I felt drawn to a room I hadn’t seen before. It was near the end of the long hallway of dormitories. I took a glance back toward my room. I hadn’t wanted to move too far from Sylvie, but right now, Lazarus still had no reason to target her. He thought I was going through with his plan.
The room was dark inside. Shocking. I sensed a presence. “Is that you?”
Victor stepped out of the shadows. “That depends who you were looking for.”
Shit. The first question to enter my head was to ask what the hell he was doing lurking in dark rooms. But the asshole was a vampire. Their idea of a fun weekend was probably lurking in abandoned ruins or hanging upside down in closets.
“Victor,” I said, trying to think fast. I could come clean now, but we’d have no idea where Lazarus was keeping the others. Even with Victor’s help, we might only save Sylvie and sign the death warrant of the others.
I was saved the trouble of having to figure out what to do when the door opened behind me. Lazarus walked in, then shut it behind himself. “Do it,” he said.
“Tell me where the others are,” I said.
“What is this?” Victor asked.
The door opened and two more vampires came in to flank Lazarus. Cleaners. And I sensed they weren’t the half-wits he’d sent in the car to make a show of stopping us. These guys were the real deal, and I was officially fucked if this came to blows.
I held my hand up toward Victor, hoping to shut him up long enough to get what I needed out of Lazarus.
“Patience, Riggs. Do what I’ve asked, and you’ll have them. Or are we having second thoughts?”
“Tell me where they are and I’ll do it.”
“Do what,” The Prince demanded. “I should mention my father and mother were planning to meet me here as soon as father finishes up in the dungeon. I can imagine how much fun they’d have with three Coven vampires trespassing on neutral ground. And maybe a werewolf conspirator?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
Shut up, I thought. “Tell me,” I said again, looking at Lazarus.
Lazarus narrowed his eyes, and I felt the tell-tale tingle of vampire influence trying to seep into my brain. I did my best to shut down my thoughts, but the bastard was strong. He raised his eyebrows and laughed. “I see. I see,” he said, smiling. “No matter.”
“Where are-”
Lazarus was fast. He was so fast that I barely saw him moving toward The Prince. I whipped my head to the side and had only taken a step toward the two vampires before Lazarus was on the Prince. He had him from behind with both forearms locked around Victor’s neck.
The other two cleaners moved fast, but not fast enough. I lashed out, clawing both of them open with freshly transformed hands.
Victor let out a gurgling yell and it was all over as quickly as it had started.
Mere seconds and two vampires were gutted on the ground and Victor’s fresh, hot blood was spraying me in the face.
I stared at Lazarus, rage boiling.
Victor’s headless body slumped to the floor with a thump, and it was over. The rebel Prince was dead, and war was coming. But if I brought Lazarus down, I could at least make sure it was between the Coven and the Rebels.
I let more of my wolf take me until I felt all my senses heightened nearly to the edge. The world snapped into sharp focus. Lazarus’ inhuman speed suddenly didn’t seem quite as impossible to track.
I readied myself for the moment when he came at me, but instead of trying to attack like I’d expected, he grabbed the bodies of his fallen cleaners under both arms. With an obnoxious wink, he seemed to melt into the shadows with them. The lone window at the back of the room broke, and I was suddenly alone with Victor’s head at my feet and covered in blood.
The whole exchange had taken maybe thirty seconds. Everything had gone to shit that fast, and I didn’t have time to think before two vampires who looked like faculty entered the room. “We heard-” the female one started to say.
They took in the scene then, baring sharp teeth and hissing at me.
“It was The Coven,” I said, taking a step back. Of course, I nearly tripped over Victor’s disembodied head, which probably didn’t help the heightened tensions.
“Go get Vladimir and Ana,” the woman said, advancing toward me.
Three more vampires appeared while I backed away from the woman. I could’ve taken her, I was sure, but I didn’t want to dig the hole deeper. I still needed to find a way to get Sylvie out of this place. Killing rebel vampires was not going to help me accomplish that.
“Just fucking listen,” I said, holding my palms up. I’d transformed them back to my human hands, but they were still covered in blood from the vampires I’d swiped. It pissed me off how perfectly it had all played out for Lazarus, and I had to grudgingly give the man credit. There was a reason the Cleaners had the reputation they did. “Lazarus was here. He wants you to think I did this. Why would I want to kill your Prince?”
One of the new vampires who had entered spoke. His lip was curled and he was circling to my side, pinning me in the corner of the room. “You hate our kind. Everyone knows it. We tried to warn Victor not to trust you, but he wanted to mend the tensions. Look what that got him.”
“It. Wasn’t. Me,” I growled.
The vampires circling me spread out, and I saw the only opportunity I might have. I tried to dash through them, but I wasn’t fast enough to make it unscathed. The four of them all lashed out. Vampires were stronger than they looked, and their fingertips dug into me like claws as I passed. I’d nearly made it to the door when they got a hold of me, keeping me from moving. I had no choice but to fight back. I did my best to keep it from being lethal.
I threw my elbows, fists, and knees until they decided it wasn’t in their best interest to keep holding on.
I’d added a little blood to the collection by the time I staggered back into the hallway, but the alarming majority of it was my own.
I burst into my room and found Sylvie waiting anxiously by the door. “Slight complication,” I said.
31
Sylvie
Riggs looked like he’d taken a bath in blood. “Slight complication,” he said.
“You were gone like two minutes!” I shouted. “What happened?”
My eyes fell to his sides, which were glistening with fresh blood. His shirt was torn in several places like he’d been in a fight with a pack of lions.
“Grab your medicine,” he said. “Victor’s dead. It wasn’t me, but it sure as hell looks like it was to the four vamps that just walked in on me playing soccer with his head.”
“What?” I demanded.
“Pills!” Riggs said, rushing over to help me scoop them into a bag, which he quickly shouldered before taking my arm and leading me toward the door.
I was in the hallway before I knew what to think and we were stumbling toward the stairs. Night had fallen and the mansion was quickly filling with students heading to classes with books in their arms. Most of them stopped to stare at Riggs’ bloody form, but no one tried to stop us.
We made it down the stairs and out the front doors before I saw Vladimir and Ana Black coming toward us.
A small contingent of students and faculty had followed us out front and were now forming a semi-circle behind us.
“Hold on,” Riggs said loudly as the two vampires approached. “None of this is what it looks like, Lazarus wants-” Riggs was standing beside me one moment and the next he was gone.
I blinked, turning my head in confusion. Ana Black was in front of me and Riggs was on the ground several feet to the side clutching his chest. Vladimir was on top of him, but Riggs was barely managing to hold the shorter, stocky vampire’s hands from his throat.
“Fucking wait,” Riggs choked. “The Coven wants this.”
Ana snapped her fingers. “Wait, Vladimir. I want to hear his story.”
Vladimir got up and brushed off his elegant coat. “If what they say is true, then I want to kill this bastard wit
h my bare hands. That’s our boy he murdered.” Vladimir took a step closer, fists clenched like he was about to slam them down on Riggs who was still struggling to stand.
Students were whispering excitedly, like this was all some sort of game.
The gravity of the situation wasn’t lost on me. My life and the life of everyone I cared about hung on the next few moments. On the whims of two vampires who were probably hundreds of years old with motivations I had no hopes of guessing.
Riggs got to his feet shakily and my heart hurt for him. He was bleeding heavily, and I had no doubt that being hit hard enough to fling him like that had done some sort of internal damage. I had to remind myself of the fall I’d seen him suffer from my apartment window. He’d healed quickly enough from that, and hopefully would be able to recover soon.
“Kill us, and the Coven will get the war it wants,” Riggs said. “Think about it. What do we stand to gain from killing your Prince? Start a war with the only faction of vampires who don’t actively want to destroy us? Why wouldn’t we wait until we’d used you all to help weaken the Coven before striking? It doesn’t make sense. Think about it.”
Ana was holding in her emotions better then Vlad, who was pacing and fuming as he looked at Riggs. She waved her hand to a pair of gray-haired vampires in the crowd. “Take them to the dungeons. We will make contact with the Coven and determine if there’s any chance what he’s saying is true.”
32
Riggs
The dungeons were what looked to be an old wine cellar. The walls were cinderblocks and the whole place was damp, wet, and cold. We were led to a lone room at the back and locked behind a heavy door.
Sylvie quickly rushed to me once we were alone and tried to lift my shirt to inspect my wounds. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
I winced at her touch but let her fuss over me because it seemed to keep her mind from the larger problem facing us. “I’ll live. I heal fast, but this many wounds will take a little more time.”
Sylvie nodded.
“Do you believe me?” I asked. “About Victor, I mean.”
Her eyes darted between mine a few times, then she nodded again. “I do. Yes.”
I pulled her forehead to mine and held it there softly for a few moments. “Thank you.” Then I hesitated, sensing the heat coming from her skin. “Are you getting sick again?”
“I’m fine,” Sylvie said, but then I saw what I hadn’t noticed before. She was pale again. There was a faint sheen of sweat on her skin even with the cool air in the dungeon.
Fuck. She couldn’t be getting sick again. Everything was already going to shit as it was, but at least before I knew she was healthy for the time being.
I went to the door and banged on it a few times. “We need the bag we brought. It has her medicine.”
There was no response, so I tried shouting louder a few times, but gave up with a frustrated kick against the metal.
“I’ll be fine,” Sylvie said. “I’m more worried about the others.”
I sat down beside her and let her rest her head on my shoulder. “I don’t think Lazarus will hurt them. The bastard is calculating. He still knows he can use them to blackmail me, and I don’t think he’ll give that up as long as we’re alive. That means we need to stay alive, because our lives practically guarantee theirs.”
“Then stop bleeding so much,” she said, smirking as she made another pass at poking and gently prodding my wounds.
“That would be easier if you stopped touching them.”
“Sorry,” Sylvie said, blushing. She got up and tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt suddenly. I thought she must’ve got more fabric than she bargained for, because I could see the bottom of her red bra and her entire stomach once she’d finished. She blushed even more, then made a clumsy attempt at tying the too-small strip of her shirt around my torso.
“Uh,” she stammered. “That didn’t work like it does in the movies.”
I sat her down gently. “You’re getting sick. Stop tearing off your clothes for me for a minute and focus on getting rest.”
She slumped against the wall, already looking drained. But she smirked back at me. “Did you just tell me to stop tearing my clothes off for you?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s cold in here. You need all the clothing you can get. There’s no telling how long we’ll be stuck in here, and I’m guessing prisoners in the fucking dungeon don’t get blankets.”
“I read this scene in a book once,” Sylvie said, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering. “The two characters got stuck in a frozen car and didn’t know when help would come. They found out it was actually warmest if they both got naked and cuddled together. Pretty crazy, huh?”
I pressed my hand to her forehead again, smiling a little. “As much as I would enjoy that, I think we should probably keep our clothes on for the time being. We don’t know what’s coming, and I don’t want to fight our way out of here naked if it comes to that.”
“What are we going to do, anyway? Could you really fight all of these vampires and get us out of here?”
“No,” I said. “We’ll need to find a way to convince them we didn’t do this. And we’ll have to hope their investigation raises enough questions to make them consider listening.
“I really don’t feel that sick, by the way. I’m just a little chilly.”
I pulled her closer, enjoying how it felt to have her in my arms, even considering the circumstances. “I’m going to get you through this, okay?”
She had her head in the crook of my arm. She nestled in a little tighter, nodding, then yawning. “Nobody has ever taken care of me like this, you know,” she said after a while. “Other than my sister, I mean.”
“What about past boyfriends?”
Sylvie scoffed. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t throwing love letters out of my window at strangers because I was flush with romantic options.”
I grinned. “Most guys would kill to be with you, though. You know that, right?”
“I seriously doubt that. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. I’d eventually get sick one too many times and they’d get tired of it. Nobody wants to be a healthcare worker in their twenties. Not when there are millions of other perfectly healthy women out there to date.”
“You really believe that?” I asked.
Sylvie was quiet for a while. “My dad left when my mom was dying. She was like me. Always getting sick. Eventually she got so bad we all kind of knew it was time. Instead of sticking with her through the end, my dad just left. He left all of us and went to stay with his family overseas. At least that’s what my guess is, because we’ve never been able to track him down.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Sylvie shrugged. “It taught me an important lesson. Even good people have their limits. And the way I am tests those limits, just like my mom’s sickness tested my dad’s limits. So I’ve tried not to let myself really think about any of that in my future, you know? It’ll be easier for everyone, that way.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “What your dad did doesn’t condemn you to living alone. There are people who would look after you, no matter how much you got sick.”
She smiled a little. “I’m starting to think you might be right.” She tilted her head up and met my eyes. There was something there that made my skin crawl with pleasant heat. I gave her a little squeeze, pulling her closer and feeling my own resolve to never let this small, powerful creature down.
She was trusting more to me than I’d realized, and the weight of that responsibility made me feel all the more compelled to never let her down.
Damn. When had I fallen so hard? I guessed that was probably how it worked when it was real. It wasn’t always a gradual, progressive descent towards the end point. Some things came in sudden, gut-wrenching drops like having the floor pulled out from under you.
Somehow, I sensed that Sylvie had just pulled the last floorboard from beneath me and sent me spiraling toward a place
I knew I’d never climb my way out of. A place I knew I wouldn’t ever want to.
I kissed the top of her head and hugged her tight. I was going to get her through this in one piece, no matter the cost.
That was true, wasn’t it? I’d do anything to save her. Even…
I studied the door, thoughts turning over something I couldn’t believe I was even remotely considering. But it made sense, didn’t it? It made far too much sense to disregard.
33
Sylvie
I didn’t get sick all at once. It came gradually, with new symptoms presenting by the hour. It started with a fever and chills. Then it progressed to a thick cough in my lungs. Then it was a rash on my legs. It felt like my body was giving up on me piece by piece, and it was almost a cruelty that none of it dampened my mind.
My head was pounding, and I felt itchy and sore, but I was completely conscious.
We’d been locked in the small dungeon room for about a day, as far as I could guess. I’d slept for a while, woken, and then napped again. They hadn’t even brought us food, which I suspected had Riggs feeling particularly grumpy. The man didn’t love much, but I’d learned early that food had a special place in his heart.
On cue, he rubbed his flat stomach. He was sitting beside me with his back against the wall. “I’d do almost anything for a cheeseburger. I’d do anything for a burrito.”
I grinned, rolling my head to rest on his shoulder. I stared at the door with vacant eyes. A girl could go crazy staring at that damn door wondering when it would open, if ever. My latest personal torture method was imagining what would happen if they forgot about us—how long we’d last without food and water.
“Why did you retire?” I asked. I hadn’t planned the question, but long stretches of silence eventually begged to be filled, and my mouth obliged before I had a chance to wonder if it was a good idea to ask.
I Bite She Sucks Page 15
