Chapter 18 #3
Julian takes the east wing. I see him through the open corridor.
He kicks the first door off its frame, catches the guard behind it mid-rise, and drives his fist through the vampire’s chest. His hand comes out the other side with a fistful of ruined heart.
The body drops. Julian is already through the next door.
The second guard gets three steps before Julian wrenches his head from his shoulders with a single twist. He fights the way he plans.
No hesitation between one target and the next, every strike landing where he decided it would land before he entered the building.
The wolves pour through in pairs. Two of them hit a guard at the stairwell entrance. The first wolf takes his legs and the second clamps its jaws around his throat. The wolf shakes once. The head separates. The body drops in two pieces.
Another guard rounds the corner at full speed toward the comms station. A wolf the size of a draft horse intercepts him in the middle of the corridor. The impact lifts the guard off his feet. The wolf pins him to the floor and tears out his throat with one pull.
Alexei moves through the cleared rooms behind us, checking bodies, confirming each guard is down and staying down. Efficient. Thorough. The recorder documenting the operation in real time with hands that are steady and eyes that miss nothing.
I’m finishing the third guard when three more come through a door I didn’t clear. They’re fast, coordinated, and one of them has a stake.
I take the first two. The third gets behind me.
I feel the displacement of air before I see the strike. The stake driving toward my back.
Alexei hits him from the side. The impact sends both of them into the wall. The stake catches Alexei’s arm on the way down, tearing a line through his sleeve and the skin beneath it. He doesn’t stop. He pins the guard against the wall with one hand, and his eyes change.
Light pours from them. Not reflected. Not ambient.
Generated. A concentrated beam that hits the guard’s face and the vampire’s skin starts to smoke.
Then to crack. Then to burn. The guard opens his mouth to scream and the light intensifies and the scream never makes it out.
The body disintegrates. Ash drifts to the floor where a vampire stood two seconds ago.
Alexei blinks. The light cuts off. His eyes are normal again.
I stare at him.
“What the hell was that?”
“You aren’t the only one with gifts.” He glances at the graze on his arm. Already healing. “Keep moving.”
The wolves sweep the second floor. The quarters where the off-shift guards were sleeping. The sounds carry through the ceiling. Brief. Efficient. Then silence.
The building is secure.
I catch my reflection in a glass partition. Blood on my hands. Blood on my vest, my arms, my face. Julian is no better. His sleeves are soaked to the elbows. Alexei has a red streak across his jaw and dried blood on his sleeve.
We look like what we are. Vampires covered in blood.
I wipe my hands on my vest. It doesn’t help.
I reach the processing corridor. Thirty-two feet long, seven feet wide, exactly as Alexei described. Doors on both sides. Clipboards mounted on the wall beside each one. I glance at the nearest. Feeding schedule. Printed in columns. Blood type. Draw volume. Frequency. Subject number.
The handwriting is neat. Consistent. Someone designed these forms. Someone printed them. Someone filled them in by hand, daily, with the diligence of an employee maintaining a production log.
The smell reaches me before I touch the first handle. Antiseptic and something underneath it. Sweat. Skin. The smell of bodies kept too long in a closed space.
I open the door.
Twelve cots in two rows of six. IV lines running from each one to a central collection unit mounted on the far wall. Fluorescent light that doesn’t change between day and night.
They’re awake. Several sit up when the door opens. One woman presses herself against the wall, her eyes locked on the blood covering my hands and vest. A man pulls his knees to his chest. Someone in the back row starts crying.
A woman near the center of the left row turns her face toward me. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t react at all. The expression of a person who has stopped expecting anything from an opening door, even a door opened by a vampire covered in blood.
Her arms are thin. The IV line runs from the inside of her elbow to the collection system. The skin around the insertion point is raw and discolored. The line has been in too long.
Simone looked like this.
I step into the room.
“My name is Celeste. I’m here to get you out.”
The woman’s expression doesn’t change. Not right away. Then her brow pulls together. Her lips part. Her eyes move over my face like she’s searching for the lie.
Then her mouth opens. No sound comes out. Her hand reaches for the IV line in her arm and starts pulling.
“Wait,” I say. “Let me.”
I cross to her cot. I take the line out the way Elena taught me. Careful. Steady. The woman watches my hands. Her breathing changes. Her eyes fill. She doesn’t make a sound.
I move to the next cot. And the next.
Alexei stands in the doorway. Recording. This time, he’s recording something worth remembering.