The Lair (45 page)

Still in a fight two against one, I could probably take them. Price was close to fifty. I couldn’t tell about the woman, but if Roberto was right about me—if Sebastian was right—then maybe all I had to do was ask her to step aside.

I didn’t want this power. I never had. No one should be able to bend others to his will. If you had asked me an hour earlier, I would have sworn that even if I had the power of an
abductura
, I wouldn’t use it. And here I was, ready to abandon my morals instantly. If it meant saving Lily.

I pushed through the doors in to the room. It wasn’t just a single hospital room but a whole ward, like an ICU. A dozen beds were lined up on either side of the room, each with the little privacy curtain pushed back against the wall. Four of the beds had patients tucked under the white blankets. Each had an IV bag hanging from the post above their bed. Each lay as still as a corpse.

Lily lay on the bed closest to the door on the far end of the room. Her skin looked unnaturally pale. She was as still and lifeless as the other three.

Price and the doctor stood over her. They had been talking in low voices when I came in, but both of them fell silent and turned toward me.

Thank God there wasn’t a guard somewhere that I hadn’t seen through the window. Faintly, in the distance, I could hear the
whump-whump-whump
of the helicopter still hovering above the building.

The doctor looked from Price to me and back again.

“Why did you let me think you had the cure?”

“I didn’t.”

“You said—”

“No. You said she needed medical attention. I got that for her. We don’t have a cure, but we have a treatment protocol that involves inducing comas. It slows the progress of the disease. Not indefinitely, but for a while at least.”

I glanced at the other patients. The one at the far end of the room was a guy with what looked like a short, military-style haircut grown out a couple of months. Had he been one of the guards? Whatever he had been in life, he wasn’t quite human anymore. His jaw was too big, his brow ridge too pronounced, making his eyes look sunken. Even under the blanket, the proportion of his limbs looked all wrong. I didn’t ask how long he’d been like this or how quickly he was progressing. I didn’t want to know.

I barely looked at the guy on the bed next to his, but the third patient caught my eye because it was a kid. And because there was a dog asleep under the kid’s bed. The chow mix slowly stretched and sat up. Chuy. Which meant the kid was Marcos. Ely’s little brother. They looked enough alike—despite the four year age difference—that they could have been twins. I might have doubted myself if Chuy hadn’t been there. And it made so much sense. Ely wasn’t a bad guy. He was just a guy who would do anything for his family. I could understand that. Knowing his brother was in here being held by Roberto, being held in stasis—it made me hate Ely less for betraying us. That was a good thing. I had enough people to hate right now.

I looked at Lily last. I couldn’t help but imagine her a few weeks or months down the road, looking like that guy at the end. How much time did she have? I didn’t know; I just had to pray it was enough.

I looked back up at Price. I expected to feel that burst of hatred. Instead, I felt nothing but exhaustion.

“I’m sorry.” He actually looked like he meant what he was saying. Not that I believed him. Not that it even mattered one way or the other. “I didn’t know you even thought we had the cure.”

I turned to the doctor. “How long can she live in stasis?”

“Dodson has been like that for two months, but we’ll lose him completely at some point. There was a guard before him who turned completely at eleven weeks. The sedative must be incompatible with something in the Tick biology. He woke up and we had to—”

I nodded my understanding. So, under three months. Probably less because it had taken more than twenty-four hours to get her here and into the coma.

I had come in here determined to save her. To get her out of the clinic and drive straight to the Genexome Corporation headquarters. To rip the place to shreds until I found the cure.

But how could I know if that was the right thing for me to do?

I looked at Price again. “You’ve got the helicopter? Where are you going?”

“Wherever we can find that’s safe. Probably one of the Farms.”

“You’re taking the doctor?” I looked at her. She nodded. “And you can keep her alive until I can find the cure and bring it to you?”

Pity flashed across her face. “I can try.”

Price stepped forward. “Once she wakes up, she’ll stay with me. I won’t let her leave with you.”

Now, it was my turn to feel pity. Price obviously cared about his daughters in his own twisted way, but he didn’t know them. If he really thought that he could keep Lily out of this fight, then he didn’t know her at all.

God knows I’d certainly tried and it hadn’t worked. Not at all. When you loved someone, it wasn’t always about keeping them safe. It was about caring enough to let them make their own decisions. It wasn’t about control or protection. It was about respect. I’d learned that the hard way.

“You want to keep her safe with you, you’re welcome to try.”

Price looked at me suspiciously. “You’re really just going to let me take her?”

The doctor looked at me and said, “There’s room in the helicopter. You could come.”

Price looked like he wanted to swallow his tongue, but then he nodded. “We could use a guy like you. With your combat experience.”

For a second, I was tempted. The best way to make sure Price didn’t take Lily too far away for me to find her was to go with them myself. But I’d seen the copter. It wasn’t that big.

“If I came, you wouldn’t have room for all of them, would you?”

Price shrugged. He obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead. He was too used to thinking only of his own interests. But the doctor shook her head.

In the end, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice lives, especially the life of a kid, to be with Lily.

“I’ll help you load the helicopter. Lily first, then Marcos. You take as many as you can. The doctor here stays with them.” I got right in Price’s face. “You find the closest Farm and you let me know where you’re going. As long as she’s still alive when I get there, I’ll let you live. But if you try to keep me away from her, I will find you and destroy you myself.”

“You’re so sure you could do that?”

“Yeah, I am. Don’t forget, I’ll have your other daughter.”

Something hard and soulless lit in Price’s eyes and I knew he’d been planning on snagging Mel on the way out.

“Mel won’t go with you,” I told him.

“She will. Mel and I have always understood each other.”

“Maybe. But you’re the one who said you should never underestimate the great things a human
abductura
can accomplish when working with a vampire.”

It took several seconds for Price to understand my point. I’d been right. He hadn’t figured out yet that Mel had turned into a vampire. The shock on his face might have been enough to make me smile, but I was already helping the doctor wheel Lily’s bed out to the helicopter.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Mel

I sneak back to the square as the fight between Roberto and Sebastian rages on. Of course, all the sneaking in the world is pointless. Neither notices me. They are completely engaged in the battle, relentlessly focused on each other. The clang of metal on metal echoes through the square, and the closer I get, the more it blocks out everything else. The howls of the approaching Ticks. The roar of the helicopter’s engine. The report of rapid gunfire in the distance. All of it fades.

Roberto and Sebastian appear to be evenly matched. Roberto is smaller, of course, but the katana gives him a longer reach. Sebastian, I know, has battle experience that should give him an edge, but Roberto is fantastically good with the sword, wielding it with an easy confidence that I never managed.

As evenly matched as they are, I have no doubt this could last for hours. Days maybe, before one of them tires enough to make a mistake. They slash and swipe and parry with a grace and agility that no Hollywood special effects department could hope to match.

Their battle is a thing of beauty.

But I don’t have time for this. My sister needs that cure. All I need is a few minutes alone with Sebastian to find out where the cure is, so that Carter and I can leave here to go get it.

We need to get out of here soon. There are—literally—hundreds of miles of fence around this compound, but eventually the Ticks will find their way through if they haven’t already. They’ll swarm over this town and when they do—if Carter is still here—he’ll be torn apart. He’s protected me often enough. It’s time for me to return the favor.

I have to either interrupt the fight or find a way to tip the balance to end it more quickly. Neither of which I am going to be able to do unless I find some kind of weapon. I know the guard station will be well stocked, but undoubtedly there are guards there also. I’m not going to count on them handing me a crossbow so I can go murder their leader.

Instead, I sneak back around the edge of the square toward the one building I know: Roberto’s mansion.

I don’t know what I’ll find there. My trek through the downstairs of his house was somewhat impeded by the fact that I was dragged along behind a raging maniac. I don’t remember seeing anything I could use as a weapon, but even crazed vampires needed brooms, right?

Sure, Roberto doesn’t seem like the type to do his own cleaning, but the cleaning staff has to keep their stuff somewhere.

I dash up the steps and in through the front door, which stands open. My eyes adjust quickly to the darkness and I stare around the foyer. There is a front parlor off to the left with a massive entertainment center and sleek, leather furniture intermixed with elegant antiques. I guess his taste is eclectic. I am about to walk on past and look for a broom closet or something when the gleam of metal on the back wall catches my attention.

I walk into the room, feeling along the wall automatically for a light switch before remembering that the electricity is off. I am most of the way across the room before my mind processes what I am seeing.

The wall is covered with weapons, from the ceiling all the way down to the display case. Swords, daggers, crossbows. Most of them look like antiques. All of them have a cross somewhere on them, everything from the crudely painted slash of red on the wooden handle of the crossbow, to the mother-of-pearl embossed on the handle of a sword. The display case is the wood-and-glass kind you’d see in a museum. It contains a series of Victorian-style boxes. The most elaborate of them is closed to show off the carving. The others are opened to reveal the contents: daggers, pistols, vials of mysterious powder, carved pieces of wood. More crosses. Crosses on everything.

That’s what does it for me. That’s what gives it away.

They are vampire hunting kits. Once in the Before, I’d seen a TV show about them. They’d been a curiosity item popular with paranoid Victorians after the publication of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
. And Roberto collects them. By the dozens. I look at the weapons on the wall again. All those crosses. That’s what this whole display is. The tools of vampire hunters.

What kind of idiot collects weapons specifically designed to kill him?

An egomaniac with a well-equipped personal army, I guess.

I reach for a sword most like my katana. As I pull it from the wall, I notice a tiny nameplate beneath it.
Kimura 1704
. They all have labels with names and dates. So then this isn’t just a collection of vampire-slaying tools. It’s a personal collection. These are the tools of vampire slayers who came after him and failed.

I don’t take the time to count them. I don’t need to know how many have failed before me. Besides, I don’t really need to kill Roberto. I only need to distract him long enough for Sebastian to do it.

Obviously, one of the bows would be my best bet in terms of not needing to be close to Roberto to use it, but I don’t have Lily’s archery experience. Besides, I think I’d read somewhere that bow strings needed to be oiled regularly to be kept in working condition. Even if I could hit a target, having the string snap when I notch the arrow will do me no good.

I take the katana and a wicked-looking dagger. Then, just to be sure, I knock out the glass in the display case and grab a fistful of stakes. Maybe I am being paranoid, but I don’t want my katana
added to this wall.

I think for a moment, but I am not sure how I feel about Sebastian’s Arkansas Toothpick. When it comes to him, I am still torn.

How am I supposed to feel? In some ways, Sebastian seems to know me better than I know myself. He understands me like no one else ever has. And he’s used that knowledge against me. He’s turned me into a killer.

I truly hate him. But does that mean I want him dead?

No. I don’t.

Unless . . . unless everything Roberto had said was true. Unless Sebastian was responsible for the Tick virus. Unless he was the one who had destroyed the world. Unless he was the one responsible for the end of my world as I’d known it. For the death of my mother. What happened to my sister.

Then, yes. Then, I want him dead.

Once I’m armed, I sneak out the front door and slip through the darkness to the square. I stash the stakes in the pockets of my cargo pants. Then I tuck the katana under my arm as I fasten the sheath of the dagger to my belt as I walk. Confident I can reach whatever I need, I grip the handle of the katana and scrape the pad of my thumb across the blade. It’s old but sharp enough. It will do what I need it to. Kimura may not have succeeded in killing Roberto, but then, he wasn’t sneaking up on him in the middle of an all-out battle. Still, I couldn’t help wondering if Kimura had failed because he’d underestimated Roberto. And if I was making the same mistake.

Sebastian and Roberto are still at it; I knew they would be. Roberto almost has Sebastian backed against the oak tree in the middle of the square. Sebastian sees me coming, his eyes flickering only briefly in my direction. Roberto hesitates on his next strike, and it’s the window Sebastian has been looking for. With one wickedly fast movement, he lunges in and the dagger catches the katana just so. The sword flies out of his hand and goes soaring through the air.