Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
CALEB
Jesse’s severed hand lay on the floor.
I stared at it, my stomach pitching and heaving. His hand. On the floor. His hand.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, my voice gone soprano.
“Needed leverage.” Jesse planted his freed elbow against the wall and grunted, wrenching at his bound arm from a new angle. The bolt tore free. Stone crumbled and scattered over the floor.
He pitched forward and caught himself on his good hand.
His only hand. Holy shit.
Panting, he gripped one of the ankle bolts and roared. His flesh sizzled, smoke curling around his fingers. The silver gave way, crunching in his hand like the lock he’d busted outside the catacombs. Sweat slicked his shoulders as he gave the other bolt the same treatment.
Then he was on his feet and rushing to me.
Blood pumped from his stump as he worked the straps at my chest and thighs.
The silver had chewed at me for so long that I’d almost grown numb to it.
When the last buckle released, I bolted upright like I was spring-loaded, strength flooding back in a rush that left me lightheaded.
I swung my legs off the table and caught my breath.
Jesse leaned against it. “I need something tight, honey. A towel. IV tubing. Anything.”
Oh, fuck. Right. His stump.
I looked at it.
Bad idea.
I scrambled off the table and rushed to a metal rack of supplies, the operating room’s stone hot under my bare feet. Screams crashed through the door. Carlo burned on the ground, and flames from the spilled candles climbed the wall. Heat shimmered in the air.
My hands shook like I’d chugged a case of Red Bull. I grabbed everything I could reach—gauze, towels, coils of tubing—and staggered to the table, keeping my eyes firmly away from the burning vampire on the ground.
I dumped the supplies and swallowed hard. “Okay. What now?”
Jesse braced his mangled forearm on the table. His eyes were bright gold, and sweat poured off him, but his voice was steady as he reached into the pile with his good hand and pulled out a coil of rubber tubing.
“This. Loop it above the wrist twice. Then twist until I tell you to stop. Don’t hold back. The tighter the better.”
I grabbed the tubing and slipped it under his arm.
“And don’t panic,” he added.
“I’m not panicking,” I said, totally panicking. I followed his instructions, wrapping the tubing around his wrist and wrenching that shit down tight. “Will your hand grow back?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Fuck.”
“Tighter. Hurry, baby.”
I wrenched it tighter. Blood stopped flowing. Bone and muscle looked like a rump roast in a grocery store, red muscle nestled around grayish bone. Both wriggled, shifting like Jesse’s body was already trying to rebuild itself.
My stomach did a greasy, undulating roll.
I’d shifted from two legs to four, my bones busting apart.
I’d watched Jesse shift. But this was different.
Up-close and personal. Hot blood coated my fingers, which slipped against the tubing.
Smoke seared my nostrils and coated the back of my throat.
High-pitched screams split the air, and an ominous hiss swelled outside.
The opera house was on fire.
On the ground, Carlo’s body collapsed into ash. Just gone, like he’d been freeze-dried and someone tapped him with a hammer, leaving a pile of vaguely Carlo-shaped dust.
Why not? Add it to the list of weird shit.
More shrieks echoed from the hall. I twisted the tubing until my knuckles went white and tied it off. My hands came away slick and red.
“Finished.”
“Good boy,” Jesse said. “Let’s go.”
We raced out of the operating room. Fire licked over the walls. Stone crumbled and smashed on the floor. Alonzo staggered from a corridor, screaming, flames wreathing his bald head. He crashed to his knees and hit the stone face-first. The smell of cooked meat hit my lungs.
I gagged. Jesse grabbed my arm, and we kept running.
We tore down the corridor, found a stairwell, and climbed. Smoke poured down the stairs in gray waterfalls. My lungs burned, and sweat stung my eyes. Jesse kept us moving, his good hand planted in the small of my back.
We ascended one level. Two. Three.
“How deep is this fucking basement?” I wheezed.
Jesse didn’t answer. Just kept us climbing.
At last, we burst into the corridor on the main level and hurried toward the foyer. The gilded mirrors were cracking in the heat, splitting our reflections into hundreds of pieces. Above us, the chandeliers swayed, crystals chattering like teeth.
Alessia stumbled from a hallway looking like the “after” in one of those scared-straight mugshot progressions.
The woman who’d vaulted a six-foot fence was gone.
Her dark hair was wild around her soot-streaked face.
She was gaunt and waxen, her lips cracked and bleeding.
Her skin was papery and loose, and she’d aged about a thousand years.
I moved in front of Jesse, but he stepped around me.
Alessia clutched at him. “It’s done!”
I grabbed her arm. “Get off him!”
“Let her speak,” Jesse said, gripping her with his good hand. “What’s done?”
She shook her head, gasping. “Not what. Who. A man. He called himself Dun. He walked through walls. The master never feared anything. But when this man came, the master wouldn’t meet his eyes. He did whatever Dun asked.”
Jesse’s expression sharpened. “What did he want?”
“He brought blood. It was—” She coughed, clawing at her throat. Same as Carlo. It was like something didn’t want her to speak.
More screams echoed somewhere deeper in the building. Down the hall, the ceiling collapsed in a roar of sparks and dust.
Alessia cried out and cringed away from Jesse like his grip burned. She babbled something in Italian, her whole body shuddering.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“Withdrawal,” Jesse said grimly. He gave her a light shake. “What kind of blood?” When she didn’t answer, he shook her again and raised his voice. “What kind of blood did Dun give Carlo?”
Her eyes went wild, the whites showing all the way around.
“I d-don’t know what it was! Only that it was old.
The master was careful with it. Afraid of it.
He used it on the wolves he kept.” She gasped, cracked lips bleeding.
“The master thought the experiment failed. But Dun said no. He said the wolf who escaped—” She gagged.
Tears tracked through the soot on her face.
“Ulfrik?” Jesse demanded.
She nodded, coughing and cringing. “Dun said he was proof the experiment worked.”
Jesse and I looked at each other.
He turned back to Alessia. “Ulfrik escaped because whatever was in that blood kept him lucid enough to function? He wasn’t fully rogue?”
She nodded frantically. “The others, when they turned, they lost everything. But Ulfrik—” She coughed. “The master said he was still in there, underneath. He was stronger than before.”
“Because of the blood?”
Another nod. “He could think. He could move.”
And he’d traveled. Somehow, he’d gone from Italy to New York.
And he’d found me.
More screams. Flames covered the walls and spread over the ceiling. Mirrors crashed to the floor. Heat pressed us from every side, walls of it closing in. Sweat poured down my back. Across the foyer, a chandelier swung wildly, its crystals trembling.
“Jesse…” I said, eyeing the flames licking over the ceiling above us.
He stayed locked on Alessia. “What did Dun want? He wanted Ulfrik?”
She gasped. “Serv….” Her eyes rolled back. “Servizio.”
“Service?” Frustration crossed his features. “What does that mean? Answer me!”
She roused, her head lolling. “The experiment—” She coughed hard. “The master sold some.”
“He sold Ulfrik’s blood?”
The fire roared above us. “Jesse…” I said.
Alessia nodded. “Dun wanted to see what the blood would do to a human. Whether it would make something he could use.” She coughed again, wheezing, then licked her cracked lips. “It didn’t work. The human just transformed like usual. No gift, but powerful. He became a problem.”
Cold shot through me in spite of the heat. “Pyotr Zarins,” I said.
Jesse kept a tight grip on Alessia. “Carlo couldn’t find him,” he said. “The blood left no trail.”
Damn, my man was smart. Carlo had said that about his “product” not leaving a trail, and I’d already forgotten it. But Jesse hadn’t. Even drowning in silver and bolted to a dungeon wall, he’d absorbed everything Carlo had thrown at him.
Carlo’s bottled rogue blood hadn’t left a trail—until it did. With Ulfrik’s blood.
Alessia nodded. “The master said to let you search. That your bond to the boy would lead you to the human.”
Jesse’s jaw tightened, and I knew his thoughts matched mine. Carlo had used him. The whole time we’d run around Rome, chasing Ulfrik’s scent, Carlo had sat in his opera house and let it happen. Jesse hadn’t been wolfseeking.
He’d been cleaning up Carlo’s mess.
The swinging chandelier crashed to the ground. Crystals sprayed across the foyer. The ceiling bubbled. Dust rained down. A groan filled the air like the whole building was complaining.
I glanced at the doors. “Jesse, we have to get out of here.” Supernatural healing had its limits, and I was pretty sure “collapsing building engulfed in flames” made the list.
Alessia swung her wild eyes to me. “Dun will want you.”
“Me?” Oh, hell no.
“The master said you were an accident, but Dun said you were the proof he’d been waiting for. He said—” She gagged, doubling over.
“What did he say?” Jesse pressed.
The ceiling crashed down beside us. Jesse grabbed me, and the foyer lurched. Suddenly, we stood near the doors, twenty feet gone in a second. Sparks stung my arms.
Smoke rolled around us. Then it parted. Across the foyer, Alessia raced toward the flames.
“No!” I shouted.
Jesse wrapped tight arms around me, rooting me in place. “It’s too late, Caleb!”
She ran faster, and the fire engulfed her, flames lapping around her head. Her scream rose to a wail and cut off.
Smoke crashed over us in a black wave. Jesse hauled me toward the doors, and we burst through them just as another section of ceiling let go behind us, the crash chasing us down the steps.
We stumbled into the street.
Night air hit my face, cold and clear. I gulped it in as Jesse and I ran down the opera house’s steps. Glass shattered behind us. When I glanced back, the rooftop conservatory was no more.
We crossed the street. Noise hit me all at once. Sirens wailed in the distance. Flames roared at my back. Tourists stood with their phones out, recording the burning opera house. A woman sobbed into her hands, an abandoned grocery bag at her feet.
I waited for someone to point at us, two sweating, soot-stained men rushing from the flames. Jesse was naked. My jeans were fighting for their life. But we passed through the chaos like we didn’t exist.
“I can’t hold this much longer,” Jesse muttered, breathing heavy.
He’d created a ward. I really had to learn how to do it.
“I’ve got you,” I said, slipping an arm around his waist.
A car tore from a side street and stopped in front of us. A man jumped out, and my jaw dropped.
He could have been Jesse’s brother. Same height, same dark hair, same stubble. Even the set of his shoulders was the same. Copy, paste.
He looked at the opera house, then at us. He popped the rear passenger door and waved an impatient hand.
“Well?” he demanded in thickly accented English. “Get in.”