been stationed. Jakob made the walk from their house to his building with four of Aros’s soldiers surrounding him. Each carried a pistol, and two of them also had automatic weapons.
He knew from experience that when they reached the building, the two guards with assault rifles would break off, heading back to positions along the outer wall. The two guards with pistols would bring him to his room, a small space that had once been an officer’s bedroom but now, with the addition of sturdy bars outside the single window, had been converted into an effective cell. Jakob did not know if any other people, prisoners or soldiers, were currently stationed in the building. If they were, he had not heard them.
The entrance did not go as expected. When they reached the building, instead of unlocking the door the group swerved to the right, indicating to Jakob where he was to go by waving their guns. The two guards who normally left the group instead continued with them, and Jakob realized that he was likely in the presence of his execution squad. He felt mildly insulted that Aros could not even be bothered to oversee the event.
“Have you ever killed an Ay’Araf before?” Jakob asked the nearest guard, a short, squat vampire with brown hair and dark eyes who walked with a limp.
“Shut up,” the guard said.
“But surely this must be exciting for you, no? The chance to off an aristocratic pig?”
“I said shut up. You’re not talking your way out of this. We’ve got our orders.”
“Orders. Yes, of course,” Jakob said. They reached the end of the building and turned again, walking along its side. Jakob could see a dirt patch behind it, and a section of the outer wall that was pockmarked with bullet holes.
“Do I at least get a blindfold and a cigarette?” he said to no one in particular, and one of the guards behind him nudged him in the back with the muzzle of his gun.
“When we tell you to shut up, it means shut up.”
“I’m just asking for a little kindness in my final minutes,” Jakob said.
The guard behind him drew up close, shoving the barrel of his gun against the place where Jakob’s spine met the back of his head, and growled. “You’re lucky I don’t just shoot you here and leave the body for the crows.”
“We have differing ideas of luck,” Jakob said, and he spun sideways. He grabbed the guard’s left arm in both hands and twisted, snapping the humerus so violently that one jagged end of it pierced the skin. The guard shrieked in pain and lost his grip on his rifle.
The Burilgi were quick to react, but not as quick as Jakob. He shoved the screaming guard into the other vampire who held a rifle, and the two fell to the ground in a heap. Jakob leapt forward, grabbed one of the remaining Burilgi, and spun him around just as the last was raising his pistol.
“Oh, Jesus, don’t!” the guard cried, but it was too late. His companion pulled the trigger, and there was a sharp crack as the gun fired. Jakob heard the vampire he held make a gasping noise as the bullet hit him in the chest. The slug passed through the Burilgi’s body and embedded itself in Jakob’s side, but was slowed enough in the passing to prevent a deep wound.
“Fuck!” Jakob snarled. He shoved forward, barreling toward the vampire who had fired, using the guard as a shield. Before the remaining guard could get off another shot, Jakob was upon him. With his right hand buried deep in the hair of the vampire he was using as a shield, Jakob rammed his arm forward and the two soldiers’ heads collided with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed, and as Jakob let go, both bodies slumped to the ground. He reached down, picked up a pistol, and spun back to the first two guards.
The one with the broken arm was still writhing on the ground, but the other had managed to free himself and was raising his rifle to take aim. Jakob shot him in the face. He knelt again, and quickly put one bullet each into the heads of the unconscious vampires next to him.
The remaining guard was now dragging himself toward his rifle, snarling profanities in pain and exertion. Jakob took a few quick steps over toward the prone figure and brought his foot down on the vampire’s broken arm. The guard howled in pain, and without further hesitation, Jakob put a bullet into his forehead.
It would not be long before he was discovered. The firing would probably not immediately attract attention, as surely the Burilgi on the base knew that Jakob was to be executed, but the screams might have been heard. At any rate, someone, perhaps Aros himself, would be along to check in on things shortly. Jakob glanced down at his side and grimaced. His shirt and pants were stained with blood and there was a bullet wedged somewhere against one of his ribs, but removal would have to wait. At least the flow of blood seemed to be stopping.
Jakob turned and, taking a deep breath against the pain, began to run back toward the row of townhomes on the other side of the compound.
* * *
“It has to be now,” Jakob said as Rhes opened the door.
“Jesus Christ, are you all right?” Rhes asked.
“Yes. No … I was shot, but it was a weak hit. It’s not going to kill me. Rhes, we have to go. Right now.”
“OK, I … Sarah, we have to go. Jakob’s here and—”
“I’m blind, not deaf,” Sarah said from the living room. “Come get me, and let’s do this.”
“She sounds upset,” Jakob said.
“We’ll talk about it some other time,” Rhes replied. “Stay here. Shit, should I get … I don’t know, Band-Aids or something?”
Jakob grunted out something like a laugh and shook his head. “Get your wife and let’s go.”
They crossed the grounds as quickly as they could, Jakob leading, Rhes and Sarah trailing close behind. The grass was flat and even, making things easier for Sarah, but she nonetheless kept a tight grip on Rhes’s hand. Shortly, they had made it to the building that housed Aros’s offices. As of yet, it seemed, Jakob’s escape from execution had not been discovered.
“There will not be time for pulling punches, so to speak,” Jakob said as they reached the door. “If we meet any Burilgi, I am going to dispatch them. Quickly.”
“Jakob, hon,” Sarah said, keeping her voice low, “If we were going to get upset about you killing these people, we probably would’ve stopped letting you into our house a long time ago.”
Jakob made another low laugh and said, “Just warning you.”
“Do what you have to do,” Rhes said, and Jakob nodded. He grabbed the door handle and, finding it locked, leaned against the door to muffle the noise and twisted his wrist in a harsh, jerking motion. The knob splintered away and the door swung inward.
“That’s handy,” Rhes commented as they slipped inside.
“That’s why I’m only worried about the metal doors,” Jakob replie
d. He shut the door behind them and propped a chair against it. Close inspection would certainly reveal the damage, but at least any passing Burilgi soldier wouldn’t see the door hanging wide open.
They made their way upstairs to Aros’s office slowly, trying to stay quiet, expecting at any moment that the lights would be thrown on as soldiers invaded the building. It didn’t happen.
Aros’s office was dark and empty. Jakob went to the desk, opened the top-left drawer, and a moment later they heard a jingling sound as he picked up the keys. Sarah smiled a little, but didn’t speak.
“You’re entitled to tell me that you told me so,” Jakob said as he returned.
“Yeah, but I’m way too polite for that,” Sarah replied. “Let’s find out what’s behind door number two.”
The third key that Jakob tried unlocked the door. Behind it there was only an empty stairwell, with no sign of Aros or his guards.
“Is it too early to worry that this is way too easy?” Rhes asked.
Jakob shook his head. “No. This won’t last.”
They descended to the second sub-basement and exited quietly into a hallway that held a bank of cells, identical to the ones in which they had awoken four days ago.
“There’s a guard post down the hall,” Sarah whispered. “Be careful.”
They crept forward to find that Sarah was right, the hallway emptied out into a central room that contained, among other things, a table covered with scattered playing cards. The room appeared to be empty, and Jakob stepped into the middle of it, looking around and frowning.
“Yes,” he began. “This definitely qualifies as too—”
With a roar, two vampires leapt from the shadows of one of the other hallways and charged at Jakob. Sarah had no way of knowing it, and never would, but these were the same guards whose conversation she had overheard when she had first awoken in this place.
The Rat and The Dunce came into the room howling, racing toward Jakob, moving at an alarming rate that Rhes had difficulty reconciling with forms that looked so human. He felt sure that Jakob would be torn limb from limb, and realized even as he began to shout a warning that it would surely come too late.
Blood Hunt Page 30
