by Tricia Owens
Elliott’s head began to buzz.
“How badly do you wish to be with me…Elliott?”
The Count had never spoken his name before. The shock of it lit his entire body. But the lightning bolt of intrigue he felt was wrong. Elliott knew this in his gut. He didn’t need to examine the moral failure of turning against the others so the vampire could have his revenge. It was as plain as the hunger on the Count’s face.
Yet why was Elliott considering it?
He looked down at Sheridan, lying unconscious in his lap. He had done this to her. He had fought her to defend the Count. Would it take much more to align himself with the Count against The Architect?
He stared at Sheridan’s lax features and said, “I made a terrible mistake once in my life. I won’t make another.” It hurt, but he looked up to meet the Count’s fathomless eyes. “Not even to be with you. I’m sorry.”
Muscles pinched around the vampire’s eyes. “Then you are prey like the rest.”
Red filled Elliott’s vision as the Count swooped down.
So this is how I die.
Chapter 14
Penelope, the graveyard shift Head of Security, claimed she hadn’t seen Elliott or Sheridan but promised that she and her partner would keep an eye out for them and let me know via walkie talkie if they found either of them. The Sinistera wasn’t large, but it was large enough. Wandering around wasn’t the best use of my time, so I narrowed my efforts.
I was heading for the ground floor kitchen when Taurus abruptly blocked my path just outside the doors.
“Something’s going on,” the KE specialist said bluntly. “Housekeeping just picked up another body. It was messy.”
“There’s something in the hotel. I’m dealing with it.”
His dark eyebrows rose slightly as he took in my holstered guns. “You’re not on the clock.”
“Neither are you.”
“I want to know what the hell’s going on.”
“It doesn’t involve you, Taurus. This isn’t a job. I’m not getting paid. That’s all you care about, right?”
He nearly smiled. “Call me curious. I’m coming with you.”
I didn’t want to waste more time arguing with him. I pushed past him and entered the kitchen. The basement was accessed via the employee elevator, which was located beside the walk-in coolers. Though I’d never ridden this elevator down since I’d been assured that the statuary guard protected the basement, I’d always been curious about this area.
When we reached the bottom level and the doors opened, I expected a dungeon, or at least something dank and ominous. But the hall we stepped into was concrete lined and immaculate. The floor was polished to a high shine and the walls, though made of cinderblock, had been painted a creamy beige, softening their harshness. I didn’t see a speck of dust. Overhead ran a track of bright lights that obliterated shadows. Our footsteps echoed hollowly, and far ahead of us.
“Does the basement encompass the entire lot?” I asked in amazement as we continued to walk along the shiny floor.
Taurus shrugged. “Never went far enough to find out. When Housekeeping deposits bodies, we use a conveyor, just up there.” He pointed ahead, and sure enough, a large square door the approximate height and width of a loveseat was inset into the wall. “I’ve looked inside,” he said as we passed it. “The belt is automated, activated by weight. It carries everything forward.”
“You don’t question why the bodies end up here and not in a morgue?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t question a lot of things. Smarter that way.”
“You might want to rethink that,” I told him. “The bodies you guys keep finding? They’re victims of something the government created and which is running loose through the hotel.”
“So we’ll kill it and move on.”
I stared, incredulous, at his profile. “It doesn’t bother you that men made this thing and they might make more of them?”
Taurus shook his head. “I’m here for the jobs. For the money. All that propaganda The Architect spouted means nothing to me.”
My first instinct was to be disgusted by his selfishness, but I reminded myself that I didn’t know his story. What had happened to me hadn’t happened to him.
“Innocent people have died and will continue to die if we don’t do something. The Specials are in a position to do that something. If you sit out, and we fail because we lacked your strength—you don’t think that’s going to haunt you?”
“Lots of things haunt me,” he said in his low, rumbly voice. But though he’d tried to sound nonchalant, he didn’t fool me.
I opened my mouth to ask more, but I didn’t get the chance. He and I staggered as the world jerked violently to the left. Then to the right. Taurus slammed against the wall on his side. I dropped into a crouch and blurred my vision to see better.
The world wasn’t moving, only the hotel was. It was shifting on a massive scale. From around the corner, I heard a male gasp and then a curse.
It sounded like Nathaniel.
I stumbled forward, relying on the wall to keep from falling, as everything continued to judder mercilessly around me. It was like trying to run through the dream of a massive earthquake. I couldn’t keep to a straight line and staggered drunkenly, hands extended to either side of me, fighting to reach the corner, to see around it—
I made it, and gasped at the sight of a massive stone statue standing guard before a set of closed double doors. This guard wasn’t like the one in the managers’ office. That one had been around five feet tall. This statue was nearly thirty feet tall and besides the hooves for its two feet, was shaped like a powerful man dressed in Samurai-like armor. It held a weapon in each hand that looked like long horns, and jutting from its forehead was a third horn at least six feet long. Its face was carved handsomely, with a strong jaw and sharp cheekbones; I would have admired it in a museum or art gallery. But here, the statuary’s role was defense of the basement, and its beauty was quickly ignored as it slashed the two horns through the air, directly above the fallen figure of Tower.
The hotel manager lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed. Blood leaked from his throat but his chest rose and fell quickly with breath, affirming that he was alive.
Nathaniel, meanwhile, was shifting relentlessly around the room. His glasses were gone and he didn’t hold his ledger. He was shifting deliberately, though his attention remained pinned on the red-garbed figure in the middle of the room. The Count. He carried Elliott’s body.
A cry of denial burst from between my lips at the sight of my friend. The vampire’s black gaze jumped to me and a cruel smile lifted his sensual lips.
“There you are. I knew the attack on your precious Architect would bring you running.”
“What did you do to Elliott?” I choked out. My friend was pale and boneless in the Count’s arms. I couldn’t see his throat because his chin was tucked to his chest. “If you’ve hurt him I will stake you a thousand times,” I snarled.
“You may have him.”
I gaped, but I knew better than to trust the Count. “What do you want in exchange?” I asked.
The vampire turned his head to watch Nathaniel shifting. “I want The Architect to open the doors of the basement.”
The demand prompted me to look to Nathaniel for answers.
Nathaniel narrowed his eyes. His face was hard. “My father isn’t inside, Count Ionesceau. He’s a prisoner of the government. I’ve told you that.”
“And you think I would believe you? You lie as sweetly as your father and Dr. Day lied when they tricked me into giving up my flesh.” The Count’s sharpened canines extended over his bottom lip. “If you have nothing to hide, admit me to the basement.”
“I can’t do that, Count. You’ve already hurt Artemis. I don’t trust you not to hurt Elliott, too, no matter what you promise.”
Artemis. That must be Mr. Tower. It humanized him to learn his first name. But would it matter if he died on the floor?
&
nbsp; “He was not cooperative,” the Count purred.
“Thankfully not.” Nathaniel turned a smug look on the statuary that loomed over us all. “You’ll never get inside, Count. Not now that Artemis activated the guard.”
“Will you stand by while Elliott bleeds to death?” the Count asked, turning his attention to me. “He is your friend, is he not? Yours to protect.”
“You were supposed to protect him, too,” I said, taking a gamble that Elliott hadn’t been delusional all this time. “What happened to that, Count? He cares for you.”
“I care for no human.”
“You care for Elliott. He’s the only one who sees past your faults and thinks you’re something special.”
Nothing softened in the vampire’s black gaze. It was like looking into the void. But I refused to believe that Elliott had fallen for something without a heart. Elliott was sensitive. Empathetic. The Count wasn’t the monster he appeared to be.
I glanced worriedly at Tower and his torn throat.
Or was he?
“Count, I think you—”
The words died in my throat as I felt the familiar build-up of pressure. “No!” I yelled, half-turning.
But it was too late. Taurus let loose with an energy blast at the vampire.
The Count glided smoothly across the room, faster than I’d ever seen him travel, though the speed was nothing compared to Nathaniel’s instantaneous shifting. Taurus’ blast passed the space where the vampire had previously been hovering and struck the leg of the statuary guard instead.
That was when all hell broke loose.
I dropped to one knee as a horn slashed through the air where my head had been, my hair flying wildly in the powerful breeze of its passing. I heard a grunt and the impact of a body and looked back to see Taurus sprawled on the ground and glaring up at the horn that had barely missed him.
The living statuary stomped its hooves like a bull preparing to drive forward. It swung both hands through the air again, one stabbing down at Taurus, the other goring the air where I kneeled before I somersaulted forward.
Energy punched through the air.
The statuary stumbled back beneath Taurus’ energy blast, but it didn’t drop its horns nor appear to be affected by the direct hit. It straightened up, and then it surged forward, hooves crashing down inches from Tower’s body. Nathaniel cried out and shifted beside the fallen older man, but immediately the Count surged forward, dumping Elliott’s body to the floor in his haste to reach Nathaniel.
The room juddered and shifted. I felt like I was falling down a mountain as my senses spun. Even the Count erred in his trajectory, gliding too far left to intersect Nathaniel. Shifting. Shifting. Only the statuary guard was unaffected, and I was actually glad. Maybe Nathaniel could manage to keep the vampire off him.
My guns were useless against the statuary guard and there wasn’t anything here in front of the basement’s double doors for me to meddle. So I meddled one gun—bullets and all—into a solid mass. Then I directed the molecules to reform into a thick, pyramid-shaped spear head.
“Taurus!” I held it up for him to see. “Do it!”
I tossed the spear head into the air. Taurus’ aim was solid. His energy blast carried the metal through the air like the head of a rocket. It smashed into the statuary’s chest, blowing a hole clean through it. The stone around the hole spidered and cracked, pieces of shattered stone falling off the guard to the floor to explode as they hit the concrete. The statue staggered back, its shoulders hitting the wall above the basement’s double doors.
Yet even with a hole blown through it, the guard didn’t go down. After regaining its balance, it lunged forward and thrust out with the horn in its left hand, forcing Taurus to leap sideways to avoid being impaled. I heard him curse as he rolled across the floor, hitting the far wall with his head.
The statue shifted, its left foot coming down within inches of crushing Tower’s legs. The statue seemed uninterested in leaving the doors—it must be compelled to protect it—but that still brought it within range of crushing the unconscious hotel manager. Straightening up, I tried to find my balance amid the shifting room. I needed to protect Tower, but the shifting disoriented me and was beginning to make my head pound.
I faced the statue, which was gearing up for another strike with its horns, and then I closed my eyes and I ran straight toward it. Blind, I wasn’t distracted by the shifting walls and floor. But blind, I was unable to see my death if it came. Breathless with fear, I mentally calculated the distance I traveled and hoped I’d gotten it right.
I opened my eyes.
A hoof swung at my face. I yelled and ducked to the right, narrowly avoiding the statue’s kick. Voiceless, it couldn’t make a sound of frustration as I threw myself at its other stationary hoof and slapped both hands upon its stony surface.
I did what I had been taught to avoid: I meddled something which held life. Molecules resisted me. Bonds refused to break. Life knew what it needed to be and do to exist and it didn’t want to degenerate. When the statue attempted to pull its hoof away, I jumped atop it and wrapped my legs around its shin as I concentrated on pulling apart that which demanded to be together.
When it began to happen, I realized this was why I had been taught to meddle only inanimate matter. Death spread from beneath my fingers. In my mind’s eye I watched myself tear apart the workings of life as I manipulated the statue’s molecules. Dust rained down around me as I meddled faster, breaking apart chemical bonds and defying inertia. This statue might be made of stone, but I was killing it nonetheless.
“Arrow!”
Taurus’ shout jerked my head around. The statue kicked. I hung on desperately. Through the crumbling stone falling all around me, I saw the statue raise one of its arms, preparing to stab at me with a horn.
“Jump!” Taurus yelled.
I couldn’t move without stopping my IMT. This thing needed to be brought down. A day ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated in my response, willing to take the risk of injury.
But I wavered now, aware of the weight of my choice. I glanced at Elliott’s body, and then I looked to Nathaniel and Tower.
“It can’t kill me!” I shouted back, lying to Taurus, and then I curled flat over the top of the statue’s hoof to avoid the horn.
It wasn’t far enough.
Fire lanced up my spine as the tip of the sharpened horn gouged into my back, tearing through skin and muscle. I felt the gush of blood over my rib cage and it pooling hotly at the small of my back. Agony was a white hot poker stabbing at my spine. It hurt so much I couldn’t make a sound.
I could tell the injury was likely fatal. The damage felt too deep; the blood poured too freely. I grew faint both from the pain and what it meant for me, but I refused to lift my hands. I wasn’t finished with this bastard of a statue.
The leg beneath me shuddered. Taurus hit the statue with another blast of energy. Weakened by my meddling, this time the statue’s shoulder exploded. A third blast took off its arm.
There was no turning back from there.
I felt the shift as my magic took control. Suddenly I crashed to the floor as the hoof beneath me disintegrated. Something slammed into me, knocking me across the floor until I crashed into the double doors. I looked over my shoulder in time to watch the statuary guard crumple into an enormous pile of dust where I had been lying just seconds ago. Taurus stood on the other side of the rubble, looking grim.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
Realizing he’d used a kinetic energy blast to knock me out of the way of the falling statue, I waved off his apology. But I hissed and arched at the pain that sunburst from my back. So much blood. Already it was pooling beneath me.
“Arrow!”
Nathaniel’s shout of concern lifted my head. He was still shifting, dodging the red blur of the Count, but only barely. The vampire seemed to be getting closer, swiping at Nathaniel with clawed hands that missed him by inches now rather than feet, as though the Count had
begun to anticipate how and where Nathaniel shifted.
“Healing factor!” I choked out, not wanting him to be distracted, especially when I was telling him a lie. To Taurus, I pleaded, “Help him!”
The big man scowled and aimed at the Count. He missed with his energy blast, but it was distracting enough to make the vampire temporary lose track of Nathaniel.
It also allowed me to turn my attention elsewhere. Elliott lay on the floor where the Count had dropped him, his limbs sprawled like those of a broken doll. It was motivation enough to force me to my hands and knees. My entire back felt sickeningly wet, but I ignored the sensation as I crawled across stone and dust to reach him.
When I was but a few feet away, a small black ball rolled across the floor and bumped into Elliott’s extended left hand.
“No,” I whispered in horror. “No!” I screamed when the ball suddenly swelled in mass, bursting upwards and spreading, forming the limbs, head, and torso of a child. Except this child had no face, and its entire body was pitch black.
It reached down and covered Elliott’s face with a hand that expanded until it was the shape and approximate size of a mitt, smothering the blond from forehead to chin. I had nothing on me with enough mass to hurt, so I slapped my palm flat on the floor, meddling furiously. The concrete cracked loudly before it split beneath my palm. A jagged crack raced through the floor, heading straight for the vampire hybrid. The thing leaped out of the way easily, but I wasn’t disappointed that it hadn’t fallen into the chasm I’d created; I just wanted the thing away from my friend.
A pair of fangs slithered out of the child monster’s face in the approximate area where its mouth would be. There it was. There was the Count’s DNA. The sight of those fangs repelled me. I had the feeling someone else would share my loathing.
“Look at your creation, Count!” I called out, my voice cracking. His red figure was a blur as it glided, materialized, and dematerialized throughout the room, chasing the shifting form of Nathaniel. “The fruit of your loins, Count. It looks just like you. Aren’t you proud?”
