“Do you think I’d tell you? Look, mademoiselle, I respect your sense of family. There are not many left in this fallen place that do. But,” he snickered, his eyes dancing in the muted light, “I have orders to kill you; you will never see them again.” He raised his sword, pointing it at my chest as he charged at me, confident he would hit his mark.

The moment felt suspended in time. My anger at him for denying me what I wanted most ignited a new fire, one stronger than I had felt before. That this man could think this would be the end of me, before I had finished my mission, before I could hold Jeremy and my mother in my arms again and cry tears of joy, it was unacceptable. I wanted him to suffer as I had, rip his heart from his chest so that he would know what my pain felt like. I watched his movements, every twitch of muscle, every ripple that his body made as his feet landed on the floor. The moment slowed down, like an dramatic action scene in a film, giving me plenty of time to ever so slightly slip a blade from the bandoleer strapped across my chest.

He didn’t notice, and I didn’t even feel it when I let the blade sink into his chest, my hand following it through the warm opening. I felt the pulsating mass of his heart, jerking and shuddering as it realized it was no longer king of this vampire. I let my fingers wrap around it, feeling the life force shoot out of it as I ripped it from his chest. His face was twisted in surprise as he froze, paralyzed in the grip of death. Horror splayed across his features as he watched his heart beat in my hand. Its crimson fuel fountained down my arm and puddled on the floor. It continued to beat, succumbing to irregularity and finally stopping as the vampire’s body slammed to the floor.

Even though my own heart was leaping in my chest I felt an overwhelming, hypnotic calm. I stared at the wet and veiny thing in my hand, like a token of battle. It made me feel a strange sort of ecstasy, filling my mind with pleasure.

“April!” Seraphin’s voice pulled me back into myself. The horror returned with her voice as I stared at the organ in my hand, making me fling it to the floor, appalled and disgusted. My hand tingled, with the salty blood clinging in ribbons of clots and bits of muck. I wiped it on my pants and stared up at Rye’s ex-wife. Her face was still, almost ethereal. Unlike me the rush of battle had not made her crazed and mad at all. I hoped I wasn’t losing my sanity. Maybe it was the vampire blood inside me that had turned the world into such a strange and unfamiliar place.

I didn’t know myself anymore. Ripping out a man’s heart out was nothing I had ever done or trained to do. The blood inside me called for it, craving the hybrid’s death, desiring blood and metal. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. This disorienting feeling made me want to question where I even was and what I was doing here in the first place.

I had to get a grip on this now.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Seraphin grabbed me and pulled me up the stairs. My senses were still normalizing from the shock of what I had just done. She practically dragged me along with her like a rag doll, up the staircase, never complaining. She had obviously done away with the other guard but I didn’t see where she had disposed of his body.

We found ourselves on another floor, almost identical to the one below, except this one had a banquet room and a restaurant with a long hall dissecting the place like two halves of an orange. I glanced around; these walls were solid except the doors separating each section were plate glass. Another circular hallway followed the line of windows that surrounded the disc like the floor below. Where was everyone? Where was my family?

Seraphin continued to pull me along as we entered the old dining area. She sat me on a chair and took my machete from my side. I let her, not thinking much of it. I don’t know why I let her, or why she did so, but her face was cold and serious. I hadn’t quite recovered. That is, until she clicked something cold onto my right wrist, making me look down to see that she had handcuffed me to the chair. I jerked my head back up to her as she backed away, out of my reach.

No! I trusted her. She killed members of her own hive for me, no, this isn’t making sense!

“Well done, Seraphin. You will be well-rewarded.” A deep baritone voice boomed across the room from around a wall. I turned to see who it belonged to but couldn’t find the owner. My nostrils flared as my anger seethed through me, glaring back at Seraphin. She was looking at me but not smiling, not sneering or anything for that matter. Her eyes were trying to say something. Or maybe I just wanted them to.

I wanted her to change her mind, let me go and get me the hell out of here. But why would I expect that from her now? Why had I trusted her at all? I was her competition now. Something told me that even though she had been paired off with another vampire, Rye was not so easily forgotten. I was sure of it. I groaned at my stupidity. I should have known. And Rye? How did he not know? Or Blaze? She had them all fooled.

“I apologize for the ruse. I don’t like to toy with people.” The baritone-voiced man stepped out from behind an area that had probably been an employee station to empty plates and refill drinks. His hair was a deep coppery mahogany, long and straight, tied at the nape of his neck. His features didn’t match the color of his hair. I almost expected freckles but found a slightly olive complexion. He had to have been a mix of several ethnicities but I couldn’t pinpoint which ones.

He stood tall, taller than me but not as tall as the warrior I had taken down at the foot of the stairs. His eyes gleamed back at me with strange colors; one eye was green and one was brown. That was a bit freaky in and of itself but the circles around each iris were not gold but a sickly bright orange-red, like rust.

“I’ve waited to meet you for a long time, April.” His velvet tone washed over me like a wave of sleep. No wonder he was the leader of this hive. He was another mutation of some sort of vampire. His telepathic powers pushed at my mind, fogging it up and making the room spin. I tried to shake it off, breathing in slowly and closing my eyes.

“Where’s my family?” I snapped at him. I felt clearer with the anger surging through me. I opened my eyes, narrowing them as I stared back at him. He seemed amused by my defiance. He waved Seraphin away and she complied, setting my sword on the floor and giving me a flighty glance before running out of the room and out of sight.

I’m going to kill her if I ever get out of this alive, I thought to myself.

“You have a fire about you that I like. Not like your mother or brother at all.” He tilted his head, eyeing me like a specimen about to be dissected. “I should have aimed to acquire you instead of them.” He rubbed his chin as he crossed his arms and seemed wave a thought away.

“No matter, I have you now.” He smiled, looking genuinely handsome except for the fangs that slipped out like two tusks. I looked away, seething at his smugness.

I peered down at the grenades I had on my bandoleers, hidden under the side of my jacket. My small knives had been used up and were long gone. Seraphin had known I had more weapons; why had she left them? She had just taken my machete away. But even then, she had left it behind, gleaming at me from a just few feet away. I wiggled in the chair, hoping it wasn’t bolted down. It was. Of course.

I watched him as he ranted on about my blood and that I would be the answer to the plague that now ravaged his hybrids and oh, by the way, his name was Christian. How appropriate, I thought. Apparently, his hive had been hit harder than Blaze’s. That would account for the swelled numbers of altered ferals they’d had to use to defend the fortress. Daylight left them vulnerable. We had attacked at the perfect moment, information that could have only come from Seraphin.

I was beginning to feel that I was just a pawn in this game, that I didn’t really know who was on which side anymore. I wondered if this man even knew that he had double agents in his hive. He must have known something was up by now. How much he suspected, I had no way to know.

“Look at me when I talk to you, mortal,” he spat at me, reaching out and roughly jerking my chin up. I grimaced as his fingers dug into my face and glaring into his peculiar eyes. It suddenly dawned on me that he was most likely sick. His eyes should have both been brown. The sickly green one was an effect of the plague. I knew he was desperate for a cure, I could feel it in his touch. The sickness inside him made my own stomach lurch as he radiated his suffering onto me.

What kept him from keeling over? My insides twisted from his touch. I didn’t give a damn about him, I wanted to spit in his face to let him know what I thought of him.

“Let them go and I’ll give you all the blood you need to find a cure. I can smell the rot in your breath; you won’t last very long without me. Let my family go and you might yet live to see another day–or night, in your case.” I snickered, feeling his rage growing like a metastasizing cancer across his features. His hardened snarls made his good looks vanish, turning him into a monstrous devil.

Christian stomped away, pacing in front of the covered windows, glaring out the slats to observe the city. He knew I was right. I could see his mind wrapping around the thought of possibly having a cure with me as his guinea pig. He was frustrated and what had kept him alive until now was apparently failing him. I bet he felt like crap under that powerful exterior. I couldn’t help but feel smug at pissing him off so. I wanted to laugh out loud at his weakness, so obvious once one observed him for more than a moment.

“I don’t have to let them go. I have you now. You are no match for me and I will take every drop of your blood and turn you into a dusty corpse, with or without your consent,” he hissed, walking around behind my chair.

I had other plans. My free hand had loosened a grenade and its pin. I held it in my left hand, the weaker of the two, but I was sure the vampire blood inside me would help me meet my mark. He was oblivious, for my back was toward him and he couldn’t see what I was up to. I had to do it before he approached me again. I was hoping the explosion would blow him through the windows.

I wondered briefly if the shrapnel would hit me. It was a risk I had to take. I figured that if I hunched behind the chair I was cuffed to, I might avoid serious injury. It was fortunate I had only been bound by one hand. I was also fortunate that it wasn’t an open-backed chair. I hoped it would be enough to keep me from the mess and shards that were sure to fling my way.

I whirled around and, dropping down onto one knee, flung the live grenade at the leader of the hive, hearing it clink on the shudders and glass of the windows.

“What the…?” was all I heard as I hunched down into a ball, my face pressed into the seat I had just been sitting in.

The explosion made the floor vibrate and shake in waves. Shards of glass and bits of metal and concrete scattered across the room. A cloud of dust particles enveloped me and reduced my visibility. I wasn’t sure if it had gotten him or not but the howl of wind and the sudden clearing of the air assured me that there was now a gaping hole in the side of the Stratosphere tower. My hair whipped around my face as I looked up from the protection of my arms, which I had wrapped around my head. As I moved, a fiery shot of pain jolted me back into stillness. My left leg and arm protested, making me gasp and bite my lip through the agony.

I peered down at my arm first and saw crimson blood trickle out of a rip in my shirt. My leg had suffered the same fate; a sharp fragment of glass was embedded in my thigh, drenching my pants around it with dark, warm fluid.

Shit!

I reached over and pulled the shard out of my arm, yelping at the searing jolt that came with it. I tossed the red glass to the ground, pushing on the cut with my hand. I needed to stop the bleeding now. I ripped the bottom of my shirt into strips and wrapped it around my arm, tightening it with my other arm and teeth. I pulled on the stupid handcuffs and chain that bound me to the chair. I would need to pull really hard or get bolt cutters to get it off.

I had just finished tying a wrap to my leg when I realized I had forgotten about Christian. I looked up and over the chair, slowly pulling myself onto my good leg and peering about. He was on the floor, just in front of the gaping hole in the wall. His hair floated about him in whipping ropes of copper mahogany. He was lying face down and knocked out. His back was filled with multiple punctures that seeped with his icky crimson-green blood.

I yanked on the chain again, trying to squeeze my hand through the restraint. My skin rubbed raw into a nasty reddened, weepy sore. It probably would have hurt more but my leg and arm took precedence in that area. After a few minutes of gritting through my squirming to get the cuff off I sighed and sat back down on the chair, hoping someone else from our hive would make it up here soon to help me.

I jolted back from my resignation as I remembered the lock picks in my pocket. I fumbled to yank out the small rolled bag. I pulled out a couple pins but found it impossible to maneuver them with one hand. I dropped them to the floor, angry that they were as useless to me as paperclips.

I still hadn’t found my family and worst of all, I was trapped. Being possibly mortally wounded made my endurance start to wane. I needed more blood. I could feel my body weakening under the strain of the fighting and blood loss. Eyeing my machete on the floor in front of me, I longed to hold it in my hand. I doubted I’d be able to hack this chain off but I would feel a lot better if I was armed instead of being a sitting duck on a chair next to a crazed, sick hybrid vampire and a hole leading out to oblivion. This had not gone as planned.

I hung my head down, warm hot tears forming in my eyes, maybe from the cool winds that made me shiver for a moment and stung my eyes, maybe from the deep failure I felt at that moment. I didn’t know. I hated that my despair was bubbling up inside me. It was weak of me. I was stronger than that. I could kill hybrid vampires for goodness sake! I had hunted tribes of ferals that mucked up the city. I could do this and I would get out of here no matter what.