“Hello, Charlie.”
I couldn’t stop my own smile as I gave him a quick hug. It was so good to see him. I had feared that when I left him on the roof all that time ago, I’d never seen him alive again. He was one tough bastard to survive the Hive as an enemy for this long.
Lincoln shifted on the spot. His expression was hard and I could tell that good and bad vampires meant nothing to him. All vamps were the enemy. But for now they were following my lead and not attacking.
“Where’s Tessa?” I asked Lucas. There was no time for pleasantries.
He didn’t seem surprised at all, and with a nod he took off running. Okay, that worked for me. Please let her be alive and not mentally fucked up from being tortured. I was feeling good about this plan. It was going really well; there seemed to be no vampires down here. They must all be busy fighting Ryder and the rest of our crew. I was seconds from seeing my best friend. That’s when my thoughts jinxed me, because the moment we turned the corner a flashbang grenade went off right in front of my face. Cue deafness for the second fucking time.
I really needed to quit this job and work on a farm or some shit.
I hit the ground, grabbing my ringing ears and trying to orient myself. The fucking sound bomb had worked too damn well in disabling my backup soldiers; we were all on the ground, wincing in agony. The humans in our group would take longer to recover, which put us at a decided disadvantage. Of course, I should have known Wonder Woman wasn’t going to let a little sound grenade keep her down. She was up before everyone and was already spraying bullets at the onslaught of undead coming at us.
Lucas and I were close behind her. Blue Eyes and the Sanctum males recovered quickly too. The humans had actually fared better than I’d expected. One or two were still on the ground, so right now it was five versus at least thirty. My instincts had been right. This was a secondary trap, primarily for me. I wondered how long Fugly had been planning this. These vamps had probably been down here for days.
Vampires weren’t big on weapons usually. They considered themselves to be enough of a weapon, but some of them were shooting at us, so we had to use one of the little alcoves for protection. I wasn’t able to get out of the way fast enough and a bullet grazed my left arm, opening a four-inch gash that was now bleeding freely. Just a flesh wound, so I didn’t bother to give it more than a glance. Blue eyes dragged his other men in, while tatted chick and I started blasting away at vamps.
They were coming straight for us, clearly not caring that we were easily taking down their front line. I think they expected to have enough numbers to reach us before we could kill them all. And it looked like they were right.
I dodged to the left, avoiding a rain of bullets that clinked into the stone right where my head had been.
“They’re too close now,” I said to the badass while I reloaded my gun. The tranqs were not going to work on these assholes – bullets all the way.
She nodded, and before I could say anything else she did a dive roll out, a gun in each hand, firing away like a crazy person. And from what I could tell, every shot was a headshot. This chick was not human, I don’t care what anyone said.
Lincoln and I followed her. Lucas, who didn’t have a weapon, remained protectively crouched close to my side. While firing my semi-automatic, I handed him a handgun, and it turned out that he wasn’t just a pretty face. Dude had game. He was slicing through the charging mass, each hit a headshot too.
The vampires were down to about twelve when the front line finally reached us. A body toppled next to me, and I glanced down long enough to see one of the humans dead on the ground, bullet to the head. Shit. We were all wearing tactical gear with bulletproof vests, but a bullet to the head couldn’t be avoided. Turning swiftly, I used my gun to both shoot at the assholes and also smack a few of them around. I cracked a vampire in the face with the butt, knocking him back a few paces, before swinging the weapon around and shooting the male in the temple.
Lucas growled at my side, and by the time I glanced to the left he’d completely torn a female’s head off.
“They’re not used to combat,” he said with a grin. “Too many years of getting ash to do their dirty work.”
I didn’t have time to answer, I was being double-teamed by two beefy vamps. I’d never seen them before, but that wasn’t unusual; vamps and ash did not mingle much. They came at me at the same time. I hit the ground, sweeping out with my feet, knocking down the one to my right and yanking my knife out to slice the other’s femoral artery. It dug deep into his thigh, but I hit the spot. It wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it would slow them down long enough that I’d find killing them much easier.
On my feet again, the one who’d hit the ground first was already rising. I dived and slammed into his chest. The impact radiated up my arms, but thankfully I didn’t drop the knife. In these close quarters my ashpire blood was working in full effect; the vampire growled and struggled to get at me. A few drops of my blood had dripped on his face. He stilled before his fangs extended full force and his eyes went crazy. He leaned up as if to bite me, and I used the distraction to shove the knife straight into his eye socket. Had to hit the brain to kill them.
My stomach roiled as I forced the blade in, up to the hilt. Holy hell. When had this become my life? I could now casually stab people in the eye. ‘Cause that’s not fucked up. Shivering, I finished the job and he fell to the ground, limp. Lucas was going around to all of the vampires we had dropped and was snapping their necks. He did this with such ease and precision it was clear he had done it many times before.
He noticed me watching and explained: “When you snap a vampire’s neck hard enough, it severs the spinal cord. This type of injury takes hours to heal and renders the vampire unconscious for that time.”
I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to leave them alive, but time was important too. And we needed to get moving.
Blue eyes was watching Lucas’ movements with interest, but said nothing. We were six now, and I felt awful that he had lost one of his men, especially because he was about to see that Tessa wasn’t human and they’d risked their lives for a vampire. Fuck me. He would probably kill me.
Making our way over the piles of unconscious or dead vampires, we continued down the hall and followed Lucas to a door. Cell 213. Lucas stopped in front of it and turned to hand me keys. By this time we were only a foot apart and his eyes had started pulsing, fangs distended. I was covered in blood, and a lot of it was mine. Damn unicorn blood.
“Lucas!” I forced as much authority as I could into that one word. For a second I thought he wasn’t going to snap out of it, but thankfully with a shake of his head he dropped the keys into my hand and stepped back.
“Sorry, they have restricted my feedings as punishment,” he murmured, his voice low and hoarse.
Shit. Well, hopefully the plan went off in the next few days, with no problems of course. Then we would cure all the vampires and end their sadistic rule. A moan from inside the cell drew my attention.
“Tessa!” I shouted, and began fumbling with the keys. “I’m coming for you, girl!”
“Char…” Her weak reply was cut off. Finally getting the key into the lock, I threw back the rusty handle and opened the door.
The first thing that hit me was the scent of urine and blood. The second thing was the sight of Fugly standing over my best friend. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He had a lit torch in one hand, inches from Tessa’s bleach-blond hair. I knew her obsession with curling products. She would go up in flames in a moment.
