Afterglow (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #2) (10 page)

I still had about a half hour of sunlight to make sure that I could get past any booby traps, make my way past the locked gates and descend toward the dungeons that Uta had described to me. I wanted to be ready when they woke up.

More than that, I wanted to be ready if Vlad showed up. Had we killed him or not?  Or had it been one of his henchmen we had killed, sent in first to see if it was safe, as Uta had assumed? It was true that Vlad had survived many attempts on his life as a vampire. I supposed I would find out tonight if he was still alive. I really hoped he was not. We had killed two vampires last night in the trap, but I confessed to myself that we only knew for sure that one of them had been Gabrielle Dubois.

When the sun got right on the edge of the horizon, I heard something that chilled me to the bone.

Children singing. Not kid-type songs like
row-row-row-your-boat
, but they were singing a praise song to vampires to the melody of a popular worship songs. Only they were singing things like, “Yes, vampires love me, yes, vampires love me…”

I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

I was utterly shocked at the level of evil by the vampire perps.

I had come here to rescue Kristen, but now, I had a whole different picture in my mind of how happy the victims were going to be to get out of Dodge and how we could all run out of here together. I hoped to God that they were just faking their enthusiasm for the vampire culture, in order to escape…only God knew what horrible things were indoctrinated into them through brainwashing.

The first rule of being a captive was: Figure out what you need to do to stay alive. The second rule of being a captive was: Don’t compromise other people’s safety and well-being to save yourself. Third rule was: Escape!

As I looked at the ruins of the castle, which was mostly rubble above ground, I saw candles being lit on the top floor of the Raven Citadel. I surmised that most of the previous rescue attempts had the rescuers heading right for the dungeons where they thought the captives might be.

Instead of doing that, I thought that I would start from the top of the castle ruins and work my way down.

Nobody inside the castle would be expecting that.

Now for the hard part.

Parkour IRL. Parkour
in real life.

Shielded from view of anyone in the castle by piles of dark rubble, I stretched and bent and got my special parkour gloves on. I took deep breaths and let them out and focused on the goals of a
traceur
, or one who does parkour.

Two movements at a time was the way my parkour free running needed to proceed. I needed to stay light on my feet and climb the rough walls, find handholds and make it to the top level of the castle ruins before anyone saw me.

But someone did see me. Lots of eyes saw me climbing the wall like a jumping spider, jumping and leaping and pulling myself up and up. Just like our own Blackstone Castle, the Raven Citadel had…well, ravens. They kicked up a bit of a fuss, but only for a minute or so because when the sun goes down, those birds go to sleep and they are no longer such good burglar alarms.

Not looking down, because I sure as hell knew better, I made progress on climbing up the castle ruins, just keeping two movements ahead in my mind as I leaped between piles of rubble and monoliths and remnants of old stone stairs.

Soon, I reached a tower landing and an open corridor. When I went in, the ravens roosting around the long-unused bell crooned their
rook-rook
sounds to me, but there was no loud cawing.

I saw the glow of candlelight coming from a corridor and went through an unlocked door, utterly baffled at the level of security. There was none.

I followed the flickering candlelight to a long room filled with slanted school desks where pale children seemed to be drawing or writing something as they sang chilling song after chilling song, all of them dedicated to the edification of vampires.

There were some sick pervs running this operation.

I noticed something about the kids. They looked like they were in a collective trance, hypnotized or something. Oh, their mouths were moving, singing, and plenty of drawing and writing was getting done by candlelight. But, I was further sickened when I also noticed that they had IV ports stuck in their left hands and they were drawing or writing with their right hands. So, they were good little blood slaves. Probably the best ones, too. They looked healthy and clean. Nobody was chained. They seemed to be excited to have art supplies and be doing something even remotely fun. I was completely baffled by the scene.

I had a feeling that these indoctrinated kids were the crème de la crème of artists and calligraphers. But what did they do with the ones who did not have the skills to pull this off in a lurid sweatshop run by vampires? I got scared when I realized that my Kristen had massive, massive art talent. Besides me, her father, many other people who bought her artwork online thought this, too, not knowing that a little girl was behind their expensive drawings and paintings.

Were the uncooperative dungeon captives not as lucky as the art geek kids? I gritted my teeth against each song that edified the vampire culture, as if it was a religion. Perhaps to the vampires, it was. But I had my own religion—it was a silver blade in my right boot, a silver blade named Aurora.

For all their appearance of health and well-being, all of these kids in the third-level area of the Raven Citadel would have to be weaned from whatever drug or hypnosis they had them under and deprogrammed from the vampire indoctrination. Counseled. Questioned. Fixed. Lordy, I didn’t want that job, but I was glad they were alive and pink-cheeked cherubs.

I stayed in the shadows, creeping along the unguarded room whose kids had only eyes for the work on their slanted desks. I peered through the half-darkness to see what the kids were working on while they sang the creepy vampire cult songs.

Illuminated manuscripts. Beautiful books. Hand-done by the delicate and careful hands of children who sang re-tooled songs in praise of vampires while they created some sort of religious vampire cult works of tremendous talent, even with gold and red and green ink. Swirls, scrolls, illuminated capitals and page borders of red and gold.

None of the twenty kids in this room were even looking at each other, but only at the work they were producing, as if it was a test and they were to keep their eyes on their own papers. It was then that I realized how they kept the children so docile:

They used fear and reward.

But what did the vamps threaten them with if they did not sing and chant pro-vampire mantras?

It surely was screwing them up emotionally.

Since nobody was a direct threat to these kids at the moment, I decided to go down a level in the ruins and investigate further to figure out how to get them all out at once. I was only one person and was beginning to see the foolishness of me coming here alone to find Kristen and Lucian, save other captives and kill Vlad, if he still lived, and/or his henchmen, if they showed their ugly faces.

I shuddered, wondering what I would find on the next level of the Raven Citadel. I was not scared for myself, but for the captives.

So far, I still had not seen any vampires or guards of any kind. It was downright weird. As I passed cameras, the kind that sweep back and forth automatically, I used some parkour techniques when the camera was pointed away from my path.

When the security camera whirred and angled away from me, I did a huge leap down a set of stone stairs, did a tuck and roll and sprang to my feet. To my utter shock, I came face to face in the near darkness with:

Ambra.

I almost screamed until I caught her scent and realized who it was under the black ninja getup and mask through which only her eyes showed. But I’d know her scent anywhere—summer rain—and I would know those blue eyes and blond eyebrows anywhere, too.

She put her palm over my mouth and dragged me into the blackness of a corner so dark and cold that I was scared witless that she was even here.

“
What are you
doing
here?” I whispered in her ear.

“
The bigger question is: What are you doing here
alone
?” she replied into my ear through the black mask that covered most of her face.

“
I’m here being foolish and egotistical,” I admitted.

“
I’ll agree with that,” she replied. “You can’t save all of these people by yourself, and kill the vampires, too.”

I nodded. “I know that now. There are twenty kids upstairs. Where are the vampires?”

“One floor down.”

“
Good to know. How did you get here?” I whispered.

“
I rode the same trains you did and stayed in another coach car so you wouldn’t smell me.”

“
Wait a minute! You tailed me this whole way across several countries and I didn’t even know it?”

“
That’s right. I even got a ride to the train station in the far back area of your Jeep. I rolled in snow before I got in so you wouldn’t be able to smell me with your super-nose.”

I stood open-mouthed in shock.

She teased, “If I’d-a been a vampire, I’d-a bit you!”

Chapter Eleven

“What’s the deal with the twenty kids upstairs?” she asked.

“
No guards are up there! Just kids singing creepy vampire cult praise songs, writing and drawing illustrated books that look like the kind monks used to make in the olden days.”

“
Illuminated manuscripts? With decorated borders on the pages and fancy capital letters?”

“
Exactly! Is that what you call them?”

“
Yes.”

“
Ambra, the kids each have an IV port in their non-dominant hand. I assume for blood draws.”

“
That’s horrible.”

“
Yes. It is. But not as bad as being bitten and sucked.”

“
So, they’re somehow coerced to believe that vampires are a good religion?”

“
I assume. I wonder what their cover story is to the kids. Have you been underground yet?”

“
Yes. Horrible dungeons are full of suffering people, adults and teens. Some of the tortured are at the point of madness. But there aren’t any guards there either.”

“
Oh my God, let’s get them out of there!”

“
We’re going to have to blow the locks on the dungeon doors with C4 or something.”

“
I don’t have any of that!”

Ambra said, “Neither do I. We’ll think of something.”

“You’ve seen pictures of Kristen. Is she there?”

“
No. Not unless they changed her hair color or something.”

My heart broke a little more. No.
A lot more.

“
Kristen might be in a room we haven’t seen.”

“
Thanks, Ambra. Let’s get everyone else out of here.”

“
First, I have to tell you something important.”

“
What?”

“
You were right. Vlad is not dead. We didn’t kill him in the vampire trap. It was some other vampire who went in there with Gabrielle.”

“
Jesus.
Where’s Vlad?”

“
On the ground-level floor with his henchmen. It looks like they are having a big staff meeting with absolutely everybody, which explains why no guards are about.”

“
We should attack them and kill them before they feed and amp up their strength,” I said.

“
Let’s go!” Ambra whispered.

“
Wait!” I got out the photo of Lucian and showed it to her. “Don’t kill this guy, even if he’s a vampire.”

She punched me in the arm. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Just trust me, Ambra. Even if he’s a vampire, he’s got three little kids who need him! Let’s hit it!”

Chapter Twelve

I had Aurora, my silver blade, in my right hand, a silver dart in my left, and my trusty little homemade blowgun in my mouth, the one that shot out one silver sewing needle. I’d use it once and then move it between teeth and cheek while I used my other weapons.

Even if the vamps were wearing Kevlar, I was pumped and determined to stab through the fibers and take out the enemy, heart by heart.

Ambra had her full-sized scythe—she’d named her weapon Epiphany—pulled out of her right boot, and her mini-scythe necklace curved through her left hand, ready to claw out a vampire heart, and she had her voice free, which she used to shout:

“
Lucian! Help us!”

They rushed us. All of them at once.

Ambra and I went back to back in the fray, stabbing, kicking, jumping, lunging with all of our might.