Chapter 12

Halo did not sleep. He stayed aware of his surroundings as best he could with a tempting woman lying in his arms. He wanted her again, with a surprising hunger. What was more, he wanted to feed from her. Poisoned or not, all he could think about was gobbling her up like a sensual, tasty treat. Considering how wildly arousing and satisfying their sexual encounter had been, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to do it again while feeding from her. The thought made him hard and left him wanting.

He let her sleep though. She had been sleeping often, he noted. Probably from the exhaustion of fretting over their situation or perhaps to escape the situation entirely. Perhaps even to escape him. He felt her pulling away at the end, just before she had drifted off. That was what he wanted…wasn’t it? He wanted her to keep distance between her physical desires and her emotional ones.

That didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy each other fully in the moment though. She should take the time to indulge like he was. He was filling his senses and his memory with all the sweet and luscious things about her. He knew he would savor them for a lot longer than he usually savored a woman. She was indeed special, worthy of more consideration than a passing fancy.

Halo stayed in bed even though his instinct was to prowl about the room, staying alert and ready. It was better to remain relaxed. He burned less energy this way. Then again, he had just burned a copious amount of energy. Probably not the smartest thing he’d ever done.

He hadn’t been smart about a lot of things. Suddenly, he was questioning his judgment on many aspects of his life. This situation was forcing him to take stock, to examine it fully and see where it was flawed and weak. He had devoted so much time to hunting and playing that he had not developed any true connections, as Felice had pointed out. But that was the way he wanted it, wasn’t it? Connections were difficult. They took up a lot of energy and often came with a lot of drama. He didn’t need any of that in his life.

However, he couldn’t escape the feeling that something was lacking. He hadn’t felt it before…before being held captive with Felice…

Damn it, no. He wasn’t going to give in to sentimentality. If this capture and imprisonment had taught him anything, it was that he needed to become even more isolated. Even more on guard. He couldn’t waste his attention on the feelings and needs of others. He had to become a sharper tool, an ultimate weapon. He had thought that was what he was, but it hadn’t been true. If it had been true he would never have been captured. He would have seen it coming.

He examined their situation for the hundredth time that evening. Not their sexual situation—that stood on its own. However, he did examine their captivity, trying to anticipate their captors’ next move.

Without cameras to see into the room, it would be driving them crazy not to watch how their little experiment was going. They were probably working frantically to restore them. If the charge he had sent through the system had been anything, it had been powerful. It might’ve been far-reaching enough to have fried those cameras so completely that they would need to come into the room to replace them. That would be ideal. As would the idea of them coming in to feed them. The more often they risked coming into the room, the more possible it was for him to hatch an escape. And whatever escape plan he did hatch, he had to keep Felice as far from it as possible.

Restlessness settled over him. He had enjoyed his postorgasmic lassitude, had wallowed in the feeling of pleasure and the tenderness of watching her fall asleep. He wished he could join her in her trusting, carefree actions of the moment. He didn’t have that luxury. He must keep aware. He must.

Halo grew quickly bored, however. He was a man of action. He needed to be on the hunt. True, he was very patient and often played the waiting game—waiting for a mark to show up or slip up was all part of the hunt, part of the game. This was different, however. He was the hunted, he was the one who was vulnerable, he did not have the advantage. True, he had more advantage now than he had a mere hour ago, but was it enough?

It had to be. He was out of ideas. He probably shouldn’t have started this flirtation with Felice. It complicated things. He believed she would not try to sink her hooks into him. She would not try to force him into her mold of what a man ought to be. She would not expect more of him than he was able to give. He respected her for that. Respected her for knowing her own mind and coming to terms with the nature of what their relationship was going to be.

However, he had this strange sensation in his belly. This odd desire to stay connected to her even after all of this was over. He tried to tell himself it was because he didn’t know the nature of the danger she was in—and that was part of it—but there was more. An elusive more. A more he wasn’t equipped to understand at that moment. All he did know was that he needed to protect her. She was innocent. She was blameless in all of this. And she was compelling. More so than any woman he had known before, and given the extent of his life, that was saying something. She made him think. Made him question his life and his existence. That ought to piss him off. And in a way it did. He wanted to argue that his life was fine just the way it was. However, he was more enlightened than that. He had already admitted there were flaws to the way he lived his life. He just wasn’t sure his lack of interpersonal relationships was one of those flaws.

He was thinking in circles. So much so it was making him dizzy. He had already gone over all of this in his mind. Why did he keep returning to it? He had to get out of there. He couldn’t take any more of this. He had to get out!

As if sensing his distress on some subconscious level, her eyes flew open and she reached to place a hand over his pounding heart.

“What is it?” she asked as she tried to blink the sleep from her eyes.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

“No. It’s something. I can feel the tension in your body and your heart is pounding like a jackhammer,” she said stubbornly. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

“This whole situation is wrong, if you hadn’t noticed,” he growled meanly. “And I don’t have the luxury of sleeping through it.”

“You can’t possibly…you aren’t thinking of staying awake for the entire time we are in here! It could be days! I know vampires need to sleep as much as humans do.”

“You know that, eh? Suddenly you’re an expert on vampires? For your information at peak efficiency, I can stay awake for days. A week if I had to.”

“At peak efficiency. As long as you kept your energy up,” she lobbed back at him. “You are far from being at peak efficiency. You’ve been captured and poisoned by gas, which you said yourself takes a lot of energy to process. You’ve been starved and offered only one source of food…me. Just the act of resisting the temptation must burn energy.”

“Who says I’m tempted? You’re poison. There’s nothing attractive about that.”

She frowned, looked hurt, and he immediately felt like the ass he was. He jumped to take back his words, to clarify his meaning.

“I mean…if you were clean it would be a far more irresistible temptation. I know being poisoned isn’t your fault. And you should know there is a huge difference between being tempted to dine on you and wanting to nibble and lick you and devour you in other ways. Now those ways I do find irresistible.”

“Thank you, but don’t feel you have to say that to spare my feelings.”

“I’m not. I mean that sincerely.”

“Yet you still call me poison.”

“I can’t help the facts.”

“I know. It just sickens me that I’m tainted like this. I wish I could be clean for you.”

“You want me to feed on you?” he asked, surprised. He had never known anyone who had voluntarily offered to feed a vampire of their own free will. Oh, he knew they were out there, he had just never come across them. Had never needed them. Those humans were cultivated to be a perfect source of energy, and they were used to feed the sick or the infirm. Of course, there weren’t many sick or infirm vampires, and usually if there were they didn’t stay that way for long. But energy was essential to the rapidity of their healing process, so if the vampire was too injured to find energy, then energy was brought to them. The purest and most powerful energy they could find—a cultivated human—was offered up to the sick vampire.

“Yes.” She answered strongly, showing him she knew her own mind in this matter. “I want you to feed on me. I want to know what it feels like. I want to share that with you.”

There was a certain amount of intimacy that came with a feeding. It was what had helped him become a considerate and affectionate lover instead of the selfish one he might have been otherwise. Sure, there was a selfish aspect to the way he managed his women, but for the short time he had them he treated them like queens.

He would do no less for her. He only wished he could feed on her, without care or worry or poison standing in the way. It frustrated him in a way he wasn’t used to.

He reached out and stroked the line of her jaw with gentle fingertips, tracing it, drawing a circle on her chin before drifting his touch beneath her jaw and down the length of her throat. The touch created intimacy between them almost instantly. He dipped his head and kissed her lips softly. She reached for him with a lift of her chin and kissed him again.

That was when his keen vampire hearing detected something. He was out of the bed in a flash, sprinting across the room and flattening himself against the wall by the door as he waited to spring into action.

Felice scrambled to get out of bed across the room and he halted her with a sharp hand gesture. To his relief she stepped back as far as she could go on that side of the room without getting on the bed and huddling in the corner.

There was a clang of sound, of metal being worked against.

The door opened.

A cadre of soldiers rushed into the room. Dressed in black and armed with weapons, their faces covered, they were in the room in an instant.

Halo reacted immediately. Disregarding the fact that he was outnumbered five to one, he grabbed the first soldier by the muzzle of his weapon, hearing it go off with a rat-a-tat of rapid automatic gunfire. Immediately he saw the danger. He had to keep all five of them occupied in order to keep them from taking aim at Felice. That was nearly an impossible task, but he was damn well going to attempt it.

He shoved the first soldier bodily into the group of soldiers behind him, bowling them all over and off their feet.

He kicked the first soldier in the face, stunning him, sweeping his leg around to knock back three of them at once, continuing to keep them occupied on the floor. He moved smoothly, fluidly for someone so big and powerful. He bent into a strike that caught the soldier in the throat. He gagged, unable to breathe, and clawed at his crushed larynx. One down, four to go.

He snatched away the first soldier’s automatic weapon just as one of the soldiers grabbed him by his foot and tried to yank him down onto the ground with them. He knew immediately by the strength of the pull that this was a phant. It took a bit of fancy footwork for Halo to kick away the grasping hand while maintaining his balance. He fired the rifle into the chest of the first phant and a second one as well, incapacitating them if not killing them. One of the three remaining guns came up and fired at him in the chest. He felt the bullets ripping into his flesh and the power of the strikes made him step back twice.

Halo heard Felice cry out right before one of the soldiers held up both hands and ejected a pulse of energy that also beat him back. But there was the invigorating aspect of being dosed with so much energy. The trouble was, it was painful and disorienting. Something he hadn’t shared with Felice. Had he been less disciplined, he would have given in to the pain ripping through his nervous system.

Halo took what little energy he could from the pulse, the acrid taste of the taint of the sycophant’s energy like rotten eggs against his palate and senses, and immediately sent it back toward the pile of soldiers. The pulse sent bright blue and yellow light jolting into the open air of the room. The phants on the ground cried out as he hit them with as wide a dispersal as he could while maintaining the power of the pulse.

It was clear these men were not as disciplined as he was when it came to riding out the pain of the pulse. They spent precious moments writhing on the floor. Moments Halo used to grab up another weapon and bend the muzzle, rendering it useless so it couldn’t be used against him. He kicked the third armed man in the head, snapping his head back on his neck with a loud crack of sound. Halo figured he had broken his neck cleanly with the action because the man fell back in a lifeless heap. Halo saw the knife at his waist and drew it sharply from its sheath then; discarding his rifle after rendering it useless as well, he took the soldier’s backup weapon, a 9mm handgun, strapped to his thigh, and checked to see if it was ready for action. This weapon Halo took and put to use. He shot the man in the throat, effectively severing his brain from his spine in the single clean shot…just to make sure he was dead.

Then, suddenly, Halo was struck with energy pulses from two of the remaining men at once. The force threw him back, sent him crashing into the table, the dishes from their dinner falling to the floor. But he held on to the knife and the gun, even as unimaginable pain tore through every last nerve in his body. He used it, took what energy from it that he could.

There was the sound of gunfire as one of the men fired in Felice’s direction. A warning shot.

“Stop or I’ll kill her!” he barked.

Oh, like hell he would. Halo knew this was his only chance. He couldn’t waste it. He expended precious energy sending another burst of pain-searing energy at the two beginning to struggle to their feet. He rammed into them again as he did this, like bowling for bad guys. Only this time it was more calculated. As they writhed with the pain from his pulse, Halo kicked over the one who had dared to aim and fire at Felice and stabbed him in the back of the neck with a savage thrust that buried the blade to the hilt just beneath his skull. So deep he couldn’t take the time to withdraw it as that would be too difficult a task. Instead he disarmed his latest victim of his knife and shot the remaining rifle owner in the face with his handgun. It wasn’t a neck shot, it wasn’t enough to kill him, but it was enough to keep him from being able to see and aim.

Finally the two soldiers he had shot in the chest managed to get to their feet. A somewhat worthy pair of opponents, Halo thought in passing, pretty impressed that they’d been able to do it. Having lost his primary weapon, the one on the right withdrew a handgun from a holster and fired at Halo. As a moving target, the best the man could hope for was striking Halo on the side of his neck and his left shoulder. The neck shot severed Halo’s carotid artery and blood began to pump from the wound, making him a bloody, slick mess. Just as Halo shot the second man through the throat, dropping him instantly, the first connected with him. But as the two men clashed, the slickness of his blood-covered skin gave Halo an advantage. Naked and wet made it nearly impossible for the man to grapple with him.

Of course, the more Halo was injured, the more energy he burned. He was growing weaker. He could feel it. He needed this fight to be over now.

In three succinct moves, Halo disarmed the man, elbowed him in the throat, effectively choking him again as his windpipe was crushed further, then yanking his head forward, he found the spot at the base of his skull and fired his weapon.

Felice, in fear of being struck by stray gunfire, had hurried to the farthest corner of the room. She’d listened to his instructions about keeping as far from the action as possible. He was infinitely proud of her in that moment and it invigorated him.

The last living phant, the one he had shot in the face, had managed to get to his feet. He staggered into Halo, grabbing him close and sending a pulse into him that seared his weak nerves. Halo grappled with the man as his head rang and his nerves burned. He gathered the last of his energy and sent a pulse into the remaining phant. He used the last of his energy reserves with that final pulse, but the pulse clearly wasn’t as strong as the others had been because it didn’t knock the man off his feet. Still, it occupied him long enough to allow Halo to use martial arts to stun him the rest of the way. He was well trained in all kinds of styles, having devoted nearly a decade to the learning process, a time when he had done nothing but immerse himself in the arts. He had even trained in the classes of the late and great Bruce Lee. He called on his knowledge of those classes now.

This phant was different from the others. Fresher in spite of his wounds. Armed. He fired his sidearm at Halo, and Halo felt the bullets whizzing by his neck. He kept in motion, rolling across the floor and kicking the phant’s legs out from under him. The trouble was it brought them in closer quarters, and the phant was very strong and a very good shot. It wouldn’t take much more for him to shoot Halo through the brain stem.

The first order of business was disarming him. The two men rolled in a clash of muscle and vigor. Somewhat. Halo was weakening. Growing tired. He had expended all the energy he’d had in reserve. He couldn’t fire another pulse. The same wasn’t true for the remaining phant.

Halo struck him across the face even as they rolled again. The sycophant pinned Halo onto his back and sent a searing pulse down into his body. Dizzy and disoriented and in a hell of a lot of pain, Halo struggled to keep control of the weapon the phant held. He was bringing it up around his throat, fighting with Halo for every inch. The still fresh phant sent yet another pulse into Halo, slamming his head against the concrete floor. Halo was losing. Desperation was the only thing keeping him in the fight. The muzzle of the gun inched closer and closer into position against his throat. Another inch and the phant would be able to shoot, severing Halo’s spinal cord.

Then suddenly the phant jerked—a startled movement that allowed Halo to bat the gun away. He was prepared to fight the remaining sycophant to the death, but the phant reared off Halo, clutching at his neck. That was when he saw Felice backing away, her hands covering her mouth and a look of horror in her eyes.

She had stabbed him, Halo realized with wonder. Felice had retrieved the little plastic knife and had stabbed the phant in the back of the neck. She had missed the crucial point, of course, the knife not strong enough to make it through bone and cartilage. But she had stabbed him badly enough to give Halo the advantage he needed. He struck out with a hard palm, catching the phant in the nose even as he held on to his weapon hand. He hit him again, waiting for his hand to go lax. The phant’s free hand was grappling at the back of his neck, trying to find and dislodge the blade there. But the handle had broken off so there was nothing to grab.

One more hit in the sycophant’s face and Halo was able to wrench the weapon from him, take it into his own hand, bring it up to his throat, and fire twice in quick succession, making certain it would hit the mark this time.

The phant collapsed, all of the life leaving him.

Halo laid there a moment, panting and weak. It was Felice who rolled the dead phant off his body. He was aware of the crackling of energy across the room—the energy of the enemy phants’ bodies disintegrating into nothingness and ether. When a vampire or sycophant died, it was only minutes before his body disappeared in a crackle of energy and light, dissipating into the energy of the world around them. The more charged the vampire or sycophant was, the stronger the energy output was when he died. But Halo couldn’t use that energy. It was bad enough he had taken in tainted energy during the battle. But that had been a necessary evil.

Now he was left nearly immobile. But Halo forced himself to move. To sit up. Felice was there beside him, scrambling to help him sit up by situating herself behind him. He leaned on her a moment as he panted for breath.

“What is it?” she asked, worried.

“I can barely move. It took all of my energy to fight them. I need a minute.”

“You need to feed. You’re pale and weak. There’s barely any color to your lips, and I’ve never seen your eyes look so dull. You must feed.”

“I can’t. There’s no one to feed from.”

He pushed away from her, struggling to his feet by sheer force of will. It took a monumental effort.

“There’s me. Feed from me. Please! It’ll only be this once. It won’t change you. We won’t let it.”

“We have to get out of here,” he said, ignoring her. He disarmed the final phant of his knife before he disappeared like the rest. He also stripped him of his black T-shirt and handed it to Felice. He went for the phant’s pants, grateful that the bastard was about his size. He stripped him of them and put them on. Felice followed his example and scrambled into the shirt. It hung loosely on her smaller frame, even around her generous hips.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

He staggered toward the door and she immediately came up to his side and levered herself beneath his arm. She was insane if she thought she could bear up under his weight, but he was grateful for the prop.

They left the room through the door. It emptied into a corridor and Halo knew there would be other guards posted. They were out of the room, but they were far from out of danger.

He stumbled and they both went down to their knees. He braced the hand that held the knife against the ground while the hand that held the gun remained against her shoulder. He couldn’t let either weapon go. He needed them both. But his hands were shaking so much from energy deprivation that he would find it impossible to aim either one.

She was right. He needed to feed. And he needed to do it quickly.

Halo panted for breath, gritted his teeth. This was not ideal. It was not how he would have wanted to introduce her to a feed. Without hypno it would hurt her more than was necessary. Without time they couldn’t indulge in the experience like he would have preferred. And then there was the fact of her cleanliness. If he fed from her and turned immediately evil, she would be shit out of luck. How could he risk doing that to her?

“You won’t be evil,” she said, as if she had plucked the thought from his head. “I know it. You won’t give in. But you need energy. Tell me. Tell me how it’s done.”

Halo rolled onto his backside and propped his back against the wall. Cameras. There had to be cameras watching the hall. There wasn’t time. A decision had to be made.

“Sit in my lap and bend your neck forward,” he said on a rasp of breath.

She did so instantly. Trustingly. She sat facing him.

“Face away,” he corrected her.

In a perfect world he would have taken her while she faced him, but he couldn’t spare the energy to finagle her position properly. She promptly turned her back to his chest and bent her head forward.

Without any preamble, he used the last of his strength to sweep her hair off the back of her neck. He shot forward like a striking cobra and sent his teeth into the tender flesh at the back of her neck. Anticipating the feed, his fangs had grown until they were long and needle sharp. Now they fastened onto the knobby bone where her neck met her spine and punctured through flesh and bone.

She cried out, tensing, flexing with pain. Her spine arched and out of instinct she grabbed for the beast attacking her. He was that beast. But instead of pushing him away she held him to her, her hand threading into his hair, holding his head close. He made a savage sound of approval as the taint of her energy skipped across his taste buds. But there was something compelling about her flavor after a few moments. It seemed somehow richer, more decadent. More sumptuous. He didn’t know if it was because of her taint or because she was Felice or because he hadn’t known such a drain in energy before.

Regardless her energy flooded his tissues and he immediately felt a surge of strength. His hands came around her chest, holding her back against him as he made a savage sound and drank deeper. She moaned and he knew she was feeling what he was feeling—pain laced with ultimate pleasure. He was soaring high. Again, was it because he was so starved or was it because she was so tainted? He feared not knowing the answer.

However, he was committed to his course of action and he went into it wholeheartedly. At the moment of a feed he could hear all of her thoughts, feel all of her pleasure. It hardened him, made him want her with a hunger as if he had never had her. It wasn’t the time or the place, but there was no denying the feed.

His tissues flushed with energy, his body was reinvigorated. Halo had to stop, he was taking too much, but he needed more. He was starved for more. He didn’t want to stop feeling the high he was feeling, even though it meant he was draining her of her life force with every passing second. She gasped, her body going limp and lax, her fingers falling from their place in his hair. It was when he felt her hand hit his thigh with a weak thump that he realized he had gone too far.

He broke from her with a wrenching that tore at her delicate flesh in a way he would never normally have done. He was acting like a savage.

He was a savage.

Halo surged to his feet, cradling her limp body.

“Come on. You have to walk on your own. I need to have my hands free,” he told her, settling her onto her feet. He was being callous, but it was what was needed in that moment. He needed to shock her into responding. He thumped her on the back of her head with his knife hand. “Hey! Wake up. Move it, honey.”

She came to herself then, her dazed eyes clearing. She took all of her weight onto her own feet and he sighed shortly with relief. Not just because she wouldn’t be a burden as they left but because it meant he hadn’t harmed her irreparably.

All the while her energy was coursing through him. It was a rush—high and amazing. He felt as though he could fight an entire army. Which was good because he had no doubt he would have to.

“Take this,” he said, putting the knife in her right hand. “You know how to use it. Just…next time make sure you give it your all.”

“I had a plastic knife,” she said dryly. “Excuse me if it wasn’t up to your standards. It seemed to do the trick.”

He chuckled to hear her snapping at him. It meant she was all there. His Felice. Good. He would need her.

“It did do the trick. But it isn’t easy to make it past all that bone and muscle. It takes years of training to get it just right. All you have is a knife and gumption.” He urged her forward down the long corridor, his senses stretching outward. If there was anyone in the hall at any point, he would sense their personal energy. It was like an early warning system. But if he could sense them, it was very likely they could sense him. There was little chance of sneaking up on them—if they were phants or vampires. It was possible they had resorted to human guards in the halls, thinking there was no way they would ever make it out of that room.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him, bringing up a hand to rub gingerly at the back of her neck. Her fingers came away and they both saw the bright red streaking of her blood. She was bleeding, but not in a worrisome way. She would take longer to heal for many reasons. The savagery of his bite, the taint of heroin in her blood, the days of captivity—it all added up to lowering her immune system. Slowing her healing processes.

He couldn’t worry about that now. They reached the end of the corridor, the walls made of what looked like solid steel. But a touch told him it was mostly steel sheeting with a metal skeleton behind it. He looked up at all the seams of the ceiling and there he saw it; tucked into an upper corner was a camera pointed toward the hallway. But like the ones in the room, it had no glow of a red light to indicate it was working.

They didn’t need cameras, however. Halo could sense three guards at the ends of the corridors that split off from the one they were in now. The corridor to the right had only one guard. The corridor to the left had two.

Practicality might suggest they go to the right so they met up with that smaller resistance, but instinct told him that they would more heavily guard the way out. He didn’t have the luxury of debating with himself.

He turned them down the left corridor.

“Keep an eye out for a window or a door leading out. Look for sunlight.” It had turned to day again while they’d been locked away. “Remember, you have to keep out of reach. If they catch you they can use you against me. It’ll be all over.”

“They won’t catch me,” she promised, her voice a fierce whisper to match his.

As they neared the end of the corridor, Halo became aware of the fact that it was one phant and one human and they were both in conversation, not paying attention to the area around themselves. In other words, sucky guards. Roth sure had a knack for picking the wrong guys for the job. Then again, maybe not. Roth had gotten what he had wanted. He had forced a situation where Halo had had to feed from a poisoned well. Maybe this was all part of the plan…maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know and he didn’t have time to worry about it.

Halo barreled around the corner, bulldozing into both men, slamming them into the nearest wall so hard the metal pranging of the walls echoed into the corridors. So much for a stealth exit. Then again, the gunfire should have given them away long ago. None of it made sense. Where was Roth? Why wasn’t he gloating over his success at making Halo do exactly what he had wanted him to do?

No time to worry about it. He shot the human male in the chest, dropping him instantly. The phant male wasn’t as easy. The sycophant immediately sent out a pulse of dirty energy, and this time Halo refused to take any of it in. He couldn’t afford to. He couldn’t keep exposing himself to toxic sources.

Halo shook off the pain of the pulse, and with a vicious snarl he pounced on the phant. He ringed him around his neck with one powerful arm and yanked him down to hip height, wrenching his neck beyond its natural connection, effectively breaking his neck. But that wasn’t enough to kill the phant. Not unless the cord was severed. However, once the neck was broken it only took a little more twisting before the cord was snapped cleanly in two by the torsion.

He let the phant fall and disarmed him of the gun he had managed to withdraw from its holster but had never had the opportunity to fire. He handed it to Felice and now she had a weapon in each hand.

“I can’t fire a gun!” she whispered fiercely.

“You couldn’t stab a guy in the neck until a few minutes ago either. You’ll learn.” He checked to make certain the safety of the gun was off for her. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably so he took the knife from her and allowed her to hold the gun with two hands. “Remember, aim for the throat or the back of the neck. Preferably the back of the neck. Sometimes the bullets don’t make it all the way through to the back.”

“It’s worked for you,” she said.

“I’ve been up close. Hopefully you won’t get that close. Your first choice is still to keep out of the way, got me?”

“Oh believe me, I’ve gotcha,” she said earnestly.

“Good girl. Now…I see sunlight.”

He felt it too. It wasn’t touching him yet, but he could sense the radiant energy of it. He took her elbow in hand after tucking the knife into the pocket of his pants. The pockets were deep so he wasn’t likely to lose it.

He did have a problem though. He was still pumping blood out of his carotid artery. Granted, it was slowing down, his body having begun to heal already thanks to the fresh dose of energy Felice had supplied, but still…he had lost a lot of blood and it was fucking with his sense of balance. Losing this volume of blood might not kill him, but it burned precious energy to compensate.

On the plus side, he hadn’t turned instantly evil after drinking from Felice. He hadn’t really thought he would, but he still felt high from the feed. Had she been a clean source, the feeling would have leveled out by then. The way he felt now was highly addictive. He could very easily crave it some more. However, Halo didn’t like not having control over his senses. Sure, he drank from time to time, but never enough to dull his senses completely. Not like this. He didn’t crave alcohol the way he was craving this. Craving her. Not just anyone. Felice.

He shook off the neediness of that thought, filing it away with all the other alien feelings coursing through his mind and body. He needed to remain focused. He needed to get them out of there. She was counting on him.

He drew her close to his side, supporting her weakened body as best he could while allowing himself the freedom to move and act. They were coming out of the maze of corridors and there was a vast warehouse at the end, high windows streaming sunlight into one side of the building. Windows too high to escape out of.

On the plus side, the warehouse was littered with crates and boxes of all sorts. God only knew what was in them. But it provided cover for them as they searched for an exit. There was no telling if there were functioning cameras in that part of the building. There was no telling when they would encounter resistance.

Also on the plus side, he sensed very few sources of energy, be they vampire or human. There were men making what felt like regular patrols, walking around the perimeter of the enormous building, but not many.

Halo finally found what he was looking for.

A door.

It was on the sunny side of the room, so odds were it led directly outside. It was also the only source of egress he could see other than the loading bays which were locked up tight. He could probably break a lock, but it would be very noisy opening a bay door even a little bit. And besides, there was a congregation of warm bodies just beyond the bay doors. The opposite side of the building, the side he was heading for, had far fewer obstacles.

Halo took Felice’s hand in his and drew her behind a large crate. He put a finger to his lips and moved out of her reach. He immediately saw the panic that leapt into her eyes when she realized he was going to leave her there but he also saw her gain control over it. She was shaking as she held the gun up to her chest, ready to fire if she needed to. He highly doubted she could hit anything unless it was up close, but having the weapon must make her feel better on some level despite its alien feel.

He moved as stealthily as he could to the door, but also quickly. If he could sense them, then a vampire could sense him. The minute he fired the gun in the echoing warehouse was the minute they would have every guard and warm body converging on where they were. He had to be as silent as possible. At the same time he had to fight the taint coursing through his body. It was distracting him, throwing him off his game. There was a sickly sweetness to the pleasure that lingered from his feed. As Halo slowly came away from the sharpness of the first flush of feeding, he couldn’t seem to focus on much more than the way he was feeling from one moment to the next. It took monumental discipline to keep on point. He had to do it. For Felice if not for himself. She was depending on him.

There were two men guarding the door. One sat lazily in a chair while the other leaned against the door itself. It was obvious how bored they were. It was also obvious they were a team of human and phant, just like the one in the corridor. Strange that they should be working together so closely. Roth must have a following of humans along with his sycophant minions. It was not unheard of, but Roth had only turned away from the lawful side of vampire law a short while ago. It seemed strange that he would have so many followers so quickly…unless he had been building them up covertly over time. But dirty vampires were inherently mistrustful of lawful e-vamps. Sycophants wouldn’t follow a clean vampire. Hell, it was only Roth’s high placement in the queen’s life that had given him any value when he had been turned into a sycophant. The information he carried was a valuable commodity. It was no doubt what had led to this plan to dirty up Halo.

It was all a worry for another day. Another moment. His focus had to be in that warehouse. On his escape. God only knew where this warehouse was. God only knew what was waiting for them outside. Were they in the country or the city? Were they isolated or were they part of a row of warehouses? He wouldn’t know until he walked out that door.

Halo didn’t sneak the last few steps to the guards. He came out from behind the crate nearest them and advanced on them with lightning speed. He had switched the gun with the knife, pocketing the noisy weapon and going for the stealth of the other. Again, the human was a nonissue, except perhaps for the noise he might make. Halo silenced him first, yanking him backward out of the chair and smashing his head into the concrete floor with enough force to crack, if not crush, his skull. It knocked him out instantly. Then Halo leapt on the sycophant. Immediately the phant sent out a pulse. It was so typical—so like them to resort to the gracelessness and lack of skill it displayed.

Phants disgusted him. That was why flirting with becoming one himself filled him with dread and fear. It was a feeling he had to put aside. A thought process that did him no good in that moment. But it was so hard to focus. So damn hard.

A pulse was an electrical charge, and it came with a light display. It was sunny on that side of the warehouse, for the most part, so it was possible the light would not be visible to the point of drawing attention. Still, Halo couldn’t take the chance, and he acted accordingly. He pounced on him, fighting through the agony of the pulse. This phant was stronger than the others, his pulse more concentrated, as if he had recently fed from an abundant source just like Halo had done.

Halo kept him from having the opportunity to alert others with a strong and well-placed punch right in his Adam’s apple. The phant gagged, his hand going to his throat. He was on the floor on his stomach with all of Halo’s weight on his back in the next moment. Halo ringed a powerful arm around his neck, gagging him effectively as he choked him out. There was no better way to render a vampire or a phant unconscious than sapping him of all his energy, but because this phant was tainted Halo couldn’t do that. Besides, he had just fed. He couldn’t glut himself.

He didn’t use a pulse, not knowing what lay ahead and realizing he had to conserve his energy. He could conceivably feed again if he depleted his energy supply to the same point it had been when he’d been forced to feed from Felice, but that was not ideal when he didn’t know if he’d be able to find a clean source. And he most definitely could not feed from a tainted source again, no matter how tempting it might be.

And it was very tempting.

He took the tip of the knife and pressed it to the back of the vampire’s neck, inserting it only half an inch.

“Tell me what lies ahead,” he hissed into the sycophant’s ear. “Tell me what’s out there.”

“You’ll never make it,” the vampire gagged.

“We’ll see. Tell me.” Halo pushed the knife in farther.

“You’ll kill me anyway!”

“Probably. Maybe I’ll just drain you dry,” Halo lied.

The phant thought about it a moment too long. Halo fitted the tip of the blade right into the sweet spot between vertebrae.

“Okay! There’s four guards that walk the perimeter of the warehouse!”

“Sycophants…or sycophant and human?”

“Sycophants. Powerful sycophants. More powerful than me.”

“I think you’re a liar. But then again, so am I,” Halo whispered in his ear just before he jammed the knife home. He jerked the knife free and let the phant’s body fall where it would. He beckoned Felice over to him, and she hurried from her hiding place to get to his side. “There are guards outside as well,” he said softly. “He said four, but there could be more. I think he was telling the truth. I don’t know.”

“We have no choice but to take our chances,” she whispered back.

“True. Let’s go. I wish it were dark out, but we have to use what we’re dealt.”

“I’m right behind you,” she said.

“Let’s go.”

Halo opened the door slowly, just a crack, and peered outside. He switched weapons, knowing the time for the gun, a distance weapon, was at hand. Firing it would bring all others running, but it would take a while for them to figure out which way it had come from. By then he planned to be long gone.

What they needed was a set of wheels.

He peered outside and saw a parking lot. On the plus side he saw a truck. On the downside they were backed up to woods, indicating they might be in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t see what was on either side of the warehouse from that position.

Halo knew their best bet was the truck. He grabbed hold of Felice’s hand and, keeping low with her, he snaked his way out of the door and headed for the side of the truck he felt provided the most cover, the passenger side. When they reached it, he took the butt of the gun and with a powerful smack he broke the passenger-side window. He reached in and unlocked the door. He cracked it just enough to slide inside, letting Felice take up the rear. Otherwise he’d have to climb over her to get into the driver’s seat. He took a moment to brush away the glass from the broken window, cleaning off the seat so she wouldn’t cut her bare bottom and legs.

As soon as she was in he hit the locks on the door and with a wrenching of his hands he cracked the column of the steering wheel, exposing the ignition. He searched around the cab and found a screwdriver on the dashboard. He dismantled the ignition just far enough that he was able to fit the screwdriver in and, with a turn, started the truck.

Diesel. The truck ran on diesel fuel. It was immediately apparent because of the noise of the engine. Realizing they were exposed, he slammed the truck in reverse and with a screech he backed out of the parking spot and into the lot. He was driving blind, not knowing which way was best. All he could do was follow the blacktop and hope it went all the way around to the front of the warehouse.

He made it to the first corner just as the first shot came whizzing through the windshield, punching a perfect hole in the glass right in front of Felice. She cried out, whether it was in fear or pain he didn’t know. Had she been shot? Halo couldn’t spare any attention for her. He was careening around the building and two sycophants were standing in his way, taking aim at him. He ducked down, barreling through them as a hail of gunfire erupted. He yanked Felice down low, hoping the engine block would protect her from the barrage of bullets.

He saw it then. The exit that led out onto a road. Which way? Left or right? He didn’t know so he took a guess. He went right, trying to decipher the topography with guesses and logic. There seemed to be denser woods to the left; the road might dead-end that way and then they would be trapped. He went right because the woods didn’t seem as dense and he thought he saw a gate.

He was right. But it was a guarded gate. He floored the gas pedal, hearing the complaints of the shot-up engine. He didn’t care. All the truck had to do was get them the hell out of there. Halo could only hope they wouldn’t pursue them once they hit the public roads.

Halo flew past a guardhouse and slammed through the closed gate in front of it. There were two sycophants in the house, but they were so stunned by his appearance that they didn’t start shooting until the truck was well through the gate. The metallic pinging of bullets hitting the bed of the truck behind them was nerve-racking. But there was no time for fear.

He raced out of the gate and down the road.

It was only two turns later that he hit a highway.

Content they were clear of danger, Halo sat up straight and glanced in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed. They weren’t as far as he could see. As far as he could tell they were out of danger.

He took stock, looking over at Felice.

She was clutching her shoulder, blood seeping through her fingers. She’d been shot!

“Shit, Felice! We’re out of danger. Hang in there. I’ll get you help.”

“It’s all right,” she gasped through the pain. “Just drive. Get us somewhere safe.”

Safe was relative. They could drive for ages before finding somewhere safe. Truly safe. But she wouldn’t be safe if she lost a lot of blood. His feeding from her had depleted her energy, had weakened her immune system. Getting shot was the worst thing that could happen to her right then, no matter how slight the wound. The only thing worse would be if she caught a virus or some other bacterial infection. Feeding made it harder for the body to fight. That was why they didn’t feed from the same source over and over. It lowered the immune system too much, allowing things like cancer the opportunity to grow unchecked. Or any other number of pathogens.

When he got on the next freeway, he began to see signs that were familiar.

They were in Upstate New York. About an hour and a half out of the city. The city where the e-vamps had a centrally located building—the very building where the queen resided. Her apartment took up the entirety of the top floor. Halo was supposed to live in that building as well, along with all the other vampires in NYC, but he was given a lot of latitude because of his value to the queen. She allowed him to make an exception of himself and live off campus.

If Felice could make it that far there would be medical care without questions, and they would be safe behind the most protected walls in the vampire nation.

“We’re about an hour and a half away from the safest place I know,” he said to her. “Can you make it that long?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about me. Just drive—if you think the truck will make it.”

She was right. The rattling of the engine was ominous. The radiator had been hit and was no doubt leaking fluid. They would have to change vehicles.

“Let’s pull off and find another truck at the next exit,” he said, trying to keep her conscious and alert as her eyes began to droop closed. He had sapped her of all her energy. She had to be exhausted.

And it was all his fault.