Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 34



Lucy


Nicholas shot to his feet so quickly my hair flattened off my forehead.

“Solange is here,” he said.

Kieran leaped up too. “What?”

Nicholas smiled slowly, surprising us both. “She’s not a hostage.” He sliced through Kieran’s bonds. “Yet.”

I tripped one of the Host as he shot past us. He was remarkably ungraceful as he stumbled. I tucked my legs back in before he could reach out and snap one of them in half as retaliation. He was one of the few still left in the cave. Dr. Frankenstein frowned. “What on earth is going on out there? Can’t you see I’m working?”

“He’s got the keys,” Nicholas said, jangling his handcuffs.

Kieran used the edge of one of the tables for leverage, jumping and landing on a Host while using his locked elbow as a weapon. The table shot away, rolling on squeaky wheels, until it collided with Dr. Frankenstein. He spilled a beaker of green liquid over himself, then it fell to the ground and shattered. He collapsed groaning, but still conscious. I leaped on him, fumbling through the strange implements in his apron pockets, trying to find the keys.

“Stay down,” Nicholas warned me, grabbing one of the iron bars set over the dungeons. He jumped, using his entire body as a battering ram, knocking one Host into another.

Kieran managed to get a hold of a long, rusty spike and used it to stake the Host he’d just knocked down. Ashes coated the already slippery ground. One down, three more to go. Now if only I could find the damn keys. My fingers still tingled from being restrained so tightly and felt as agile as frozen sausages. I pulled out three vials, a corkscrew, a gold coin, a tangle of fish hooks, a Helios-Ra medallion, two stakes, and something squishy that made me want to throw up. I flung it at the wall with a shudder. Dr. Frankenstein’s eyes opened. “Not that,” he moaned. “It’s important.”

“You hurt my boyfriend,” I said, right before knocking his head back into the floor.

And finally, finally, my fingers closed over a key ring. “Got it!”

Nicholas flung himself free of the bar, his hands outstretched when he landed in front of me. I jammed key after key into the tiny lock. He kicked back once, catching a Host who got too close. More of them were rushing back in from outside. The handcuffs finally unlocked and Nicholas snapped them apart. “Go,” he yelled at Kieran. “Help Solange.”

Kieran took off, grabbing weapons as he went. There was a box of stakes and daggers on hooks on the wall, crossbows and staves and various other things.

Nicholas spun back around, facing the others, half smiling. “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

He became a blur of pale skin and fangs. Three Host circled around him. He had no weapons, no means of escape.

But he had me.

I filled my hands with stakes and then crouched under the shelter of one of the tables, waiting. The first blow that knocked Nicholas down had him landing hard. I rolled a stake toward him. He grabbed it and flipped back to his feet. One of the Host crumbled into thick dust.

Nicholas went low, into a rolling somersault, his palm out. I threw another stake. His fingers curled around it as he leaped back up. He’d managed to break out of the circle and with every stake he threw, I passed him another.

One of the prisoners stuck her arm out, clotheslining a passing Huntsman. Nicholas was right, we had an army behind the bars. I grinned at her. She cradled her now-broken arm, grinning back through the pain.

Since Nicholas seemed to be channeling a vampire ninja and I was out of stakes, I hurried to the nearest iron gate. I went through the key rings again, until I found the one that fit the padlocks. The first prisoner stumbled out, squinting in the artificial light. Sores and frostbite scars coverered his bare arms. He must have been here for weeks. I swung open gate after gate and humans and vampires emerged blinking like half-blind moles.

The vampires went straight to a fridge powered by a humming generator, ripping into blood bags. A woman tore through a camping bag full of protein bars and beef jerky.

When more vampires and Huntsmen came out of a passage on the other side of the small murky underground pond, the prisoners swarmed them. They weren’t particularly strong, having been starved and shackled for so long, but they were enraged. The ones doing most of the biting weren’t even vampires. There was a kind of frenzy in the air that made my mouth go dry.

Nicholas kicked a Host, breaking his thighbone, and I shoved him as he fell, sending him into one of the dank cells. I slammed the gate shut, locking it. “We can’t stay here,” I said to Nicholas. “Let’s lock them all in and stop Hope.” I thought, before this turns into a bloodbath. I had to shove an old man off a Huntsman before things got really ugly and the Huntsman choked on his own fang necklace.

Nicholas stood over Dr. Frankenstein, his boot pressing lightly on the other man’s throat. The doctor gagged, his eyes bulging with fear. “Nic, stop.” I grabbed his arm.

“You don’t know the things he’s done. He’s a monster.” He pressed down just a little harder. Veins bulged in the doctor’s forehead. He clawed at Nicholas’s ankle.

“Don’t let turning you into a murderer be another one of his crimes.” I tightened my grip on his arm, holding on as tight as I could. “Don’t let him break you, Nicky.” I shook him. “Lock him up so we can go save the rest of your family.”

He moved his boot just as I was wondering where my Nicholas had gone. He leaned against the wall, wiping his face with a trembling hand. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, Lucy.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” I said gently. “Take my hand.”

Everything was getting too ugly, too fast. Nicholas wasn’t the only one who’d reacted to the miasma of fear and the memory of torture. The vampires who had fed were now prowling the perimeter of the cave, snarling. Hunters lay in pools of blood. Violence had a coppery smell, like burning pennies. “I need a tranq gun,” I muttered. There was a box of them next to the other crates of weapons but the way was blocked.

“I’ll get it,” Nicholas said, staking between a Host vampire and a Huntsman, and tossing them both apart as if they were toy soldiers. He plucked one of the guns out of the pile, checked that it was loaded, and then tossed it to me. It looked like a pistol and fit easily in my hand. My first shot went wide as I got used to the new weapon. Unfortunately, it didn’t go so wide as to hit the wall; instead a dart hit one of the prisoners in the butt. She fell over, curses slurring as she fell asleep. “Oops.” I stared at Nicholas, wincing. He just shook his head at me.

My next shot was much more accurate, felling a Host vampire after two darts. “I need the vamp stuff,” I called when the vampire stirred after just a few seconds of unconsciousness.

Nicholas crouched over Dr. Frankenstein. “Where’s the vampire sedatives?” he asked darkly. “I know you have some.” Dr. Frankenstein started to babble, trying to protect his neck with his arm. Nicholas leaned in closer, pupils dilated. “Tell me.”

“In the small fridge,” he finally said as the pheromones slipped under his defenses. “The bottle with the blue labels.”

“And?”

He gulped. “And there’s a box of preloaded darts t-there . . . under m-my work table . . .”

Nicholas didn’t look away as he grabbed the box and slid it to me. Then he pulled the whole table down, dumping beakers and test tubes and microscopes onto the floor. Broken glass and dented equipment skidded in all directions. “Oops,” he said, echoing me.

One of the more recent prisoners, judging by her lack of cuts and bruises, hauled the now-weeping Dr. Frankenstein into a cell. She broke his wrist doing it, but none of us much cared, especially when he kept wailing about his “work.”

“He used to be one of us,” she said, disgusted. There was a Helios-Ra sun tattoo on her arm. I reloaded the gun just as one of the prisoners sailed past me. Nicholas caught her before she landed in the broken glass.

I shot three more vampires. They sank to the ground as if they were suddenly made of water. When there were finally only three Huntsmen left, I grabbed one of the emergency foghorns from a metal shelf piled with signaling devices. I pressed the button and the sound bounced off the stones. Everyone stopped, grabbing at their ears. One vampire tried to hide her head under her sweater, gnashing her fangs. Nicholas swung his head to stare at me. I added another blast for good measure.

“Lock them up!” I snapped in that military-school tone Hunter was so good at. “Now.”

There was some grumbling and someone called me a rather uncomplimentary name but the majority looked relieved to shake the violence off and have some kind of direction. We dragged the limp bodies into the cramped dungeons. Nicholas punched one of the Huntsmen who refused to move, even with a vampire sedative aimed at his head.

“We have to go,” I said to the Helios-Ra woman before the echo of the clanging gates had faded. She seemed the most capable and definitely the most stable. The old man was laughing to himself and peeing along the line of gates. I shuddered.

“Can you keep them calm until morning?” I asked her as Nicholas sorted through the crates of weapons.

“We’ll build a fire out on the edge,” she said. “And keep warm. That’ll stop most of them from freaking out further.”

“I just want to go home,” a college student muttered.

“If you go now you’ll just get lost in the forest and be even worse off,” I told him.

“She’s right,” the agent agreed. “We’ll keep guard, call for help on one of the machines and wait until first light.”

“League headquarters are under siege,” I warned her, hanging a miniature crossbow off my belt. “You might not get an answer right away.” I slung a regular bow over one shoulder and added two quivers of arrows. They were much faster to reload than a crossbow. I took three more tranquilizer guns as Nicholas dumped the stash of vampire sedatives into a pack. I added at least a dozen stakes all over myself, from pocket to pant cuff. If I tripped and fell I was in very great danger of puncturing a vital organ.

Nicholas and I were finally ready to leave the caves. Nicholas shoved the last Huntsman on the ledge right off the side. He swore all the way down, even though it was only a drop of a few feet. Huntsmen really were drama queens. Nicholas leaped down and then turned to steady me as I climbed after him, with far less grace. I clung to weeds and rock.

“Did you just cop a feel?” I asked when he let me drag down the length of his body. His smile was so quick I nearly missed it.

We ran down the trail, passing two prone hunters, a pile of ashes, and several broken saplings. We found Solange and Kieran back to back, fighting off Host vampires. Just this summer, he’d been threatening to kill her, and now he was trying to protect her and her whole family. If Solange could ignite change in vampire society, maybe Kieran could do the same for the League.

Solange disarmed one of the Host and claimed his sword. She was mostly blocking savage blows. She kept leaning in to whisper softly.

“What’s she saying?” I asked Nicholas.

“She’s telling them to get lost.”

The vampires, taking the order literally while under the influence of her pheromones, wandered away dazed. When Kieran was knocked over by a particularly vicious jab and nearly eviscerated himself falling onto a tree, Solange kicked back. She was fierce and confident; the Solange I knew so well but few ever had a chance to glimpse.

She extended her arm, cracking the vampire across the jaw, then spun on her foot and smashed the hilt of her sword into his face. Buffeted by blows, he staggered. She finished him off with a pheromone-soaked suggestion that he give up a life of crime and survive off rats.

“We’ve reclaimed the caves,” I called out. “And stuffed the evil asshats into the dungeons.”

She ordered the next vampire to give himself up and peacefully allow himself to be locked up. The last two vampires decided it was more prudent to abandon the fight and tear off into the dark forest.

Solange pushed her long black hair off her face. “Everyone okay?”

I hugged her tightly. “You saved us. All of us.” I pulled away, wrinkling my nose. “Did Kieran catch you up?”

“Fate of the world,” she said. “Betrayal, battles, blah, blah, blah.”

“Just like old times.”