Twilight Vendetta (18 page)

He didn’t return the triumphant grin. “But
your
cell is locked...truly locked,” he pointed out.

“But yours isn’t. You can go. I mean, sure, there are probably guards on this building, but you can move faster than they can even perceive. By the time they raise their weapons, you’ll be over the fence and gone. Find Wolf and Sheena, get them to safety. Let the others know what happened.”

“You can’t possibly think I would leave you here alone.”

“Dev, I wouldn’t leave with you even if my cell was wide open. My father is still a prisoner. I need to find him. I’m not leaving until I do.”

“You said yourself they’ve probably moved him.”

“Right, because this is where they imprison vampires. Not humans. If that’s the case, then they’ll move me, too. Maybe to the same place.”

“That’s a leap of logic.”

“It’s all I’ve got. If I walk out of here, I won’t have a clue where to begin looking for him.”

He pushed his cell closed again. The lock didn’t engage, but from the outside, it appeared to be shut. “You don’t understand what these people are capable of, Emma.”

“
They
don’t understand what
I’m
capable of.”

“They can just make you disappear. They can erase you, as if you never existed.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe so. But they’ll do far worse to you. The experiments. The tests.” A shiver raced up her spine. “Sheena said...she said they hurt her. They’ll do worse to you. You need to get the hell out of here, Devlin.”

He met her eyes, shook his head firmly, then walked to his bunk and lay down on it. “Will they feed us, do you suppose?” he asked.

She sat there watching him, afraid for him, even as a rush of pleasure flooded her soul. He wouldn’t leave her. And it wasn’t because she was one of The Chosen. It was because he felt the same way for her that she felt for him. It had to be. She wasn’t going to doubt it again, and sooner or later, she would make him admit it.

The night wore on, and there was no sustenance brought to him. Devlin was weak because of the blood they’d taken from him, and without feeding, it was impossible to regain his strength.

His vitality had taken another hit too, when he’d seen that the unconscious body in the cell across from him was Emma’s. He thought he would explode with frustration, being unable to go to her, to touch her, to make sure she was all right.

Boots came clattering down the hall just before dawn, when he felt the sleep calling out to him again. He would be glad to sleep. At least it would get rid of the hunger pangs clawing at him from the inside. But he wouldn’t be able to see what happened to Emma while he rested, and that thought terrified him.

“You, human,” a man said. He had a saggy face, jowls like a hound, and he stopped outside Emma’s cell, his back to Devlin. But other men, armed crows, stood beside him, and their eyes were on him. So were their rifles.

Dev moved toward his door, and Emma met his eyes over the man’s shoulder telling him to wait, without uttering a word. She couldn’t speak to him mentally. It was all in her eyes. Her beautiful, expressive brown eyes.

“Hello Commander Hobbs,” she said, rising and going up to the barred door to face him. “Wish I could say it’s good to see you again.”

“Who are you and why are you here with this creature?” Hobbs didn’t ask. He demanded.

She looked past the commander at Devlin and blinked repeatedly. “Who, him? I’m not with him. I came here because you took my father and are holding him without any cause whatsoever.”

“Your father.” It wasn’t a question.

“Doctor Oliver Benatar,” she said.

“So you’re the daughter. Emma, the thrill-seeking adventure writer.”

“The one and only,” she said. “I want my father, Commander. You took him from his home without a warrant, along with thousands of dollars’ worth of radio equipment and–”

“Yeah, he’s been moved.”

“Moved?”

“That’s right. This facility is a temporary holding unit. He didn’t belong here, long term. Neither do you.”

She lowered her head a little, but snuck a look around Hobbs’ body at Devlin and wiggled her eyebrows as if to say,
See? I was right.
He read the look clearly and wondered why she wasn’t cowering in fear instead of telling him “I told you so” with her eyes. Then she pasted a serious expression on her pretty face again and lifted her head to look at Hobbs.

“What’s that mean? Long term? Where is he? Where did you–”

“Don’t you worry. You’ll be joining him soon enough.”

“Will I? When?”

He grunted, ignoring her question. “How did the Offspring escape?”

“What the hell is an offspring?”

“The two prisoners who were here when you arrived. My men said that
my
voice came over the radio, ordering their cell doors opened. Who did that?”

Emma shrugged. “Wasn’t me. Someone snatched the radio off my belt and shoved me into this pen so hard I banged my head and knocked myself out. I didn’t see who it was. I didn’t see anything.”

“You shouldn’t have been in here.”

“I agree completely. My
father
shouldn’t have been in here either. He’s done nothing wrong. You’re trampling all over his constitutional rights. Mine, too.”

“This is DPI, ma’am. We’re trying to save our species from extinction. That trumps the Constitution.”

“Nothing trumps the Constitution,” she told him.

He lowered his head. “So you’re one of those.” Then he turned on his heel and faced Devlin’s cell. “You, vampire. Did you see the two Offspring escape? Do you know where they are?”

“Do you think I would tell you if I did?” Devlin answered, glad to have the man’s attention on him instead of Emma.

The commander smiled very slowly. “I know about vampires and pain,” he said. “I know that the older you get, the more acutely you feel it. The more debilitating and unbearable it becomes. And you do not appear to be a fledgling to me.”

“The older we get, the more powerful we become, Hobbs. And you’re right. I’m no fledgling.”

It was a threat. Hobbs clearly recognized it as one. He even took a step back from Devlin’s cell. “I’ll be back for you.” He looked at his watch, shook his head. “Once you sleep, I’ll be back. And when you wake again, you’ll be in my
special
room. The one where we make vampires talk. And howl and weep and scream, and eventually, die. But not until long after they’re begging to.”

The man turned and tapped away down the hall.

Devlin’s eyes met Emma’s in the cell across from his. Hers were wide and horrified and tear-filled. “You have to leave,” she whispered.

“I should’ve killed him while his back was turned.”

“Twenty armed guards would’ve killed you in return. And then where would I be?”

“I won’t leave you.”

“You’ll be dead. What good are you going to be to me dead, Devlin?”

He lowered his head.

“You heard what Hobbs just said. They’re moving me anyway. Probably while you rest, so you won’t be able to follow. You’ll wake and I’ll be gone, and it’ll be too late for you to get out then. They’ll torture you. They’ll kill you, Devlin. You have to go now, before sunrise.”

He knew she was right. “I won’t leave you,” he said again.

“They’re taking me to my father. That’s what I wanted. Once we’re in the same place together–”

“Stop it!” He yanked his cell door open and lunged across to hers. He put his hands around its bars, and tried with all his strength to bend them, to rip the door open, anything. But it wouldn’t give, not at all, and he let his head fall forward.

She slid her hands over his on the bars. “It’s no use. You’re weak from the tranquilizer and the blood loss.”

He lifted his head, stared into her eyes. Her hands slid upward, palms pressing to his cheeks. And he knew what she was going to do even before she did it. He didn’t even try to avoid it. She pressed her face between the bars and touched her lips to his. His hunger for her exploded inside him, and he kissed her back, one hand moving between the bars to cup the back of her head and hold her to him. The other arm went around her waist, tugging her flush to the cell door as he tasted her mouth, explored every inch of it. His need for her lit a fire in his soul.

As they fed from each other’s mouths his hips arched, his groin trying to press against hers, but restrained by the bars, the damned bars. They could only brush over each other, tantalizing, thrilling, but not enough.

She thrust a hand through, closing it over the bulge in his pants, and rubbing him there.

“Emma, don’t–”

“You’re weak. I have what you need to make you strong, you know I do.”

“No. No, you can’t–” but then she was kissing him again, her tongue tangling with his. She tugged her shirt upward, baring her breasts for him, and they, at least, were accessible to him, full and beautiful. He feasted on them between the cold bars, tasting, nipping, suckling her.

“Drink, Devlin. Drink from me so you can be strong enough to get out of here. Please, Dev, please. If they kill you, I’ll die anyway. Don’t you know that?”

“I can’t–” He pressed his hand through and down into her pants, touching, rubbing her there. “I’ll lose my mind if I taste you.”

“I’ve already lost mine.” She rubbed him harder, reaching inside to clasp his bulging erection and moving her hand more rapidly. “Go crazy on me, Devlin. Drink my blood. You know you want to. I want it too. I want to feel your teeth in me. I want–”

He bit down. Fangs pierced her breast and she felt the pain, and then the pleasure as he suckled her there, feeding slowly and gently, but feeding, drinking her into him, his tongue flicking over her nipple. He moaned around her breast and she felt his cock throbbing, pulsing as his seed spilled over her hand.

He leaned against the bars, holding her as best he could while her blood rushed through him, healing every injury, clearing every toxin, heightening every emotion. She was a part of him now. She had no idea what she had done.

“I want you to go, Devlin,” she whispered. “I want you to stay alive so you can save my father and me. Please, please don’t let them torture you. It will kill me, I swear to God it will.”

He lifted his eyes to hers. Lowering his head once more, he caught her mouth, kissed it, still aglow with passion and the power of her blood in his veins. “I’ll get you out.”

“I know you will. It’s got to be almost dawn. Hurry, Dev.”

He nodded. Then, fully powered up on Emma’s blood, he did the most difficult thing he thought he had ever done. He walked away from her.

“W
e need food,” Wolf said.

He and Sheena peered out from behind a Dumpster in the back alley of a small building. They had run from the compound without a backward glance, and had been avoiding humans ever since. But now their hunger had driven them into a small village where the smells of cooking food had been too much to resist. A car zoomed past on the road only a few yards away, and they both ducked, startled by the little machines.

“There are so many of those things! I hate them!” Sheena said.

“They’re better than boats and cages,” her brother told her.

A foreign feeling rose up in her chest, one she’d been noticing ever since they’d escaped. “Devlin is in a cage now. And that woman, Emma, she’s in one, too.” Sheena had thought and thought on this. “The way she spoke, it was as if she thought we should stay and help them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Wolf said. “How would we survive and escape ourselves if we helped them? They can take care of themselves, same as we did.”

“But we didn’t, Wolf. We only got out because they came.”

“
You
got us out! We could’ve grabbed any talking box from any of the guards if we’d only thought of it.”

“I thought of it because I saw the human called Hobbs use his. And he only did that because Devlin and the woman came.”

“He’d have used it sooner or later. Some other captive would’ve come.”

“How do you know that?”

He looked at her as if she were stupid. “You should know as well as I. All those empty cages. What do you think they’re for, if not to hold others. Others like us, I bet.” Then he closed his eyes, and picking up on his intent, Sheena did too.