by Michele Hauf
She should have laughed at his threat. Should have come back with something witty, something perfect that would let him know that she wasn’t afraid of him. That she could take him down any moment she chose to. But for some reason her tongue was tied.
A cacophony of locks springing open rumbled through the air. Xana gasped then glanced down the hallway, looking for Cayman once more. When she turned back, Marius was gone. That was her cue to leave. She turned and headed for the stairs. She’d wait for Cayman upstairs, away from these coffins. Away from Marius.
“You ready?” Cayman asked, seemingly coming from nowhere.
Xana grabbed him by the arm. “Damn you, Cayman. Where have you been?”
“Getting this.” He held up a small plastic case. “Are the charges placed?”
“Yes, but we’ve got company—Marius. He took my gun, and for some reason he was asking for you and for some kind of cylinder.”
Cayman’s blue eyes swept the room. Only they weren’t quite the blue they’d always been. Somehow they were different, almost mirrorlike and incandescent. “What’s up with your eyes?” she demanded.
“What?” Cayman asked, taking a step back.
“I don’t know. They look—” she groped for the right word “—pale.”
Cayman blinked and he was her brother again, the same guy who had always been there for her—on the day she was born and on the afternoon their parents died. “We’d better move.” He glanced furtively around him.
“You got that right.”
“Set the charges then meet me back at the top of the road.” He placed a plastic case into the pocket of her blouse inside her jacket. “Make sure nothing happens to that case. Trust no one.” Cayman turned and started up the stairwell.
“What? Cayman? Damn.”
A loud sound popped, then the whoosh of vacuum-released hydraulics. One by one, the coffin doors opened. “Shit!” Xana ran to the timer hooked to the fuses that was spread across the room and activated the clock preset to count down from three minutes. “Time to roll.”
She saw Cayman flying up the stairs, taking them three at a time. Xana followed, but couldn’t catch up as they hurried up one flight after another. She ran through the warehouse past the boxes of junk art and vases. At the other end of the room, Cayman burst through the door into the front offices. Xana glanced at her watch as she followed. “Twenty-five seconds ‘til the blast.”
She bolted forward, running down one hallway and then another before finally pushing through the offices as shock waves ripped through the building. She tore out the glass front door, covered her head and kept running. The blast shook the ground beneath her. She faltered, trying to find her footing.
A violent roar cracked the sky. Windows shattered. An intense wave of heat slammed into her, lifting her off her feet and throwing her to the ground. Birds took flight with raucous screeches and squawks. Glass and debris pelted her neck and shoulders. After a moment, the ground settled and the clamor dimmed to a chorus of creaks and groans of tortured metal.
Xana lay beneath a bush and took mental inventory of her extremities. She hurt everywhere, her ears rang, her eyes stung. When the smoke thinned, she stood on wobbly legs and looked around her. Her heart dropped, dread filling the empty space. Cayman wasn’t in the parking lot or lying on the hillside or anywhere.
“Cayman!” she yelled, and limped stiffly toward the building. She looked through the shattered, gaping opening. He was nowhere to be seen.
Intense panic gripped her. She headed around the back of the building. A side door flew open in front of her. Smoke billowed out the doorway. Marius, his black eyes glowing red, stormed out the door. Stunned, Xana stopped. Before she could catch her breath, he was gone.
She kept walking. Where was Cayman? He’d been ahead of her. He had to have gotten out, unless there was something else he’d wanted to do. She entered through the side door into the building once more and immediately doubled over. The room was a shambles, burning walls and equipment released noxious gasses. High-pitched screams filled the air—vampires succumbing to the flames.
Xana hurried back out the door and up the road toward her truck. Cayman said he’d be there. But he wasn’t. There was no sign of him anywhere. Had he left on his own? Without her? That would have been shitty, but she wanted to believe it because the alternative was not something she could grasp. Her brother was nose-deep into something and from the look of things, it wasn’t something good.
Trust no one.
She recalled his last words and shivered.
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER a moment of waiting by her truck, Xana turned and hurried back down the hill toward the warehouse. Cayman could not have just disappeared. He had to be here. Somewhere. The building’s automatic fire sprinklers had extinguished most of the flames. She poked around inside the building, looking over cubicle walls, under desks and fallen partitions, looking for Cayman. He must be there. But he wasn’t.
Her heart constricted with fear. He had been in front of her. He had to have gotten out. Unless he couldn’t. She turned a corner and ran straight into Marius. Without thinking and with an anxiety-laden roar, she launched herself on him, stake in hand. “Where is he?” she demanded.
Marius grabbed her by the neck and pushed her against the wall. She leveraged the stake between them and pushed it against his chest. “Let me go,” she threatened.
“You first.”
“Where is my brother?”
“Where is the formula?”
This couldn’t end well. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now let me—”
The next thing she knew she was flying through the air as if she weighed no more than a child’s toy. She hit the wall with a teeth-chattering thud then slid to the floor. She waited for the stars to stop circling then with a derisive shake, pushed to her feet. Damn, she wished she had her gun.
“You should have played possum,” Marius scolded, his lips curving into a smile, revealing sharp white teeth elongated into fine chiseled points.
“What fun would that be?” Xana picked up a broken wooden leg from a chair and thudded it against the palm of her hand. God, she looked stupid. Like this little piece of splintered wood would stop someone as old and strong as Marius, but she wasn’t about to stand there and let him think of her as a weak little girl he could easily whip. Even if he could.
She drew back and bent low, her weight evenly distributed on the balls of her feet as she contemplated what she should do next and how the hell she was going to get out of there. In an instant, Marius had her once more shoved against the wall, her feet dangling mere inches above the ground. Long fingers gripped her neck, and squeezed. The broken leg dropped to the floor with a loud clatter.
“Are you going to make me ask again?”
“I don’t know,” Xana spluttered. She knew he had the strength to snap her neck with no more effort than snapping a decayed twig. But he wouldn’t as long as he thought she could help him.
She squirmed in his grasp. Marius’s grip tightened. “If you don’t want me to dismember you, finger by finger, limb by limb, while you lay on the ground screaming for your daddy, then give me the cylinder.”
Xana didn’t doubt for a second that Marius would live up to his threat. “What’s so important about this cylinder?”
Marius leaned in close, his lips mere inches from hers, his black gaze warming her skin, even as she refused to look into it. Lesson 101 in dealing with vampires—never look them in the eyes unless you want your free will pulverized to mush. But she had to breathe, and Marius’s breath smelled sweet as it filled her mouth and nose and slowly moved down her throat to expand in her lungs.
Xana gagged, trying to stop the sensation crawling through her. Marius was an old vampire and the most powerful she had ever run across. He had tricks up his sleeve that would make her head spin. Languid warmth coursed through her, relaxing her muscles, easing her mind. For a second, she actually believed everything was going to
be okay.
“What are you doing to me?” She tried to pull away, to escape the sickly sweet odor, but only succeeded in butting the back of her head against the wall.
A sharp sting pierced her skin as he sank his fangs into her neck. The sensation burned hot, lighting a fire in her veins as Marius’s mouth worked against her throat, sucking, pulling as he drank. A sudden eroticism swept over her, and against her will, against every fiber in her being, she felt desire surge, riding her heated blood as it pulsed through her veins.
She fought it with every ounce of willpower she had, but to no avail. Marius laughed, the sound rumbling deep in his throat and vibrating against her chest.
“I love this. Xana Scorpio, fearless vampire hunter, is now pinned against the wall, helpless against my ministrations. Are you afraid of what I might do to you? Afraid of the sensations flooding though your very human body?”
“Go to hell!”
He laughed again, obviously enjoying himself. “Humans really are victims of the blood coursing through them, flowing and ebbing like the tide. You don’t have nearly as much control or power over yourselves as you think you have. But you try, you fight, you play, making the game oh, so sweet.”
Xana watched the blood lining the inside of his lips drip down the side of his mouth and knew it was her own. He wiped the crimson liquid off his chin then sucked it off his finger. “I love the taste of you.”
Xana’s chest tightened with revulsion … and fear.
“I love how you taste so similar to your brother.”
Rage laced her mind, spinning it out of control. Had Marius snatched Cayman from the warehouse? Had he killed him while she’d been lying in the bushes outside? How long had she been there? Seconds? Minutes?
Marius bit her again, and this time, as he drank, a peaceful, languid sensation came over her. Even as she pushed against his rock-solid chest, a part of her wanted to throw in the towel, to let her eyes drift closed and sleep—to join her parents in whatever hell existed beyond this place, even if it was nothing but a deep yawning abyss of darkness.
Marius released her and Xana slumped to the floor. Sensations flooded back—fear, anxiety, rage—while dizziness swam through her head.
The sound of approaching sirens painfully pierced her temples.
He shoved his hand inside her breast pocket, his hard grasp scraping against her tightened nipple. “Cayman put a case in this pocket. Where is it?”
Xana turned surprised eyes on her empty pocket. Good question.
“It was the case for the blasting caps I needed to detonate the explosives,” she muttered, hoping he’d believe her. Hoping he’d let her go. He didn’t. Disoriented and confused she looked up at him, as his tight grasp on her neck cut off her circulation. Her vision wavered as darkness encroached. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
And then there was nothing.
As the sirens grew louder with the approach of the fire trucks, Marius picked up the woman and quickly disappeared into the woods, heading down the mountain to where his car was parked. He didn’t know what Cayman and his sister were up to or why they were here, but he’d make them sorry they blew up his warehouse. That formula had been inside and the two annoying humans had obviously beat him to it. But if Cayman ever wanted to see his dear sister again, he would return it. And quick.
Marius had to get that formula for the virus to his people tonight before this situation got any worse. He’d had to kill three of his brethren last night. Who knew how many more were infected. He didn’t have the time or the patience to play the human’s game.
He resisted the urge to push the accelerator to the floor as he navigated the winding road, passing one emergency vehicle after another. He almost wished he could stick around and see what lies the humans would tell each other about what they were about to discover in the basement of the warehouse. Fire was a great cleanser, but it wouldn’t erase everything.
When Marius first learned about the Alliance and their virus, he hadn’t believed it could be true. Why should he? The arrogance. The audacity of humans thinking they could conquer the vampire. That they could mimic the genetic structure and create “super” humans. It was ridiculous.
But he’d seen the coffins and the abominations within them. But so far, he’d yet to see a human survive the experiments. Still, he was more concerned about what was happening to the vampires that had been lured into their plan. Somehow the experiments had infected them with a virus that replicated and destroyed, turning friends into vicious, rabid killers with no soul, no conscience, no semblance of who they really were.
He had to stop it.
But to do that he needed the formula from the experiments the Alliance had been conducting. He needed that cylinder. And he would get it, because he knew Cayman well enough to know there was only one thing in this entire world that man valued and Marius had just dumped it in his backseat.
The pretty little Xana would look nice perched on his hook, now all he needed to do was reel Cayman in.
Xana opened her eyes. The first thing she was aware of was the pain shooting through her skull. The second was the chill seeping into her skin. Her eyes widened. Where were her clothes? She tried to move, but couldn’t. Both her hands were tied above her, and each foot was strapped to a bed post by … silk scarves? Son of a bitch!
The bastard had tied her spread-eagle to the bed.
Panic fired through her mind, zipping across her nerve endings. She writhed, pulling at her restraints. Suddenly, fluorescent light lit the room, burning her eyes and sending a fresh arrow of pain shooting through her temples.
“Oh, good, you’re finally awake,” Marius said as he walked into the room.
With all the strength in her legs, she pulled at her entrapments and cringed as they tightened around her ankles. Tears of anger and frustration filled her eyes. Furiously, she blinked them back. “Where are my clothes?”
“Does it matter? You look much more beautiful as you are.”
She stared down at herself. The only clothing she still wore was her white satin thong. The bastard was trying to make her feel vulnerable. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She steeled her eyes and glared at him. “What do you want with me?”
“I want the formula and now that I have you, your brother is going to bring it to me.” He walked closer, trailing the tip of his finger up her leg. “How have you been, Xana?”
“Just fine, thanks,” she said through gritted teeth.
He sat on the edge of the bed and grinned. It was eerie—seductive, charming and deadly. Monsters should not look so damned hot. Leaning in close, he ran his finger along the groove in her stomach.
“Don’t touch me.” She said the words softly, but stared at him with such fury her eyes felt like hard-burning orbs in her skull.
She was going to kill him.
“You really are a lovely woman.”
She ignored him. He was trying to get to her with his mind games. He hovered closer. She looked at his mouth, his deep red lips, made all the more crimson by the pale tint of his skin. Long dark hair framed his face. His dark eyes were … mesmerizing. Seductive. She glanced away.
“Cayman will bring me the formula, and then he will help me and we will all work together.”
“You’re lying.” She bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming at him and tasted the tinny metallic flavor of her blood.
He stared at her lip and seemed momentarily distracted.
Damn.
He leaned closer. “Am I? Did you know he told me to meet him at that warehouse? It looks as if he’s left us both … hanging.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You’re right, why should you? Except now it appears you might have lost him, too. You might be … alone in the world.” There was a tiny glint of pleasure on his face as he said the words.
Had he been responsible for what had happened to Cayman? Had Cayman played some stupid game with Marius and lost? For the first time
since she opened her eyes, she felt real grab-you-by-the-guts-and-twist fear. Her outrage and anger evaporated.
“What do you know about my brother?”
“What makes you think I know anything?” Marius laughed, then the smile disappeared and his face turned cold, freezing the blood in her veins. “What do you know about the Alliance?” he asked. “About the warehouse we were in?”
“Nothing.” This time she whined. She hated it. Hated that she couldn’t hold on to her fury. Hated that the fear was seeping in. She felt a slight tickle on the inside of her thigh and tried desperately to clamp her legs together, but all she succeeded in doing was tightening the restraints around her ankles until they cut off her circulation and burned.
“Don’t you and your brother talk?”
“Please, let me go,” she pleaded, her bravado vanishing and quickly being replaced by Miss Timid-and-Scared.
He bent his face toward the juncture between her thighs.
“What are you doing?” she cried as panic rose in her throat.
“I love this spot, where the flesh is so soft and creamy.”
A flash of burning pain exploded in her thigh. “Stop,” she screamed. He was biting her! Tearing into her skin. She ripped at her restraints, thrashing on the bed, trying desperately to pull away from him. The silk ripped, nearly freeing her left leg.
The burning in her thigh dulled, spreading languid warmth through her body. Her muscles relaxed. He continued sucking her thigh, until her breathing became shallow and her breasts swelled, reaching, aching.
A hot tingling ignited beneath the satin thong, and she squirmed, growing light-headed. To her horror, a moan escaped her wet lips. Marius lifted his face from her thigh and stared at her, blood dripping down his chin and landing on the white satin where it pooled and spread into the fragile threads.
She knew she shouldn’t look into his eyes, but she was past caring. “Please,” she whimpered. Do it again, take more, take her.
Fury lit a fire in his eyes. “The Alliance? The experiments?”
