Angel's Pain (24 page)

“Hey, there, my crazy little loon,” she said. She leaned over Crisa, pushing her hair off her forehead with one hand. “Baby, hey. Come on, wake up, it's your favorite hell-bitch.”

Her brows drew together, and she shot a look toward Matt. “How long has she been like this?”

“Since yesterday,” Matt said. “Is she—I can't tell, I'm not a vamp. Is she even alive?” He felt tears in his eyes and tried to blink them away.

“Oh, hell, yeah.” Briar dropped down to one knee, putting herself at eye level with him. “Yeah, she's alive. She is. You poor kid. You've been sitting here not even sure of that much, haven't you?” He nodded. “For how long?” she asked.

He shrugged. “All day. And for a little while before that.”

Eric lifted his head, glancing upward without any real focus. “We need to get her out of here before we're unable to. Matthias, you can come with us or stay behind. It's up to you. But I'd far prefer you come with us.”

Briar glared at the man.
What do you mean, it's up to him?
She thought the words urgently, unaware, Matt knew, that he could hear them, too.
We're not leaving it up to him whether or not he stays with a killer like Gregor. We show up without him and Ilyana will never forgive me. Neither would Roxy, and God knows I'd never hear the end of it from her. Besides, the kid could end up dead if we leave him here.

Eric shrugged and looked again at Matt. “What do you say, son?”

Matt looked from one of them to the other, and then he nodded. “I'll come with you.” Then he looked toward the desk in the lab. “Those are the files Derry, uh, Mr. Dwyer had on her. You might need them.”

“Good man,” Eric said, clapping the boy on the shoulder. “Let's gather them up and go.”

 

Raphael Rivera,
Gregor said mentally.
It's about time.

It's long past time, Gregor.
Reaper had allowed Gregor to sense him as he approached the front door. He hadn't made it too obvious, but not too challenging, either. And apparently it had worked.

Gregor flung the front door open wide even as Reaper jogged along the walkway toward it. Reaper had a tranquilizer gun loaded, drawn and clutched in his hand, ready to fire. So, he noted, did Gregor. “I've been expecting you,” Gregor called.

“Oh, I have no doubt. But I'm not here for you, Gregor. Not this time. This is about Crisa. She's an innocent in all this. Let me take her out of here, and then you and I will settle what's between us.”

“Who's Crisa?” Gregor asked, feigning innocence.

Reaper poured on vampiric speed, staring into Gregor's face in an instant, gripping his shirt front in a fist.

“Don't play games with me, Gregor. She's dying. She needs help immediately.” He held his gun to Gregor's head, but Gregor did the same. If Reaper fired, Gregor would, too. Stalemate.

“I know.” Gregor jerked himself free of the other man's grip, then smoothed his shirt front down, still holding the gun steady. “That's why I've sent the drones to bring me a surgeon.”

Reaper's brows drew together. The man's words didn't make any sense to him. “Why would you do that?”

“Because Crisa needs that chip removed from her brain or she'll die. And because I have decided to keep her alive if I can. And if I can keep her alive, then I've decided to keep her.”

“
What
?” Reaper asked, his eyes narrowing.

Gregor shrugged. “I don't have to explain myself to you. However, you should know that I'm not going to let you leave, even though I'm not going to be able to deal with you until after I do what needs to be done for Crisa.”

“It's because of your son, isn't it? It's because of the boy.”

Gregor's eyes narrowed. “What the hell do you know about my son?”

“I had a conversation with Dwyer,” Reaper said, debating how much to give away and still unsure whether Gregor knew that Ilyana was with Reaper and his gang.

“He told me he had the boy. He told me about the chip, the mind control power it provides, the fact that you had taken those controls from him and had them here. It wasn't much of a leap from there to guessing that you would have forced Crisa to bring Matthias back here to you. So where are they, Gregor? Where are you keeping them?”

“You're good. Very good. But I wouldn't tell you where they were even if you shot me.” Gregor walked over to the fireplace, where a fire was burning, though the flame was extremely low.

“Interesting that you put it that way, since those are your precisely your options,” Reaper said, following him, not wanting to let him get too far away. He was constantly sensing for drones, constantly monitoring for a signal from Briar that she and Eric and Crisa had made it clear.

But he heard nothing.

And then he did.

He heard the grating of metal hinges beneath him, and he felt the floor giving away. Before he could react, he was plummeting downward, a long way downward. Finally he landed hard on what felt like a cold concrete floor in a room of utter darkness. The single square of light from above quickly vanished, as Gregor swung the trapdoor closed again.

“Enjoy your stay, Reaper,” Gregor called just before he extinguished the last bit of light. “As soon as I've granted my son's request to save your friend Crisa, I'll be coming down to drain you of every ounce of blood—and of power—you possess.”

“Damn you, Gregor!”

Reaper whirled in a circle, arms reaching outward, eyes adjusting rapidly. And soon he could see and feel the situation. He was in a small room. Windowless concrete walls on all four sides of him, and the chute through which he had plummeted above. Nothing else.

 

Gregor trekked down into the basement. The cell where he'd sealed Reaper was in a sublevel below this one. The chute through which he'd fallen was wide and completely enclosed. From here, it looked like an oversized chimney, a square pillar that reached from floor to ceiling. No one would guess that it opened into the living room floor above and ended in a tomblike pit below.

He'd expected to hear Reaper shouting at him, cursing him, demanding to be released. But he heard nothing. The man had gone silent. Probably plotting his escape. Gregor wondered how long it would take him to figure out that there was none.

But that was for later contemplation. And enjoyment. For now, he needed to shift his focus to Matthias and his pathetic newfound companion. He hoped the drones could find a surgeon and bring him here before this night was through. Even then, there was still no guarantee the woman would survive. But he had promised to try, and he intended to.

Gregor's thoughts ground to a halt as he realized that there was no sense of Matthias anywhere nearby. He frowned and sharpened his focus, but he felt the emptiness of the room even before he reached it. He opened the door to the basement lab, then moved through it and into the room beyond.

Crisa's hospital bed lay empty. Clean sheets, and mounds of blankets and pillows, were rumpled, as if they had been used. But no one was using them now. One small blanket and a pillow lay on the gurney on the far side of the room, and he guessed that must have been where his son had napped today. Close to Crisa's side. Watching over her as if he were a man grown, and her protector, rather than a young boy. Gregor's chest swelled with a feeling of pride in his son, even as his stomach lurched in worry.

Someone else had been here.

Briar!

He could smell her, almost taste her on the air. She'd been here, and so had someone else. Another vampire, a male, and one Gregor did not know. Gone now. Though how the two could have come and gone unseen was beyond him.

He followed his sense of them, knowing they had taken his son and Crisa away. As he moved back through the lab, he noted that the stack of files was also missing. The ones he'd taken from Dwyer, the ones that had all the information on Crisa.

And then he searched the main part of the basement lab, again following his senses. One wall had a freestanding rack of shelves against it, only he realized now that it wasn't freestanding at all. The bricks behind it were actually attached to it. The marks on the dusty floor showed him the truth. It was a secret door. He ran his hands over the books, touching only where
they
had touched, until the shelf sprang free. He pulled it open.

Whirling back toward the room, he howled in rage.

What's the matter, Gregor?
Reaper's mind reached out to his, adding to his fury.
Your kid run away again?

I'll kill you for this, Reaper. Make no mistake. I'll get them back. All of them—Briar included. But you, my friend,
you
are not going to be around to see it.

Gregor started for the hidden entrance to that subterranean cell, then stopped himself.

He called out to his drones, most of whom were patrolling the woods or standing on guard duty.
There are intruders on or around the grounds. They have taken my prisoner and my son. Find them. Kill the man, and bring the others to me. And do not hurt the boy.

That done, he hauled open a trapdoor in the basement floor, climbed down the ladder to the bottom and stood in the small open area, facing the solid door to Reaper's cell. He was going to kill the bastard, and he was going to do it now. No more waiting.

He reached for the door, unfastened the bolt, gripped the large handle and shoved it inward.

But the door didn't budge.

He shoved again, but still there was no movement.

From the other side, Reaper laughed softly. “Did you expect that I'd make it easy for you? I suppose you can always come in the way I did. Though I'll be waiting to tear you apart when you land, so you'd have a hell of a time getting out again.”

The bastard was blocking the door with no more than the force of his mind! Telekinesis, of a sort, fueled by the power of his bloodline, perhaps. Gregor tried to battle it with the force of his own powers, but he knew already that he was no match for the vampiric powers of someone descended from Rhiannon, and from Vlad the Impaler before her.

Gregor gave up trying after a moment, knowing he couldn't open the door that way. “I don't have to resort to coming in that way,” he said. “You
will
die, Reaper. Even if I can never get inside that cell, you'll die. Either slowly, of starvation, or more quickly.”

“Either way, you don't get to drain me. My power dies with me.”

Gregor narrowed his eyes. “Honestly, as long as you're dead, I no longer care.”

“Bull.”

Gregor shrugged, never admitting that he really did care, that he craved Reaper's power. The man would be just as dead, either way. He climbed the ladder and crossed the basement, then headed back up the stairs to the main part of the house. In the living room, he went to the mantel and picked up the remote control he'd left there. He'd been preparing this place for months before he'd actually taken up residence, and this particular feature was his greatest innovation. With a thumb to a button, the trapdoor dropped open again. Then he thumbed another button and watched the floor as a solid, impenetrable, glasslike panel slid silently across in its place.

Do me a favor, Reaper. Look up.

He knew full well what his nemesis would see when he did. He would see the long chute through which he had plummeted. He would see that the trapdoor in the living room floor was open, a window in its place, and directly above that, in the towering ceiling above Gregor, he would see the skylight, as its electronic shades drew back.

Right now that skylight would show Reaper only a distant glimpse of the night sky, the twinkling stars, perhaps even a corner of the crescent moon. A tantalizing, teasing bit of the freedom he would never again know…and the slowly dawning realization that in the morning, that window onto the world would reveal a far different view. A view of the daylight—and of the sun. As it rose, its rays would flow down into the chute, and by the time the sun reached its zenith, Reaper's tiny cell would be flooded in light.

And he would go up in flames.

 

Briar followed Eric into the tunnel, then turned to pull the section of wall closed behind them, as the boy stood trembling beside her. With the door closed, the passageway was black as pitch, and the child's fear was palpable. She could see as well in the darkness as by full light, but she knew he couldn't, so when he groped blindly, his eyes wide, his lips trembling, Briar caught his hand and closed hers around it. “It's okay, Matt,” she said.

Ahead of her, Eric was carrying Crisa, who hung limp in his arms. She was so still that Briar wondered if she had any chance of survival.

“Is Crisa going to be all right?” Matt asked. He shuffled his feet when he walked, unsure of his footing, slowing Briar's pace. She held on to his hand even more tightly, pulling him along.