by HELEN HARDT
I resisted the urge to scoff. Her definition of “causing no harm” clearly didn’t include kidnapping, torture, and false imprisonment.
We walked to a closed door, and she opened it. “Emilia, I have someone here who wants to see you.”
Chapter Five
Erin
“Does something seem off to you?” River asked Jay.
“Partner, this whole thing is off, wouldn’t you say?”
“I mean, we were able to get right in. The door wasn’t locked. No one was guarding it.”
“Yeah, the thought had occurred to me.”
“For God’s sake!” I interrupted. “Lucy is in there! And Bea as good as said they were going to kill her. We have to get to her before that happens!”
River stiffened. His distress was clear. “Are you sure that’s what she said?”
“It’s difficult to decipher Bea’s quotes sometimes, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. We’ve got to find her.”
“She’s not killing people,” Jay said. “She returned two of them unharmed.”
“So what? Are you willing to take a chance with Lucy’s life?”
“No,” River said adamantly. “No, I’m not.”
“Neither am I. So we go back in there, and we find Lucy. If we find her, we’ll find the others. I just hope we’re not too late.” Shivers coursed through me. The thought of Lucy not being alive—I couldn’t even wrap my head around the idea. We had to find her and get her to safety.
“We still need to be cautious,” Jay warned. “The fact that we were able to get right in could signal a trap.”
“You want to look for a back door?” River asked.
“Are you guys kidding me? We go in the way we know!”
“Erin,” River said, “I care just as much about Lucy as you do. But they know we’re here now. They expect us to go back in. I think your brother has a point.”
“Fuck both of you, then.” I stalked forward toward the wooden door and opened it. Again I shielded my eyes against the fluorescent light.
Jay pulled me backward until I oofed when my back hit his hard chest. “Are you nuts? That woman inside is dangerous, and she already knows we’re here.”
“Dante will protect us,” I said.
“Sis, Dante didn’t even know you. He was under some kind of spell.”
“No.” I disentangled myself from my brother, only to have his partner grab me instead. “Let go of me!”
“Quiet,” River admonished.
“Why? You’ve already said they know we’re here. If they know anything about any of us, they know we won’t stop until we free our friends. Your father is in there somewhere too, River. Julian says he doesn’t have much time left.”
“What?” River froze.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that, but that’s what Julian told me. He said our first priority is Emilia, Lucy, and the others, but then we have to find Braedon. Julian feels strongly that his time is running out.”
“Fuck.” River shoved his hands through his hair, which was growing longer.
“Still want to look for that back door?” I said to my brother.
“No, Sis. You win. We’re going in. You with me, Riv?”
River nodded, his eyes glazed over. “I was going in anyway. I tried to get you two to leave. My place is here, with my cousins, my father, and with Lucy. I have nothing on the surface right now. Everything I care about is here.”
“Everything I care about is here too,” I said. “Except my parents, of course. But Dante and Lucy are in there. And I care deeply about Emilia and the others as well.”
“My child is in there,” Jay said solemnly. “My place is here also.”
“Erin, you stay between us like before.” River grabbed his gun out of his holster. “I’m going in armed, Jay.”
“Right behind you.” Jay removed his gun as well.
River eased open the wooden door, and we all blinked against the harsh lighting. The room was oblong and now empty. The door where Dr. Bonneville had stood—where Dante had knelt before her—sat in the distance, seemingly farther away than I remembered.
I blinked. Something was wrong with my perspective.
River led the way, and as we walked, the door seemed to be getting farther and farther away. I blinked again. This room was an illusion. Everything was an illusion.
Until the door appeared abruptly in front of me.
River turned the knob slowly.
Chapter Six
Dante
“Get away from me!”
My sister’s voice.
“Em,” I said softly. “It’s me.”
She lay in a hospital bed, her abdomen hooked up to what I assumed was a fetal monitor. A rapid heartbeat echoed from a screen that also showed an ultrasound image of Em’s baby. At least I assumed it was the baby. It looked like a bunch of squiggles to me. Her dark hair was stringy around her shoulders, and her complexion—well, it was better than when I’d last seen her. Maybe they were taking care of her here.
“Dante?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“I’m here also, Emilia.” My father’s voice. “Do not let anyone know you hear me. I’m audible only to you and Dante.”
“It’s good to see you. Can you get me out of here?”
I turned to her. “Why is she here?”
“She requires special treatment. The baby she carries has a positive Rh factor, and you know how difficult pregnancy and childbirth are for our women. We’re going to make sure both she and this baby survive.”
I regarded her. Though physically young and beautiful, she exuded ugliness. And evil. Yet was she truly doing good here, helping Em carry her baby to term? Em’s fair pallor had returned, replacing the green.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Why shouldn’t I? You won’t be leaving here, so there’s no one you could tell.”
“Are you feeling okay, Em?” my father asked. “Blink if you are.”
Em blinked.
Good. She was okay. For now, at least. If she was telling the truth, Em would be fine…at least until the baby was born. We’d have her out of here way before then, if I had anything to say about it.
“Is there a woman named Lucy here?” my father asked. “Blond hair, blue eyes?”
Em blinked.
“Is she okay?”
Emilia widened her eyes slightly.
Shit. What did that mean?
“You don’t know?” my father said.
This time Em blinked again.
“Dante,” my father said, “I need to leave you.”
My heart fluttered, but I made no reaction.
“I need to see Bea. I need her to break the shield surrounding this place so I can enter all areas. She should be able to use my ashes.”
No! Don’t leave us, Dad!
But the words never left my vocal cords, nor did the expression change on my face.
I couldn’t let it.
Inside me, fear was churning. I needed my father. Needed his presence and his wisdom. Needed whatever new power he was developing. Needed his energy.
All this I had to keep harnessed up inside me.
How could he leave me? Leave Em?
My fangs elongated, but I kept my mouth closed and the growl lodged in my throat. The darkness swirled within me, threatening to consume me as it had earlier.
Control, son.
Damn his words!
My sister lay before me, unable to speak of our father. “Em,” I said, willing my voice not to shake with rage, “everything will be all right.”
The words I longed to say to her I could not.
I’ll get you out of here. I’ll free you and the others. I’ll do whatever it takes.
“Your sister needs her rest, Dante,” she said. “We need to leave now. You made a promise to me.”
Damn my father! He’d promised to find a way to keep me from going back to the dungeon. Now, he’d forsak
en me, forsaken Em, forsaken his twin brother. All for what? To get a nutty voodoo priestess to somehow get him access to the shielded parts of this place?
I suppressed a growl.
“I want to see Lucy,” I said to her.
“The deal was that you’d see your sister, and then you’d go back in chains.”
I showed my teeth. “New deal, my queen. I see Lucy, or I go nowhere.”
“Who do you think you are, giving me orders?” She bared her fangs at me.
I laughed. Mine were twice as long.
“You’ll come with me. Now.”
“Not until I see Lucy.”
“Lucy hasn’t been cooperative,” she said. “We’ve had to take…measures.”
“What kind of measures?”
“That’s not your concern.”
Bea had quoted something about a wolf. I couldn’t remember the words, but Erin had thought they meant that Lucy was going to be killed.
Not on my watch.
“Is she alive?”
“She is. For now.”
“What do you mean for now?”
“I don’t mince words, Dante. I say exactly what I mean.”
“The priestess was right,” I said, more to myself than to her. “You’re going to kill her.”
“I’m not a killer…though in her case, it has crossed my mind.”
“What about your oath as a physician, as a healer? You made a big deal of it minutes ago.”
“The little wolf is a danger to what I’m trying to accomplish here. I brought her here for her value in research, but she refuses to cooperate. Drugging her does no good. Something in her physiology has made her immune to all the sedatives I’ve tried.”
“That’s not possible,” I said. “She just had surgery for a stab wound. She must have been sedated for that.”
“They must have knocked her out with a mallet. Unfortunately, no one here knows much about wolf physiology. Tying her down does no good. She forces the change and escapes. So I’ve done the only thing I could.”
“Which is?” Rage oozed out of me.
“She is in training. Then she’ll go into the arena.”
Fight or die in the arena.
I seethed. “Against whom?”
“Against whomever I see fit.” She smiled. “Perhaps against you.”
Chapter Seven
Erin
“Emilia is alive.”
I jolted at the words. “Julian?”
“I’m here but not visible. Em and her baby are being closely monitored.”
“And the baby is okay too?” Jay asked.
“From what I can tell, yes,” Julian’s disembodied voice said.
“What about Lucy?” River asked.
“I don’t know yet. Dante is asking to see her.”
“Why aren’t you with him?” I demanded. “Is he all right?”
“He is, for now. He let the darkness overtake him for a few minutes, and I’m sorry you had to witness that, but he’s back in his right mind now.”
“That’s why he didn’t seem to see or hear us?” I said.
“Correct. He feels terrible about it.”
“Not terrible enough,” River said. “If he’d been in his right mind, we could have overtaken his queen right then and there.”
“Don’t underestimate her. There’s something strange about her. Something I haven’t been able to put my finger on yet. She’s not what she seems. You were right about your Dr. Bonneville, Erin.”
“She’s not my Dr. Bonneville. I can’t stand the sight of her. And if she’s responsible for what Dante has been through—” I curled my hands into fists. “I wish I could take her out myself.”
“She’s got a whole hospital built underneath here,” Julian continued. “I can’t get to any of the other facilities. They’re all heavily shielded. I’m going above ground to get Bea to force me through the shield with my ashes.”
I gulped. “Bea says breaking a shield takes dark magic. I asked her to break the shield on my book, and she refused.”
“She won’t refuse me,” Julian said. “Besides, all I need is for her to let my energy pass through the shield. She should be able to do that with my ashes.”
“But Dante!”
“Dante is not happy that I’ve left, and I hated to leave him, but my hands are tied. I can’t do anything for him at the moment, and he’ll understand when I can get through to find out where my brother and the others are.”
“Don’t be long,” River said. “We need you down here.”
“I won’t be. I’ll let you know when I return.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry about us. Stay with Dante.” Was I the only one concerned about Dante? I was beginning to feel like it. I itched to get to him, to be with him, to protect him in any way I could.
“Dante would want me making sure the three of you are okay. I will see you, and then I’ll see him. Be careful. Please. And good luck.”
“Wait! Why aren’t there—”
“Too late, Erin,” River said. “He’s gone.”
I sighed. “I wanted to know why the door isn’t locked. Why there aren’t any guards or anything. If this is a top-secret hospital, shouldn’t it be harder to get into?”
“Yeah,” River said. “It doesn’t take detective training to know they want us here. They’re letting us get in.”
“Too easy. They’ll know we’re armed, too,” Jay said.
“What do we have that will surprise them?” I asked. “How can we not walk into a trap?”
“We outsmart them, Sis.” Jay turned to River. “You’re a vampire. Help us think like vampires.”
“I’m not sure we have to,” River said thoughtfully, scratching his temple. “Now that I think about it, I don’t believe anyone in there will harm us. Well, relatively speaking. I don’t think they’ll kill us.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“If your hypothesis is correct, Erin, and they’re trying to find a way to produce vampire offspring from mating vampires and humans, we’re all very valuable to them. I’m a full-blooded vampire, and the two of you are quarter-bloods. One of you is bonded to a vampire, and the other is father to a vampire’s baby. They’re not luring us in so they can get rid of us. They’re luring us in so they can study us.”
“This is all a setup. Is that what you’re saying?” Jay rubbed his forehead. “It does make a certain amount of sense. Why else would they leave this placed unlocked?”
“So Dante could come back,” I said. “He got here before us, remember? She was luring him back.”
“That’s a good point too,” River agreed. “This could all be circumstance. The entrance was open for Dante, and we simply followed him.”
“And remember what Lucien’s note said,” I reminded them. “It said we’d find what we need between the doors of perception. There’s something here that we need.”
“Simple enough,” Jay said. “We need to find the missing women, and they are most certainly here. We know for sure that Emilia is, and that means the others are probably here too.”
“It also means that this Lucien Crown fellow knows what’s going on here,” River said. “How else would he have known about the doors of perception?”
“True,” I agreed. “He was also into research, and he lost his medical license because of it. He was onto something. Something the vampire council didn’t want him researching. Something to do with pregnancy and childbirth in vampire women. But why? Why wouldn’t the council want him to find a way to make childbirth easier for vampire women?”
“You got me,” River said. “My mother and my aunt might be alive today if Crown could have continued his research.”
“Our grandmother too,” Jay said. “This whole thing stinks like shit, if you ask me.”
“If my dumbass grandfather hadn’t tried to poison himself—”
“He poisoned himself to get us away from Lucien Crown,” I said. “But why? Why wouldn’t Bill want t
o make pregnancy and childbirth easier for women of his kind? I don’t understand.”
“And he certainly won’t tell us,” Jay said.
“His poisoning came at another opportune time.” River rolled his eyes. “He never got around to telling Uncle Jules what he’d read in the Texts. The old coot planned all of this. Mark my words.”
“But why?” I said again. “Why wouldn’t he want pregnancy and childbirth to be easier for his people? I’ll never understand.”
“Unless…” River stroked his chin, as if rubbing an invisible goatee.
“Unless what, partner?”
“This is going to sound pretty out there.”
“This whole thing is out there, Riv,” Jay said. “Lay it on us.”
“What if making childbirth easier for vampire women leads to some other problem? Something Bill knows about?”
“What kind of problem could it lead to?” I asked. “Other than having more vampires in the world. Why would that be an issue?”
“It wouldn’t be. Not for any of us, at least. Humans would still vastly outnumber us, and for the most part, vampires have been living side by side with humans for millennia without the latter any wiser. We’ve adapted to live on stored animal blood, and although our skin remains sensitive, we’ve also adapted to the sunlight.”
“So again,” I said, “how could making childbirth easier for vampires have any unwanted side effects?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” River said, shoving his fingers through his hair. “But we’re sure as hell going to find out.”
Chapter Eight
Dante
“You want me to fight a woman?”
“Not just a woman,” she said. “A wolf-woman.”
“I won’t.”
“You’ll do as you’re commanded to.”
“Let me see her.”
“She’s in training.”
“So you’ve said. Why can’t I see her?”
“Because you’re going back to the dungeon. I have plans for you.”
I suppressed a snarl. She was not stupid. She must know what I was capable of now, how my powers had grown. She wouldn’t put me anywhere she thought I could escape from.
