Twilight Vendetta (5 page)

“Dey were children, not mutants,” Tavia snapped.

“If they were children, they’d still be dead,” he replied, pulling a clean shirt over his head and waiting for her reaction.

Her head came up, black eyes wide and already surrounded by a fresh coat of thick black liner. Andrew and Bellamy stopped what they were doing and stared at him, as well.

“According to Emma, they revived in the boat, took out a couple of the crows before they were apparently drugged and taken prisoner.”

“That’s crazy!” Bell shot Andrew a look, and his partner nodded. “You said they were shot at point blank range with high-powered rifles.”

Devlin shrugged. “They were. And that would have killed any one of us. There’s no way we wouldn’t have bled out within minutes. We probably wouldn’t even have lived long enough to get out of the water. Apparently the Offspring regenerate like we do. But with them, it happens right away. Within minutes. They don’t have to wait for the day sleep.”

Tavia looked at the floor. “Where do you tink dey were taken?”

“I don’t know. Emma might. She had a lot more to say, but we ran out of time.”

“You should have brought her here,” she said, pacing now. “So we could make her tell us everyting she knows. Why did you let her go?”

“She seems more than willing to tell us everything she knows, Tavia. She wanted me to bring her back here, I got that the minute she knew she wasn’t going to drown and the fear cleared from her mind enough to let her thoughts surface again. That’s why I didn’t bring her. This is our haven, the only one we have right now.”

“But if she knows anything that can help us find Sheena and Wolf,” Bellamy began, and then he paused, searched Devlin’s face and said, “We
are
going after them, aren’t we?”

Devlin wanted to say no. He’d told himself for centuries that caring about others more than you cared about your own well-being, more than you cared about your particular cause or mission in life, was a mistake, and not one he would ever make again.

He talked the talk very well. He’d convinced a lot of people it was true. And for the most part, he walked the walk. But recently....he’d put himself at risk to help Rhiannon and Roland, two of the most powerful vampires he’d ever known. He’d joined them to take the research vessel
Anemone
and to free the vampires held prisoner there.

Those had been considered choices, decisions he’d made after careful, emotionless calculation. Or so he liked to think.

But with Emma, it had always been different. From the first time he’d saved her life, when she’d wandered out of her bed and fallen into the swimming pool at the age of two, to the car wreck at seventeen, to the skiing accident just over a year later. With Emma, he didn’t think. He just acted.

And he didn’t care to dig too deeply into why that might be.

He’d managed to stay cool, distant and uninvolved where the Offspring were concerned, too. It was hard, challenging. He had a weakness for children. And when he’d seen Wolf and Sheena shot like that, it had felt like bullets ripping through his own heart.

“Devlin?” Bell prompted.

He nodded. “We’re going after them. We don’t have a choice. And don’t worry about Emma. She was willing to tell us what she knew tonight, and she still will be when I track her down again. But we’ve got about an hour left to find a safe place to bed down. And I don’t think this lighthouse is it.”

“There’s nowhere to hide in here,” Andrew said. “And windows everywhere.”

“You said dere was a house in de woods,” Tavia said. “Is it–”

“Caves, too, or so I was told when I bought the place, centuries ago. Honestly, I’ve never spent enough time here to get familiar with it. But the caves would be our best bet, if we can find them.”

Nodding, each of them hefted a backpack. Andrew handed Devlin’s to him, and Dev hitched it over one shoulder, still carrying his wet clothes in his free hand.

“I am starving,” Tavia complained as they hiked out of the house, closing the door behind them.

“We’re all starving, Tav.” Andrew looked around, eyes flashing a little. “Maybe we can find something in the woods to–”

“I don’t think we should eat the native animals,” Bellamy interrupted.

“Why the hell not?” Andrew, who was already in hunting mode and irritated at being cutoff mid-sentence, glared at him.

“Because if this is our island, then they’re our charges. We’re gonna be here a while. Maybe. If it turns out to be a good place. And you just don’t feed on your own.”

“I would like to feed on you, you leetle sheet,” Tavia said, but she said it affectionately.

“We go to sleep hungry,” Devlin said. “First thing we’ll do at sundown is find sustenance. And then...we’ll find Emma Louise Benatar.”

B
y the time her dad had brought her meal to her, the sun was rising outside. Pale bits of light found their way in around the heavy curtains, shades and blinds. Her dad had never let go of the habit of keeping the sun out. He’d never given up living a nocturnal lifestyle. He was still waiting for his love to return. He would never give up hope.

Emma’s childhood had been filled with stories about them meeting, falling love, and their breathless romance. It was her favorite thing to hear about when she was a little girl. All her bedtime stories were mini-romance novels about her own mom and dad.

The stew he brought to her was hot and hearty, the tea soothing and perfect, and the dry pajamas and blanket finally filling her body with warmth. Her teeth had stopped chattering. She was curled up on the corner of the sofa, and her father was sitting in front of his biggest radio, fiddling with dials and holding the headset up near his right ear, but not putting it on. She noticed a few new silvery strands in his hair. A few in his eyebrows too, behind the black-framed glasses that had been the same exact style every day of her life.

“When I told you what I’d overheard about the sighting of the
Anemone
,” Oliver said, “I didn’t expect you to put yourself in the middle of a battle.”

“Really, Dad? Cause...we’ve met, right?”

He smiled on cue, but it didn’t meet his eyes.

“It wasn’t really a battle anyway. It was an ambush.”

“So you were out there. You saw what happened? There was a tweet. Wait, I favorited it.” He found the tweet on his phone, then turned it toward her.

2 unarmed teen vamps shot on sight by goops off OR coast. I-witness.
#ERFU

“Was that you, Emma?”

She nodded. “On the way home. It’s a new handle. I deleted the account right after the post. Used all the usual precautions. Don’t worry, it won’t be traced back to me. No one ever knew I was there.” Except that vampire. She got a chill up her spine remembering him, then reminded herself that her pair of human heroes knew too. But they hadn’t exchanged names, so she was safe.

The fear in her father’s eyes was genuine, and she knew it. His greatest fear was losing her just like he’d lost her mom. “You were right there. You saw it?”

“Close enough to hear the shots. Picked up the rest from their radio transmissions.” She let her head rest on the back of the sofa and tried to keep her eyes open long enough to finish her stew.

He shook his head slow, “Risky, daughter. Risky.”

“I used a disposable phone to post the tweet. Ditched it right after. She shrugged and ate some more. “I had to do something. I’d just witnessed what looked like an execution at the hands of government-sanctioned troops.”

“Not the first time it’s happened,” he said. He looked back at her, a hint of his darkest memory in his eyes. “How’d you end up in the water? You were in a boat, right? So how’d you end up soaking wet?”

She bit her lip, lowered her head. “You’re getting too far ahead, Dad. Those two teenagers were shot in the chest, their lifeless corpses dragged up onto a boat. Then they came back to life.”

He went very still, just staring at her. “Vampires don’t heal until the day sleep.”

“I know that as well as you do.” She’d spent her lifetime learning about the Undead, and the past few years trying, anonymously, to help drum up support for fair treatment and civil rights for them through the recently formed, mostly anonymous group of activists known as ERFU. “I don’t think these were vampires,” she said softly. “I think they were something else. One of the goops called them Offspring.”

Her father’s eyebrows bent at the word. “Offspring,” he repeated, as if mulling on what it might mean. “And then what happened?”

“There was screaming. The kids killed two of the assassins, but then they were tranquilized or something. The goops took them to shore, threw them into the back of a van, and took off for parts unknown.”

“Ah-huh. And
then
you went into the water?”

“I knew the vampires had to be nearby. I had to find a way to tell them what had happened.”

He came nearer, pursing his lips like he already knew the answer to his next question. “And you did that by...?”

“I stashed the radio equipment, bagged my phone, rowed out far enough to make getting back a....challenge. And then I chopped a hole in my boat.”

“Wonderful!” He threw his hands out to his sides and tipped his head back. “You risked your life, yet again! How many times do I have to tell you, Emma Louise, to
beg
you to be careful? How many times do I–”

“It
worked
.”

He lowered his head and his arms dropped to his sides as if they were made of lead. “Of course it did.” He was not amused. But he was curious.

“A vampire came to save me. The same one, Dad. The same one who saved me from the car wreck and the skiing accident. I said something about it being the third time, and he said it was the fourth, but I was too young to remember.”

He frowned, his eyes shifting back and forth as he visibly searched his memory. Then he blinked and looked at her. “You spent the night at your mom’s parents’ once. You were two years old. We were away for an overnight at a B&B to celebrate our anniversary. Your grandfather heard banging on the back door, the one that led out onto their patio and into the pool area. He went to check it out and found you dripping wet, sitting on the concrete. No one was around. You were completely alone, but you had clearly been in the water, and had got yourself out again.”

He blinked away the memory and met her eyes. “It must’ve been him.” Then his eyes widened a little. “Maybe he knows something about your mother!”

“I intended to ask, but a pair of fishermen came after me in a little motorboat at the same time. I managed to tell the vampire that his friends were alive and captured, and then he left, and let the two pain in the ass do-gooders save me.”

“If the vampire hadn’t come, you’d have
needed
saving.”

Oh, hell, she’d brought the subject back around to that again. Her father hated her thrill-seeking, life-risking ways. And she got that, from his perspective. After all, she was his only child. He’d lost his wife, the love of his life, and he didn’t want to lose Emma, too.

But he was going to. And probably within the next twelve years, fifteen at the outside, if her condition proved to be typical. Unless, of course, she became a vampire. She just wasn’t sure if she wanted to live that way.

“Dad, you said a lot had been happening tonight. Aren’t you going to tell me what?”

He looked at her, bit his lip. “I want to. But I’m afraid you’ll go running off half-cocked and risk your life again.”

“They were just kids. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. A girl and a boy. And now they’re prisoners and God only knows what’s happening to them.”

He heaved a great big sigh. “I think I can figure out where they took them,” he said. “And I’ll tell you. But I want you to promise me you’re not going to try to go after them. Just convey the information to the nearest Undead we can find–
without
you risking your life to draw them out–and then let them deal with it. You promise?”

She looked him in the eyes, nodded once.

“Out loud, Emma Louise.”

She smiled. “You still talk to me like I’m a kid.”

“Out loud,” he said.

Sighing, she recited the words he wanted to hear, even raised her right hand as she did so. “I promise I won’t try to single-handedly rescue those two kids.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

She smiled, glad he hadn’t noticed her insertion of “single-handedly” into the verbal contract she’d just signed. “So? Where do you think they are?”

He nodded. “We’ll need a map, a compass, and the precise time and location you saw them put into the van,” he said. Then he started shuffling papers around in search of those items.