The couple closest to the door stumbled back; tears streamed down their faces as they coughed. The woman clasped her throat before falling to her knees. Her coughing spasms abruptly ended when she slumped to the floor. The vamp with her stumbled back a few more feet and collapsed to his knees. When he tried to rise again, his knees wobbled and his legs gave out; he face-planted onto the floor.
“Holy shit,” Jack said as he rose to stand beside Mike.
The remaining patrons filling the tables leapt to their feet as the smoke twisted insidiously through the air until it covered the entire front half of the bar. If he hadn’t been a vampire, he never would have seen the vamps and humans falling to the ground within the thick mass. Then the front door, tables, chairs, and customers overtaken by the smoke were swallowed by the cloud.
The rest of the crowd continued to stumble away from the smoke, but it was only a matter of time before it consumed them all.
Mike tasted something bitter on the air as the cloying smoke clogged his nostrils. LeNae, her face pale and her eyes wide with horror, backed into the shelves of booze lining the wall. Two bottles rocked precariously before toppling off and shattering at her feet. LeNae jumped and bit back a scream when liquid splashed over her sneakers.
More patrons collapsed while the rest backed into the bar as the smoke neared.
“What is going on?” Jack demanded.
Grasping his beer bottle by the neck, Jack bashed it against the bar. He held the jagged remains before him as he prepared for something to charge out of the smoke at them.
“Is there a back way out of here?” Mike shouted at LeNae and slapped his hand on the bar to get her attention.
Her eyes rolled toward him; her fingers reflexively gripped the shelf, but she didn’t respond. Reaching into his coat, he removed one of the stakes tucked into a pocket there. He suspected there were vampires out there, waiting for them to succumb. Only a vamp would have a gas strong enough to knock out or kill another vampire.
Placing his hands on the bar, Doug leapt over it and strode toward LeNae while speaking to her in a soothing tone. “Is there another way out of here, gorgeous?”
Adjusting his grip on the weapon, Jack jumped onto the bar and slid over it. Mike kept his eyes on the smoke and the few vampires and humans still standing as he lifted himself onto the bar and over the top.
Doug had taken LeNae’s hand, and she calmed as she spoke with him. “This way,” LeNae said when Mike stepped next to her.
LeNae kept her hand in Doug’s as she led them down the back of the bar toward the opening at the end. She paused to remove a key ring from under the cash register. To the left of the bar was a set of silver, swinging doors. Two of the customers slipped through the doors, but they quickly reemerged.
“There’s no way out through there!” one of the men shouted at LeNae.
“I didn’t say there was,” LeNae retorted as she shouldered her way past him.
Mike’s nostrils burned, and tears pricked his eyes as the smoke spread to their area of the bar. Then another rattling ting bounced off the floor, and Mike realized someone had thrown another smoke canister into the building. They only had a minute or two to escape before the smoke overtook them too.
His hands fisted as he resisted the impulse to charge through the smoke and destroy whoever was doing this, but even if he held his breath, he doubted he would make it out the front door before the smoke overwhelmed him.
He exchanged troubled glances with Doug and Jack as the canister settled into place and everyone froze. The distinct thud of boots hitting wood broke the ensuing silence. Someone had entered the bar—multiple someones judging by the vibration of the floor beneath his feet. The smoke muffled the approaching footsteps, but Mike spotted shadows slipping through the haze toward them.
We’re being hunted.
He didn’t know where the thought came from, but once it hit him, he knew it was true. But by who and why?
Some of the patrons balked when LeNae led them into the smoke, but Mike held his breath and followed the woman. They had no other choice but to trust her, and he didn’t think she could fake her earlier terror. LeNae traveled only ten feet through the smoke before splitting off into another hallway and breaking into a run.
The air here in the hall was less choked with smoke than the rest of the building, but it was spreading through here too. Mike released his breath on a harsh exhale as he ran behind LeNae to another set of swinging doors.
LeNae pushed through the doors to reveal a shadowed room full of dust-covered, stainless-steel appliances. The appliances were of little use to most of the new customers of this establishment, but they’d been of some use to the previous owners.
“There’s no exit this way either!” one of the customers protested, apparently knowing the restaurant well.
Mike’s lips skimmed back as he focused on LeNae. If she’d led them into a trap, he didn’t care if it was the last thing he ever did, he’d kill her.
LeNae held up her arm, and the keys in her hand jangled. “One of these will open the door.”
“It better,” Jack growled, and Mike agreed.
At the end of the room, a thick, steel door blocked the way out. LeNae’s hands shook, and the keys clicked together as she sorted through them in search of the one she sought.
“Hurry,” one of the women urged. “They’re coming.”
Mike retreated and turned so he could see anything coming through the swinging doors. He didn’t hear any more footsteps, but another canister bounced off the walls and floor. Before the noise stopped, smoke started seeping through the cracks around the doors.
He glanced back at Jack and Doug before slipping his hand inside his coat. Being an ex-Boy Scout, and surviving this many years amid vampires and humans, had taught him always to be prepared. The weapons stashed inside his coat wouldn’t do much against smoke, but if any of the fuckers who had done this came near him, he’d fight them to the death.
He returned the stake to his pocket and slid his crossbow free. He checked to make sure it was loaded before tying the string at the end of it to a belt loop on his jeans and releasing it to hang at his side. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the stake.
Jack came to stand beside him with his broken bottle top in one hand and a stake in the other. Doug remained with LeNae, talking calmly with her as she chewed on her bottom lip and tried to fit another key into the lock.
“I can’t… I can’t remember!” she cried.
“Can we break through the door?” Mike demanded. There were two other vampires and a human with them; they might be able to tear the steel down.
“No, the owner designed it so no one could get in or out this way without a key. The front door looks like wood, but it’s also steel. He was concerned about vamps ripping him off. I… I can’t find the key!” LeNae wailed.
“It’s okay,” Doug assured her. “Let me see the keys, and I’ll try them.”
Doug took the keys from her and tried another one in the lock.
“He’s the vampire equivalent of Mother Teresa,” Jack muttered. “What do you think is going on here?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not good.”
“Oh, it’s not? I assumed they were coming to take us to Disneyland,” Jack quipped.
Mike glared at him but held his tongue. He knew his friend well enough to know that when Jack was stressed, he became more sarcastic. Under normal conditions, Jack could be as friendly as a yellowjacket, but when he was tense, Jack was as friendly as a hornet’s nest someone bashed with a baseball bat.
“I hope Mickey eats you,” Mike muttered.
“We have no idea what’s coming through those doors, so he might,” Jack replied.
“I’ve got the key,” Doug said, drawing Mike and Jack’s attention to him.
The lock clicked seconds before the door swung open. A flash lit the night beyond the door before Doug started jerking like he’d stepped on a live wire. LeNae reached for him but p
ulled her hands back.
“Doug!” Mike yelled as a familiar clatter sounded seconds before smoke started filling the kitchen.
With their hope of getting away dwindling, the remaining patrons panicked. Two of them turned and fled toward the swinging doors while another raced toward the steel door Doug had opened while Doug continued his odd dance. LeNae remained frozen with her hand over her mouth, but the woman running toward the door darted past Doug and plunged outside. Her scream pierced the air before abruptly cutting off.
Adrenaline flooded Mike’s system; his fangs elongated as he searched for an enemy he could fight, but he saw no one through the smoke and confusion. When Doug groaned, Mike spun away from the doors and ran for his friend. He was only feet away when two, simultaneous blows pounded his back and chest.
Pain raced through him as sharp points pierced his skin and lodged inside him. His body made the same awkward, jerking motion as Doug’s when electricity flooded it. The scent of burnt hair and flesh filled his nostrils, and he realized it was coming from him. A hand curled around the edge of the door Doug had opened; against the steel, the long red fingernails, honed into lethal points, were a vibrant splash of color before they retreated.
The color of death.
The next spasm caused him to chomp on his tongue, and blood flooded his mouth. Mike couldn’t see Jack anymore as his vision dwindled to a pinpoint on Doug. He tried to take another step toward Doug when his friend hit his knees. Mike fought against going down, but his knees wobbled with his next step.
Jack shouted behind him, but the blackness creeping in around the edges of his vision made it impossible to see more than a foot or two in front of him anymore. When his chin drooped against his chest, blackness swelled and took him under.
Chapter Three
Mollie shifted uncomfortably in the steel cage she’d called home since yesterday. She eyed the bars in front of her with hatred. The dim light of the moon crept through the cracks in the boards of the barn, but Mollie couldn’t see much beyond the bars surrounding her. If she ever got out of this mess, she’d kill every single person involved in whatever this was.
Never before had she contemplated murder, but she gleefully did so now. Because if she didn’t contemplate murder, then the terror would sink back in, and the last time the terror sank in, she’d become a raving lunatic who yanked uselessly on her bars and screamed her throat raw. She’d uttered the most animalistic sounds she’d ever heard—sounds she never expected to hear coming from her.
But that was because her captors had come inside, opened Aida’s cage, and taken a struggling Aida away. Mollie tried not to look at where her sister had been locked in her cage only hours ago, but her gaze was irresistibly drawn back to it.
Where had they taken her little sister? What were they doing to her?
Images of sex trafficking, forced prostitution, rape, and every other appalling thing she’d ever heard happening to kidnapped people flooded her mind. Closing her eyes, she rubbed at her eyelids as she resisted another meltdown.
Not Aida, please not Aida.
Mollie would give anything to be the one they’d taken from here instead of her beautiful, vibrant, eighteen-year-old sister. Aida had endured so much bad over the years, to have her experiencing whatever she was now…
When madness started creeping around the edges of her mind, Mollie shut down the possibilities. As tempting as it was to give in to the screaming again, she’d never get out of this mess if she went bonkers.
Deep breaths, relax, in and out. Her years of yoga and counseling were not helping, not when facing so many unknown possibilities. She didn’t care what became of her, but she wanted her sister back, now.
Shifting, she tried to find a more comfortable position to sit, but the five-by-five steel cage wasn’t built to accommodate someone of her five-ten height and the bars under her dug into her ass. After being in it for at least a day, her legs and back were screaming in protest.
She’d explored the cell for hours and examined every bar for weakness after first waking. She’d tried picking the lock with two of the bobby pins tucked into her hair, but working from behind the lock in the dark had rendered her attempts useless. Afterward, she tucked the ruined bobby pins into her bra.
Escape seemed impossible, but she wouldn’t give up on getting out of here.
She glanced at the small, silver pan tucked into the corner of her cage and almost kicked it against the bars. The only problem was, she’d broken down a few hours ago and used it to relieve herself. If she kicked it, she’d only wind up covered in her urine. She could pour it outside her bars and onto the dirt floor of the cavernous barn, but she was hoping her jailers would come back to remove it and she would have a chance to attack them.
The chances of that happening were probably slim, considering they hadn’t opened her cage since she was tossed into it, but she’d bet on slim over nothing any day. They kept her cage locked the one time they bothered to bring her food, and her captors hadn’t opened it the two times they slid a small cup of water through the bars.
At first, Mollie refused to drink the water and eat. She had no idea what these bastards had done to it, but when she saw some of the other people in the cages surrounding her eating and drinking, she conceded to the water but refused the food. She didn’t trust it would be okay, and there were others who weren’t eating.
Granted, those others were only given cups of water and no food, but there had to be a reason for that. Mollie wondered if it was because they refused food before or were already drugged, had experiments or whatever done to them, and were now being starved to death because they were considered useless.
Shifting again, Mollie winced when her tailbone dug into the bars beneath her, making it impossible to get comfortable or sleep. Exhaustion succeeded in pulling her under a few hours ago, and she’d dozed for a bit, but like food, sleep was scarce.
Her stomach rumbled as her thoughts returned to food; she tuned out the noise and the pangs following it. She’d gone without food for longer than this, so if these pricks thought she would cave and eat, they had another think coming.
No one could starve her any more than she’d starved herself for more years than she cared to recall.
When her stomach gave another loud rumble, she dug in to her pocket and fished out her crushed pack of gum. They’d taken her wallet and coat, but left her with the gum. Pulling out a piece, she unwrapped it and slid it into her mouth. It didn’t ease her hunger, but the act of chewing made her feel better.
Plus, the smell of spearmint filling her nose was much better than the human waste and body odor scent of the barn. She’d been in a few barns before, at a fair. She’d examined the animals and held her mom’s hand as they walked through the cows, sheep, horses, and chickens on display. The scent of their shit and animal aroma had been overwhelming, but she’d also smelled hay and feed. In this place, she detected only the faint hint of hay or straw and no animals.
The two-story-tall doors at the far end of the barn suddenly slid open, each of them going in opposite directions. The small influx of light entering through the doors, nearly two hundred feet away from her, caused Mollie to blink even as she strained to see more.
She sat up and gripped her bars. She wished she could kneel, but the last time she tried, her knees dug into the bars beneath her.
Aida! Are they bringing Aida back?
She held her breath as anticipation warred within her. Please, please, let them be bringing her back!
From the numerous cages surrounding her, some of the other people sat up to see what was happening. The last time the doors opened, they’d come in and removed Aida.
In the faint glow of the headlights, dust motes danced on the air as the man who opened the door turned away. When the doors opened for their first feeding, Mollie tried counting the cages within the massive barn, but there were so many around her that she lost track after fifty. Most of those fifty were full of men and women.
> If this was a sex trafficking ring, then the operators weren’t picky about age, as some of the men and women looked to be in their fifties or sixties, and others appeared to be in their teens or early twenties.
She believed they were still somewhere in Canada, but she couldn’t be sure. The last town she remembered before her car broke down had a population not much bigger than this barn, yet somehow these sicko perverts managed to gather quite the collection here.
But then, for all she knew, they weren’t in Canada anymore. They could be somewhere in the United States, and she’d have no idea. The last thing she remembered was trying to change her flat tire, someone stopping to offer help, and then blackness.
She’d woken here afterward. Judging by the time on her grandpop’s Rolex wristwatch when she awoke, Mollie assumed she was only unconscious for a couple of hours. But for all she knew, it could have been more than fifteen hours or a day later.
That meant she could be beyond the U.S. as she could have been on a freaking plane without knowing it. They could be in Europe or Mexico right now. Her head started pounding, and she decided not to think about it. She’d never be able to puzzle out where she was while caged.
When she first woke, with cottonmouth and a headache, Aida was sleeping in the cage next to hers, but that was twelve hours ago. They’d taken Aida from her two hours ago. She’d kept careful track of time since waking; it was the only thing she could control in this place.
The man reemerged, and the headlights pulled away as the truck turned around. Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the lights on the back of the vehicle, the man waved his hands in the air to direct the driver into the barn. The backup alarm sounded until the box truck came a few feet inside the barn doors.
When the alarm stopped, the man gripped the back doors and flung them open. An interior light turned on to reveal the bodies piled inside. From both sides of the truck, men and women appeared and climbed inside. Like an assembly line from Hell, they started removing the bodies and tossing them out to their waiting cohorts.
Consumed: The Vampire Awakenings, Book 8 Page 2
