Twilight Vendetta (15 page)

“That smallest structure,” Devlin said, pointing at something that didn’t resemble a building at all, but more like a multi-person restroom. Concrete blocks, a long and narrow shape, and a door on the narrow end nearest them. “There are people below it. That’s where all the activity and energy are coming from.”

“Below it?”

“They’re underground.”

“How are we going to get in there?”

“I don’t know yet.” He nodded toward the next bit of cover and said, “Are you ready?”

She wrapped her arms around him from behind and buried her face against his neck, tasting his skin on her lips as she replied, “You bet I am.”

T
avia, Bellamy and Andrew were waiting for them when Emma and Devlin made their way to the rear of the compound. Emma imagined they’d moved a lot faster. As a mere mortal, she had probably slowed Devlin down.

“There are three vacant buildings on this side,” Devlin said, “And one that’s not vacant at all, though the energies are coming from below ground.”

“We didn’t get anything from the buildings on our side, Dev,” Bellamy said. “But there are some guards posted.”

“I would not call dem guards. Dey are snipers,” Tavia added.

“How many?” Dev asked.

“Three,” Bell said. “None on your side?”

“No. Which tells us my side is the way we have to go in.”

Emma put her hand on Devlin’s bicep, then felt the hard bulge of it and almost forgot what she was going to say. She had to focus hard to find her train of thought again. “Um...right. Or it might mean this side is the way they
hope
we’ll try to get in.”

“You tink dey knew we would come for de kids?” Tavia asked.

“Maybe. Why else have snipers posted like that?”

Tavia narrowed her eyes to mere slits. “How could dey know?”

Emma shrugged. “At the very least, they must think someone is liable to show up. They have the two teens. They know they were with four other people, and they’re pretty sure you’re vampires. It might just be a precaution. Either way, we should do the thing they would expect least. Go in on the side where the guards
are
, because they want us to go in on the side where the guards
aren’t
.”

Devlin looked at Emma’s face for a long moment. She thought she saw admiration in his eyes. “All right, that’s what we’ll do. Lead us to these snipers, Tavia. We’ll take them out, quick and quiet.” He strode off in the direction the others had come from.

“Take them out, how?” Emma asked, running to catch up and gripping his forearm this time. Less distracting, though she was dying to run her hands over that bicep again. And again. “And what do we do after?”

“We take them out by whatever means is necessary,” he said.

“But we don’t have weapons.”

“We
are
de weapons,” Tavia said.

Emma looked from one of them to the other. “You...you mean just sneak up on them and...and bite them? Drain their blood? Kill them?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Devlin said. “If you don’t have the stomach for it, Emma–”

“There is no need to take their lives. If you do that, you’re no better than they are. Besides, it will just give DPI another PR weapon to use against your entire race. They’ll say you murdered military men. Soldiers, they’ll say. Boys whose mothers sent them off to serve their country–”

“They are not boys, Emma,” Bell said softly. “They’re seasoned, not raw recruits. These men are mercenaries, hired guns.”

“Trained vampire killers,” Tavia said.

“I understand where you’re coming from, Emma,” Bell rushed on. “But they shot Wolf and Sheena in the water. You were there.”

Emma closed her eyes, nodded. “All that’s true. But the men who did that are dead. Just because they wear the same uniform doesn’t mean–”

Devlin spun around and gripped her shoulders. His face was fierce, his eyes blazing as he stared into hers. “Go back back to the Jeep and wait for us.”

“What? No, I–”

“Go. And do not be seen, Emma, or you’ll get us all killed. Veer a few hundred feet away from the fence before you get to that camera we spotted before. That should put you out of range.”

“I want to go with you. I need to save my father–”

“If he’s in there, we’ll bring him out. Now go.”

She straightened her spine, lifted up her chin, faced his ferocity and said, “No.”

“Then this mission is over. Everyone, let’s go.” He kept on walking, and Tavia grabbed Emma’s arm, looked imploringly into her eyes. Almost like she was trying to speak mentally to her, and she did, in a way. All with those huge dark eyes.

“All right, all right, I’ll go back to the Jeep.” Emma lowered her head. “But please, please, Devlin for the sake of your people, don’t kill anyone unless you have absolutely no other choice.”

She could have sworn she heard him growling softly as she turned and walked away.

Devlin stopped near the first guard tower, which was tall, lopsided, and unsafe looking against the night sky. But on closer inspection, it appeared to be deliberately so. The tower was a square platform with a slanted roof to protect it from sun and rain alike. One strip of its steel roofing was pulled loose and curled up on one end. However, it was also twisted in a way that would send rainwater down over the side, near the lowest corner, rather than in onto the guard. The ladder that led up to it was missing a few rungs. But never two in a row. The remaining ones would be easily climbed all the same. There was a rail around the platform’s perimeter, to keep a man from falling to his death, two-by-fours nailed to each of four corner posts at knee level and again at chest height. The boards were unpainted and weathered looking, but Devlin’s keen eyes recognized new lumber, deliberately distressed. It even smelled new. There were strips of camouflage netting that hung like tattered curtains, as if they’d been there for years. But they were positioned to hide the human behind them while allowing him to see out.

They did not, however, prevent Devlin from seeing
in
.

So the tower was solid, the guard in it alert and watchful. Clearly he knew high-value prisoners had been brought here and that trouble was likely. All the guards had probably been warned.

Devlin wondered if this place had only recently been commandeered for its current purpose, or whether DPI and its attending militia had been using it for a while.

Not that it mattered.

He waited for the others to get into position. Tavia near the second guard tower, Bell near the third, and Andrew back in the other direction where there were neither towers nor guards, just to watch and see what transpired that way.

It was a beautiful night for this, Devlin thought, looking up at the black fingers of cloud veiling the face of the moon. It was almost as dark as night could get. And the perfect time for the first skirmish. His vampire resistance movement was being born here and now, this very night. Rescuing the twins and Emma’s father hadn’t really delayed his plans after all. If anything, it had hastened their development.

I’m in position,
Tavia whispered inside his mind.

So am I,
Andrew said.

Bell didn’t reply, but he had farther to go, and tended to be a bit more cautious than most. Still, he could move with vampiric speed, so it wouldn’t be long. Devlin wondered where Emma was. There hadn’t been time for her to make it back to the Jeep yet, and he couldn’t communicate with her the way he could with the other vampires.

The thought of her brought her words back into his mind. “If you kill them, you’re no better than they are.”

He closed his eyes.

Bell said,
I’m ready, Devlin.

Dev nodded. Then he said,
Drink, but do not kill. Leave them weakened, bound if need be, enthralled even.

So de little bird, she got to you after all,
Tavia’s mind whispered to his.

On my word, we spring as one,
Devlin told them
. Three, two, one, now!

He pushed off from where he stood, clearing the dilapidated perimeter fence, and landing on the tall tower’s platform right in front of the guard, a burly fellow with bad teeth and a straw-colored flat top. There was no time for the man to react. He couldn’t even raise his rifle before Devlin was pressing his head all the way to his shoulder, and sinking his fangs deep into the man’s neck.

Blood rushed into him with the force of an adrenaline fueled heart. He drank deeply as a rush of images and memories flashed into his mind. Wars the world over. Soldiers, even innocent villagers, mowed down by an automatic weapon, seen through the eyes of its wielder. Remembered. By this man. Devlin wanted to kill him more than he wanted to see another moonrise. But he wanted to win this war even more. And propaganda was a powerful weapon. Emma was right about that. He need not arm his enemy.

As the man’s heartbeat began to slow, Devlin withdrew. The pinprick holes made by the razor sharp tips of his fangs sealed themselves enough to prevent him from bleeding out. This was one crow who wouldn’t be capable of doing anyone harm until he’d had several transfusions and time to recover.

Devlin released his hold on the front of the man’s black flak jacket and let him fall to the floor. Then he jumped down again, hitting the ground, opening his mind, and feeling Tavia and Bell doing likewise.

Come to me,
he told them as he kept to the shadows, eyeing the smallest of the buildings, the one where he could sense the energies of Sheena and Wolf.

And then he waited for them, until he heard, very clearly,
Oh, hell. I think I’m in trouble here.

What is it, Bell?

Bell’s energy was trembling with fear when he replied,
I’m pretty sure I just stepped on a land mine. If I move my foot, it’s going to go off.

Emma did not go back to the Jeep. She ran all the way to the front gate, keeping out of sight of those hidden cameras Devlin had pointed out to her, and retrieved her phone from the hollow in the tree, just in case. Then she found a spot where she could crawl underneath the fence. She moved on hands and knees, following the tire marks she could still make out in the dirt.

They led, not surprisingly, to the motor pool, a long, arched metal building. She followed the tracks right up to its closed oversized doors. There, she stopped, looking carefully around her for alarms or cameras or other obstacles. And for people. She looked carefully for people. But she didn’t find any.

The door itself was too big to open without drawing attention, but there was a worn path around the building. Crouching low, she followed that to a smaller door on one side, and rising up a little bit, she tried the doorknob.

It wasn’t even locked.

Of course it wasn’t locked. A locked door would signal something to hide. And besides, these guys didn’t expect anyone to get in undetected.

She turned the knob slowly, pushed the door open a crack, and looked inside. It was pitch dark, dead silent, and the hulking shapes of vehicles were everywhere.

Crouching once more, she waited for her eyes to adjust a little, and then crept through the place in search of anything she could use as a weapon. Instead, though, she found a rack of keys, each one labeled with a letter and a number. Frowning, she pulled out her phone, moved up very close to a vehicle, and dared just once to use her flashlight app to look at the writing on the driver’s door.