Chapter Fifteen
Bang. The explosion shook Seb’s skull, and even with the extra armor he’d fashioned around his head, the flash was brilliant enough to light the back of his thickened eyelids.
He forced himself to slit open his eyes and look back.
Cleomenes and all his henchvamps blundering around, blind and deaf. A simple flashbang wouldn’t keep a Soul Stealer down long. Still, it might be long enough for one more trick.
If Zappman had come through for him, that was. And if he had, which of several potential traps had the human set up? Damn it, things had gone from bad to worse to what the holy fuck?
Then hacking drew his gaze. Brie clasped her neck, making hoarse little cries.
“Gods, Brie!” Keeping his eyes slit, he ran. “What’s wrong with your throat? Did he—?”
“No.” She lifted her hand from her neck, revealing red marks, scrapes, and bruising.
He expelled a relieved breath past his hammering heart. No skin was broken. If the Soul Stealer got a taste of her blood, he’d be able to track her. Even the possibility turned Seb’s guts inside out.
“My locket.” Anguished eyes lifted to him. “It’s gone.”
“I’m sorry. We’ll go back for it when we can. This is important. Did Zappman tell you anything?”
“Adam?” She wrapped arms around his neck, clinging to him. “Y-yes. He said, ‘Tell him, son.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
“Oh, yes.” Son—or sun. He accessed his inner blood awareness, searching for his friend. There. A blip, a few more yards, around the corner, heading away fast. He pushed himself full-out.
“Rikare!” Cleomenes screamed. Seb dared a glance back. The other male raced toward them, silver shards spewing from him like water.
Bad, in that, as soon the Soul Stealer got rid of all the silver, he could again mist. As mist, he could catch Seb instantly.
Good, because Zappman’s surprise would only work if the Soul Stealer was mist.
“Give up, you stupid banker,” Seb taunted. “You can’t begin to control ancient blood. I drilled you full of silver. No way you’ll catch me now.”
“The hell I won’t!” The vampire stopped to expel the last of the silver, a moment only. The instant he did, he blew himself into a rocket of mist, its nosecone a skull with flames for eyes.
That moment Cleomenes paused, though, Seb dashed around the corner—where a small lamp sat on a stand.
A sunlamp, which turned the corridor into a raging summer day.
Seb burst past it. A little sun wouldn’t do much damage to an older vampire, not in the few seconds it took to pass.
But mist? Well…mist burned instantly.
Cleomenes shot around the corner—and his face burst into flames. He collapsed screaming, his whole body licked by fire.
If Cleomenes had been anything but a Soul Stealer, that would have been that. Seb would have drawn one of his daggers and neutralized the vampire by cutting off his head and digging out his heart, and locked him up in a jail of electricity or sunlight.
But with the Soul Stealer’s regenerative power, Seb couldn’t count on finishing him fast enough. Cleomenes would still be a threat to Brie, and Adam, too, if his friend hadn’t gotten far enough away.
He kept hold of Brie and streaked toward the parking structure.
“Rikare.” Cleomenes’s voice, ragged with pain, rang along the corridor. “I’m coming for you.”
Seb gritted his teeth and poured on as much speed as he could. The fight had weakened him, and he was struggling carrying Brie, especially when he hit the stairwell. But Cleomenes might recover any moment, not to mention his lieutenants were sure to shake off the effects of the flashbang soon, if they hadn’t already. Seb checked his blood sense for Zappman, relieved when his friend pinged in the parking structure, moving rapidly out of range of the vampire’s insane rage.
Panting and faltering by the time he neared the Bulls parking level, Seb dared set Brie down. They both walked on trembling legs up the last few steps to the landing.
“Rikare!” Cleomenes’s furious roar echoed up the chimney of the stairwell, turning Seb’s legs to ice. “I’m coming for you—and everything and everyone you’ve ever loved.”
“Joke’s on you, Soul Stealer,” Seb shouted back. “I don’t love anyone.”
He only hoped that was still true.
…
When Seb set me down in the stairwell, that was the first time I understood how bad off he was.
I’d clung to him as he ran like the Tasmanian Devil through the concrete passageways, my bracelets and earrings clacking in the wind he generated. I spared a brief thought for my suitcase, but that was only clothes. I was glad I’d taken the precaution of anchoring my backpack on both shoulders.
Seb’s face, right next to mine, was fully vampire. He was in many ways as gorgeous as a vampire as he was as a man. His long, clean fangs and cliff-like face plating were as starkly beautiful as his normal face. His eyes were brilliant in either black or red. Both the stark beauty of the male and the pure frightening beauty of the monster were compelling.
Now, he was tiring. I grabbed his arm and tried to muscle him toward the door. Didn’t work because after the terror of the past minutes, all my muscles were trembling. We stumbled together up the last few steps and paused, panting, on the landing.
Then two dozen vampire feet pounded up the stairs.
Leaning heavily on each other, we hustled together for the door. Seb threw it open to reveal a low, fast-looking motorcycle parked near the exit.
“Get her, you imbeciles.” Cleomenes’s blackened face came into view on the half landing below us. He waved his thundering pack past him. “She’s human, weak. She’s his weakness. Get the girl!”
Vampires flooded up the stairs, headed straight for me.
Time went strange.
Flick. Seb plucked me from my feet. Flick. I sat on the motorcycle, a helmet descending onto my head. Flick. The strap was secured. Flick. He straddled the bike in front of me.
All in the time it took a pack of preternaturally fast vampires to start to pour out of the stairwell.
Though he’d been tiring, apparently the threat to me had again been enough to slam him into high gear. But how many times could he tap that well before it ran dry?
Time snapped forward. Seb clamped into neutral and fired up the engine. The first vampire, slavering blood, reached us—claws stretching for me.
The rank odor of the vampire’s fetid blood-breath billowed into my nostrils. I flinched away as Seb kicked up the stand.
“Hang on.” He didn’t roll on the throttle—he gunned it.
We took off like a streaking jet. I had not hung on.
He caught my arm, one-handed without looking, before I fell off. I wrapped arms around him and pasted myself to his back.
Then he really kicked it, popping up the gears with a lightning-fast toe.
Vampires could run fast—Seb had proven that—but they sure as hell couldn’t keep up with a motorcycle rocketing at ten miles per hour over holy shit.
We circled down the ramps leaning so far to the side I could have kissed the pavement. At the manned cashier station, he zipped in front of the car about to pay and barked, “Pass” at the woman in the booth with such heavy compulsion it even rang in my head. Then we were on the open road, leaving the Cleo gang far behind.
We only slowed somewhere near Aurora. Seb turned the bike into a hotel parking lot and idled there.
“Seb, what’s going on?” I yelled it a little loud because of the helmet.
“I wouldn’t have taken you to O’Hare if I thought for an instant Cleomenes would find us, much less threaten you. The bastard’s not abiding by the rules of noncombatants. I was scared shitless for you.”
“Now you care?”
His glare was so narrow it cut. “I expected this trip to Meiers Corners to be a quick fact-finding mission. It blew up in my face. That’s on me. I got you into this mess, mri-jb, I’ll get you out of it. It means no more than that.”
“Mery-ab?”
His cheeks darkened. “A slang term. Like princess.”
Just a casual endearment, like sweetie. Right. The level of losing it when I was threatened that he’d just demonstrated? Maybe he was lying to both of us.
I had a ton of questions, from what was going on with Cleo to whether we were still investigating the murders. I ended up with, “Who’s the Shadow Lord?”
“That’s the gold-nugget question, isn’t it? If I knew that, I think all the other puzzles would unravel.”
“Why are we at a hotel? Isn’t there another airport that connects with New York?”
“Midway. Cleomenes will be watching that, too. I’d take you to Milwaukee or Rockford or South Bend, but frankly, I don’t know if there’s time. There’s another problem.”
“Of course there is.”
Seb rolled the bike across the lot into the shadow of the hotel’s canopy. There he shut off the engine, handed me off, and dismounted himself. As I pushed and pulled at the chin strap, he said, “You remember what I told you about, um, v-politics?”
“Just that Meiers Corners is part of something called the Iowa Alliance.” I gave up on the clasp with a huff. “This thing is glued shut.”
“Let me.” Despite his gruff voice, his hands were gentle opening the clasp. “New York is run by a suspicious sort of master. He and the leader of the Iowa Alliance have bad blood between them.”
“The Ancient One?”
“Yes. Those murders not only trace a line directly between the Alliance and his territory, but the killer planted Meiers Corners tourist pamphlets to point directly at the Alliance. If Lorenzo finds out about them, he’ll think the Ancient One is deliberately taunting him. New York will retaliate.”
“How many New York v-guys are there?”
“These days, there are about one of my kind to every couple thousand humans. In a city of nine million—nearly five thousand NYC v-guys.”
“Shit.”
“It’s worse. Lorenzo’s territory takes in more than the city.”
“Double shit.”
He gave me an appraising, almost approving glance. “You have no idea.”
In the hotel, the desk clerk was serving a young couple. He lowered his voice and continued, “I have to prove that Iowa’s not involved.”
“Owun?”
“Yes, he’s definitely my number one suspect, especially with the information Cleomenes let slip. What we need is evidence.” The couple stepped away from the desk and Seb stepped up. “Room for two.” He pulled out a different credit card this time, and the name on it wasn’t Seb Rikare.
Despite everything we’d just been through—or maybe because of it—my body began to heat.
As he came away with two room keycards, I managed, “What are we here for, anyway?”
He gave me one of the cards. “We’re catching our breath. And then, well. I was sure you were safe in Meiers Corners as long as Lorenzo didn’t know. Even when he did find out, I knew I’d have time to get you clear. Now events are blowing up faster than I can counter. I’m afraid I have to do exactly what I was trying not to do, bringing you with me in the first place.”
“Which is?”
“I have to reveal myself to Julian Emerson.”