There was a long moment of stunned silence. Then all hell broke loose.
The sound of claws against steel began to stir up above them, faint at first but growing louder with each passing second. “Jesus, Riley, what did you do?” Scott said, grabbing her by the shoulder and hauling her further back from Brandon. Everyone, even Brandon, was looking toward the ceiling. Riley tilted her head back to look for herself.
Far above them, in the steel rafters that criss-crossed the ceiling, were dozens upon dozens of vampires.
“You don’t have the upper hand here, Zachariah,” Brandon said. “We’ve got the weapon, and we’ve got you in here. You’re the only ones who are standing between me and what I want.”
“And what does that happen to be, Brandon?” Scott asked.
“Immortality, of course,” Brandon said, as if it should have been obvious. “Who doesn’t want immortality when the option is put in front of them? Directorship of the Agency, also. It would be the perfect tool for me to further my own goals.”
“Oh, is that all?” Zachariah snapped sarcastically.
“Of course not,” Brandon said. “I want Riley.”
“Only over my dead body,” Riley snarled. And then, because she had already messed up any plans Zachariah had had anyway, she raced toward Brandon, ready to kick his ass into the ground before she put him down for good. Her charge seemed to have been the moment everyone had been waiting for, because as soon as she slammed into Brandon, Zachariah and Scott rushed into the fray.
Riley’s impact with Brandon was so forceful that it sent both of them tumbling to the concrete floor. They rolled, over and over, each fighting for the upper hand, until Riley ended up on top of him, straddling his stomach. Taking advantage of the high ground, Riley slammed her fist into his face, ignoring the pain that shot through her knuckles, and then drove her knees into his sides. Brandon grunted, but he seemed unfazed by her blows. He braced his feet against the floor and bucked upward with his entire body. She was thrown off of him, and then he was on her, grabbing a fistful of her shirt and hauling her upper body off the floor. He backhanded her with a blow so forceful that her ears rang. Then he slammed her down onto the floor, knocking the breath from her lungs.
Riley’s lungs heaved as she struggled to get air back into them. Her brain felt like it had been rattled around in her skull. She tried to push herself up, but Brandon’s fist struck her face again, flattening her back to the concrete. She tasted blood in her mouth, warm and metallic. But though she was dazed, she was far from out of the fight. Managing to get a breath into her lungs, she twisted her lower body, kicking him in the side of the knee with her left foot before driving her right foot into his groin so hard that it knocked him onto his back. She shoved herself off the ground and flung herself onto him, slamming her fist into his face repeatedly. Her assault lasted as long as it took for him to get his fist past her defenses and strike her in the solar plexus. She fell back, and as she did so, her hand closed around the hilt of a knife on Brandon’s belt and ripped it free. Before she could try to use it, though, Brandon was on his feet, and his dress shoe slammed into her gut with enough force to send her sliding several inches across the floor. Her mind whirled and staggered like a drunk, partially horrified by the fact that their relationship—such as it was—had come to this: them trying, officially, to kill each other. But the anger she felt over not only his plans but his arrogance that she’d just roll over and go along with them overrode any shock she felt over her current position in life.
“Did you actually think you could beat me, Riley?” Brandon demanded, kicking her again. Her body lifted off the floor a couple of inches with the blow. Her brain ran in frantic circles as she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Where was everybody else? Where were Scott and Zachariah? She was supposed to have some fucking backup!
Another kick buried Brandon’s pointed shoe into her solar plexus again, bringing out a groan of pain. Then he landed one on her face, throwing her onto her back as her brain decided it was time to take a vacation.
Brandon knelt down beside her. She looked up at him, struggling to breathe, and he smirked. “You shouldn’t have said ‘no,’ Riley,” he said. “That was stupid. Really stupid. We could have been so much together, you know.”
Riley narrowed her eyes, and a fresh surge of anger flashed through her again. “Fuck you, Brandon,” she slurred. She tightened her grip on the knife she’d stolen from his belt and struck out at him. She missed his chest by a mile, but she managed to bury the blade to its hilt into his thigh. Brandon yelled out in pain as the serrated black blade bit into his skin. Riley drew another yell from him as she tore the blade free, twisting it as she withdrew it.
Bright red blood fell from the knife and the wound to splatter onto the floor.
The vampires in the rafters started to stir into a frenzy as the scent of blood hit the air. Riley glanced up at them as she lay on the floor, her knife gripped in her blood-stained hand, her eyes wide.
“You just threw chum in the water, you stupid bitch,” Brandon snarled. He landed one more kick in her side, stealing her breath from her abused lungs one more time. And then he fled the building, limping back out the front entrance he’d come in through, abandoning them to whatever was about to happen like the coward he was.
Riley tried to get up, tried to find her feet and get them working again, but she’d barely managed to get onto her hands and knees when the vampires in the rafters started dropping from the sky.
~*~
When Riley had started her charge at Brandon, Scott hadn’t hesitated to step up to back her up, but he’d been intercepted by the surviving man who’d been helping carry Ashton. Scott stepped forward and struck out at the man, slamming the heel of his hand into the man’s nose before punching him in the throat. The man crumpled to his knees, unable to breathe, and a well-placed kick to the side of the man’s head put him down on the floor. He didn’t move again.
Nodding in satisfaction, Scott started forward to help Riley again, but the rest of the men who’d entered the warehouse with Brandon moved up as one to attack him en masse. He dodged a punch from one of them, leaning backward at the last second to put more space between them, and then blocked another strike from one of the other men with his forearm. He gritted his teeth in pain; it felt like someone had just hit his arm with a cement block. He grimaced and moved to punch the second man, but he drew up short when the man raised a gun and pointed it right at his head.
“Oh shit,” Scott said. He reached to try to disarm the man when a blond-haired blur appeared seemingly out of nowhere and grabbed his attacker’s arm. The brittle snap of bone followed, and the gun toppled to the floor with a clatter. Then the man himself crumpled, his head turned around at an unnatural angle. Scott looked at his assist and raised an eyebrow in surprise. It was the white-clad woman who had entered the warehouse with Brandon, and she looked like she was ready to slap him.
“Stop playing around,” she ordered. “We’re about to have a problem.” Then she moved away, faster than a human should have physically been able to move, toward Zachariah, who knelt at Ashton’s side near the entrance.
“What the hell?” Scott breathed, but he didn’t take the time to try to figure out what that had been about. Instead, he looked toward Riley, who was on the floor, swinging a knife toward Brandon. She embedded the blade into his thigh and ripped it out, splattering blood all over the floor.
That was when it started raining vampires.
“Fuck,” Scott breathed as the vampires in the rafters dropped to the concrete floor. He pulled the gun Zachariah had given him free from the waistband of his jeans and chambered a round, aiming it at the nearest of the vampires. He fired, and the bullet impacted with the creature’s shoulder. Then, remembering Zachariah’s orders, he ran for the armory cage as fast as his legs could carry him. He slammed into the cage as his run carried him into it, and he fumbled for the card he’d been given, swiping it through the card reader
on the door. He ducked inside the cage and slammed the door closed just as three vampires ploughed into it with a clang.
Scott looked around the interior of the cage wildly, trying to find something more damaging than the little .22 pistol Zachariah had given him. Several ammunition boxes caught his attention, and he picked one up. Shotgun shells. Someone had written “silver nitrate” in black marker on the top of the box. He tore the top off, grabbed one of the shotguns from the rack that hung on the wall, and loaded it. He racked the slide and took aim through the bars, firing a blast into the face of one of the vampires. It screamed, a high, unearthly sound, and fell to the floor, thrashing and flailing in pain. Scott ignored it and instead turned his attention to the other two that were harassing him through the bars. As he fired on those two, he realized that there were even more heading his way, drawn to his position by the sound of the shotgun blasts.
Scott looked past them and saw the blond woman who had helped him standing in the center of the chaos, her head bowed in concentration, her blond hair spilling over her shoulders. The gray-skinned vampires in the room seemed to be avoiding her, intent as they were on the others. That, more than anything else, suggested to Scott exactly what she was.
“They are in the throes of bloodlust!” the woman yelled. “They’re no longer under my control. I can’t make them stop.”
“The box!” Zachariah shouted back to her. He was still beside Ashton, protecting the man as he recovered from the beating he’d been given under Brandon’s hands. “Elise, we need to use the box.”
“But it will kill you and me both.”
“I know!” Even from his place inside the armory cage, Scott could see the anguish the knowledge brought him. “But we can’t let them get out of this building.”
The woman—Elise—looked around frantically, her eyes landing on Scott before dismissing him. Then she looked toward Riley, who was fighting off the vampires that had surrounded her with a surprising amount of skill. “Riley Walker!” Elise shouted over the noise. Riley startled and looked in Elise’s direction. “Catch!” She pulled Riley’s backpack from her back and lobbed it at Riley as easily as throwing a piece of paper.
Despite being surrounded on all sides by vampires, Riley managed to catch the bag by its strap. She slung it around and onto her back, then resumed her firing at the vampires, placing her bullets carefully to keep from wasting them. But it was clear she was going to run out of bullets before she got clear of her attackers, especially since even more vampires were streaming in through a hole that they’d clawed into the roof. Scott grabbed a few more weapons from the racks—two silver-coated machetes similar to Zachariah’s, several magazines of bullets that would fit Riley’s gun, and more shotgun shells, which he stuffed in his pockets—before he swiped the card to exit the armory cage.
Several more vampires had pressed themselves against the cage in the intervening time, and he shoved the door open with a strong kick of his leg. They fell back, and he raced out of the cage, slashing and hacking with one of the machetes as he raced toward Riley.
Vampires surrounded Riley, some two and three deep in places, but somehow she was managing to hold her own against them. Scott dodged around the body of the first man he’d fought with—vampires had literally torn him to pieces, and there wasn’t much left of him—and dove into the fray, cutting his way to Riley’s side.
“You hurt?” he asked her, breathless with exertion. He passed her one of the machetes.
“Nope, just feeling alive,” Riley said. She shot another of the vampires in the head and then swung the machete about, hacking it into the shoulder of another. “I don’t think I’ll be able to keep this up much longer, though.”
“Me either,” Scott confessed. As he put his back to hers, attacking the vampires behind her, he caught a glimpse of Zachariah. He stood over Ashton, protecting the man as he slaughtered all of the vampires that came within arm’s reach of the two of them. Even as Scott watched, Zachariah grasped one by the neck, digging his fingers in, and tore the vampire’s throat out effortlessly. Then Zachariah looked toward them and yelled out.
“Riley, open the box!” he shouted. “Do it now or we’ll be over-run!”
Hearing Zachariah’s orders, Scott turned and grabbed at Riley’s backpack, unzipping it and pulling the box free. He shoved it into her hands and said, “Open it. I’ll guard you while you do.”
“But what’s it going to do?” Riley asked, taking the box from him. She sounded scared, like she didn’t want to do it, but something in the tone of her voice suggested that she would if someone ordered her to.
“I don’t know, but do it!”
Riley cast him one last worried glance and then stuffed her pistol into the waistband of her jeans. As the vampires surged toward them and Scott tried to beat them back, Riley dug her fingernails into the wax sealing the box shut and, with one last deep breath, ripped the top free from the box.
~*~
Zachariah’s heart hammered in his chest as he watched Riley pull the lid free from the box and drop it to the concrete floor. He had no idea what was about to happen, but his instincts were screaming at him to grab Ashton and run out the doors with him.
He was about to die, and he knew it.
The moment the lid left the box, the vampires surrounding Riley and Scott fell back from them, stumbling over each other in their haste to get away. A hush fell over the room as every eye stared at the box in Riley’s hands.
A thin gray smoke began to rise from the inside of the box, and Zachariah was reminded of a ghost as it hovered there, inches from Riley’s face. Riley stared at the smoke as it drifted there, and Zachariah held his breath, wondering what would happen next.
The smoke rushed forward, slamming into Riley and disappearing. She stumbled back a step at the impact, gasping, and then she went still, her eyes closed. Scott, standing beside her, lifted a hand, looking like he wanted to touch her but didn’t dare.
“Riley?” he whispered, the word carrying in the silence across the warehouse. There was no response from the young woman.
Elise appeared at his elbow. “Zachariah, I’m sorry,” she whispered. He glanced at her, and somehow, he knew that she knew what was about to happen to them. Like she’d seen it before. Elise pressed the locket she wore around her neck into his hand. “Please, find my sister for me,” she whispered, and then she handed him a sharp knife.
“What’s this for?” Zachariah asked.
“Me,” Elise said. At his startled look, she continued. “That weapon that’s about to be unleashed will kill every vampire in a ten block radius—maybe even larger. Neither of us can get out of here in time to avoid it. I don’t want to die like that. So save yourself. And then save my sister.” She tapped her chest. “Straight up, into the heart. Before it’s too late.”
Zachariah looked back to Riley again and saw she was still standing, unmoving, beside Scott. And as he stared, her eyes snapped open. But they weren’t the dark brown they’d always been. They weren’t even human. They were molten, a liquid gold color that swirled and glowed. There was nothing of Riley in the cold, hard, almost blank expression on her face. It was like she was possessed by something Zachariah had no comprehension of. And when she spoke, her voice rang like a bell, echoing and pure, flowing over the room like water.
“All of the vampires in this room must die.”
Then she lifted her arms and her head was thrown back, her body bending over backwards as a wave of pure sunlight began to build around her, getting brighter and brighter.
“Zachariah, now!” Elise insisted, grabbing his hand and guiding the tip of the knife she’d given him to her body, just below her ribs. “Do it now!”
As the light became unbearably bright, the vampires all around them began screaming in pain, and the smell of cooking flesh began to permeate the air. Zachariah could feel his own skin beginning to burn, and blisters were starting to form on Elise’s pretty face as she knelt there, waiting on him to deliver h
is blow.
“I’m sorry,” Elise said again. And then Zachariah drove the blade forward, up into her heart. Elise let out a soft sigh, and then she died, slipping away from him to collapse against the floor.
The light in the room reached a crescendo, and pain blasted through Zachariah’s head. He cried out, releasing the knife he’d just killed Elise with, and grasped his head in both hands, curling up on himself and screaming in agony. A shockwave burst through the room, blowing computers and desk and tables over and shattering every window in the building. Zachariah fell back on top of Ashton and, as the pain got the better of him, closed his eyes and tumbled into unconsciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The shockwave seemed to be the end of whatever was happening to Riley. As soon as it had dissipated, the light faded, dialing down until only Riley was left standing, still bowed backward, her body trembling from the force of whatever power had moved through it. As Scott watched from the spot on the floor where he’d fallen, the hazy gray smoke that had emerged from the box when she’d opened it pulled away from her, hovering before her for a moment before retreating back to the box. He dove forward and slammed the lid back onto it, breathing heavily and choking on the smoky, ashy feel of the air.
Then Riley collapsed onto the floor.
Scott spared only a momentary glance at the room around them, checking for danger, as he crawled to her still form. The vampires were gone, nothing but ash left in their places, drifting down from the ceiling as if it were snowing, swaths of it scattered across the concrete where the ones they’d fought had fallen. Scott knelt beside the slim woman, brushing ash and soot from her face and patting her on the cheeks, trying to rouse her from unconsciousness.
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