Undefeated

by HELEN HARDT

  River nodded. “Agreed. Let’s go.”

  I eyed the place. Sterile-looking, as a hospital should be, but no staff milling about. “It’s so quiet here. It looks so much like University, but no one is here. Where would Lucy be?”

  We walked down an empty corridor, and—

  A sign on a door—a door to a refrigeration unit.

  Blood Bank.

  Without warning, I turned and opened the door.

  “Erin—” Dante said.

  I walked in, rubbing my arms against the chill. The freezer storage lay ahead, where units were stored longer term.

  Yes, a blood bank.

  The blood bank from my dream. I eyed the shelves.

  Filled only with B positive.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dante

  “Erin, come on.” I tugged on her arm.

  “All B positive,” she said. “Just look.”

  “Luckily I just fed and I can’t smell this blood anyway,” I said. “But think of River. He’s going to need to feed soon.”

  “I’m ahead of you.” River entered. “There’s plenty here, and now I know where I can feed.” He inhaled. “Human blood. I’ve never tasted it, believe it or not.”

  “Now’s your chance,” I said. “We’ll look away.”

  “I brought a couple days’ supply with me in my pack. It’s in a small cooler.” He inhaled again. “But God…this is tempting.” He shook his head. “I can’t. I fucking can’t. What if…”

  “What?” I said.

  “What if…I like it?”

  “It’s stored blood,” I said. “It’s not the same.”

  It wasn’t. I’d raided a blood bank that first night—that fateful night when Erin had come into my life. I’d feasted on the bags of stored blood at the hospital. It had sated my hunger, but it was nothing like—

  I used to dream of severed human heads…

  The reality. Not the dream. I’d forgotten it was a reality until recently. I’d thought Erin was my first taste of fresh human blood.

  The nectar that had dripped from the human heads was still warm. Still fragrant.

  Chills erupted on my skin. It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t killed those human beings. She had. But I had drunk from them. I had lapped up their essence as it fell onto my face.

  Erin stood next to me, her hair in a tight ponytail, her face pale and beautiful.

  Taking Erin’s blood had been unlike anything I’d experienced before, even from the suspended heads that I’d thought for so long had been a dream.

  “You okay, bro?” River asked.

  No. Not really. But I nodded anyway.

  “Good. Because I have to get out of here before I fucking masticate this entire bank.” River turned and left.

  “He has a lot of willpower,” I said quietly.

  “Is it that…tempting?”

  “Not for me. Not with you standing right here. Plus, I just fed.”

  “I’m sorry I came in here,” she said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just had to know.”

  “Now we know. Your dream was a premonition, just like my dad explained. B positive blood is essential to whatever is going on here. Problem is, we don’t know what to do with that information.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” she said. “Come on. Let’s find Lucy.”

  We left the blood bank and headed farther down the corridor. I pointed to a turnoff. “Em is down that way. I assume the others are as well.”

  “I want to see her,” Jay said. “I want to make sure my baby is okay, too.”

  “They’re okay,” I said. “Believe me, if I thought they weren’t, we’d be heading there. But we need to get to Lucy. She’s in danger.”

  Jay nodded. “All right. I’ll take your word for it. For now.”

  I tensed, going rigid. Erin’s presence next to me was a soothing warmth.

  “There must be an exit somewhere,” I said. “When I was here—”

  An image erupted in my mind. The manhole I’d found. Was it truly the right one? When I’d escaped, the paths had been lit. This time, when I’d come down here, they hadn’t been. Was I even in the right place?

  Had to be. She was here.

  But the place I’d been kept was dark and dank. Not a sterile hospital.

  Yet these halls were familiar somehow. Had I been in this hospital…before?

  I opened my eyes and squinted against the stark white light.

  My face stung, not like when I was electrocuted. It stung with the bristly bite of antiseptic. I inhaled. Humans. Humans were near.

  I tried to turn my head to look around, but I couldn’t. Either I was being held in place, or my neck was so stiff I couldn’t move. I could see only the ceiling—stark white textured plaster.

  Stark white.

  I hadn’t seen stark white since—

  Since I’d been taken.

  How long had I been held here, captive against my will?

  My body was numb. Had I been drugged? Surely, I should be able to feel something.

  What had happened? How did I get here? Had I…

  I settled my mind, opening it, urging it to recall even the smallest detail. Where had I come from? How had I gotten here? Why was I here? What was this place?

  But…

  Nothing.

  Yes. I’d been here. Somehow, this hospital was connected to the other place. The horrid, hellish place where I’d been tortured, electrocuted, violated, forced to fight for my existence.

  Think, Dante. Think.

  If I’d been here, I’d gone from here back to the dungeon. If only I could force my mind to remember. If only I could find the pathway from the hospital to the…

  No.

  I couldn’t go back there.

  But I didn’t have a choice. If Lucy was in training, she was there. Somewhere.

  I cleared my throat. “I’ve been here before. I can’t recall the details, but there must be a way through here to get to Lucy. We just have to find it.”

  “It’s mostly hallways, so far,” Jay said.

  River pulled a bota bag out of his backpack and took a long sip. Then he licked the blood from his lips. Jay looked away.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Erin said.

  “Sorry. A guy’s gotta eat.” River put the leather bag back in his pack and inhaled. “I don’t think she’s far. Or at least she hasn’t been gone that long. I can still pick up her residual scent.” He closed his eyes. “We’ve got to find her.”

  “Dad?” I asked tentatively.

  No response. He’d found something else to occupy his time, clearly. Perhaps he was looking for Lucy. He could go places we couldn’t. At least for now.

  Then, “I’m here, son.” He appeared. “I wish I had better news. I can get to Lucy, but you can’t.”

  “A shield?” Erin asked.

  “Yes. A strong one.”

  “Someone had to create the shield,” Erin said. “Who else has that kind of power?”

  “Any practitioner of magick who is also a medium,” he said. “Bea’s enhanced power comes from the energy of the ghosts who inhabit her. She did not create the shields down here, however. I’ve already ruled that out.”

  “How?”

  “I asked her.”

  “Oh. Simple enough, I guess.” Erin rolled her eyes.

  “She can reverse the shields, but it will require dark magick, and she prefers not to dabble. She was able to get me in with my ashes. My energy can pass.”

  “Is there a doorway somewhere here in the hospital?” Erin asked.

  “Yes,” my father said, “but as I said, you will not be able to pass.”

  “We’ll see about that.” River bared his fangs, some of the blood he’d ingested still visible on them. “I’m going to get to Lucy one way or another.”

  “Your strength and teeth won’t get you past, River,” my father said. “But there is another way.”

  “How?” Erin asked.

  “We
need to lure her to us.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Erin

  “You mean like I lured Dante?” I quickly explained what we’d found in the book.

  “Not exactly. No one here has a blood bond with Lucy, and even if one of you did, Lucy isn’t a vampire. She won’t be lured by blood.”

  “Then how?” River asked.

  “You’re the key, River. You and Erin.”

  “How are we—”

  “If she shares your feelings, your scent will be the strongest to her. Erin’s should also be strong. Since we have both of you, we’re in good shape. There’s only one issue.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “She needs to be in wolf form to pick up your scent.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Dante said. “Bonneville”—he seemed to struggle with the name—“said Lucy’s been forcing the change to get out of captivity.”

  “She is not in wolf form right now,” Julian said. “She’s being forced to train to fight, and she’s not changing. I’m not sure why she isn’t.”

  “They’ve threatened her,” Dante said gravely. “That’s the only explanation.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “You. And River. Bonneville”—he cleared his throat to get the word out—“knows you’re here now, and she’s using you as leverage to get Lucy to do what she wants.”

  “Can’t you tell her, Dad?” Dante said. “Appear to her and tell her she needs to come to us.”

  “Seems logical, doesn’t it?” Julian agreed. “Problem is, I already tried that. Werecreatures are notoriously resistant to the ghostly plane. I’d heard rumors, and apparently, they’re true. She couldn’t see or hear me. I can get to her, but I can’t do anything beyond that.”

  “Take us as far as we can go then, Julian,” I said. “The closer we are to her, the better chance she’ll be able to pick up our scent.”

  “She’ll still be too far away if she’s in human form,” he replied. “Somehow, we have to get her to shift.”

  “What causes a shift?” Jay turned to River.

  “What are you looking at me for?”

  “Because you’re dating her.”

  “And I had no idea she was a shifter until we found her in the cemetery. Although”—he lifted his brow—“she did shift when we had the car accident. She shifted and broke through the windshield.”

  “What caused the shift?” Jay asked.

  “Fear. She said she shifted out of fear.”

  “We need to scare her?” I said. “If she’s not scared already, just being here—”

  “That’s obviously not enough right now,” Julian said. “I believe Dante is most likely correct. Bonneville is using your presence, River and Erin, as leverage to keep Lucy from shifting.”

  “So she’s more frightened for us than she is of anything here,” I said. “That sounds like Lucy. She always puts others before herself. It’s what makes her such a great nurse.”

  “Then how do we get her to shift?” Jay asked. “If she can’t see or hear a ghost, and we can’t get to her, what chance do we have?”

  “We have to show her we’re not in danger,” I said.

  “How?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t know. You’re the detective.”

  Jay rolled his eyes. “Good one. Honestly, I’m not convinced we aren’t in danger here. The good doctor won’t take forever to get past that door. Even without a key, she’ll find another way in. She built this place, right?”

  Dante nodded. “That’s what she says.”

  “Then she knows it inside and out. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, kids, but we are in danger.”

  “Stating the obvious, Jay.” I rubbed my arms. I’d been on high alert since we got here, and though I’d managed to tamp down the aching fear to try to reason and figure out our situation, still the emotion was there, coiled within me, ready to spring.

  “Then we have to find another way to force her to shift.” Dante turned to his father. “She can’t see or hear you.”

  “Stating the obvious again,” Julian said.

  “Bear with me. I’ve seen you harness your energy to move something twice now.”

  Julian nodded. “But it’s not anything I can control. No other ghost that I know of exhibits this type of power.”

  “I have this type of power too. Maybe it’s some kind of latent power in the Gabriel line.”

  “Perhaps,” Julian said. “But if it were, wouldn’t our ancestors have discovered it by now?”

  “Not necessarily,” Dante said. “Maybe it has to be…switched on. Maybe it happened while you were kept here. While I was kept here.”

  “And maybe it has something to do with the change in your Rh factor,” I said.

  “Bonneville”—Dante winced—“is conducting research here. I’m not sure what kind of research, but it has something to do with B positive blood. And the council—” He fingered his several days’ growth of beard. “The council has something to do with it. Otherwise Levi Gaston wouldn’t have prohibited Bill from telling us how to find the women that night at Napoleon House. And when Bill cautioned us about exploring a translation of the Texts, he said something like it had to do with what we’re capable of. What if all vampires are capable of the things you and I are exhibiting, Dad?”

  “We also know Gaston wanted vampire progeny, and that he was a geneticist and an alchemist,” Julian said. “He was also a supremacist. He considered vampires superior to humans and weres.”

  I gasped. “She’s keeping human women here. Human women with B positive blood. Plus a shifter with B positive blood. She’s trying to breed vampires.”

  “Not only breed vampires, Erin,” Dante said. “She’s making vampires stronger.”

  “Somehow, B positive blood is the key,” I said. “But how?”

  “You’re the medical professional,” Jay said. “You tell us.”

  “How would I know?”

  “I have no clue. Just getting you back for the ‘you’re the detective’ remark.”

  “Ha ha. Bonneville did have me research physical characteristics and blood types, but there wasn’t any correlation. At least not that I found.”

  “Maybe she was looking for something else,” River said.

  “Or maybe,” Jay said, “she wasn’t looking for anything at all.”

  “Do you mean she sent me on a wild goose chase?” I said.

  “Exactly. She obviously knew you were with Dante, if she went so far to exchange your birth control pills with placebos.”

  “Still, why would she have me research something that doesn’t exist?”

  “She was dropping hints,” Jay said. “It’s a very common narcissistic tendency. She believes so fiercely that she’s unstoppable that she intentionally drops clues, proving to herself that she can’t be caught. She led you into suspecting her, and you did.”

  “Right on the money, partner,” River agreed. “We see that all the time on the force.”

  I nodded. This was all making so much sense. Dr. Bonneville was a classic narcissist. She treated others like complete shit and lacked empathy for those around her. Except for her patients. She did seem to care about them. The woman was a puzzle of contradiction.

  “So what do we—”

  A crash thundered through the air, and then descending clatters, as if a rock had been thrown through a window.

  I gasped.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dante

  The clash and shattering rang in my ears. My fangs descended with a snap, and a growl left my throat.

  “What was that?” Erin gasped.

  The spiky scent of adrenaline permeated the air. “Riv?” I asked.

  My cousin inhaled. “Nothing. Nothing but adrenaline.”

  “Vampires,” I growled. “The thugs. I’ll take care of them. You get Erin to safety.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m here for you. Let me help you. Jay can keep Erin safe.”

  “
No, he can’t. He can be glamoured. You can’t.”

  “You two are wearing your potion, right?” River said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Jay nodded.

  “Just in case, you two should separate. Dante, take Erin. I’ll take Jay.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snarled. “I’m taking those bastards out.”

  Footsteps clomped, becoming progressively louder.

  “Are you crazy? They can’t smell us, and they can’t smell Erin and Jay. They have no idea where we are. Our best bet is to get out of sight.”

  “Take the hallway to your right,” my father said to me. “There’s a supply closet where you can hide. River, you and Jay go the other way, past the blood bank.”

  “Yeah, don’t go near the blood bank,” I said. “They’ll sniff that out.”

  “They probably already know where it is,” Erin said. “My guess is that they fill it for her.”

  “There’s a small pharmacy where medication is kept,” my father continued. “The vampires are her suppliers, and that’s probably where they’re going. To the right is a janitorial station. Go there, and River, see if you can hear what’s going on in the pharmacy.”

  “We’re on it,” River said. “Come on, partner.”

  “Dad, why don’t you go listen in?”

  “I’m needed elsewhere. Hurry!” He vanished.

  “Damn!” I grabbed Erin’s arm. “Come on.” I whisked her down the hallway to the right. Two doors stood ahead of us. Which one was my father talking about?

  I grabbed the knob on the first one we got to and opened it. Inside were lots of cardboard boxes with labels that read syringes, bandages, Ringer’s solution—whatever that was.

  I closed the door so we were in darkness. I could still see, but Erin widened her eyes.

  “Give it a minute. Your sight will adjust,” I whispered.

  “My heart is beating so fast.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “I know.” Oh, how I knew. Each thump rang in my ears like the sweet strum of a harp. The sweetest sound ever.