Twilight Vendetta (19 page)

She crouched there, very still, for a long moment, focusing on the others who were like them. Their siblings. Then she nodded. “The Betas are well,” she whispered, using the term their original captors had always used for the four eleven-year-old Offspring. “I feel them, north. They’re together and they’re well.” She frowned. “They’re...laughing.”

Wolf frowned as if even more perplexed by that than she was. “The Deltas are together too,” he said, referring to the three seven-year-olds. “But not as well. They’re upset. Afraid. Farther away than the Elevens. East, I think. A long, long way east.”

“They’re young. Not strong like us,” Sheena said.

He nodded his agreement. “I can’t feel the Thetas at all.”

“Do you think they....”

“I think they’ve gone so far away, we can’t feel them,” he said. “They’re only two-year-olds. No one could perceive them as a threat.” He sighed, and she wondered if he really believed that, or was only saying it to soothe her fears. “We have to get food, Sheena.”

“And then what?” she asked. “What do we do after that, Wolf? I do not know how to...how to
be
in this world.”

He clasped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “We know how to do the only things that count. Stay alive and kill our enemies. This, our keepers taught us well.”

She searched his vivid blue eyes, and there was a feeling in the pit of her stomach that there was more. There had to be more to living than just that. “Our keepers taught us that vampires are our enemies. But that was a lie. Vampires saved us from those cages, and when we found ourselves again imprisoned, they came for us once more. Vampires are not our enemies.”

“That is true.”

“And yet we killed them. In our training, on the ship. I killed many. Too many to count. Ever since I was the age of...of Nikki.”

“I, too.”

“I feel...something when I think of that. That they were not truly enemies, that I killed them because our keepers told me to. I feel something....here.” She made a fist and pressed it to her chest, where the pulse of life bumped over and over from inside her. She had always wondered what that thump-thump, thump-thump was.

“We did as the keepers told us to do. We did not have a choice.”

She nodded, knowing that to be true. “But we have a choice now, Wolf. We are free. We can choose. And I do not believe we can trust anything the keepers ever taught us. They lied to us. Maybe about everything.”

He studied her for a long moment. “They did teach us
some
things of value, Sheena. They taught us how to fight. They taught us how to survive and how to destroy our enemies. Those things are useful.”

“But what if the keepers are our only enemies? What if all the people we see hurrying around out there...are as kind as the vampires were to us?”

He looked out at the street. Sheena did, too. A woman walked by with a small child on either side of her. They held her hands and looked up at her with an expression in their eyes that she had never seen before, and the look the woman returned was one that brought back the odd ache in her chest and the tightness in her throat. “Our keepers never looked at us like that,” she whispered. “No one has ever looked at us like that. It’s different here. Can you feel it?”

“Maybe,” Wolf said. He wrinkled his nose. “There is food in this big box,” he added, tapping the Dumpster. “But there is also food in there.” He nodded at the small brick building. “And the food in there smells better. Let’s go in and get some of it.”

Sheena looked down at her torn, dirty clothes, and touched a hand to her tangled hair. “We don’t look like the others. We should look like them before we–”

“We should
eat
!” Wolf rose up to his full height, went to the metal door in the back of the building, and gripped its knob. He twisted it, but it did not give, so he pounded it with his fists in frustration.

Sheena hurried to stop him, but then froze as the door suddenly opened, and a fat human female stood there, wiping her hands on a scrap of cloth and looking from one of them to the other. Her face, which had been smiling, changed. “Oh, my! Oh, my, you poor dears. What’s happened to you? Were you in an accident?”

Wolf looked at Sheena, a question in his eyes. He was wondering what on earth this woman was going on about.

Sheena said, “We are very hungry. We need food.”

“Well, of course you need food. Come, come on inside now, and I’ll fix you up a meal.” She held the door wider, waving them in with one chubby arm.

Neither of them moved. They looked at each other, eyes wide and wary. There might be a new set of cages awaiting them beyond that door.

And then the female said, “You’re scared, aren’t you? Good Lord, what has happened to you?”

“We want food. Will you give us some or not?” Wolf could’ve said, “Or will we come in and take it.” Sheena was proud that he didn’t. But she knew, whether he said it or not, that was his intent. And the way hunger was gnawing at her insides, she would not try to stop him.

“Of course I will. Wait here.” She hurried back inside, leaving the door open. They did not follow her, but they did move closer–close enough to watch what she did.

The room the woman entered was a cooking room. Several other humans wearing white clothing and hats stood in front of long hot surfaces where many kinds of food sizzled. The others, males, poked and flipped the food with long handled instruments. There were flame burners where pots bubbled. Several of the cooking men looked toward the open door, and every face registered surprise and alarm. None, however, seemed hostile.

The fat woman hurried around with two large plates in her hands, stopping here and there so a cook could scoop food onto them. By the time she finished, both plates were heaping. She carried them back to the door and held them out.

Wolf snatched his so fast some of the food tumbled off the edges. Sheena took hers more carefully, not wanting to waste a morsel, but still afraid to be so close to the female. She backed away quickly. Neither of them touched the food, keeping their eyes on the woman. They knew better than to be distracted by hunger or the delicious smells wafting up from the plates while a potential enemy stood so near.

The woman blinked a few times, then said, “I’ll get you some silverware” and turned to hurry back inside.

Wolf lunged forward, grabbed the door and slammed it closed. Then he spun around and ran, and Sheena followed, trying hard not to spill the food as they went.

The alley behind the row of brick buildings ran behind and between them, but there were barricades of crisscrossed wire with wood slats woven through it. Not really barricades at all for them, of course. Wolf jumped, and Sheena followed, and only then did they slow down. They crouched low, staring through the tiny openings in the barricade at that closed door as they scooped food from their plates and devoured it. Yellow eggs, tiny lengths of spicy meats, and what seemed like some kind of potato, prepared in a way they’d never tasted before. Sliced thin, and seasoned and cooked so that the outsides were crispy and brown. There were muffins, great giant sweet ones with dark purple berries inside, and a crumbly sweet coating on top. Never had Sheena tasted anything like this fare, and she knew Wolf hadn’t either.

There was more than she could hope to eat. More than three people could, she thought, and wished for a way to save the leftover food.

The door opened again. Sheena set her plate down and leaned closer to the barricade to peek through. The female stood there looking around for them, worry on her face and a large bag in her arms. Then, sighing, she carried her sack out from the door, all the way to the very back of the alley and set it down. Lifting her head, she looked around. “There are drinks in here. Some silverware, some storage containers and things. And a few dollars and change.” Then she went back inside and closed the door.

Sheena looked at Wolf. “Was she speaking to us?”

“I think so,” he said.

“She’s giving us things. I don’t know what most of them are.”

“She’s baiting a trap for us. If we go over there, someone will pounce on us for sure.”

“Who? She’s old and fat.”

“The men inside aren’t.”

“Still, they’re only humans.” Sheena set her plate aside and jumped over the barrier, dashed the rest of the way, snatched the bag and raced back. When she landed, she wasn’t even breathing hard. “Watch the door,” she said. “I’ll see what’s inside.”

“No, never mind. They could come from the front. And look, this building has a door too. We should get away from here.”

Sheena was dying to see what was in the bag, but she knew better than to take risks. Wolf was right. She picked up her plate, unwilling to leave it behind, and carried the bag in her free hand. Wolf had devoured every crumb of his, so he left the plate behind.

Behind the row of buildings and the fence, there was a road with another fence on the other side of it. Humans certainly were fond of fences and walls, Sheena thought. They leaped the walls easily, waited for several speeding vehicles to pass by, and then raced across and vaulted the second barrier. This put them into a weed-strewn field with a forest of trees at its far end. That would provide cover, so that was where they went, into the trees.

The woods smelled of pine and earth, and were filled with birdsong. She hadn’t even known what birds were until the vampires had pointed them out to her on the upper decks of the
Anemone.
And these were quite different from the ones at sea. Tiny, flitting about, hopping on tree branches, and singing in ways far too big and loud to come from such small creatures. Sheena listened in rapt amazement, and couldn’t help but smile at the beauty of the sounds. She nodded slowly.

“This is where we’ll be safe,” she told Wolf. “This can be our home.”

Devlin had precious little time before dawn. He headed back through the halls of the sub-level prison, moving fast and silent. Taking a sharp right, rather than going straight ahead to check the other cells for captives was a difficult decision, but necessary. And Devlin always did what was necessary. At least almost always. Surely blasting past the crows, leaping the fence, and racing to safety before dawn was the wise course of action. But there was something in him. Something that trumped many lifetimes of living by his own simple set of rules. He did what was necessary for self-preservation first, for the preservation of his kind, second, and for anyone else, only when unavoidable.

Somehow, Emma’s well-being had reared up in him, demanding it be treated with more importance than his own. And he knew, in spite of himself, that it wasn’t just because of her blood type.

He headed back along the hallway they had dragged him through while he’d been mostly unconscious, but vaguely aware. He paid attention this time. There were three doors, two on the right, one on the left. And he took hold of the knob for the one on the left and twisted, easily breaking the lock. He didn’t hear an audible alarm or sense a silent one, which did not guarantee a light wasn’t flashing on some screen somewhere else in the secret compound.

It might very well have been. All the more reason to be fast. He had no intention of leaving this place without Emma. He just had to find a way....

The first room was an office. Cinderblock walls painted green, steel file cabinets and desk in the same shade of olive drab. Stark, efficient, and ugly. He opened the computer’s tower with no more than a yank, removed its hard drive, and tucked it into a pocket. Then he ducked out, closing the door behind him. The two rooms on the right were next. One of them was identical to the office, except more barren. It held a rectangular table and a couple of chairs. He didn’t bother searching it. There was very little to search.

Then he opened the door of the third room, and what he saw startled him so much that he froze for a moment. Its walls were white and lined in glass-fronted cabinets that contained an assortment of instruments and drugs in vials. In its center, beneath a stainless steel dome light he imagined would be blinding when lit, stood a padded table that had brown leather restraints at four points. A gleaming tray bearing a small square of white fabric stood beside the table, empty at the moment.

It was an operating room. As that reality hit his gut, he felt sick inside, and even more determined not to leave Emma here in this place. But he shook off his queasiness and went to the cabinets to examine the vials there. BDX. Protectol. VT-3, VT-3X, Diurnol 2.0, BD-Voile, and more.

He pulled the instrument tray closer, noisily dumping a vial of each drug onto it, then gathering the white cloth around them all and tying a knot. And then he turned to head back out into the hallway only to come face to face with a tall, strong, handsome mortal man who smelled of vampire and something else. Something Devlin had never encountered before. He wore the uniform of a military officer.

“Come with me now,” he said. “They’re coming for you.”

Devlin narrowed his eyes. “Who the hell–”

“My name is Willem Stone and I’m a friend. We have to go. Now.”

Devlin shook his head. “I can’t leave without–”

“You’re out of time. The only question is whether the sun gets to you first or the armed men running from their barracks at this very moment. We’ll come back for her.”