by Mary Hughes
Ric’s blood led Aiden to a row of townhouses lining the east side of the street. Aiden paused. Hiding in the trees and shadows of the backyards were one, two…no, three of Eloise’s vampire lieutenants. He took another reading. Ric was in the first basement.
Aiden misted to get past the vampires, a bit tricky with as much gear as he carried. He felt half his ordnance slipping, and snapped solid before he lost it, barely managing to make it inside past the watching lieutenants. Damn it. He’d tanked up again after sparring but apparently full veins and a day in the soil weren’t enough to completely replace his vampire edge. Thank goodness he hadn’t had to do a complete draining for Dirk. He’d seen the effects of that, and it wasn’t pretty.
Aiden clenched his will, mentally grabbed his gear and misted again. As bits slipped he arrowed as fast as he could down the stairs of the townhouse.
He snapped back in a rec room dated by its damp-smelling carpeting and peeling wood-panel veneer. Overlaying the musty odor was the earthy smell of an old-fashioned cellar. No humans but plenty of rats. Sharp on top was the scent of Ric and Eloise.
Aiden considered using the blood scent/taste to mist directly to Ric. But no, Eloise would expect that. Be ready with some sort of trap. Though it chafed, he’d have to use old-fashioned walking.
The physical smell led him through a doorway into a smaller room with more paneling, acoustic ceiling tile and a desk, lit by a desk lamp. An office of some sort, though it smelled stale and unused. Upstairs, he heard Eloise’s three vampires filtering into the townhouse. They stopped. Following him, but keeping their distance.
Aiden eased into the room, his gums and fingernail beds tingling, fangs and claws fighting to emerge.
The desk had been pushed away from the wall, revealing a section of peeled-up carpet, beneath which was an open metal hatch. The hole was stygian, even to his vampire eyes. But scent said Ric was down there. And by the tang, his friend was scared.
An earth-corer of a bad feeling drilled Aiden’s gut. But what choice did he have? He carefully lowered himself into the hole. No ladder or bottom met his feet. Ric’s presence was moving rapidly away. Aiden gritted teeth against frustration and dropped. Ten feet down he landed like a cat on soft soil, in a tunnel that smelled of freshly turned earth. Above him, the three vampires had moved into the basement.
“Well finally.” Eloise’s voice floated from half a block away, at the other end of the tunnel. “What took you so long? Never mind. Try to keep up.”
His instincts flared red alert. The trio could wait. He again considered mist, rejected it. Not only was Eloise a known hostile, Nosferatu laced his stronghold with traps specifically tuned to vampires. Aiden banged into a run.
The faint light from the office disappeared. His world tinted red. Without light, a human would be blind, but vampire eyes made their own.
Ahead, Ric and Eloise were at a T intersection. Eloise carried a bazooka on her back. He wondered what the hell good she thought that would do against dozens of Nosferatu’s guards. Ric’s shoulders were cramped, as if he was handcuffed.
They were still too far ahead, but Aiden would catch them as they paused to check for traps. He considered his options as he slowed to a silent glide. Incapacitate Eloise and try to extract Ric, or try to extract him under Eloise’s nose?
But they didn’t pause. Eloise grabbed Ric’s arm and sailed around the corner, straight into a cinder block passage.
Every hair on Aiden’s neck rose. If there were motion sensors…
Alarms whooped.
He ran after them, consigning Eloise to rot in hell.
At the tunnels’ intersection, precise glances, won from a thousand deadly situations, informed him of the existence and placement of motion detectors, trip wires…oh, this was not good at all. Instinct shouted at him to get out of there, now.
But he’d never leave Ric.
He put on a burst of speed.
Amid the jangle of sound Eloise ran, dragging a protesting Ric, ignoring all obstacles—including the tripwires. Aiden had nearly caught up when her foot hit one.
A dozen pencil-size arrows thwipped from tiny holes in the wall. Eloise ducked, barely evading them.
Ric wasn’t so lucky. Half a dozen hit him.
The thud-thud-thud turned Aiden’s stomach to acid. If the arrows were silver…he tamped down the need to mist to his best friend’s aid. Nosferatu’s wire would trip more than the arrows. Mist was the method of choice for escape. There’d be a trap specially tuned for the exposed state.
Flames shot out of the wall, inches from Aiden’s nose. He froze.
Ahead, Eloise tugged along a stumbling Ric. They turned a corner, disappearing from Aiden’s sight.
“Fuck.” The instant the flames ebbed, he shot forward, flying around the corner into a low-ceilinged chamber.
He nearly plowed into the ring of Lestat vampires. Eloise stood in the center. She shouted, “Get Nosferatu. Get him for me immediately.”
Her arm circled Ric’s bent frame. Ric held his belly, breathing heavily.
Something was very wrong, silver arrows or worse. Aiden needed to get Ric out now. Fighting his way through the mass of Lestats to snatch Ric from Eloise would take too long. He needed a distraction.
“I don’t know how you got in,” one of the Lestats was saying. “But we’ll get the master, all right. Then we’ll watch him take you apart.”
Aiden reached under his jacket for a smoke bomb. A pull of the ring and a toss, and the air around the gang was filled with white smoke so thick even vampire sight was obscured. In seconds, a dozen shadowy lumps bent over, coughing.
Aiden ghosted through and grabbed Ric’s arm. “Come on.”
But Ric pulled sluggishly away from him. Horror slashed Aiden’s chest.
Eloise saw and stabbed at Aiden with a knife. “No! I control Synnove, I control him. You’re not taking him from me again. He’s mine!”
He was an imbecile. Ric still thought Synnove was captive. Aiden opened his mouth to tell his friend the good news.
“Stop.”
The command rang in Aiden’s very cells, locking both mouth and legs.
It was Nosferatu, their maker.
“What is going on here?” The voice was dry and dead, like air from a sarcophagus opened after millenniums.
Aiden strained to move, but even his tremendous willpower only made his muscles twitch. As the vampire who made him, Nosferatu’s hypnotic power was magnified a hundred times. Last time Aiden and Ric went up against Nosferatu with an immune human to reverse the suggestion. This time they had nothing.
The master vampire strode unaffected through the haze, but he was old and powerful—or maybe he was simply as dry and dead as the smoke. His gaze, finding Eloise, softened slightly. “Welcome home, my dear. You’ll never leave me again.” His eyes flicked over Ric. “Holiday. You don’t look so good.”
He turned. “Blackthorne. Thank you for finding Eloise.” With a cold smile he raised what looked like a flare gun but was probably much more lethal. “Now you die.”
“No!” Eloise, still holding on to Ric, stepped between them. “This is not how it’s supposed to be.”
“My dear. Step aside while I deal with this scum.” Nosferatu lowered his voice. “I love you, my dear. I do not wish you hurt.”
“Love? Denying me any friends, locking me away?” She turned her glare on Aiden. “You were supposed to save me from this hellhole. You’re going to make up for that. Fight him, Aiden. Do what you should have done decades ago.”
Aiden clenched his fists, nodded and stepped forward. Nosferatu frowned. Eloise stepped back, a triumphant smile lighting her face.
As she dragged Ric past him, Aiden hissed, “Syn’s fine.” Ric blinked.
Eloise’s smile faltered.
Aiden seized Ric’s arm and yanked him from Eloise’s
grasp toward the exit. Eloise shrieked. This time Ric didn’t fight.
But he stumbled, then sagged against Aiden. Only extreme concentration and superb muscles kept Aiden from stumbling too. He shifted grips to lift his friend onto his shoulders.
It gave Eloise time to dart in front of the exit. “No! You have to fight for me.”
“I have to get my friend out.” He hefted Ric and prepared to rush her.
“You utter ass.” She unhitched the bazooka. “You’re not leaving me again!” She plopped the tube on her shoulder and launched the rocket.
Shock rolled cold through Aiden’s veins, but he was already moving. He dodged, barely in time. The rocket whizzed past.
It hit Nosferatu. The charge blew a hole in his chest.
The rocket was supercharged. The back blast threw Aiden and Ric into the opposite wall. Aiden hit so hard he bounced off and lost hold of Ric.
Reflex tucked Aiden into a force-expending roll. He came up a few feet short of where he’d started, on all fours, trembling on cracked bones, pain shooting along his legs and back, his ears ringing and his eyes flashing with fiery afterimages.
He closed his useless eyes and brought his nose up, nostrils flared. He smelled blood, Ric’s. He centered on the scent and opened his eyes.
A blurry Eloise was hoisting Ric to his feet. Farther away, blotchy Lestats grabbed the limp blob that was Nosferatu and dragged him away.
One of the Lestats hit a button on the wall. Whirling red lights blared warning. An ah-oo-gah cut through the ringing in Aiden’s ears.
Clang. A bulkhead-style door slammed down between him and the Lestats. More clangs echoed from farther away, more doors slamming down.
Eloise disappeared the other way with Ric.
Aiden stumbled up, into a stuttering, painful run. The supercharged blast and rock wall impact had shattered his bones and damaged deep tissue. All trying to knit, but his vampire healing was compromised too. Movement jarred his bones, grinding them together, shooting glass-shards of pain into him. He gasped.
For Ric. Panting, Aiden pressed on.
The corridor was a tear-streaked blur. Eloise disappeared around a corner. Aiden grit his teeth and ran, pushing himself to his limit and beyond, but he’d never forgive himself if Ric died when he could have given just a little bit more.
When he lost her he used Ric’s blood scent/taste to locate them, down long corridors to a doorway. He bolted through it.
Habit ticked who, what, where. Small chamber. Eloise to one side, bent over a shapeless lump with blond hair. Ric, pale, moaning, wasn’t moving any other way, severely injured, perhaps dying.
Eloise rolled him into a hatch. Aiden made a mad dash toward his friend. The sound of a body starting to slide down a chute came from the hatch.
Aiden leaped, desperate to stop Ric.
Eloise turned, arm raised—silver spike in her hand.
His momentum sealed his collision. Only severe torsion averted a slaying stroke of the spike. He twisted his half-healed body as hard as he could, angling his chest away, recracking vertebrae. He gasped through the pain, managed to mostly avoid her, but the tip of the spike slit a hot bloody line through his sleeve and into his arm.
His legs crashed with her thighs, pushing her against a lever. Her hands wrapped around it and she used it to push herself straight.
The hatch clanged closed.
Aiden fell and rolled, coming up on his feet, swaying. She lashed out with the spike, catching him from forehead to cheek. He tried to counterattack. She blew into mist and reformed near the doorway.
Blood ran hot into his eye, down the side of his face. Silver cuts healed human-slow, so he spat on his hand and wiped it. It stung and leaked ichor and only slowly closed. He stood there, panting, gathering his strength to destroy her.
“You dumb fuck,” she shrieked. “That hatch was my escape. But you shut it, you ass. Now how will I get out?” Her girlish face was smeared with soot, her blazing eyes stark within. “Huh, Aiden? You always know everything. How do I get out?” She waved the spike, her tone strident.
Part of him mourned for the girl she’d been. The friends they’d all been, once upon a time. He blinked blurry eyes—and knew by the acid spilling into his gut that he’d made a fatal mistake. She’d moved. His eyes sprang open and he spun but it was too late.
Pain drove into his back and exploded in his chest, spreading, like his ribs were being crushed. With unsteady fingers he pushed aside the flap of his jacket and looked down in stupefaction.
The point of the silver spike protruded from his left pectoral.
She’d rammed the spike into his back, between rows of grenades and ribs, stabbing him through the heart.
The beating muscle shut down.
Push it out. He had minutes of consciousness left, but only moments before lack of circulation made movement impossible. He fisted a hand and hammered the silver point, trying to pound it back through his chest.
He hissed. His hand burned like he’d skewered it with live flame. Worse, he’d only slid the stake back an inch or so. It was still embedded in his heart.
His leg muscles buckled and he staggered. Lack of blood flow had already started to deaden his extremities. He plucked numb, ineffective fingers at the hole in his chest.
No. It couldn’t end like this. Sunny…he had too much to live for. There had to be an alternative. He reached for his mist…intense pain from the silver spiked his concentration. He snapped solid. He tried to heal his heart around the spike, let the bubbling new flesh push it out. The silver burned the newly grown tissue, searing him with excruciating pain.
Metal hit his wrist.
Eloise had snapped on one handcuff. He fell to his knees, trying to escape the only way he could. Boots thudded dully in his ears, a couple of her lieutenants. At her signal, they surged forward, grabbed his arms and lifted.
He had no breath and his chest was crushing pain but it still took them both. Eloise wrestled the second cuff on him and jabbed the button. Electricity hummed. He stared in disbelief at his cuffed wrists.
One by one his organs and muscles shut down. He tried to suck in oxygen, but his lungs had stopped working long ago. His brain would be the last to go. One more chance. Using all his concentration, his will, and reached for his mist again. He began to spread apart…
The cuffs surged. Electricity zapped him solid.
Trapped.
She’d reloaded the bazooka with a regular charge before setting it down. If only he could get to it…but he couldn’t even move.
“We think we can reopen the tunnel, mistress,” one vampire said.
“We must go,” said the other.
“No! I’m not done yet.” Eloise kicked Aiden. “He’s not done yet. You go open the passageway. I’ll be along soon.”
The vampires dropped him on his side, and left. Eloise crooned, “Very soon.”
Aiden tried to move but the only muscles responding were on his face. He locked gazes with her and formed the word, “W-why?” He had no breath to actually say it.
She stood before him, fists on hips, an ugly sneer on her face. “You arrogant fuck. You have to ask?” She circled him. “You left me. Again!” She screamed it. “Tried to take Ric from me. Again.” She kicked him in the gut. “You crushed me when you left me but I thought you’d come back. I was only ten. I thought it was a mistake. I waited for you. We were partners, Aiden, more than partners. But you fucking did it fucking again!”
Aiden couldn’t believe it. Elias was right. Eloise had idealized Aiden into something he wasn’t and never had been. Deep down she had to know better. He used the last of his conscious strength to deny her words. To force her to see the truth. You chose to stay.
“No.” She leaned over him, her face dwindling in his darkening gaze, her breath playing across his face. “Never. It’s your
fault. Not mine. You left me. The great Aiden Blackthorne, first among assassins. Not so great now.” Her venomous smile appeared in the pinhole of vision left to him.
Aiden had sometimes wondered how he’d die the final death. Now he wished she’d stop talking and just do it. But he recognized her talking for what it really was—working up the courage to take the life of a male who was once her friend.
“I’ve learned a few things since you abandoned me, Aiden. Are you proud? ‘Always use the right tools for the job.’ I have a stake for your heart, and a blade for your neck.” She flashed a wickedly glinting silver knife. “I also learned if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. So I’ll make this hurt.”
His last thoughts were of Sunny.
Chapter Twenty
The evening after I sparred Aiden Blackthorne, I woke in a panic.
The truck terminal. The vampires. Not taking the killing shot. Dirk… No, Aiden had said my brother would be okay, and I trusted Aiden. Strange, trusting an assassin I’d only known a few days. Maybe because, in his own way, he was a protector like me. I’d told Mom that Dirk was away on assignment and not to worry because he was fine, and she believed it because I believed it too.
So what was the churning in my gut?
I was just starting patrol, trying to talk myself out of heading past Dawn Truck Lines, when the jangle of my cell phone startled me. I snatched it up. Elena.
“Sunny? Have you seen Blackthorne lately?”
“No, not since last night. Why?”
“I just heard from Alexis Byornsson. She was kinda hyper, talking about her sister and Blackthorne and the Museum Campus—and blood. But when I asked for details she backed off. I called Blackthorne but he didn’t answer so I called Alexis’s sister Synnove but she didn’t answer. Then I tried Blackthorne’s bromance Ric Holiday and he didn’t answer. I don’t know what’s going on but it feels way off. I don’t like it.”
