by E. S. Moore
I got to my feet, swung my gun around, and fired at him before he could fully right himself. He flung up an arm just as I pulled the trigger and the air around him wavered. The bullet struck the rippling air and ricocheted across the room.
“Damn it,” I muttered, holstering my gun and drawing my last knife in a quick, fluid motion. Did I mention I hated sorcerers?
Davin straightened and licked his lips as if already savoring the taste of my blood. Not that he would drink it. Vampires got nothing out of drinking another vampire’s blood. He would get more nutrition out of a cat or dog than he would out of me.
He kept his eyes on my weapons, but he didn’t seem all that concerned. He was clearly older than the vamps I had dealt with at the Fledgling Houses I had taken down. None of them had been able to do anything remotely close to sorcery. No wonder House Tremaine had risen to Minor House status. With a vamp sorcerer, they had an advantage very few could overcome.
“Give me a knife,” Gregory said at my side. I just about stabbed him he was standing so close. I had all but forgotten him.
“No,” I said, trying to ignore him. I was reluctant to give up one of my weapons, especially since my other knife was still stuck in the wolf downstairs. The other vamps and wolves in the room were completely content to fight it out with Nathan and Jonathan, leaving me alone with Davin. I wished Gregory would go away and find someone else to bother.
“I want to help,” Gregory insisted. “Give me a knife so I can help.”
“Why don’t you shift?” I said, taking a step away from him. He was seriously crowding my personal space. If the vamp attacked, Gregory would get in the way. “You’d be of more use that way.”
The vampire stood his ground and grinned. He seemed to be enjoying our little side banter.
I wanted the vamp to just attack and get it over with. Now that I knew what he could do, I was ready for him. If he wanted to get in close with me, he would have to drop his shield. As long as Gregory didn’t get in the way, I could have the vamp down and disabled in seconds. I just needed to get within his reach.
Besides, the longer we stood there staring at each other, the more likely it would be that Adrian or one of the other Tremaine wolves would join in our little standoff, severely tipping the scales in their favor.
At least I didn’t have to worry about anyone hitting me with silver. Thanks to the vampire ban on the stuff, I was pretty sure I was the only one packing the illegal metal. It gave me an advantage over everyone in the room. I like having the advantage.
Gregory thrust an open hand out toward me. He wasn’t going to go away unless I gave in and gave him what he wanted.
“Damn it,” I said, putting my last knife in his hand, hilt first, careful not to let the silver touch his skin. As long as he didn’t cut himself with it, it would only burn him anyway. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn’t incapacitate him.
Davin’s grin widened as he took us both in. He looked mere moments from a gale of laughter. He turned his gaze away from us to take in the rest of the fight. It was getting pretty desperate for the good guys.
I took a step toward the distracted vamp, hoping to get in close before he knew I was coming. From what I understood, the shield charm would stop bullets, but something moving slower could get through. As long as I didn’t rush things, I could take him down before he knew what hit him.
Before I could go more than a step, a stabbing pain in my back sent shockwaves through my body. My muscles instantly seized. My entire body locked up, and my sword fell useless from my suddenly weak fingers. I fell to one knee, fighting my body as I went down. I would have screamed if I had the breath.
Another stab to my shoulder dropped me the rest of the way to the floor. I managed to hit with my uninjured shoulder and fell over on my back instead of my face. If I was going down, I was going to do it facing my killer.
Gregory stood over me, the knife I had handed him in one hand. It was stained red with my blood. He had that smug grin on his face again and was shaking his head sadly as if he was disappointed in me.
“I wish things could have ended differently,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I gasped through teeth that didn’t want to unclench. It was all I could do to force the air out for the words, but he heard them fine. The silver coursed through my veins, paralyzing me. The poison would eventually run its course and I would be able to move again, but that would take time. Time was something I was quickly running out of.
A scream that seemed to shake the very walls of the ballroom jerked Gregory’s head to the side. Whatever had made the tortured sound must have been good for his side, because when he turned back to me, he was absolutely beaming.
He leaned over me and I tried to reach for his throat, though I knew it was useless. I managed only to move my arm a fraction of an inch. I wasn’t even sure it was my own muscles that caused the movement or if my arm had simply convulsed. I couldn’t feel anything but pain from head to toe.
“Say good-bye, Ms. Redding,” he said, pressing my knife to my throat.
“No.” Suddenly, Adrian was standing over me. He was still in human form and looked as though he hadn’t bothered to take part in the fight at all. His clothes were completely unrumpled, as was his hair. “Keep her alive. Tremaine wants to speak with her.”
Gregory scowled and leaned into the knife even more. “No,” he said. “This is my moment. Tremaine can go fuck himself if he thinks I’m going to give up the chance to kill her. I’ll be a legend.”
The edge of the knife bit into my neck, and the pain of silver seeping into my bloodstream caused my eyes to squeeze shut, so I missed what happened next. All I knew was that the bite of the knife was suddenly gone, replaced by what felt like thick, sticky rain and a tearing sound. A split second later, there was a pair of thumps, one hitting so close to my head I felt the impact through the floor.
I scarcely dared to breathe. Not that I was able to breathe all that well as it was, but if I could have held my breath voluntarily, I would have. Had Jonathan managed to save me somehow?
“Get her locked up before she can move,” Adrian said, shooting down my hopes of salvation. He gave an annoyed sigh and I heard him walk away.
Rough hands thrust under my arms and around my ankles. I was hoisted into the air, carried between two unseen assailants. I tried to fight against the silver, but it had its teeth in me. I wasn’t going to be moving for a long while and I knew it. I could no longer hear the sound of battle and I feared what that meant.
I managed to open my eyes as my captors reached the door where I had left the dead man’s body. One of them cursed, but neither stopped to investigate their fallen comrade. They would have more than enough time for that, I was sure. They opened the basement door and took me farther into the depths of House Tremaine.
26
Tremors shook me as the silver worked its way out of my system. It felt like hours before I was able to move my arms and legs, albeit stiffly. I closed my eyes and waited for the moment when the pain would stop, praying that when I opened them again, I wouldn’t see the bars surrounding my cell, the cold stone floor, or the inevitable faces that would surround me, pleading for help I couldn’t give them.
I could hear them. Muffled whispers and the shuffling movements of those so thoroughly defeated they couldn’t move at much more than a crawl. A soft woman’s voice, cracked by days without water, tried to soothe someone close to her. A cough that sounded as if it brought up more blood than sound came from my right and then abruptly ceased.
The pain ebbed enough so that I could sit up. I had been stripped of my coat and weapons, and tossed in a cell to rot. At least they left me my clothes, which was more than I would have expected. I opened my eyes and looked around the small cell, and the tremors increased tenfold. It wasn’t the silver doing it to me this time.
It was the memories.
I couldn’t see the room that contained the cells within House Tremaine. All I could see were the cell
s of House Valentino, the floors smeared in human and werewolf blood. The whispers of the cells next to me turned into screams of pain, of tortured wails. I was back in hell, back to where my life as a Pureblood ended and the life of a predator began.
I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the memories. I wanted to push them as far to the back of my mind as I could. They refused to budge, refused to be banished back to the dark hole in my mind where all the darkest memories lurked. They taunted me, forced me to confront my current predicament by giving me glimpses of a past I would much rather forget.
Footsteps that sounded hollow on the concrete floor passed my cell, but I refused to acknowledge them. I wasn’t even sure I was really hearing them or if it was all still in my head. A cell opened and something was dragged by, a body by the sound of it. I refused to look up, to even peek at what was going on around me out of fear of what I might see. I knew what happened in dungeons like this. I was in one before. I had lived it.
Thomas’s face floated before my mind’s eye. It was Thomas before the first change, before they turned him into a werewolf. He was smiling, telling me everything would be all right, that we would infiltrate the Minor House, take out Count Valentino, and the rest would fall into place. We would be legends.
Funny how those words tended to come right before disaster. Gregory should have known better.
I should have known.
Thomas’s face contorted, shifted into the snarling wolf he would become. He hadn’t been able to control the change, hadn’t been able to keep his face then, nor could he now in my mind. He lashed out at his captors, killed the vampire, tore him to shreds as easily as he would a newspaper. He knew the consequences of his actions, but he couldn’t stop. The beast had him. It would keep him.
And what could I do? I was trapped behind bars that were too strong, too sturdy for my human body. I could only grasp the bars in trembling hands, scream at him to stop before he went too far. I had prayed he would realize what he was doing before it was too late.
Thomas’s rage had no bounds. He attacked the wolves that tried to subdue him, ravaged them with a strength born of his newly changed body. He was an animal now, a savage beast who knew only to kill.
But before he could kill them all, before he could escape with what was left of his self, they caught him, buried him beneath their numbers. They forced vampire blood down his throat, made him consume the very vampire he had slain.
They tortured him before my very eyes.
And then they came for me.
My eyes snapped open and I forced myself to take stock of my current situation. Living in the past wasn’t going to help. It would only slow me down, force me to confront things I didn’t want to deal with. Not now. Not ever again. If I wanted to get out of here alive, I needed to focus.
The room was large, almost as large as the hidden basement in the Luna Cult Den. The walls were lined with cells. Most of the ones on the far wall were occupied. The cells to my left and right were empty. A door three cells down hung ajar. A trail of blood was smeared across the floor all the way to the stairs.
There were no guards, no one to keep an eye on the prisoners. A desk sat by the stairwell, but it was unoccupied. It looked as though no one had sat there for a good long while. A pile of old magazines and newspapers rested on the swivel-back chair behind the desk. The desktop was covered by more magazines. A cattle prod and a whip lay on top of them.
The stench of urine and feces was heavy in the air. I stood and the floor under me crinkled. I looked down to find newspaper spread out in the corner of my cell. The cells across the way were likewise adorned, though the paper was wet and lumpy where the occupants had deposited their wastes.
A girl of no more than fourteen crawled to the edge of her cell and dangled her arms out toward me. She had a pleading look on her face and made strange, muffled, chuffing sounds. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot. Where the whites did show, they were yellowed and diseased looking.
She wasn’t going to live much longer down here. By the way it smelled, very few would.
I moved to the front of my cell and grasped the bars in my bare hands. Searing pain jolted me backward and I fell back onto my ass. Hard. My hands were red and blistered where they had touched the bars. It was painful but would most likely heal within an hour or two. It was what the pain meant that was far more distressing.
Silver. Now that I knew that it was there, I could see the shine to the bars, the way they gave off a certain smell. These weren’t the usual iron or steel bars. These were made of pure silver, probably enhanced in some way. The sorcerer came to mind. I wasn’t getting out of here unless someone was kind enough to open the door for me.
Fat chance of that happening. This was going to be my prison.
The room was entirely windowless, so when the morning came, I would be safe from the sun. That was something at least. I just had to survive whatever Count Tremaine had in store for me until then. I knew he wasn’t going to ever let me out while conscious.
I knew Adrian would push for it. He knew I was Lady Death. I had killed so many vampires and werewolves, I lost count years ago. My skin would be worth more than any number of Purebloods. Letting me out while I could still fight back would be far too dangerous, and Tremaine wouldn’t want to damage his prize.
House Tremaine no longer needed the Luna Cult to rise through the vampire ranks. They had me.
I got to my feet and tried to think clearly through the silver-induced pain. I needed to get out of there before anyone bothered to come and check on me. The moment someone came downstairs and found me moving around, they would be all over me. Any hope of escape would be lost.
The people across the room in the other cells weren’t going to be much help. Most of them were near starvation, others so dehydrated they were pretty much corpses already. I was surprised the vampires had let them degrade so far. These people were their food, were they not? Or were the captives here useful in some other way?
I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. Normally, a Pureblood kept in a vampire House was kept healthy enough to feed upon, but not kept strong enough to fight back. Even the Purebloods in Count Paltori’s basement had been fed and watered regularly. These poor wretches were hardly enough to sate a single wolf, let alone an entire House full of wolves and vamps.
There was a hook above the desk by the stairwell. I assumed that was where they kept the keys to the cells, but there were no keys to be found. There might be spare keys in the desk, I supposed. How I was going to get to them was beyond me.
I started to look away when I noticed the stuff on the floor next to the stairs. My weapons were there, tossed haphazardly away like they were of little importance. If I could only get through these bars, I could make a fight of this.
Of course, that was the problem. How was I ever going to get out of this on my own?
I had to think. Silver bars made leaving the cell a near impossibility. My gear might be in the room with me but was too far away to reach. The weapons wouldn’t do me much good if I was still locked up anyway. The floor was solid concrete. So were the walls, and I imagined there was nothing but cold, hard earth on the other side.
I turned my head slowly and scanned the cells once more, my breath catching in my throat.
Where were Jonathan and Nathan? Where were the other Luna Cult members who had survived the fight? Had anyone else survived? I seriously doubted I was the only one who had been captured.
So then, where was everyone?
My eyes traveled to the smear of blood on the floor. It went right past my cell and up the stairs. It was still fresh enough that I could smell it if I took a deep enough breath. Whoever had been dragged by had still been alive at the time.
The door at the top of the stairs opened and three sets of footfalls echoed throughout the basement prison. The Purebloods cowered in the back of their cells, whimpering and pleading in soft voices.
Count Tremaine, flanked by two other vamps I didn’t kn
ow, stopped in front of my cell, his face a mask of hatred and anger.
Tremaine looked me over, taking his time as if he were trying to remember my every feature. “Who are you?” he demanded, his eyes finally falling on my face.
I stared at him, ignoring the other two vamps entirely. They were probably high-ranking members of House Tremaine, ones who managed to avoid all the fighting upstairs if their flawless appearance gave any indication. Tremaine himself looked as though he hadn’t taken part in the fight either. Not a hair was out of place.
“Who sent you?” Tremaine asked. His nostrils flared, and a trickle of blood slid from between his lips.
I licked my own lips out of reflex. Tremaine grinned, exposing his teeth. His gums were bleeding, his fangs slowly extending. We were but a night from the full moon, and already he was losing some control over his change. I could feel it, too. It would make his rage more acute, send him over the edge that much faster. If it came down to the vamps torturing me and a quick death, I would gladly play on their lack of control to get it over with quickly.
“What House do you belong to? Are you a rogue?” he went on, licking the blood from his lips. “If you tell me, then perhaps I will give you something to feed upon.” He gestured toward the caged Purebloods. “They aren’t much, but people in your predicament can’t be too choosy, now can they?”
I barely heard the last. My mind was running races going over what he had said.
He didn’t know who I was. How could he not know? Adrian had more than enough time to tell him by now. There was no way the wolf would keep it to himself, not if he had sworn the Oath and was a part of House Tremaine.
Would he?
I kept my mouth shut and straightened. If Count Tremaine didn’t know who I was, then there was still hope. He had no idea what I was capable of. One mistake and I could be all over him. All I needed was a single instant and I could use the silver bars to my advantage. I knew he was probably vain enough to fear the scars the silver would cause him. Just one more step toward me, one ill-advised movement within my reach and I could have him.
