Chapter Twenty-Four
“Take care of yourself, Brie.”
I stared at the door, replaying Seb’s exit over and over. The pain on his face. His gait, like an old man’s.
Love weakened him. I’d done that to him. I didn’t understand how, but it didn’t change facts.
So what? I asked myself. You’re just going to give up?
I’d opened myself to Derek. When he’d pushed me away, I’d given up, because I’d known intuitively that he wasn’t worth it.
Seb was.
Yes, I’d opened myself to Seb, twice. Yes, his pushing me away had hurt hundreds of times more than my ex.
That pain paled in comparison to what Seb had endured. He’d found peace in eliminating his emotions. Who was I to ask him to forsake that? To go back to suffering, simply because I wanted his love?
Goosebumps riddled my body. I’d been standing, naked and numb, for almost ten minutes.
Get dressed, I coached myself. I reached for my T-shirt.
Shredded.
All my clothes were shredded, and my suitcase was somewhere in the bowels of O’Hare. I went to the drawers and dug through neatly folded pants and shirts, finding a big, thick T-shirt, which fit me like a dress. The socks were too big, making my shoes unwearable. I sighed and took off both shoes and socks. Maybe Sera had something I could borrow.
I got my phone from my backpack, dumping Seb’s cell in, in its place. I hit Sera’s speed dial.
The call connected. “Brie?”
“Sera, I know you’re working. But—”
“You sound awful. Need to talk?”
Sighing my relief, I slipped on my hoodie and lifted my pack onto my shoulder. “Desperately. But even more, I could use a pair of leggings. Are you working?”
“I’m at Nieman’s, but I’m just keeping busy. Worried about the ceremony, the fight, the negotiations…Thor was edgy, which he never is. Makes me nervy, too. Let me grab a word with Buddy and I’ll be free.”
Some covered murmurs were followed by the sound of Sera leaving the bar area.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“A lot. I’m not sure where to start.” I put on my shoes without socks. “Why is Thor worried?”
“He sees things, puts them together in that wily brain of his. He thinks Owun was maneuvering to get himself alone with Seb and Elias.”
My stomach roiled. “But if Owun attacks them, they’re older than him. Stronger, right?” I let myself out and started down the stairs.
“They’re both weakened and stripped of weapons. And who knows about Owun? Remember, he’s acting second to a Soul Stealer.”
That made my heart pump harder. “What can we do?” But even as I asked the question, my feet were taking me back upstairs.
“Nothing we can do,” Sera said. “Stupid vampire tradition. We can only wait for them to come out.”
I eyed Seb’s gun case. I didn’t know what half the stuff in there did, but Seb did. And even if, for some reason Seb couldn’t use it—a real frisson of terror hit me—most of it was point and shoot. About to heft it and go, I remembered Seb’s new lock-pick gun and knife. I located the bag in my backpack, picked out the items, and found a place for them in the gun case. Clicking the latches closed, I hefted the case and again left the B&BS, this time walking with more purpose.
Not wanting to think about Seb, locked in a room with creepy Owun, I changed the subject. “Have you heard how Nixie is doing?”
“Still in labor. This kid’s taking its sweet time.”
Hitting the outside, the fall evening breeze was what some might call crisp, but blowing against my bare legs up my makeshift dress onto my bare…everything…I called it cold. Still, lugging the heavy case warmed me up soon enough.
“Sera…there’s something Elias said to me that I didn’t understand.”
“The Ancient One?” Her tone went hushed, awed. “He’s the v-equivalent of Superman.”
“If by that, you mean alien, I’d agree.” I remembered the not-quite-human look behind his black eyes, and when I shivered this time, it wasn’t the cold. “He was talking about mating. About rubbing and tasting and…well, it was kind of embarrassing, because it seemed to be aimed at Seb and me.”
“I knew it!” Sera crowed. “You’re Seb’s mate.”
“No! I’m not a mate, I can’t be. Especially not Seb’s. I’ve only known him a few days.”
“He hasn’t been rubbing and tasting?”
“Maybe a little.” My cheeks heated like a furnace. “But it was for his cover. Camouflage.”
“There wasn’t any sex?” She said that archly.
“Not my point,” I yelped. “My point was, I think Elias and Seb have a past.”
“Ooh. Nobody knows that much about Elias. Now that you’re in a relationship with Seb, you can tease it out of him.”
“We’re not in a relationship. It’s just physical.” Except he’d said he was falling in love. “Mostly.”
“Mostly? Just physical my ass.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“See, saying that means it’s exactly what I think. Spill.”
“He told me he’s falling in love with me.” I sighed. “But then he said love makes him weak.”
“No.” Her tone, if possible, got more awed than when I mentioned Elias. “What did you say?”
“I tried to tell him I’m falling in love with him, too. He was off to negotiate, though, and I didn’t make him listen.”
And now I was regretting that.
…
“You want to lead us?” Seb raised a skeptical eyebrow at the robed man on the screen.
“You need my leadership. The evidence is in this very room.”
The male’s voice struck Seb as deep and rich, but in a studied, almost artificial way. Perhaps a video conference or a prerecorded speech.
“What do you want? Well, what do we all want? Peace. Prosperity.”
In spite of himself, Seb paused and really listened.
“But what do we need for peace and prosperity? We need stability. Unity of purpose. Yet you sit there and bicker.”
Seb grimaced.
The cowl shifted, shadows running along the cleft of the male’s chin. “What we desperately need is strong leadership. Leadership that’s not afraid to make the tough decisions. Even unpopular decisions.”
Elias himself had said something like this. Seb exchanged a glance with the other male. Elias was frowning.
“A strong leader will boldly cut red tape for the greater good.”
Another change in air pressure rumpled Seb’s skin. The hiss of filtered air was strangely hypnotic.
The robed male droned on. “A real leader isn’t afraid to mow down old ideas to enable new growth. He brings unity from disparity, erasing the differences that cause instability.”
“Seb,” Elias said. The male’s voice sounded strangely muted.
And the air’s hissing had taken on a distinct snake-like edge.
“Sweet.” Elias’s black eyes twitched, as if he too was having trouble staying awake…
Jarred again, Seb tested the air. Its scent was pleasant, almost minty sweet. But underneath…he caught the edge of a metallic tang.
Shock knocked him breathless. Bruno Braun’s canisters of nitrous oxide. Purchased by a generic John Smith and stolen within hours. NOS could be used to deliver toxins.
Seb chilled. He knew where Bruno’s nitrous had gone.
Owun had gassed the negotiation room.
Horror suffused Seb. His breath returned in cold pants. From the moment a vampire clawed out of the grave, the human existed beside the monster. Every night they existed, the monster grew a little stronger. Straitjacket tradition was the only way to keep the monster in check. The only way to keep vampires from indiscriminately tearing out each other’s throats. From slaughtering humans and dying in horrific reprisals.
Tampering with ritual…was the triumph of the monster.
While the Shadow Lord had been droning on, maybe even as soon as Owun shut the door, an aerosol drug had been pumped into the air.
Seb tried to shoot to his feet. Tried to shout, “It’s a trap.”
His muscles were slow to respond. He stumbled, bumping the table as he stood. His words were slurred, almost unintelligible. “I’ a tra’.”
“Yeah.” Grin malicious, Owun’s eyes rolled as the drug took him, too. “E’pected Elia’.” Expected Elias. “You…bonus.” The young vampire’s eyeballs rolled back in his head and he slumped in his chair.
Hoping like hell the drug was only in the booth, Seb tried to dash for the door. He barely managed to stumble there, already halfway to incapacitated. He grabbed the handle with hands that shook and wrenched at it.
Nothing happened.
He gave the handle a hard yank, putting every bit of strength into it. Either he’d given up more blood than he thought or the drug in the air had done something to his muscles, because even using all he had did nothing.
“Mis’,” Elias slurred.
Mist, but Seb had already begun to blow himself apart into the smoky form. Or rather, he tried to mist. His body wouldn’t cooperate, staying distressingly solid. The drug had cut too far into his concentration.
Elias stumbled to his feet. He’d given more blood than Seb, was more vulnerable, but the male had formidable self-discipline. He backed up a step then threw himself at the glass wall. He hit with his shoulder and bounced back.
Through the sludge of Seb’s brain, understanding emerged. The other male was trying to crash bodily through the room’s weakest point. Even reinforced glass would break under vampire strength, however reduced as his was. He took two stumbling steps back then threw himself at the same pane.
The glass cracked. Bits fell away. Seb hoped for fresh air flooding in…no change.
Elias put a finger into the crack. His fingernail tinked against a second pane. “No,” he said, quite clearly.
Seb growled. The second transparent pane was something harder than glass, polycarbonate, or maybe even alumina-infused. Even for a vampire, that would take a long time to bash.
“How?” Damn it, Owun had trapped them in a glass cage.
Seb’s eyesight changed. Bright, impossible colors began to bleed onto the walls.
Check that. Incapacitating hallucinogen.
“No.” Elias shook his gray-black head. “Why?”
Who cared? “Figh’ i’,” Seb groaned, sinking to his knees. Fight it. He used every bit of his four thousand years of discipline to stay conscious.
“No,” Elias gasped. “Sto’…” He panted, his eyes whirling in their sockets. “Stop. Hear’.” His body thudded to the floor of the booth.
Stop his heart? Seb nearly howled. Was Elias trying to get them killed? If Seb stopped his heart, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe…couldn’t inhale any more of the hallucinogen.
But what that implied… To Seb, the worst horror was Owun and his Shadow Lord breaking the sacred tradition of Bargaining Rights.
Elias thought there was worse to come.
Seb lay on his side facing the door and shut down.
His blood stopped flowing, his body quieted, then silenced. To all intents and appearances he became a corpse, his eyes open and glassy, his skin draining of color. But deep inside, his vampire nature continued to nourish and provide for his human cells. Unmoving, but watching, and inside he was fighting to keep alert.
If Elias was right, he’d need every bit of clarity left in his brain.
Seconds ticked by, underlined by the hiss of gas.
The door unlocked.
It opened to brawny males wearing gas masks. They trampled into the small office. Maybe Cleomenes’s goons, but none Seb had seen before.
Three held electrified handcuffs. Vampire-proof.
Seb jump-started his heart and blew himself into mist.
Or tried to.
His body’s response was sluggish, his concentration laughable. He barely puffed into a cloud and immediately collapsed solid.
Two of the goons grabbed his wrist. The third cinched a cuff around it.
Then they worked to bend his wrist behind him, trying to fasten his wrists together.
Seb bypassed more subtle fighting techniques to grab two of the vampires in a bear hug and, with a tremendous flex of thighs, shove them bodily out the open door. They stumbled to the rail.
But he sucked in more drug. As the remaining thug reached for him, his stomach lurched. The air bled a bizarre purple, and the thugs’ gas masks danced in lurid green and neon orange.
Damn it, he had to get out of here. Hoping the gas was less concentrated outside the booth, he launched himself into the two males outside. They caught him and managed to wrestle him to the ground.
Until Elias, with a roar, drove his shoulder into the first vampire, then the second and third, sending them flying.
More gas-masked vampires clattered up the stairs, a whole army from the racket.
Seb grabbed a breath. His head whirled in response. The gas might’ve only been a trickle in the booth to start, but since then a whole lot of it had been pumped onto the main floor.
Seb clasped the railing, his head spinning. They needed help. Camille. She and the other Alliance vampires patrolled outside. All he had to do was let them know disaster had struck. Then they’d rush the doors…which were locked. Camille could mist in…breathe in the hallucinogen, and be incapacitated or unconscious within moments. Unless luck put her right in front of a door, she’d have to mist right back out.
Elias lurched to the landing, grabbed the first half-dozen goons hitting it, three in each out-swept arm, and used his momentum to drive them to the guard rail—and hit it and flip over it.
“No!” Seb’s cry sounded strange and muffled to his ears, his heart a cottony lub-dub of panic. He pushed himself erect and rushed to the rail. The seven males plummeted to the floor. Three stories up at least was fatal or nearly so to humans. In his weakened state, Elias wouldn’t fare much better.
Spinning end over end in slow motion, the male didn’t seem conscious. And when each hit the floor in seven separate thuds, none of them rose again. Seb’s insides curdled.
“Get him!” More thugs flooded into view below on the main floor.
Seb shoved aside his horror to reach for his efficient warrior. It was harder than it should have been, but he managed to stumble quickly down the stairs, panting, his gaze never straying from where Elias lay, twitching now.
Halfway down the stairs, his nostrils full of sick sweet gas, Seb’s vision fractured, spinning and refracting like a kaleidoscope.
He pitched off the stairs. Instinct spun him, and he didn’t land on his head, but the drug interfered and he slammed flat on his back on the concrete.
It knocked the breath out of him, freezing his diaphragm. His vision spun and started bleeding shapes.
Suddenly, everything dimmed. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t his eyes, but figures surrounding him. Pain sliced into him. Thigh, shoulder, arm, flank. Blades. Damn it, they were cutting him. If Seb had been at full strength, he’d have laughed at these little cuts, painful but instantly healed.
But Seb wasn’t at full strength. The blades bit faster, deeper. Not to kill, but to incapacitate. That was bad news, but he couldn’t remember why.
He was disoriented, fuzzy and confused. Somehow, the only thing that made it into his fogged brain was a yearning for Brie.
Beside him, something big and dark half sat. Wavered. Elias.
Just as one of the goons bent beside him, tugging on his manacled wrist.
“Seb!” Elias roared. “Fight.”
His god-king’s command focused Seb with the memory of a hundred youthful battles. His vision crystallized, though still dancing with lurid colors, to three goons slicing him while a fourth tried to fasten his cuffs.
Seb grabbed that one’s wrist and spun him into the other three, sending them flying. He let go of the fourth, who flew off into Seb’s writhing lava lamp vision.
A brown flash, headed for him, swung his attention around—Elias dove into the baseball bat’s path before it could crash into Seb’s skull.
The bat slammed into Elias.
The big vampire hit the ground with a groan. More feet came running while Elias tried to sit, his forehead bleeding. In that moment, a dozen goons rushed up and managed through sheer numbers to bring the big vampire’s wrists together. In another second, they’d snap his handcuffs closed.
“Pharaoh!” Seb shouted. “Dan’r.” Danger.
Elias roared and twisted like a bull, throwing off his attackers. The moment he was free he skated on his knees to Seb’s side. Blood ran down his face like rain. He lifted his hands.
The cuffs were in place.
“Go,” Elias said clearly.
“No.” Seb shook his head vehemently. His vision buzzed and his stomach heaved. “No’ leav’.” Not leaving you.
More gas-masked goons were running up. They had only moments. He staggered to his feet and turned to face their attackers.
“Seb.” Elias’s dark call claimed his attention. Blood ran from the male’s forehead into his eyes. Yet his black gaze meeting Seb’s was clear. Determined.
“Get. Help.”
As the goons surrounded them, Seb’s head spun, his cuts stung and weren’t healing fast enough, and he was tiring. But Elias was bludgeoned and handcuffed. Of the two of them, Seb stood a better chance of escaping.
He signaled his understanding with a nod.
Elias nodded in return.
Then, heavily bruised and bleeding from several deep cuts, Elias roared his defiance like a wounded lion and charged the mob surrounding them.
With a last-ditch effort, the big male barreled into their attackers. In the confusion, Seb managed to wrestle loose.
“He’s getting away!” a male shouted, his masked voice thin.
“Doesn’t matter.” Another goon. “The doors are bolted shut. He won’t escape. Get this one first!”
Elias roared again, spinning his fists in great arcs, less trying to cause damage than attract attention. The goons threw themselves onto the Alliance leader. At first, they were attempting to tackle him. But even reduced, Elias was a great beast. They couldn’t take him down.
Finally, they started piling onto Elias as if they’d simply snuff him out.
He staggered as each body hit, stumbling and then bending. About to collapse.
Seb chafed at leaving Elias to fight alone. But unless Seb could get help, both he and the Ancient One were doomed.
Because he’d remembered why being incapacitated, but not dead, was horrific. There was only one thing those thugs could want with them.
As blood cows for Soul Stealers.
Elias stayed fighting just long enough for Seb to slip away. Seb’s vision was filled with swirling colors, the walls seeming to drip with diseased hues. There were several doors here—somewhere. When he got free of the main body of goons he kicked into a run, dashing for the exit.
He ran straight into a wall.
He slammed into it with his full strength. Broke his nose, smashed his mouth and chin. Knocked himself nearly unconscious. He slid to sit on the floor.
His vision became a mass of slimy, swirling nothing. He couldn’t see door from window from brick. And then he started seeing things where nothing existed at all.
He scrabbled to his feet. The drug had gotten thicker, worse. He didn’t hear Elias’s roar, the males’ shrieks—he tasted them. He didn’t see the oozing colors—he heard them.
Elias gave a bull-elephant’s black roar of pain. Their precious seconds were running out.
Disoriented, stymied by a maze of illusions, Seb couldn’t get out.