Night Reigns

Chapter 13

Kneeling, Ami ejected an empty clip and slammed the Glock down on the last full clip on her reloading blocks. She never ceased firing the Glock in her right hand as she used her shoe to rack the slide of the Glock in her left, then rose. Every time a vampire went down, another one or two took his place. Even with Étienne, Lisette, Richart, and Sarah now tossed into the mix, they seemed to be making little headway.

Richart appeared several yards away and hissed in pain as the bullet meant for the vampire he slew instead sank into his shoulder.

Horrified, Ami gasped, then jerked back when a vamp took advantage of her hesitation and tried to gut her. The long bowie knife he wielded sliced across her middle, carving a shallow cut from one side of her waist to the other.

Richart disappeared again as Ami’s back hit Marcus’s. Gritting her teeth against the fiery sting radiating outward from the wound, she squeezed the trigger, targeted the major arteries of the vamps closest to her, and struggled to remain on her feet.

“Ami?” Marcus bellowed.

“I’m okay,” she called back, shaken.

The 9mm in her right hand fell empty. Out of clips, Ami holstered it, stepped forward, reached over her shoulder, and drew a katana. The other Glock emptied. Ami holstered it, too, and drew the second katana as she brought the first one down. The vampire in front of her jumped back, tripped over a decaying vamp at his feet, and impaled himself on one of his compatriot’s blades.

Her back safely guarded, Ami concentrated on keeping her breath deep and even as she swung the katanas without pause in the pattern Seth and David had taught her.

These vampires, like the others, thought to easily defeat her. It was all that worked in her favor, because she could match neither their strength nor speed.

Despite her best efforts, Ami began to weaken as the battle continued, worn down by their powerful strikes. Another body fell at her feet. Then another. But blades steadily marked her. A shallow cut here. A deep gash there. Puncture wounds. Bruises.

A blow to the head sent her reeling toward Roland.

A large body appeared behind her. As a strong arm wrapped around her waist, another launched throwing stars with deadly efficiency.

Glancing over her shoulder, Ami offered Richart a breathless thanks.

“I’m taking you to safety,” he said, grabbing one of her katanas and wielding it against a new onslaught.

“No!” She pushed out of his hold. She would not leave without Marcus.

Marcus felt a sting—like that of a bee—in his neck at the same moment Ami cried out behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. Richart was righting Ami as he swung one of her katanas.

When the other immortal told Ami he was taking her to safety, relief rushed through Marcus.

Pay attention! Étienne snapped in Marcus’s head.

Pain cut through his thigh as a sword (another one?) he failed to deflect sank deep. Marcus gritted his teeth and dispatched his opponent.

Your woman is fine, the telepathic immortal bit out. More vamps are coming from the trees.

“No!” Ami shouted as Marcus felt another sting in his neck. “I’m fine!” she insisted behind him. “Just give me my damned sword back!”

Holding off the vampire trudging over the pile of decaying comrades in front of him, Marcus reached up and touched his neck over his pulse. Something was sticking out of it.

Yanking the object out, he spared it a quick glance.

A dart. Like the tranquilizer darts he had seen the authorities use on wild animals.

The vampire in front of him lunged. Marcus dropped the dart and fought the vamp back, mortally wounding him then shoving him back into the vampires clambering up behind him.

The number of vamps attacking them had at last begun to dwindle. If no more arrived, they should be able to defeat the rest and might even manage to take a few captive to question later.

Across the clearing, a tall, lean vampire left the trees and marched forward. He seemed oblivious to the violence and carnage that flitted in and out of his path. His glowing blue gaze, alight with the advanced madness common in older vampires, lit on Marcus and stayed, never deviating as a feral smile distorted his long face.

This was the so-called vampire king. Marcus knew it without a doubt.

As he braced himself for a renewed attack by the vampires just a few feet away, the vampire king raised what looked like a handgun and fired. Marcus instinctively shifted to avoid being hit, then cursed when Richart grunted in pain.

Swinging around, Marcus saw a dart protruding from Richart’s neck and yanked it free as another pierced his own shoulder.

What the hell was the vamp doing? Was he so far gone that he had forgotten drugs didn’t affect them?

No sooner did the thought enter his head than his knees buckled with sudden weakness.

Marcus staggered, saw another dart lodge itself in Richart’s neck.

“Marcus!”

Ami leaped forward and, still clutching her weapons, threw her arms around him to keep him from falling.

Richart stumbled.

Another dart stung Marcus’s upper back. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. His thoughts scattered.

He heard Richart whisper his sister’s name, looked past him, and saw Lisette drop to her knees. Étienne, too.

Alarm ripped through Ami as Marcus leaned weakly against her.

The lingering vampires began to drop back.

What was happening?

Looking up, she saw a dart of some kind protruding from Marcus’s neck. Dropping a katana, she reached up and yanked it free. “Marcus?”

He didn’t seem to hear her.

Bringing the tip of the dart to her nose, she sniffed ... and felt her blood run cold.

“Richart!” she shouted, panic rising. “Get them out of here! Now!”

Richart vanished. Ami looked around wildly.

Richart reappeared beside his sister. As soon as he touched her shoulder, they disappeared.

“Roland,” Ami called hoarsely and turned to Marcus’s friend for aid. Three darts jutted from his back. She strained forward enough to yank them out. Like Marcus, he wavered on his feet.

Richart appeared beside his brother, touched Étienne’s shoulder, and teleported him away.

“Roland!” Sarah cried and charged toward them, cutting down vampires left and right.

Ami nearly sobbed with relief. Sarah seemed to have escaped the darts.

Had Ami and the others blocked the shooter’s view?

Another dart struck Roland in the shoulder as he turned toward the sound of his wife’s voice.

Ami wrapped her arms around Marcus’s waist and shifted until she was between him and the shooter. “Sarah!”

“I’m here!”

Sarah grabbed Roland just as his knees buckled. Grabbing a throwing star from the bandolier looped across her chest, she hurled it over Ami’s shoulder. Then another. And another. “Roland?” She gave her husband a gentle shake. “Roland, sweetie?” Unlike Ami, she was able to support his full weight with only one arm.

“You have to get them out of here,” Ami begged in a trembling whisper.

Sarah nodded. “We can fight our way out.”

“No. They’ll only drug you like they have the men. Just take them and run.”

Sarah jerked her head to one side. A dart whizzed past her ear and landed in the throat of a vampire behind her.

Unlike the immortals, the vamp instantly collapsed.

Sarah’s conflicted gaze met Ami’s. “What about you? I can’t leave you here.”

“You have to. I lack your speed, and you can’t carry us all.”

“Yes, I can. Just—”

“I’ll slow you down too much. They’ll catch you. They’ll drug you. Please.” Ami’s eyes burned with tears. “Don’t let them take him, Sarah.”

“Ami—”

“Wouldn’t you do anything to keep Roland safe?” she demanded. Sarah needed to move. Quickly. Before the vamps stopped taunting them long enough to catch what they were saying.

Richart suddenly appeared beside Sarah, an M16 in one hand.

Tears spilled past Ami’s lashes and slipped down her cheeks. Marcus could no longer stand on his own and leaned his full weight against her. His eyes had lost their glow, as had Roland’s, returning to a deep brown dulled by the drug. She forced a smile. “You see? Richart is here. I’ll be fine.” Richart was far too weak to just teleport them all to safety. The immortal could barely remain upright.

Ami suspected the next dart Sarah had to dodge made her decision for her. “I’ll be back as soon as they’re safe,” she promised.

“No,” Marcus mumbled against Ami’s hair.

She hadn’t even realized he was still conscious.

“Go with Sarah,” she urged him as Sarah bent and draped her husband over one shoulder. “I’ll be fine. There are only a couple of vamps left.”

A couple dozen. Hopefully he wasn’t lucid enough to realize that.

Sarah moved closer and bent down.

Ami removed Marcus’s arms from around her. “I’ll be with you soon,” she promised and helped Sarah drape him over her other shoulder. Then, burying her lips in Marcus’s hair, she whispered, “I love you.”

Ami stepped back and took the weapon Richart thrust at her with clumsy hands.

As Sarah straightened, Richart mumbled something in French, staggered forward, and vanished again.

Sarah looked around with dismay, then met Ami’s gaze. “You can’t hold them off on your own!”

A sharp pain struck Ami’s shoulder. She reached back, yanked the dart out, and held it up for Sarah to see. “You have no choice. There’s nothing you can do now.”

Sarah swallowed hard, bright eyes filling with tears. “I’ll be back as soon as they’re safe,” she vowed again.

Both knew Ami would be dead by then. “Go. I’ll do my best to keep them from following you.”

Turning with a sob, Sarah sped away.

An enraged roar rolled like thunder on the night.

Ami raised the heavy automatic weapon. A familiar numbness trickled through her as she spun to face the vampire leader and braced herself for an attack.

His glowing eyes followed the departing immortals. “Get them!” he bellowed.

As soon as the vampire king began to blur, Ami squeezed the trigger.

Like a marionette dancing on a string, his body jerked with every impact.

The vampires around her shifted, unable to decide whether they should pursue the fleeing immortals or rescue their leader. Ultimately, they chose the latter, converging on Ami and yanking the weapon from her grasp. Ami fought with everything she had left, but proved little challenge to them, her movements growing slower and clumsier as the drug burned its way through her veins.

Vampires—she didn’t know how many—held her immobile, her arms shoved so far up behind her back she feared her shoulders would be dislocated.

The vampire king remained on his feet several yards away. Blood gushed from wounds in his torso. Saliva dribbled from his lips as he leaned over and planted his hands on his knees. Whatever he yelled next was so distorted by rage that Ami couldn’t understand it.

The vampire king stretched a hand down to the ground and curled his fingers around the grip of a machete the length of Ami’s arm. Straightening, he leapt forward and swung the thick blade at the nearest vampire. Over and over, he hacked at his howling victim, then turned on another, slashing wildly, attacking like a rabid dog.

The remaining vampires released Ami and ran like hell in every direction.

Ami searched frantically for the gun they had confiscated, but didn’t see it. Grabbing one of her katanas, she raced for the trees in the direction opposite Sarah’s departure.

Agonized screams and garbled cries of pain rode the breeze, nipping at her heels. Eyes watering, she fought the sluggishness that invaded her limbs, borne on the back of the drug. Her breath emerged in terror-filled gasps, fogging on the cold night air. The cries ceased. A sudden wind whipped her. A body appeared before her.

Ami slammed into it, unable to halt her momentum. Her forehead struck a chin with a resounding crack. Sparkling lights burst into being as she stumbled back and dropped the katana. The world spun dizzily, at its center: the vampire king.

He looked as though he had bathed in blood, every part of him red and glistening.

One of his hands shot forward and closed around her neck, lifting her off the ground.

His lips peeled back, baring fangs in a snarl of fury as he yanked her forward.

Then darkness claimed her.

Bastien stared at the clearing that had once been the location of his lair. The grass was soaked with crimson stains from forest’s edge to forest’s edge. Too many bodies to count littered the ground, all in various stages of decay. A large number were concentrated in a circular mound around the center of the clearing. Three smaller mounds were scattered nearby, defining where the immortals had stood and fought.

On his right, Yuri swore.

On Bastien’s left, Stanislav swallowed audibly. “Are any of those ...” He shook his head. “Are any of those immortals?”

“I don’t know.” Bastien pulled out his phone. As he dialed, he eased forward, eyes alert, and tried to identify faces. “I don’t smell any of them, but with so much blood ...”

“I have never seen the like,” Yuri muttered, voice tight.

“Stay sharp,” Bastien warned as Chris answered.

“Are you there?” Reordon asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you see?”

“Death.”

“No one’s left standing?” Chris asked tightly.

“No. What happened?”

“Roland, Marcus, Lisette, and Étienne are down, hit with a drug delivered via darts from an animal tranquilizer pistol.”

Bastien frowned. “Drugs don’t work on us.”

“Well, they fucking do now!” Chris snapped. And Bastien heard the unspoken accusation: they worked now that Bastien had put Montrose Keegan on it. “They’re all out cold, barely breathing. We haven’t been able to revive them even after blood transfusions.”

“What about the others?”

“Sarah is okay. Wounded, but not drugged.”

Bastien was surprised by the intensity of the relief that struck him with those words.

“Richart is missing. He teleported from the clearing just before Sarah left. She had to carry both Roland and Marcus and thought Richart might be coming here for reinforcements or going to get you, but ... We don’t know where he is. If he is. For all we know he teleported right back to the battle.”

If he had, Richart must be amongst the decaying corpses, Bastien thought, perusing them with dread. “And Ami?” A heavy silence followed. When Sarah began to weep in the background, Bastien’s hand tightened around the cell phone. “Reordon, what happened to Ami?”

“I don’t think she made it.”

Bastien closed his eyes as raw pain prodded him. Not Ami. Please, not Ami, who had always been so kind to him. The only one who had reached out to him instead of judging him and finding him lacking.

“Tell me,” he demanded hoarsely.

Yuri and Stanislav prowled forth, circling the clearing as Reordon related Sarah’s last contact with Ami.

“If the drug can do this to immortals and drop vampires instantly, I don’t see how Ami could have survived it,” Chris said. “And, even if she did, she was surrounded by two dozen vampires and faced their king the last time Sarah saw her.”

Bastien pried his eyes open and forced his feet to carry him forward.

Humans didn’t deteriorate within minutes when they were killed. If Ami ...

He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat and couldn’t.

The freshest bodies—located near the center—weren’t even bodies. They were pieces. It looked like whoever those pieces had belonged to had either exploded or been ripped apart with a violence only a maddened vampire could deliver.

The odor of putrefying flesh overwhelmed him, blotting out all else. Unable to smell her, he examined the gore carefully for anything that might distinguish her. Green eyes. Red hair. Pale feminine flesh.

Only mouldering, withering vampires met his gaze.

“I don’t see her,” he told Chris, feeling no relief. If she wasn’t here, the surviving vampires had claimed Ami either to transform her and make Ami a vampire or to use her as a blood bank and a toy they would feed on and torture at will.

“I don’t see her either,” Stanislav announced.

“Nor I,” Yuri added.

“Wait.” Stanislav halted his slow perambulation. Eyes narrowing, he examined the trees near him. “Here. She came this way.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Bastien told Chris. Ending the call, he crossed the clearing in one leap. He could see the dirt stirred by small footprints where Stanislav indicated, her blood on the leaves.

Bastien shoved his phone into his pocket and plunged into the trees.

He had to find her before the other vampires got their hands on her. If he didn’t ...

She would be lost to them in more ways than one.

“What the hell is this?”

The voice, full of alarm, swooped out of the darkness and lured Ami toward consciousness.

“I need to stash this here for the day,” the vampire king said, calm now.

“What? Are you crazy? Who is that? Is she ... is she dead?”

“Not yet.”

Her head pounded with every heartbeat, perhaps because she was hanging upside down over someone’s shoulder. At least, she was until he slung her forward and dropped her like a bag of bird seed onto a hard surface. The ache radiating outward from her forehead magnified as the back of her head ricocheted off the table. Old habits arose and helped her hold back a moan.

“What happened with the immortals?” the first voice asked.

“They slaughtered my men.”

“All of them?”

“Those I didn’t kill myself,” the vampire king said with a shrug in his voice. “Roland and Bastien brought reinforcements. One of them could jump like that guy in that movie.”

“What movie? What does jump mean?”

“Jump. Like in Jumper, where the guy would be in New York one second and Paris the next.”

“He could teleport?” Excitement took hold of the first speaker, raising his voice. “Are you telling me one of the immortals could teleport?”

“Yeah, and it really fucked things up. He killed vamps left and right. They had no warning. He’d pop in, kill one, then pop up somewhere else and kill another. They never saw him coming. And when I finally got a bead on him and tranqed the fucker, he jumped away with two other immortals. After that, some immortal bitch ran off, carrying Roland and Bastien.”

“What about this woman? Who is she? Is she an immortal?”

Through the fuzz clinging to her mind, Ami tried to identify the vampire king’s friend. He bore no voice she had heard before, but was clearly someone the vampire king worked with.

The elusive Dr. Montrose Keegan perhaps?

“No, this is Sarah.” The venom contained in the vampire king’s voice made Ami shiver.

“The human woman who fought beside Roland Warbrook?”

“Yeah. I thought I would take a page from Bastien’s book and use her as bait.”

“And you brought her here?” The man sounded both petrified and appalled. “Are you crazy? They’ll come looking for her!”

Would they come looking for her? Did they even live?

Despair struck hard alongside fear that the drug Marcus and the others had been injected with might have killed them.

Marcus. The thought of losing him wrought more pain within her than any physical torture she had ever endured. If that drug killed him ...

“Don’t shit your shorts,” the vampire king said. “They won’t come looking for her until tomorrow night. And, since they have no idea where to begin, I’ll have plenty of time to come back and get her.”

“Why don’t you just take her with you now?”

“Because I want her to be in one piece when I kill her in front of Bastien and Roland. That ain’t gonna happen if my men get their hands and teeth on her.”

Ami surreptitiously uncurled her fingers and felt the table beneath her. Cold. Metal. But lightweight. Not like the other.

“What did you do to her?”

“Tranqed her.”

A pregnant pause followed. “And she’s not dead?”

“No. Her heartbeat is all over the place. Slow one minute. Fast the next. But she’s still breathing.”

Terror tended to have that effect on her. Thankfully, they seemed to attribute it not to her waking, but to the drug.

“She should be dead,” Montrose said, his voice rife with bewilderment.

“She isn’t.”

“She will be soon. No human can withstand that dosage. You’ve seen what it does to vampires.”

“Well, it took several of the darts to take down each immortal.”

“Several?”

“Yes.”

“She should be dead.”

“She isn’t fucking dead!” the vampire roared. Glass shattered, accompanied by loud crashes.

Ami started, then risked cracking her eyelids open enough to peer through her lashes at her surroundings.

A lab. She was in a lab. She hated labs.

A pudgy man of average height cringed against one wall as the vampire king succumbed to another raging temper tantrum and overturned a desk, a table covered with beakers and medical equipment, and a trash can marked with a hazardous materials symbol.

Montrose emitted a swine-like squeal of fear as the vampire swung around and leaned in close, spittle dripping from his fangs.

“And she’d better not fucking be dead when I return tomorrow night,” the king growled.

“Th-the drug is too strong. I can’t—”

“You will do whatever you have to do to keep the bitch alive.”

Trembling, the man stared up at the vamp with wide eyes.

This must be Montrose Keegan. He was human, had his own lab, worked with vampires, yet feared them.

Satisfied that his orders would be followed, the vampire swept from the room.

Montrose slumped against the wall for all of ten seconds, then took off after him, tripping through the door then up what sounded like a full flight of stairs.

As soon as he left, Ami opened her eyes and sat up. The vampire had dumped her on a steel gurney, standard hospital grade with no manacles or other forms of restraint. The lab encircling her was sizable and possessed an impressive array of equipment, some of which the mad vampire king had destroyed. If the vampire flew into such rages often, it was no wonder Montrose had had to replenish his funds.

Swinging her legs over the side of the gurney, Ami hopped down and looked for a window through which she might escape. There were none. Nor were there any exterior doors. The only way in or out was through the hallway and up the stairs Montrose Keegan had just traveled.

Was this another basement lab, like the one he had kept during his work with Bastien?

Voices rumbled above. Ami should have been able to hear them, but the drug muddled everything. She also couldn’t call for help telepathically and worried that no one would hear her even if she could. Seth and David were in Ecuador, most likely unreachable. Étienne and Lisette, the only other telepathic immortals in the vicinity, had both been incapacitated by the drug. Or worse.

Don’t think like that. The immortals aren’t dead. Marcus isn’t dead. You just can’t sense him because of the drug.

A door slammed upstairs. Had the vampire left?

Ami hurried to the closest table and searched the various tools upon it for something she could use as a weapon. She grabbed a pencil—it would do in a pinch—but kept foraging. Moving on to some drawers, she slid them open as quietly as she could.

Score! Scalpels. With one in each hand, she tiptoed to the lab’s entrance and peered down the hallway. It was just long and wide enough to fit a washer, dryer, and folding table, confirming her belief that she was in the basement of a house. The cement stairs on the far side rose to a landing and open door.

Ami crept forward, eyes glued to the doorway.

Wood creaked above her as footsteps crossed the ceiling, accompanied by a great deal of muttering.

One by one, she scaled the steps, glad they weren’t wood so no squeaking would give her away. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest, feeling twice its normal size. This was her only chance. The house—or whatever this was—sounded empty, save herself and Montrose, and there was no telling how long it would remain so. The great vampire king might send some of his flunkies over to keep an eye on her.

Ami paused on the landing. Her legs trembled as a wave of weakness engulfed her. Foul nausea assailed her. Gritting her teeth, she leaned against the wall for a moment and drew the back of one shaking hand across her damp forehead.

Just get it together and go, she ordered herself.

Straightening, Ami took a step forward.

A shadow filled the doorway.

Montrose Keegan’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Oh, shit!”

Ami sprang forward, seeing the revolver he raised too late. A report pierced her ears. Fire burst into life in her stomach as the smell of gunpowder filled the air.

Doubling over in agony, Ami stumbled backward, stepped into dead air, and fell.

Sharp edges slammed into her back, her head, her hip as she tumbled down the stairs. A bone in her left forearm snapped and broke through the skin just before she rolled across the basement floor and crashed into the washing machine.

Tears streamed from her eyes as she curled into a ball and drew her broken arm close. At the top of the stairs, Montrose said something, but she couldn’t make out the words over her own silent screaming. Her breath came in pants, each one feeling like a knife digging into the bullet wound in her abdomen. Blinking hard to clear the moisture from her gaze, she looked around.

Montrose, pale as milk, began to descend the stairs, his hand clutching the gun in a death grip.

Ami had lost the scalpels on the way down, but could see one resting on the last step. Her broken arm pressed to her stomach, she scrambled forward on her uninjured hand and scraped knees and grabbed the weapon. Montrose hurried down toward her. As she rose, more loud reports sounded. One, two, three, four.

More pain exploded in her torso like concussion grenades detonating. Her breath left her lungs as she staggered backward, struggling to remain on her feet. Another report. More agony.

A metallic taste filled her mouth. Black clouds suffused her vision, roiling and wavering in and out. Six shots, she thought dimly. Six shots. He was out of bullets.

Sinking to her knees, she fell backward to the floor and clung tenaciously to the scalpel.

Montrose approached her warily as she choked and coughed and tried to draw a breath. “What are you?” he asked in a high, agitated voice.

Ami strained to speak. “H-h-human.”

He shook his head. “No human could withstand this. No human could have survived that drug.” He pointed the gun at her, either too rattled to realize he had no bullets left or hoping to bluff her into thinking he did. “Are you immortal?”

She shook her head, unable to form another word.

He leaned over her, reached for the scalpel.

When his hand was only inches from hers, Ami lunged upward and buried the scalpel in his stomach.

His eyes bulged. His finger squeezed the trigger convulsively, producing a series of clicks as the hammer fell on one empty chamber after another.

Montrose dropped the gun. Staggering back, he stared in horror at the metal instrument protruding from his paunch.

Ami moaned and rolled to her side, then drew her knees up under her and retrieved the gun.

“Help me!” Montrose cried, staring at her with growing hysteria.

With the aid of the stairs, Ami managed to gain her feet. Dizziness heaved the room around her up and down, side to side. While Montrose pleaded for her aid, she tottered forward and slammed the butt of the gun against his temple.

The scientist dropped like a stone.

Ami tumbled after him, unable to maintain her balance. Weakness sifted through her, numbing her lips. Darkness threatened.

As she struggled to breathe, to find the will to rise again, one word sounded in her mind over and over again.

Marcus. Marcus. Marcus.

Voices.

Taut. Frustrated. Angry. Concerned.

Marcus struggled toward them, feeling as though he were swimming in a sea of viscous tar. He could sense the surface somewhere above him, but it felt as though hands held his ankles, preventing him from reaching it.

A name teased his ears and pierced the blackness.

“Ami,” he murmured hoarsely.

The voices ceased, then flowed anew in a jumble of urgent words.

What had happened? The last thing he remembered was being folded over Sarah’s shoulder and forced away from Ami, who had been left standing in the center of the clearing, wounded and bleeding, surrounded by vampires. “Ami,” he said again and managed to kick free and surge toward the surface, toward consciousness.

Had Richart been with her? Marcus thought he remembered Richart’s being with her. Surely he had teleported her to safety.

“He’s coming around!” a woman called eagerly.

Gentle fingers peeled back one eyelid.

Light as bright as a thousand suns pierced Marcus’s pupil and pounded his head like Thor’s hammer. Moaning, he reached up and shoved the hand away. His limbs felt weighted, clumsy, as though he were encased in a full suit of plate armor.

“Marcus, can you hear me?” Darnell asked.

“What happened?” he rasped.

A collective sigh rippled through the room.

“Can you open your eyes?” the woman asked. Not Sarah. Not Lisette. Who?

“Too bright.”

“Dim the lights,” she ordered. A flurry of movement sounded. “Okay, try it now.”

Cautiously, he opened his eyes. Darnell, Chris Reordon, Yuri, Stanislav, Bastien, and a human woman he had never seen before clustered about his narrow bed. “Where am I?”

“The clinic in David’s place,” Darnell said.

David’s place had a clinic? Was the woman a doctor then? From the network?

“What happened?”

“The vampires have a new drug,” Chris said, “and managed to tranq everyone but Sarah with it.”

Marcus leaned up on an elbow with a groan. Through gaps between the bodies surrounding him, he saw Étienne, Lisette, and Roland stretched out on beds like his. All were unconscious. IV tubing fed blood into the veins of the two younger immortals. Similar IV stands stood near Marcus and Roland, but weren’t currently in use. They must have already been transfused enough to heal their wounds.

Sarah sat beside Roland, holding his hand and staring at Marcus with glistening eyes.

Why had he awakened if the others hadn’t? “Drugs don’t affect us.”

“They do now,” Chris bit out, glowering at Bastien.

Bastien stiffened. “I told you. When Montrose was aiding me, he wasn’t working on a sedative. He was looking for a cure. Why the hell would I want him to develop a drug that could just as easily be used against me?”

“If you didn’t trust him, then why were you working with him?” Chris retorted.

“I don’t trust any of you either, but I’m working with you,” he countered.

“Are you?” Yuri asked.

As Bastien opened his mouth to lambast him, the human woman stepped forward and drew his eye. “Who do you trust, Bastien?”

Bastien hesitated. “Ami. And because these stupid bastards didn’t want me to attend their bloody party, she’s gone.”

Alarm striking him, Marcus sat up and looked at Chris and Darnell. “What? I thought Richart teleported her to safety.”

Darnell sighed. “Richart is missing. He disappeared just before Sarah carried you and Roland away. We haven’t heard from him since.”

Marcus fought to make sense of it. If Richart had left first ... He nudged the human woman out of the way and met Sarah’s distraught gaze. “Didn’t she come with us?”

A tear spilled down Sarah’s cheek as she shook her head.

“Marcus,” Chris said, drawing his attention, “reinforcements were on the way. You know we couldn’t risk any immortals falling into the hands of the vampires. Not with Montrose Keegan working with them. Sarah had to get you and Roland away from there before they drugged her, too, and the two of you together weighed over four hundred pounds.”

What Marcus was thinking couldn’t be true.

Again he saw Ami, wounded and bleeding, standing in the middle of the clearing, surrounded on all sides by vampires, tears coursing down her cheeks.

He looked at Sarah. “You left her there?” he whispered, unable to comprehend her doing such a thing.

Her breath hiccuped in a sob. “I’m so sorry, Marcus.”

“You left her there?” Fear and fury drove him to his feet.

The human woman moved into his path and held up her hands. “Marcus, you shouldn’t be up yet. Please, sit down and—”

“How could you?” he bellowed, glaring daggers at Sarah over the petite woman’s head.

Bastien circled the table in an instant and stepped between Marcus and the human. Reaching back, he looped an arm around the human’s waist and eased her behind him.

Chris moved forward, too. “Marcus, listen to Dr. Lipton. Sit down before you fall down. You look like shit.”

“Is she dead?” Marcus asked raggedly. Had he lost her already?

Chris sighed. “We don’t know. We don’t know what happened to Ami. Her body wasn’t amongst those in the clearing, so ...”

Hope rose.

“Bullshit,” Bastien interrupted. “Don’t lie to him. He deserves the truth.”

Marcus met Bastien’s gaze, suddenly trusting him more than he did anyone else on the planet. “Tell me.”

“One of the vampires took her. I think it was their so-called king. Ami’s blood trail led into the forest, then her footsteps were replaced by a man’s, spaced far enough apart that they could only be those of a vampire. We followed the trail as far as Carrboro, then lost it.”

A heavy silence blanketed the room.

Ami was in the hands of vampires. Everyone knew what vampires did to the women they seized. It was why so few female vampires or immortals existed. They didn’t survive long enough to transform. Or, if they did, they lived short, tortured lives.

“How long ago?”

“Two hours.”

Two hours. “Will you take me to where you lost their trail? Maybe I can pick up her scent.”

“If I couldn’t—”

“I’m older. My senses are sharper,” Marcus persisted.

“If you wait until Lisette and Étienne wake up,” Chris said, “they may be able to pick up her thoughts and help you narrow down her location.”

“How much longer will that be?”

Dr. Lipton peeked around Bastien’s arm. “They’ve shown no signs of rousing. Since they’re younger than you, there’s no telling how much longer they may need to recover.”

“Why isn’t Roland awake? He’s older than I am.”

“We don’t know. To be honest, I’m shocked to see you up and moving around. I took your vitals not ten minutes ago and—”

The bleating of a cell phone sent a new shock of pain through Marcus’s head. Whatever else the woman said went unheard as he pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead and glared at Chris.

Fumbling in his pocket, Chris yanked out his phone and glanced at it.

“Is it David?” Darnell asked hopefully.

Chris shook his head and looked at Marcus. “I sent some men to your place on the off chance that Ami had gotten away and gone home. She wasn’t there, so I had them rig the doors with silent alarms that would dial my cell number when triggered. Someone just opened the back door of your house.”

Marcus was pretty sure he knocked some people down on his way out of the room, but couldn’t have cared less. In a matter of seconds, he burst into David’s barn and got in one of the many vehicles he kept on hand for emergencies. Retrieving the keys from the ashtray, he started the engine, shifted into first, and floored the accelerator.

The others ran out of the house, shouting as he tore down the drive, his only thought finding Ami.