FOURTEEN
BLAZE HUGGED EMELINE tight and then pulled back to sweep her gaze up and down Emeline’s body, looking for signs of damage. Emeline looked pale and her startling blue eyes appeared even bigger than usual in her oval face. Her thick black hair shone with blue lights every time she turned her head. Like Blaze, she had it in an intricate braid, a fishbone falling to her waist. She really was beautiful, and Blaze couldn’t imagine any man not falling under her spell in spite of what Maksim had said. He had to be the only man in the world who hadn’t lusted after her in the club. “Tell me you’re all right.”
Emeline touched her mouth with shaking fingers. “Lojos gave me blood. He thinks I don’t remember, but I do,” she blurted out. “The taste of it . . .” She trailed off. “I thought it would be horrible. It should have been horrible.” She looked around the room a little helplessly. “All those nightmares I have, they’re coming true, Blaze. Including the blood.”
They were in the apartment above the bar. Both had spent a great deal of their childhood there in the living room, looking out the window at the streets below. There was a certain comfort in the familiar, and as if by mutual agreement, they both crossed the room to stare out the bank of large windows to the street below.
“Emmy, they had to give you blood to save your life.”
Emeline nodded. “I know. I knew he would before he did it. This is all part of the nightmare.” She curled her fingers into her palm. “I always knew it was real,” she whispered. “So did you. We’re part of this world no one else knows about. I don’t know why, but we are.” Her hand came up to stroke defensively at her vulnerable throat. “I think your father knew. That was why he began training you as early as possible. He tried with me. It just didn’t take. I’m not equipped for violence.”
“Emeline,” Blaze whispered the name softly, hearing the guilt in her voice. “That’s a good thing. And you’re braver than anyone I know. You always have been.”
“I told him.” Emeline raised stricken eyes to Blaze. “Sean. I told him about the dreams. I told him they weren’t just nightmares, that I was afraid they were precognition. I know things before they happen. I told him about the tunnels and the two of us running in them. It is horrible down there. The things we saw in our nightmares, honestly, Blaze, it is all real.”
“You have precognition, not me,” Blaze said with sudden insight. “I was with you every time I had the nightmares. You projected them into my subconscious.”
“You’re such an empath, Blaze. You and I were always connected, and what I felt, you did. When we were asleep, we stayed connected.” She glanced at Blaze, once again meeting her eyes. “I knew all along if I came back this would happen. You with Maksim. Both of us in danger. I knew.”
“Did you know about Dad?” Blaze asked, trying to keep her tone as gentle and as unaccusing as possible.
Emeline nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. “I warned him. I told him to be careful when he was locking up. I drew pictures of the men he needed to be on the lookout for.” She ducked her head. “He asked me not to say anything to you. I’m so sorry, Blaze, I should have told you anyway.”
Blaze shook her head and turned her face back to the window. “Not if Dad asked you not to, Emmy. He didn’t ask for much, and he had his reasons.”
“He believed me.”
“Of course he did. Dad always believed both of us. And in us.” Blaze reached out and threaded her fingers through Emeline’s. “It’s the two of us now. And Maksim. We’ll come out of this alive. You’ve got skills whether or not you like using them. Dad made certain of that. I do as well. Maksim and his friends will help us.”
Emeline’s fingers tightened around Blaze’s. “I already know that in a couple of minutes, we’re not going to have a choice, Blaze. We’re going to have to leave this room and go down into those tunnels.”
Blaze stepped back from the window immediately, tugging Emeline with her. “How do we change what you see? There has to be a way. Whatever you saw, we just won’t go. We’ll stay here until Maksim comes back.”
In spite of the pull on her arm, Emeline didn’t go with Blaze, her gaze remained on the street below. “I have to go, Blaze. You can call Maksim and tell him we don’t have a choice, but whether or not you come, I have to go. If I could prevent this, I would.”
There was no way Blaze would ever allow Emeline to go into those tunnels alone. “We don’t even know where the entrance is.”
“I had lots of time to talk to the other dancers in the club,” Emeline said. “I was careful to pay attention to details, especially when they talked about any of the Hallahans. Apparently they often go into a room in the back of the club and disappear for hours. A few times, someone has gone in looking for them and they were gone. Then, hours later, they reappear, coming out of that same room. There are probably dozens of entrances, but that has to be one, Blaze.”
Blaze pressed a hand to her suddenly churning stomach.
What is it? Maksim was there instantly, pouring into her mind. Tell me.
I have a bad feeling. Emeline can see things that actually happen in the future. She sees us going down into the tunnels. Soon.
There was a small silence. She knew he was sharing the information with the other hunters.
She’s for real, Maksim. She knows things. When she says something is going to happen, I’m fairly certain it will.
Wait for me. I am a distance from you. Do not go near those tunnels without us. We will be returning to you as soon as we can.
That didn’t tell her anything. She clenched her teeth as Emeline suddenly stepped forward and pressed both hands against the glass. She heard her friend’s swift intake of breath.
“That’s how they do it,” Emeline whispered. “Blaze, they take children. We have to go after them.”
There was horror in her voice, and Blaze rushed back to the window. Below her, she could see what appeared to be a monster, a tall skeleton-like figure with bony fingers and glowing eyes wrapping his arms around two young girls. On the ground was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, blood pouring from a head wound. Clearly he had tried to fight the vampire for the two children. One girl looked to be about fourteen, the other, maybe ten.
“There’s another,” Emeline barely breathed. “A toddler. I can’t see her, but she’s there, too.” Already she was on the move, heading for the door.
Maksim. A vampire has children. He’s taking them right now. Two girls. Emmy says a toddler as well. I’m sorry. I told you I wouldn’t leave the apartment, but we can’t let them have the girls without a fight.
The girls cried. Loud. The vampire hissed at them, dropped the youngest in order to strike the older one. She slumped over. He transferred her to his shoulder and reached down to grab the younger one when she tried to run to the boy on the ground.
“Emeline, wait for me. We need weapons.”
We are on the way. Do not go into the tunnels without us. It is far too dangerous.
Blaze heard the sudden trepidation in his voice. He knew she wasn’t going to wait. She couldn’t wait. The vampire would use the girls, draining them dry—or worse.
I’m sorry, honey. I don’t have a choice. Hurry, she replied.
“I’ll follow them while you get the weapons,” Emeline said, already yanking open the door.
“No. You wait for me. It will only be a minute and you need to be armed as well. You can’t kill these things with your bare hands, Emmy.”
Emeline turned back, her face a mask of anxiety. “He’s got both girls. I don’t see the toddler, but she’s in my dream. She can’t be more than two or three.”
Blaze didn’t hesitate; she gathered weapons and began stashing them in every conceivable loop in her belt, waist, shoulder holster and packs. She added as many of the explosives she still had from when she’d made them for her war with the Hallahans. Tossing a gun and a knife at Emmy, she added ammunition and then raced to follow Emeline down the stairs to the bar and then outside.
“The boy is still alive,” Emeline said, hurrying across the street to crouch beside the teenager.
He sat up, one hand to his temple, trying in vain to stanch the flow of blood. “He took my sisters,” the boy said. “A monster.”
Emeline caught his arm and helped him stand. “We’ll go after them, you get help. Call your parents and have them take you to a hospital.”
“Don’t have parents. My sisters only got me,” the boy said. “I’m going with you.”
Blaze was already rushing toward her motorcycle. Emeline could ride on the back. The boy was on his own. If they could move out fast, they’d leave him behind where he would be safe.
“I know where he’s taking them. He already got the baby,” the boy continued, raising his voice. “That’s where we were going, to try to get her back, and he came out of nowhere. There’s an entrance to an underground tunnel just under the dry cleaner’s. We use the entrance for shelter when the streets get too cold.”
Blaze skidded to a halt and turned back to the boy. He was pale and thin. His clothes were in tatters. If what he said was true, there was an entrance to the underground much closer than the club. “Show us.”
“What’s your name?” Emeline asked. “I’m Emmy and this is Blaze. I lived on the street for years, so don’t be afraid,” she added when he hesitated.
He eyed them both warily as he hurried down the street toward the dark dry cleaner’s. “Danny. My name is Danny. These things have been coming after us for the last year. They killed my parents. If the state gets a hold of my sisters, they’ll split us all up, so I’m keepin’ us together.” He said it defiantly.
“Do your sisters have any strange abilities? Something out of the ordinary?” Blaze asked, “Something you might call a psychic ability?”
Emeline flashed her a scared look, but she didn’t say a word.
“Yes. Amelia can talk to animals. I know that sounds crazy but . . .”
“It doesn’t sound crazy,” Blaze prompted. “The others?”
“Liv and the baby, Bella, both can perform telekinesis. I’m not that talented, but I can see auras and things like that. Mom and Dad did, too,” Danny admitted. Blood continued to pour from the cut on his temple between his fingers. It dripped down to his shoulders.
“Blood attracts them,” Blaze said. “You have to get that under control. It would be better if you stayed up here.”
Danny led the way through the narrow space between the two-story building housing the dry cleaner’s and the brick building where the flower and bike shops had been. Both had been abandoned for over a year.
“Seriously, Danny,” Blaze reiterated when the boy continued to ignore her and dropped down to crouch beside a metal grate near the ground of the building. “These things are difficult to kill. You don’t even have a weapon, do you?”
Danny didn’t even look at her. He pried open the door and crawled into the shaft headfirst, on his hands and knees. Emeline and Blaze exchanged a long look. Blaze followed him with Emeline close on her heels. Blaze understood him. She would have gone after Emeline no matter her age. Emeline would have come after her. That was family. That was the bond. That was love.
Hurry, Maksim, she whispered softly into her mind. They have three girls and this wonderful boy is risking everything to find his sisters.
You and Emeline are risking everything as well. Stay together. Remember, it will not be the undead that will come at you. First will be their humans and then their puppets. Maybe a lesser vampire. If we have not arrived, I will need to see through your eyes. Lojos gave Emeline blood. He can see through hers.
Blaze kept crawling through the narrow ventilation shaft, Emeline close on her heels. Danny clearly had come this way many times. There was no hesitation on his part at all. He moved with assurance in spite of the fact that the shaft was pitch dark. Blaze could see. Her night vision was extremely acute now, a by-product, she was certain, of the Carpathian blood running through her veins. Emeline didn’t complain, either, so she had to be able to at least see Blaze.
The shaft narrowed and teed. Danny immediately was on his belly, using elbows and toes to thrust himself forward, following the shaft that led to the right and began a downward slant. There was definitely fresh air coming from somewhere. She couldn’t imagine what these young children had coped with to drive them so far into the shaft to find out where it led. Emeline had been on the streets for years. She used the fire escapes and rooftops more than anything on the ground. She’d always said it gave her a sense of safety to be able to see anything coming her way.
Ahead of her, Danny tumbled out of the shaft onto cement flooring. Blaze followed, landing easily, looking around as she moved out of the way for Emeline. They were in a large tunnel. Very large. The ceiling curved above their head, and the hallway led in two directions. Sconces high up on the wall were lit, spilling light and shadow throughout the long, winding passageway.
“What’s down here?” she asked Danny. No way would he bring his sisters to this level without some exploring first.
“The tunnels run under at least three city blocks,” Danny said. Whispering. “We kept to the right and stayed just at the entrance so we could get back in the shaft as quickly as possible. Even the baby learned to be quiet down here.”
Blaze shivered at the sudden note of tension in his voice. She already felt the difference, the moment Danny had turned down the shaft leading toward the left. The air emanating from the right side smelled clean and fresh. Coming from the left, there was a strange musky smell. Repulsive. Not strong, just enough to keep anyone from wanting to travel down that wide corridor.
“They can smell you,” she told Danny. He needed to know, just in case they got the girls back and came out of it alive. She glanced at Emeline. “It’s interesting that after all that time when they could have taken the girls down here, they waited to kidnap them until tonight. And right under the windows of the bar and apartment.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Emeline said. “It’s a trap then. They wanted us to come down here.”
Blaze nodded slowly. Maksim, they lured Emmy and me down here using the children. Danny and his sisters have come here many times over the last year. Why would they wait if they wanted them? How could they know Emeline would be with me tonight in my apartment?
A scream filled the tunnels. High-pitched. Animalistic. One of the girls. Terrified. In agony. She had to grip both Danny and Emeline to prevent them from rushing headlong into certain trouble. Still, she had no choice. It was impossible to leave a child to the monsters. To allow the undead or their puppets to torture and feed off of them.
What they were doing was insane. Going straight into a hornet’s nest and they were waiting for them. She knew that. She knew it in her brain and felt it in her gut. Still, the scream didn’t let up. Now it was much more guttural. The throat shredded and raw.
I have to go, Maksim. I can’t hear this and not go to her. I can only hope they don’t want us dead. Get here soon. Hurry. Please hurry.
I could stop all three of you.
In spite of the implacable statement, she knew he wouldn’t. She was well aware of him there in her mind, hearing what she heard. Knowing she would have to do this. He was afraid for her, but he wouldn’t stop her because he knew and understood who she was. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try.
I love you. She whispered the declaration to him softly. Intimately. Meaning it. Expecting to die, but hoping he would get there fast enough to save all of them.
If they waited and planned this, acquiring either you or Emeline or the both of you is their ultimate goal, Maksim stated.
Thankfully he didn’t sound so far away as he had when she’d first contacted him. Still . . .
They could have killed you in the club, but they did not. If they get you, they will know you are my lifemate, but Emeline has not been claimed.
Blaze was horrified at the implication. Can vampires have sex? Are you saying they are looking for a lifemate? That’s the most disgusting thing I can think of. No woman would want to have sex with rotting flesh.
They do not consider themselves rotting. Of course they can have sex, but to feel anything they would have to torture the woman and take her blood for the rush. To a vampire it might even be the ultimate high.
Blaze had begun to move slowly through the tunnel. The thought that Maksim could be right in his assessment of what the vampires wanted Emmy for turned her stomach, the imagery burned itself into her brain. She looked at Emeline. Emeline had a look of utter despair on her face. Her eyes were filled with sorrow. With trepidation. She knew something Blaze didn’t.
“Emmy, you and Danny should stay here. I’ll go ahead and try to get the girls. We can’t all be in jeopardy. That would be foolish. Watch my back. You have a gun. I’ll give one to Danny. Shoot the eyes and nose. That will at least blind them and hopefully make it so they can’t smell you. Set them on fire if you can. Whatever you do, don’t let them get their hands on you.”
“I have to go,” Emeline said softly. She pressed her lips together and then took a deep breath. “I can change things in my dreams, Blaze. I tried many different versions of this one, hoping to stop what I know is going to happen. If I don’t go, those girls die. The baby first. I have to be there to get the baby while you’re fighting off the guards. Danny has to be there as well to take the baby.”
Get here fast, this is a disaster.
We are coming, Maksim assured.
It seemed like it had been hours since she’d first called to Maksim, but she knew it was only a matter of minutes. It just seemed much longer. Blaze snapped her teeth together and set a much faster pace through the wide tunnel. The deeper they got into the maze of twists and turns, the more it felt as if eyes watched them. The more the stench grew. Small red eyes glowed at them as rats scurried to get out of their way.
Blaze had seen these tunnels before, and strangely, because she’d had the nightmare of running in them hundreds of times, she knew the way. She knew to turn left and then right. She knew when they neared the command center and the lights of the banks of computers and large screens would cast eerie green and blue lights across the ancient floors. She knew exactly where the room with dozens of cages was.
As they approached, she held up her hand to stop the other two from moving forward. This was her job. The prisoners were kept here. The ones used for food. The ones they experimented on. She took a deep breath, drew her knife and pushed inside. She’d gone over the scenario a hundred times. In her dreams she’d been killed over and over until she learned the exact sequence of events.
She saw the human first. A Hallahan. He was on his knees, a young girl on the floor, her clothes torn, her face swollen and bloody. This was Amelia, Danny’s older sister. Blaze had never seen faces clearly, but she wasn’t surprised to see a Hallahan assaulting a child. He looked up at her, shocked to find her there. She was on him in seconds, kicking him in the face, sending him flying off the girl.
“Into the hall,” she hissed at the child, not looking at her. Carrick Hallahan grinned at her as he stood, wiping the blood from his mouth where her boot landed.
“My sisters . . .” the girl protested.
“Into the hall. Danny’s there.”
Amelia scrambled on her hands and knees, sobbing loudly. Too loudly. Blaze hoped Danny and Emeline would quiet her. Blaze whirled around, transferring the knife to her left hand while she gathered her throwing knives with her right. She threw them as she advanced quickly on Carrick. The knives went true, sinking into flesh from his belly to his throat. Four of them. He hadn’t taken a single step toward her. He was still grinning macabrely at her. Her momentum took her past him and she kicked him hard in the back of the knee, taking him down, one hand reaching for his hair to yank his head back. Her knife bit deep into his throat and she shoved him away from her, already turning toward the door of the second room.
Another room for prisoners. Long tables covered in blood. Saws. Drills. Cages lining the room so the prisoners could see what would happen to them. He would be waiting above her. She couldn’t be distracted by the room. She couldn’t vomit at the stench of what she found there. She had to be prepared.
Blaze burst through the door, leaping into the air. She had forgotten she was fully Carpathian and her strength was enormous. Her ability to jump drove her straight to the ceiling, the knife unerringly finding the heart of the guard. Another human. Not a Hallahan, but she lost her knife when she’d pinned him so deep and she didn’t take the time to yank it free. A through and through straight to the ceiling.
She couldn’t look at the baby’s face, swollen with tears. A smear of blood on her cheek as she lay in a cage beside a mutilated corpse. Blaze kept moving, straight across the room toward the other Hallahan brother. Terry Hallahan was ready for her, bringing up a gun. Behind her, she knew Emeline had entered the room. She couldn’t look. She had her job and Emeline had her own. They had worked this scenario hundreds of times. Both knew what would happen; still, they couldn’t leave the children there.
They had never known what drew them into the tunnels because they were already in it when their dream started. She kept her eyes glued to Terry, the last brother. He aimed at her kneecap.
“I killed them, you know,” she said, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. She kept walking toward him. “All three of them. I was the one who killed them.”
His eyebrow shot up. The gun was forgotten for a split second while he tried to comprehend what she was saying.
She went in under the gun, sliding, taking out his legs in a scissor takedown, rolling so she was on top and he was pinned beneath her, the gun crushed between the floor and his chest. She leaned into him, her mouth to his ear, the knife from her boot in her fist.
“Your brothers. For my dad. It isn’t a fair exchange, but then you all are scum.” She drove the point of her knife deep into the base of his skull. And left it there. She only had one more knife and she drew it from where it lay between her shoulder blades.
Emeline was still crouched at the child’s cage. She had to trust that Emmy could get her out. There was a man slumped in a cage, alert, his eyes on her. She felt compelled to approach that cage. In the dream she hadn’t known why. It was a stupid thing to do when she needed every second to count, but now she realized he was Carpathian. A hunter. Ravaged. Drained of blood. Tortured. Maybe even mad.
Go, he whispered. Leave me and save yourselves.
It was an order. Arrogant just like the other hunters. She ignored him and crouched by the cage, because if he ordered her to leave, he wasn’t insane. “You need blood,” she whispered, her eyes, not on him, but on the door. The puppet would come next. Emeline and the baby had to be out of there by the time the puppet came. Emeline would be taken in the hall, but Danny would get the baby and Amelia out. That left Liv. It was up to her to get Liv.
She never knew what happened to Emeline after that. She would wake from the nightmare and Emmy would be huddled into a protective ball, her body shuddering, her fist jammed deep in her mouth and her eyes haunted. She always looked at Blaze with despair. With pain. With absolute terror.
Blaze always forced herself to wake after she shoved Liv into the hall so she could run to freedom. She forced herself awake because there was no way to win the battle beneath the ground. She died down there. Every time.
I cannot aid you. Leave this place. It is too dangerous.
The other hunters are coming.
Leave me for them.
She couldn’t. She’d left him several times and each time he’d died there in that cage, speared by a puppet cleaning up on his master’s orders. She shot the lock as she’d done so many times in her dreams.
Can you make it out by yourself? I still have one more child to get.
He nodded. She wasn’t certain of his fate. She couldn’t stay. She didn’t dare spare blood for him. She had to go into the next room where the puppet had Liv. Little Liv, the ten-year-old girl who shouldn’t know there were monsters in the world. Little Liv, whose screams had brought them all running in an effort to try to save her from the fate she’d suffered over and over in Blaze’s nightmares.
As she moved away from the cage and toward the door, she heard a whisper of movement. Of course. She should have known. Emeline came back. Emeline gave the caged Carpathian the blood to save his life. Brave Emmy who thought she was not a warrior. Who couldn’t fight with guns and knives but fought back with sheer courage. She was already kneeling by the cage as Blaze went through the last door of the prison.