Dread Nemesis of Mine (10 page)

I waited until Maximus's footsteps faded down
the hallway before making my move. Closing my eyes, I extended a
tendril toward the female vampire standing guard outside. I felt
her cold aura. Overwhelmingly positive emotions welled from her,
mostly adoration mixed with lust. Apparently, she wanted to break
her off a piece of Maximus. All the better for me. I could
manipulate most females into sexual feelings, thanks to my incubus
skillz
, but with her already feeling the way she did, luring
her in here to cut me loose would be a snap.

Equalizing my emotional state with hers took
a moment, because I wasn't feeling particularly lustful or happy at
the moment. I eased my tendril into her aura, opening the channel
to feed.

Alarm spiked. Anger quickly followed. The
door banged open and a woman in her early twenties stormed in and
stood over me. Long brown hair, matted and tangled, framed a pale
homely face. She wore one of the pink T-shirts with the
fang-pierced heart I'd seen during the attack and a pair of
matching cargo shorts I could just make out with my peripheral
vision.

Gripping the table to either side of my head,
she leaned into my face, snarling and showing long yellowed fangs.
"Try it again, spawn," she said in a girly voice, "and I'll cut
these off." She reached a hand down to my crotch and gave a painful
squeeze.

I yelped.

She smirked. "You don't think Maximus would
put a female down here if she didn't know how to handle herself,
did you?"

I looked her up and down with my eyes since I
couldn't move my head much. "I don't know, looks like Maximus has
pretty low standards for vampires nowadays. Can't you afford
designer jeans?"

"We don't need that crap."

"And what's with these stupid hearts on the
T-shirts? Did I miss Valentine's day?"

She ran a hand down one of the fangs on the
symbol. "It's the symbol for Blood Rush." She pressed sharp
fingernails into my stomach. "Maybe I'll tattoo it on your
chest."

I squirmed, trying without success to get her
hands off me.

She leaned over. Sniffed my neck. Licked it.
"Mmm, so sweet. Too bad you belong to Maximus." She sighed. "Maybe
he'll get me my own spawn soon." She walked away, slamming the door
shut behind her.

Heartbeat thudding in my ears, I writhed
uselessly against my bonds until my skin was raw. Lifting my head
as far as the neck strap would allow, I looked at my body and
flushed from head to toe. I didn't have on anything except boxers.
A trickle of dried blood had pooled on my chest between my pectoral
muscles. I gagged again, thinking of Maximus's nasty yellow fangs
puncturing my skin.

"One requires help," said a calm, almost
emotionless voice from somewhere behind me, sounding as though the
owner might be in a far back corner.

I would have jumped except for the straps
holding me down. "Really, you think so?" I said, unable to keep the
sarcasm down to a dull roar.

"This entity believes so."

"This—what? Entity?" I strained my neck but
couldn't twist it far enough to see more than a couple of tables to
either side. Parts of the room were dark, florescent lights
flickering in fitful spurts.

"Yes," replied the same deadpan voice. "This
one is also an entity."

My neck felt sore from all the twisting, so I
gave up trying to see whoever was speaking. "Okay, Mr. Entity, can
you get me out of these straps?"

"This one is unable to do so, other
entity."

"Call me Justin."

"This is a designation?"

"It's a name!" Had Maximus stuck me in here
with a brain-damaged vampire? Or even worse, someone suffering
dementia brought on by the vampling virus? Cold prickles walked
down my spine. "Why are you unable to help me?"

"Justin, this one is also bound."

"Why do you keep saying 'this one'? Do you
know how to use pronouns?"

"Pronouns—yes. There are many words inside.
And some rules for using them."

"Okay, well rule number one, start using
pronouns. You sound like an imbecile."

"This one—I will."

"That wasn't so hard, now was it?"

"This one does not feel the 'I' inside—in
me."

My brain struggled to decipher what he'd just
said and gave up. "What are you?"

"An entity."

I groaned. "What
kind
of entity? You
sound male. Are you a vampire?"

"I do not know. I look like the others."

"Like Maximus? The tool bag who was in here
talking to me?"

"Yes," he said in the same unfaltering tone.
"Therefore, I must be a tool bag."

I would have laughed if not for wanting to
cry even more. Great. Just great! Not only was I trussed up as
Maximus's personal snack pack, but I had the intellectual
equivalent of a lobotomized yak to talk with.

The willpower to talk abandoned me. I had to
think, dammit. I closed my eyes and saw Maximus's leering face.
When I'd accused him of kidnapping my sister, he'd been completely
surprised. He didn't know a thing about it. Could Daelissa be
behind this trick? Had she somehow faked the entire video? The
memory of Bigglesworth's mocking smile and laughter slapped me in
the face. His complete lack of concern for Ivy's kidnapping made
sense now. That ball of sludge was in on the joke.

Heartache abruptly stabbed me in the chest as
another possibility came to mind. What if Ivy had participated in
the sham? What if this was her way of getting rid of me?

Please, no.

Daelissa may have cooked up the idea, but it
didn't mean she hadn't used Ivy and the others to stage it. Maximus
obviously hadn't lent his voice talent to it, but there were other
ways to fake or use recorded versions of his voice. I thought back
to the recording on the ASE and tried to remember exactly how
Maximus's voice had sounded on it. But my memory was imprecise.

And now, it really didn't matter.

"Are you also a tool bag?" the voice from the
back of the room said.

"I'm a tool bag. We're all tool bags." My
hands and jaw clenched with rage, frustration, and worst of all,
sorrow. My sister thought I was evil. She despised me enough to
toss me to the vampires so they could enslave me and drink my blood
forever. I felt the hot sting of a tear trickle down my cheek.
Betrayal was such a wicked thing. I had tasted it when Mom left.
When she told me Dad and I were no longer part of her family. I'd
felt it again when Dad told me he was giving up on Mom and marrying
Kassallandra. And with this added betrayal, I just felt like
crying.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I forced back the
tidal wave of pity threatening to flood from beneath my lids. I
thought of Elyssa and the Templars and wondered if they'd made it
out of the ambush alive. Worry burrowed into my chest.

This isn't helping!

I had to do something. Figure out how to free
myself. Sure, this table and the straps were made from what I had
been told was nearly unbreakable material. By "nearly" I didn't
know if I'd need an atom bomb or just a dragon to part the
material. I'd seen Meghan press the ends of a diamond strap against
concrete, bonding it to the surface. I'd seen her touch two ends of
the material together to form a loop. To open the straps, she'd
touched the material. Come to think of it, I'd toyed with it before
as well, connecting and disconnecting it with a simple touch.

How did the material know when to bond and
when to release? If I could reach one hand over and touch the strap
holding the other, would it release me? Or did it somehow magically
know I was the prisoner here and I couldn't free myself?

Why in the hell didn't I find out stuff like
this until it was too late?

It didn't matter. I didn't have a free hand,
and I couldn't slide one of my hands or bend my wrist enough to
touch the straps holding them. There had to be another solution,
something I was overlooking. And then it came to me. I might have
the answer if I could only figure out how to use it.

Magic
.

Elyssa

Elyssa and Bella trudged down the road back
toward La Casona. The motorcycle had apparently given its life
during the chase and wouldn't start when Elyssa tried.

"I can hotwire one of these scooters," Bella
said as they passed a line of them outside a restaurant.

"Why bother?" Elyssa shook her head as
weariness and numbing fatigue settled over her. She felt helpless.
Hopeless. This day had taken so much from her. Now all that
remained of her loved ones were her mother, Leia, and Michael.

"We'll get him back," Bella said, touching
Elyssa on the arm. "I promise you."

How was that possible without her father or
Christian to direct the troops? Who'd be in charge now? Michael? A
stranger? She slumped onto a set of stairs outside an apartment
building and pulled out her arcphone. She touched the screen, but
only saw garbled static.

"It appears to be dead," Bella said, taking
the arcphone and looking it over. She touched her wand to it. The
screen flickered and went blank a moment, then reset and came up
normally. "Or maybe it just needed a restart."

Elyssa took the phone. Pulled up Michael's
number and stared at it. Should she call him? Maybe he already knew
about the day's events.

Bella grabbed Elyssa by the shoulder and
jerked her to her feet. The short woman gave Elyssa a stern look.
"I know you've been through a lot, young lady, and you're in
shock."

Elyssa stared numbly at her. She wanted to
say something in her defense, but the words jumbled in her mind and
refused to come out. Was she in shock? She didn't feel the burning
surge of anger or the gripping agony of sorrow. She felt
nothing.

"We need to get you back," Bella said, and
marched Elyssa to a tiny car parked at the curb. She touched a wand
to the lock, opened the door, and shoved Elyssa inside. Climbed
into the driver seat and hotwired the car with her wand.

A few minutes later they reached a road
jammed with cars and people. Bella muttered something and got out.
She spoke with a man and got back in the car. "The police have
blocked the road. Looks like we'll have to walk the rest of the
way."

Elyssa nodded and pulled herself out of the
car. Her legs felt leaden. She just wanted to lie down and go to
sleep. A fierce look from Bella quashed that notion. The sorceress
motioned the Templar to follow. After a long slog through back
alleys and side streets, all while dodging police barricades, they
made it back to the outskirts of La Casona.

The burnt-out shell of her father's vehicle
still gave off plumes of greasy smoke. The front end looked like it
had been dipped in molten lava. The SUV Elyssa and Justin had been
in looked almost as bad. The other vehicles were gone. A man in a
black suit and dark glasses talked to a police officer nearby.
Another similarly dressed man caught sight of the two women and
approached them.

His eyes gauged Bella, and then Elyssa. He
said something in Spanish.

Elyssa didn't understand. "What?"

"I said you'll have to leave this area. It's
off-limits during our investigation."

"You're a Custodian?" Elyssa said.

The man's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"Elyssa Borathen."

"Ah." He nodded and pointed toward a black
sedan. "The driver will take you to the compound. It's important
you don't speak with the local authorities Let us deal with
them."

"I understand," Elyssa said.

"What are Custodians?" Bella asked as they
approached the waiting car.

"They clean up supernatural incidents so the
noms don't notice."

"Mhmm, so these are the same Templars who
cleaned up the mess at the Friendly Hotel after Vadaemos's
rampage?"

Bella's question reminded her of Jack. Her
brother was dead. Her father was dead. "Yes." Elyssa muttered. Even
talking was an effort.

The driver pulled out of the cordoned off
area and into a blind alley.

"What are you doing?" Bella said, her voice
alarmed.

The driver, a woman in the same type of black
suit as the men, didn't say a word, but slashed her finger across
what looked like an arcphone display in the dashboard. The car rose
into the air. Bella gasped. Through the front window, Elyssa saw
the hood shimmer into invisibility. Within seconds, they were
skimming silently in the air over the jam-packed streets below.

"You Templars get the best toys," the
sorceress said, watching the city roll past beneath. "I thought my
flying rug was neat. How do you power invisibility for so
long?"

"I couldn't say, ma'am," said the driver. "I
just work here."

A short time later, the car set down in the
center of a compound at the outskirts of the city. A young woman
with dark hair, fair skin, and a strong Italian nose met them as
they disembarked.

"Trouble follows your boyfriend everywhere,"
she said with a frown.

"Good to see you too, Fausta," Elyssa said,
overcoming the urge to simply grunt at her. "What happens now?"

Fausta bared her teeth. "We kick some vampire
ass."

"That's the spirit," Bella said holding her
hand out for a fist-bump.

Fausta quirked an eyebrow but didn't leave
the enthusiastic Arcane hanging. "I'll take you to the briefing
room."

They entered a circular building in the
middle of the compound. A guard unsealed the door to the room and
let them in. The moment the door opened, Elyssa felt her knees go
weak. Fausta and Bella gripped her before she slumped to the
floor.

Bella looked up and gasped.

Thomas Borathen met his daughter's gaze for a
brief second before continuing his speech. It took everything
Elyssa had not to run over and hug him.

He's alive!