Riding Rifts (Vampire's Elixir Series Book 2)

by Pippa Amberwine

  He was maybe ten feet from Nova when I saw him spin and back up in slow-motion, both with the grace and poise of a ballet dancer before he tumbled into the grass that surrounded the gatehouse.

  I leaned out and pumped bullets into the area where the shot had come from beyond the gates, and before I could say anything, Sparks was out and running, followed closely by Penny and then me. Frankie followed behind and headed straight over to where Nova was trying to shoot the padlock off the heavy chains that held the gates closed.

  By the time I reached a groaning Marty, Sparks had rolled him onto his side and checked his back on his right shoulder for an exit wound.

  “It’s gone right through,” she yelled over the rattle of firearms.

  I slung my pack on the ground and yanked it open.

  “It isn’t much,” I yelled, “but it’s all the medical supplies we have.” I pulled out a first aid box, which Sparks snatched out of my hand.

  “Stay with him, Sparks, and do what you can. Keep him covered. You got ammo?”

  Sparks nodded.

  “Come on, Penny. There’s nothing we can do right now.”

  Penny’s eyes were hard. She picked up her weapon, nodded at me and let off a long burst from the hip as we headed to where Frankie and Nova were still struggling with the gate. I stood behind as Nova tried to shoot the lock off or shatter the chain. It looked so easy in the movies, but all it was doing was scattering shrapnel everywhere. If we weren’t careful, someone was going to get hurt by friendly fire.

  The truck inside the gates was providing us all with some cover, which was a good thing.

  In the end, after Nova’s third attempt while I had been there, I held onto his arm to stop him from trying any more.

  “We can climb over?” I yelled.

  Nova looked at the fence, which was wire mesh on a metal frame, clamping his hands together.

  I slipped my gun over my head, stepped over, put my booted foot in his cupped hands, and pushed off with my other leg. Nova boosted me high enough that I could just reach the top, and I gripped the rail and pulled myself up and over. It was a long drop back down to the ground, but I managed to not snap my ankle. Once I was down, I pulled my weapon over my head again and sidled up to the rear end of the truck. There were bodies absolutely everywhere. Whoever was firing from up on the roof had ripped apart the bulk of the guards who had appeared from nowhere seemingly.

  I could hear groans and wails from those who were wounded. Somebody was wailing for their mom, which I really struggled to listen to.

  I brought my weapon around to cover the walkway into the building, which was where we would be heading soon. I could see smoke and flames rising from the top of the building as I heard the rest of the group join me by the truck. The four of us were in. We just needed to wait for someone to come down off the roof and give us the support we needed to get in there.

  “What do we do now?” Penny said over the occasional rattle of gunfire that was still going off.

  I looked back through the gate to see Sparks helping Marty get back behind the last truck outside. Once he was hidden and safe, she came running around and climbed the gate hand over hand, spun herself over the top, and jumped down. Finally, she crouch-ran over to where the rest of us were.

  “How’s Marty?” I asked, trying to give myself some time to think of a logical answer to Penny’s question.

  “He’s okay. I bandaged up the wound. He’s going to need some medical attention, but the bleeding had pretty much stopped.”

  “That’s a relief.” The idea of Marty bleeding out while we waited to move or were inside the building wasn’t one I was happy with.

  “Listen,” I said, turning around to face the other guys. “We need to try and get inside, but I have no idea how many guards there are left in there. Anyone got any ideas?”

  “I think we need to move from here. It won’t be long before the people inside figure out we’re here. How about you and I go right. You see the wall over there?” Nova pointed to a low wall that ran the length of the pathway up to the doors. I nodded and turned back to him again. “If we can get over that, we can work our way almost to the front doors. The other three of us, Sparks, Frankie, and Penny, you take the left side. There’s a wall there too. Stay low. Keep your heads down.”

  “You guys good with that?” I asked.

  All three nodded.

  “Okay. Let’s go.” I peeked back around the truck. Nothing was moving.

  “After three,” Nova whispered. “You go, and I’ll cover you. Then you cover me once you’re there.”

  I took in a big lungful of breath while Nova counted down.

  “Three,” he said.

  I ran. I didn’t try to crouch, or it would have kept my speed down. I just ran as fast as I could, hoping if anyone was going to start shooting they were a bad shot. I hurdled the wall when I reached it and stopped myself and crouched down, leveling my gun over the coping stones across the top of the wall.

  Nobody had fired, and I let out my breath and then waved Nova over.

  A few seconds later, Nova landed beside me behind the wall.

  We moved out straightaway, staying as low as we could below the level of the stones. One of the guards who had run out of the building was lying across the top of the wall face down, blood dripping into a puddle that had formed below him. I stopped and peeked over, using his body for cover.

  The doors were twenty feet away, and I could see through them by the light that was shining inside.

  I was just about to jump up and sprint to the doors when I heard screaming from inside the building and the sound of wings beating behind me. I turned to see which of the dragons it was.

  Jevyn and Nindock crept up beside me. Both breathing heavily. Both naked as the day they were born. I turned my head while they threw on the clothes they had brought down in their packs.

  “Nice of you to join us,” I said. “What happened up there?”

  “Kam set the place alight,” Jevyn said eventually.

  “Why?” That was definitely not part of the plan.

  “Accident,” Nindock said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Not his fault for a change.”

  “Where is he?” I was keeping my eyes on the door. The screaming inside continued and was getting louder.

  “I don’t know. He flew off a while ago,” Jevyn said.

  Right then, I swung my gun around, ready to fire as the front doors burst open, but I held off. The people running out weren’t guards. They wore normal clothes and lab clothes, and by the look on their faces, they were running for their lives. I wondered if the fire had started to spread, but when a figure appeared behind them, I knew exactly why they were running.

  “There he is,” Nindock yelled as a dozen terrified people ran away. I didn’t feel the need to shoot at them as they were unarmed and more concerned with getting away from the maniac who stood in the doorway, swinging some poor soul’s arm backward and forward, spray painting the floor scarlet.

  He was covered head to toe in blood, and I couldn’t for a moment imagine what the scenes inside the building looked like. The most chilling thing was that he was laughing, chuckling to himself as he watched the people run and scale the fence like Olympic pole-vaulters. I stood and saw the others from the other side of the road do the same.

  Slowly and carefully, we all gathered in front of the building.

  Most of us had a look of distaste on our faces, seeing Kam in all his glory, or in this case, gory.

  “Any chance you could get rid of that, Kam?” I asked, pointing at the arm with the white bone of a shoulder socket sticking out of the fleshy end.

  He looked at it for a second and then flung it off to one side where it landed with a sickly splat.

  ***

  Jevyn

  I WATCHED THE bloody arm sail across the reception area in a surprisingly graceful loop before it hit the ground with a spatter of blood.

  “What’s the si
tuation in here, Kam?” I asked.

  “Floors one through three are clear. Floor four is where the dragons are, I think. Floor five is where whoever is left is hiding, but the fire is spreading up there.”

  “Okay. We need to keep a couple of people down here to cover the entrance, and the rest of us should make for the stairs,” I said.

  Sparks and Nova were allocated the covering job, but when I turned back to Kam, he was shaking his head.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Take the elevator,” Kam said.

  “Why?”

  “Stairs are blocked.”

  “Blocked? How do you mean blocked?”

  Kam raised his eyebrows as if he was surprised he had to spell it out. “I mean, they’re blocked. That’s where everyone fled to once I arrived, and that’s where they all are now. The stairs are blocked.”

  “Are the elevators clear?”

  “I don’t know. I was having too much fun on the stairs.”

  “Okay, well, we need to go check then,” I said. I didn’t like the idea of elevators in a building that was on fire, but what choice did we have?

  Kam, Nindock, Katie, Penny, and I made our way over to the elevators. The power in the building was still on, so I assumed they would still be working. I pressed the button, and we separated, pinning ourselves to either side of the door in case someone came flying out fighting.

  When the door pinged, I edged forward carefully, but the car was empty.

  “Come on, let’s get moving.”

  It seemed to be a slow grind up to the fourth floor, and when we made it up there, I could already smell the smoke from the floor above. We set off in two groups, one on each side of the elevator, and began to work our way around the rooms.

  It was a shout from Nova in the other group that sent me, Katie, and Nindock running to see what was going on.

  “We found them,” Nova yelled as we approached a large room lined with what could almost be glass museum displays along both walls. Each one was no more than a few feet across and just about big enough for a bed and a toilet and no more. Each one held a dragon.

  Each dragon had wasted away to nothing much more than skin and bones, their muscles ravaged, their eyes sunken in their heads, their skin waxy and sallow.

  My anger grew at the kinds of people who could do this to any other creature, never mind one that was so obviously human-like in appearance and sentient. Surely, the people running this place must have known the subjects of their vile experiments were suffering. It almost made me feel that Kam’s viciousness was justified.

  “Get them out of there quickly. This smoke is getting thicker,” I said. “We all need to get out of here before the whole place goes up. What’s that?” I pointed along the room to a pile of large barrels that were stacked against the wall of the room.

  Sparks ran over and examined a label on the first couple of barrels.

  “I’m not familiar with the chemical, but I can read the part where it says it’s highly explosive and corrosive. My suggestion would be that we get these people out of here at warp speed.”

  “Warp speed?” I had no idea what that was a reference to, but I got the clear message. With fire approaching, time was of the essence.

  “Get those doors smashed in.” I yelled down the room as people spread out. “And no flames. If that lot goes up, we’ll be spread across most of Idaho.”

  “The doors won’t break,” someone yelled from deeper in the room as the sound of arrhythmic thumping against glass filled the room like a bad beat at a music concert.

  “Keep trying!” I yelled while I tried to take a minute to think.

  I walked along the length of the cells, reassuring the frightened dragons as I walked, and then past the barrels and out into the quieter corridor beyond.

  The first door immediately grabbed my attention.

  CONTROL ROOM

  I tried the handle, but the door was locked.

  I backed up as far as I could and then shoulder-charged the door. The weak wooden framing shattered, and with a couple more kicks to the door itself, I was in.

  Along one wall, a series of switches with a key slot next to each one took up most of the space. A number above each one matched up to the cell numbers I’d seen outside. I tried one, but it wouldn’t budge. I was loath to try and turn the switch handle any harder than I already had in case it snapped off and condemned whichever dragon was in there to a fiery fate.

  I looked around to see if there was any sign of the right kind of key to fit the slot next to each handle. Nothing obvious leapt out at me, but as I got farther into the room, something did. I’m not convinced that she was leaping at me, more trying to get away.

  “Please, please, don’t kill me,” she jabbered in my face. Her makeup was streaked across her cheeks from where she had been crying, her dark hair messed up and specked with blood and other tissue I didn’t care to try and identify.

  I held onto the side of her arms as she flailed hysterically.

  “Where’s the key to the cells?” I said, pointing at the switches on the walls.

  “Please don’t let him in here. Please, I’m begging. I have a little girl at home.”

  “Let who in here?”

  “The man. The dragon. The one who smashed through the commissary window and ripped everyone apart.”

  “Kam,” I said quietly. In the confusion, I’d lost track of where he was again.

  “I don’t know his name.” She’d stopped struggling and was just crying loudly, with rasping breaths.

  “Where are the keys to the cells?” I tried again. “The quicker you tell me, the sooner we all get out of here and you get back to your little girl, okay?”

  She put a hand in the pocket of her lab coat and handed a plastic key with some kind of microchip on it over to me. “Slot it in and pull the handle.”

  A minute later, all twelve handles had been pulled, and from the shouts outside the door, everyone was getting ready to leave.

  I turned back to the woman.

  “Ditch the lab coat, and I’ll take you with me. I’ll do my best to protect you from Kam and the rest of them.”

  “Thank you. Thank you,” she said.

  “Don’t thank me until you get away. Now, come on.”

  “Wait, wait. I have stuff here I need to take.”

  “You can get another purse tomorrow,” I said anxiously. By the sound of it, the rest of the group had gotten the prisoners out fast.

  “No, no, you don’t understand. I need my computer.”

  “You can get one of those tomorrow too.” I was getting more than a little impatient. I could see flames starting to flick across the ceiling tiles farther along the corridor.

  “I can’t. It’s got the information about the cure on it.”

  I turned to face her slowly. “The cure?”

  The woman was frantically disconnecting cables to her computer, a large desktop. No nice portable laptop.

  “Yeah. We found a way to cure the virus for the vampires. It’s in the early days but seems to work 100 percent of the time with no side effects.”

  “Great. Bring it, but be quick. This whole place is going to explode.”

  “Okay, I’m ready.” She hefted her computer into her arms and stepped over to the doors.

  I looked at her. She peered back at me with an eyebrow raised.

  I took the computer.

  “Thank you. Now, which way?”

  “Head to the elevators.”

  “No chance. If the fire gets to the motors up top, you and I will be a mess of mush by the time we hit the bottom.”

  I checked along the room where the cells were. It was deserted. I couldn’t hear any voices or any noise other than the sound of a rapidly burning building.

  “Where then?”

  “Fire escape.”

  “Where? You lead the way.”

  She dashed off toward where the fire was coming from. The heat was building with every step; then, sh
e turned after a group of offices, along a short corridor, and burst through a door to the outside, with me a step behind. I had to lean into the air being sucked into the building through the suddenly open door, and the roar of igniting flames filled my ears and singed my hair as I dodged around to start the climb down the echoing metal stairway.

  I gripped the computer with one arm while I patted myself to make sure I wasn’t on fire and then turned down the second flight. In occasional windows, I could see the shape of a person looking out onto the events outside. They had evidently missed Kam’s destructive rampage and had decided to stay in the safety of their offices rather than try to escape. Big mistake, but I didn’t have time to worry about them. I was desperate to get to the ground and keep the computer safe. If it held the cure to the VAMP virus, it could be the answer to all my prayers.

  The very last flight was caged, presumably to stop burglars from using it.

  “How do we get out?” I yelled as we clattered down the stairs.

  “It’s automatic. Hit the button at the bottom, and it opens.”

  “Do it,” I yelled. I heard a low rumbling sound from above me that could have been distant thunder although it was a clear night. “Do it quickly!”

  As the woman reached almost to the bottom of the last flight, a figure stepped out from the darkness and ripped the gate clean off its mounting, throwing it off to one side where it landed with a loud metallic clang. The woman skidded to a halt and let out a blood-curdling scream as I caught almost up to her.

  “Well. Nice to see you too,” Kam said. He extended a thickly muscled arm and grabbed the woman by the shoulder as she fought to gather a breath.

  I yelled at the top of my voice. “Kam. No. She has the cure!”

  Kam looked at her. Then his gaze swung to me. Then he eyed the computer in my arms. Then, he smiled, shrugged, and said, “Meh.”

  The woman screamed again as Kam tightened the grip he had on her shoulder. Over all the noise, I could hear the bones crunching. I stuck the computer under one arm and reached around for the pistol I had tucked in my waistband.