Alexei hopped on his feet, celebrating. “I knew it! Yes, I knew it! Now Berlin is mine as well! Pack your bags and pay up, Milan. You lost!” He made an energetic show of waving his hands in the air and twirling around like a crazy person.
Milan scowled, and his companions cowed. Behind Alexei's back, Svetlana rooted her snout deep in Iago's chest. Her satisfied growl drifted under Alexei's victory speech. She ate Iago, but not the soft bits. Bones snapped as she crunched into his ribcage. I could understand if she was hungry, but we had vampires to kill and this was no time for a snack.
On a mission, she found the morsel she wanted. Growling, she backed away with Iago's heart in her maw. She shook her head and dragged Iago's body a few paces before the heart tore completely free.
“You are about to lose your prize,” Milan said, interrupting Alexei's song and dance. Alexei turned.
“No!” he said. “Bad girl!” He ran across the room. Svetlana trotted away, growling like a disobedient puppy while Alexei chased her. “Put that down! It's mine, and I don't want your drool on it!”
Milan chortled. “It should be introduced while it's hot.”
Alexei realized he was making a scene and gave up chase. He pointed at her, his hand like God's descending from the heaven of the Sistine Chapel. Her oozing wounds gushed blood, a torrent dripping down her honey fur. Bleeding out. Her side heaved, blood drained. Svetlana whimpered and hunkered down.
She started to regress, her size slipping, fur dusting off. Her paws resembled hands again: long fingers, claws, thumbs. The heart was stuffed inside her shrinking jaws. Alexei grabbed for his portion, wrestling for the heart within her receding muzzle. Instead of releasing it, Svetlana snapped her jaws and gobbled it down, swallowing a morsel so big she should have choked on it. The bleeding along her body stopped.
“Bitch!” Alexei said. She smiled, enough human in her face to make it a wicked grin. Then she lunged, too fast for me to account for, and landed on Alexei. They somersaulted together and crashed into the wall.
I took it as my cue. I slid the back of my right hand across the blond's chest, fingers under the jacket, and grabbed his shoulder rig. It made a nice handle. I stepped in and thrust my hip back against his, pulling him over my body and throwing him to the floor. I elbowed his throat and pulled a gun from his holster. Once I had the weapon, I backed away from his body, which put me in a position to target the brunette bodyguard. I put him down with two shots and kicked the blond in the head. The third bodyguard grabbed his gun from the holster but my trigger finger was quicker than his pull. Practice came through for me in the end, and he fell dead. I kicked at the blond’s again, but he rooled and my heel glanced off without doing the intended damage.
The back of my mind still thought he looked familiar.
Svetlana and Alexei rolled on the ground in a good, old fashioned slugfest. A lesser vampire came at me with complete disregard for the gun. I emptied the mag in him center mass. The impact sent him reeling and screeching. He clutched the bullet holes in his chest, pushing at the blood streaming out. He examined the mess on his fingers, then glared at me and hissed.
Nothing could ever be easy.
I lunged at the brunette's corpse, retrieving his gun, and emptied another mag into the vampire's head. Each bullet popped in and sprayed out the back, but except for looking not-so-pretty, the lavender vampire wasn’t significantly deterred. Its chest heaved and rasped as it breathed. Each step was heavy and uncertain, and it glared at me with one half-mussed eye, tilting its head slightly to the left. The other eye was jacked, bullet-ridden. The mutilated vamp didn’t move quickly, but his friends realized my bullets hadn't done much. They smiled ecstatic grins. Something had to kill these guys.
A gunshot snapped through the room and one of the vamps fell. It writhed and screeched and scratched at its eyes.
The blond bodyguard came to my side. I bobbed the gun around to point at him. He ignored my weapon as if he wasn’t my enemy. Had to be a trick. I prepared to shoot him anyway, but the sound of running feet drew my attention.
The human girl the vamps brought for lunch attacked me. I heel-kicked her in the chest and she tumbled like a weak gazelle. The bodyguard did nothing and the snack wanted to protect her attackers? Kee-rist. The world had clearly gone mad.
“Destroy and separate the head and heart.” The bodyguard retrieved a discarded gun and reloaded it with a mag from his jacket. “So far you've only slowed it down and made it hungry.”
“Why do your bullets hurt worse than mine?”
“S7 rounds,” he said. “Blinds them and hardens their blood.”
As if that explained everything. Fine, so my bullets were useless. How else could I destroy a vamp’s head and heart? Fire, then. The primitive element cured most things supernatural.
I set down the empty gun, kept the loaded one, and reached for one of the oil lamps. Might as well see how they burn. Quite well, as it turns out. And as a small blessing, the dying vampire clung to his friends as if a hug could save him, succeeding only in setting them aflame, too.
Milan tsked. He stood with his hands clasped, watching us as if we were a late-night infomercial and he couldn’t decide what we were selling. Nonchalant about his dead acolytes. His face had no life in it, and his unfinished humanoid mask gave me the creeps. He said, “You’ve inconvenienced me. Now I must find three more matching bodyguards.”
“Life is hard,” I said as I swapped mags. Since only two guards had died, the statement implied bad things for the blond guy. Who was the dude, anyway? The man fired into Milan’s chest until his mag ran dry.
“Wicked!” the ugly vampire raged. “You villainous, filthy, unworthy creature! Abhorrent. Vile. Ungrateful!”
Milan stomped his feet like a child and lifted both arms for an embrace. An invisible, singing whip rent the air. A slash of blood tore blondie's chest. He shouted, arching in pain. The phantom lash sang again, and another ribbon of blood flared across his chest. He was being flogged right in front of me, like some biblical punishment.
Milan had god-like tricks of his own.
The clothing tore across the man’s chest. Blood fled down his body. The vamp walked closer, ranting in Old Testament poetics, but I could scarcely hear him over the man’s screams. The thrashing intensified like proximity played a part.
I slammed the mag home and shot the vampire in the side of the head. The bullet smashed into his skull but didn’t come out, which didn’t cause him any great inconvenience. Fuck.
Milan’s next lash laid so deep that the human’s flesh split down to the bone.
I ran, leapt, and punched him in the head. I yelped as it broke. My hand, not his head. We fell together. I grappled to his back and clenched him in a rear naked choke. Oddly enough, I never stopped to wonder if a vampire could be strangled. My grip locked down without affect. His blood was lukewarm and scented of pine and limestone. He grabbed my hand and squeezed the broken bones. I shrieked as he pried apart my hold.
“Kaidlyn!” The bodyguard knew my name? He came at us from the side, knocking me loose. He pulled a bullpup machine gun from his spine—what the fuck—and shoved the weapon into the vampire’s chest.
“Ashe!” I realized, fumbling for a weapon to help him. His handsome face stretched open in a feral war cry as he blasted away. The resounding thunder left us deaf. How the hell had he gotten there? Jesus, please tell me my dad isn’t here somewhere, too. His flayed flesh and shredded muscle made his aim sloppy.
Milan clenched Ashe’s throat, and it wasn’t looking good. I crawled to a fallen guard and fumbled at his holster, dragging a firearm free. As Ashe turned purple, I stagger-crawled back over, jammed the muzzle against Milan’s throat where his spine would be, and fired away.
Fired until empty and nothing remained of Milan’s throat but a ratty stump looking like a seriously frayed sweater. I grabbed the spine with my bare hands and stomped on his head. Something had to give.
Alexei raged in the background, some
where close to dying. He threw his god-plague frantically, attacking all of us, even Milan. Alexei's power shut me down so fast my heart nearly burst and my vision swamped with black brilliance. We bled profusely from nose and ears, lashes and cuts. I became magically painless. The slippery mess of my corporal flesh slithered away from my brain. My strength dissipated like a fog. I fell until the impact of the ground jolted my bones. I sighed, relaxing into my last moments on earth.
My cheek rested on the wet, smooth floor. Swampy blood, an unnatural sludge that reeked, coated my nostrils and throat. I looked for Svetlana. She crouched on Alexei, naked as a jaybird, drenched in dark blood. Her skull, ribs, and claws maintained a mutt's stature, but her flesh gleamed hairless and pink, stretched taut over a gargantuan, misshapen mess. She laced her fingers in Alexei's ribs and pulled him open, cracking him like a roasted chestnut. Breaking his chest released a high volume scream. The terror and rage in his voice struck my soul, made me think of the end of the world. Her body started to swell and shed but didn't finish. Svetlana gobbled at his heart, tearing the organ from his body until she ripped it entirely free and swallowed it down.
Blood stopped coming from her. A final trickle of black leaked over her lip. She toppled to the side, eyes rolling heavenward, fingers thrashing. Her head shuddered, twisted, and she caught my gaze. Her pupils were small, unresponsive. Svetlana coughed blood as dark as molasses and then laid still.
Iago dead? Check.
Alexei dead? Yep.
It had been a short to-do list, but I couldn't remember anything else.
I was done.
Chapter 39
I lit up with pain, brilliant and parenthetic. The room hummed and burst with noise, light, and atrocious odors. I gagged and coughed. My eyes cracked open and light flooded in, but I couldn't see. It wasn't dark, but I was blind. I shrunk from the brightness and started to panic. I didn't know where I was. My entire body, from the first molecule on my scalp to the last cell on my toe, raged with agony. My teeth hurt. My hair ached. My chest burned like they opened me for a double biopsy without anesthetic.
This was wrong. I knew hospitals, I knew drugs, this was wrong! I should have been floating in and out on a nice cloud of drugs, disorientation, and shock. Not this all-encompassing pain.
Someone grabbed my wrist. It hurt! The smell of cotton, alcohol, body odor, blood and blood and blood. Caked in my nose and throat. Everywhere. Someone chanted until the syllables began making sense. The violent superfluous sounds receded and I understood my name, recognized the power of the voice, and yet I didn't know whose it was. I tried to say, run! Run or they will kill you! I didn't know who 'they' was or who I tried to warn.
It had my wrist, and the pain drive itself up my arms. My pulverized fingers were useless.
The world grew gray at the corners, a glaring, offensive white-gray. My vision struggled to clear. It was very important this drowsiness disappear. I tried to roll over, away from all the light and hands at me, and I heard someone say, “She's yanking the IV!”
And logically, I thought hospital, but it smelled all over of blood, new blood, rotting blood, animals, and chemicals to cover it all up. A scent of coffee and peroxide clubbed me. Someone's hair brushed on my face. I knew the scent.
I cried out. “Davey?!”
“Kaid!”
It was so loud I covered my ears. “Stop screaming!”
I had the distinct impression I was the only one screaming.
“Kaid,” he whispered, and laid his hand on my arm. It hurt. I screamed like I was on fire. He jerked away. His hair made a swirl of color. The world bloomed black and a million watts of white, but his hair had tint, glorious multiple shades of brown, mahogany, cherry wood, almond, hints of red.
“There's blood. It's all over. Bring me a gun.”
Davey said calmly, quietly, “There is no blood, Kaidlyn. It was a dream.”
“It stinks so bad. I'm clotted with it. Why are you lying to me? There's blood all over, I smell it. Don't lie to me. I want my Jerichos!”
“You're in the bunker. Rainer’s giving you morphine to help with the pain.”
“No morphine! It's bad for me. Get Liza.” I wanted my regular EMT. Something wasn't right. I didn't know why I was so upset, only that I couldn't help it. How much morphine did they give me? Drunk, swooning, fascinated with the endless pain radiating from my hands and ribs.
“Kaid—”
“Leave me alone! Get Liza.”
I didn't like needles. I didn't want to be calmed down. I wanted to know where everyone was, where the blood came from, and if Alexei survived.
“Who's Liza?” Davey said.
This wasn't getting me anywhere. I scratched the needle from my arm.
“Kaid, stop!”
I could see the distinct shape of his face now. The blue-rain of his eyes opened like the sparkling sun-lit waters of a swimming pool. He flooded the world with color. Something jack-hammered at my arm, impaling me: another needle. Huge, invasive, glaring. My panic deepened. I thrashed.
On one hand, I couldn't imagine why I was so upset. It was like someone stuffed me full of all the hormones that made middle-aged women watch soap operas and eat truckloads of chocolate. What’s your problem, woman? Nothing seemed right. Davey cried; he wasn't going to help. I shouted, “Svetlana! Svetka!” She would come for me, and everything would make sense.
No one came, nothing but the drugs.
My hands drifted away, my mind followed. I fell senseless for a while.
Words rose and crashed above like they had to travel through water to get to me. Drawn out, echoing, muffled. Drugs. I had to focus on the voice in order to see if it was real. My brain wouldn't lie to me, would it? The deep man voice, the worried tone, was as familiar as family. I opened my lips to speak but my tongue adhered to the roof of my mouth.
“And she was screaming about blood. What’s happening?”
I opened one eye at a time and squinted in the ferocious glare of white that blanketed everything. At first I thought I was blind, then I thought the lights would blind me. I floated: cloudy with a chance of rain. My hands hurt. I felt like my heart had been donated to science but they forgot to stitch me back up and bury me. The room stank of blood, meat, wet dirt, and mold. The swarm of blood alarmed me. It wasn't only one type, but a matted stench with several potencies, ages, and frequencies.
Can blood have a frequency?
“She’s confused. Hallucinating.” Another voice, more familiar, more recently inside my head. Davey said, “I think we should cut off the painkillers.”
I opened my eyes to let in a paper-thin jet of light. The beacon agitated my migraine, a sharp, piercing agony that I welcomed because it meant the drug haze didn't have absolute control of me anymore. I didn't attempt to move. It burned when I moved, and by “it” I mean everything. I tested my fingers first. Knuckles creaked like rusty door hinges. Toes, when I stretched them, swelled as if I'd smashed them with a mallet. I couldn't get my bearings. My house was about to fall upon a wicked witch and little people would strike up a song.
“Hey,” Rainer’s voice rolled softly, like he was talking to a kitten. He leaned over the bed and the necklace holding his wedding ring dangled near my chest. His looming face held fatigue and strain, and he wasn't smiling. Things were not okay.
I wept without knowing why. My heart heaved as if it had been hacked off at the seams. The rest of the world swirled among confusing pain. “It's so bright.”
Davey shaded my eyes. I tried to grab him and pain tore through my marrow. “Freakin’ ow!”
Rainer said, “During the fight, you broke a few bones. Again. Quite severely. Do you want more morphine?”
“No!”
“Have some morphine,” he said.
“Okay, but only a bit. Not too much, hear me? I need water. I smell blood. How did I get here?”
“What do you remember?” His brown hands passed me a cup of icy water, straw inside. Heaven. As I sipped at it, I tho
ught about the question.
“Alexei was killing everyone, and then Svetlana killed him.”
Another man crouched next to Davey. I focused, squinted. Erik. For the first time ever, I was glad to see him. Unfortunately, I didn't know what to say about it. His white mane shone like a halo. His pink eyes gleamed like rose quartz.
“You're cute sometimes, you know that? And a bastard.”
“You've gone all gushy on us, girl?” Erik said.
“Yep, and you have the most beautiful hair.”
He crossed his bulky, lily-white arms. “How much morphine are you on?”
“You’re almost as pretty as Marc,” I said.
They laughed. “Thank you, I think,” Marc said, stepping closer to the bed. My eyes clouded and swirled. I hadn’t seen him a few yards away. What was wrong with my eyes?
“Hey,” I whispered. “Hey, Marc, break me out of here? I hate hospitals.”
“This isn't a hospital,” Rainer said. “I'm offended by the accusation.”
“You have needles and paper gowns, which makes this a hospital. Christ, but the morphine is burning through me. I’m hot. How long have I been here?”
“Two days,” Rainer said. “Your friend is here as well.”
“What? Who?”
“Your bodyguard,” Erik said. “When Zelda saw someone suspicious parked across the street, she called someone. This man came and tagged the truck with a tracker. When the henchmen nabbed you, he found where they ditched the truck and found you in the vamp’s hideout.”
“And where is he?”
“He’s on life-support, Kaid.” Rainer pulled the curtain away from the neighboring bed, revealing the immobile, unconscious man. Black and blue and pale in between. Monstrous bandages over his chest. Because of me.
“Will he come out of it?”
“He’s human, and I’m not equipped for this. I mean, I spend half my time trying to keep hungry mutts from eating him. He probably needs a real hospital.”
Bait and Bleed Page 35
