Chapter 19 #4
His eyes bugged as he fumbled for his cell phone, hands shaking as reality caught up with him.
We passed him and turned the corner just as Harper yelped.
I glanced up to see three vampires at the end of the hallway, their bodies glowing blue on Harper’s camera.
Without even thinking, I raised my harpoon gun and shot three bolts in rapid succession, muscle memory taking over.
They whizzed past Harper and Asher. One hit the female vamp’s neck, another missed, and the third lodged deep into the shoulder of a male vamp with glowing red eyes.
“Behind me!” Asher called as he stepped in front of me and ran for the injured vamps at lightning speed. He crashed into them like a bowling ball, slashing left and right, steel flashing as he took two of their heads in brutal arcs while the third slipped past him and came straight for me.
I met him full force, refusing to give ground, and when I slammed my stake into his chest with my left hand, I simultaneously punched him in the stomach with my right. He collapsed inward with a guttural snarl, driving my stake farther up into his heart.
Red lights began to flash in the hallway, and I hoped it was some type of silent alarm.
“The rest are ahead and to the right,” Harper said from behind us. “They seem to be gathering in a tight group.”
I sucked in a deep breath, thought of all the children we would be helping, and picked up speed, bypassing Asher and taking the lead.
The second I turned right, I skidded to a stop.
The hallway opened up into a giant research room, surrounded with glass walls.
We stood at the mouth of the open double doors. Sterile white light flooded the room, and lab tables lined both sides of the giant space, the interior glowing with soft blues and silvers. On top of the stainless steel tables were…cryogenic pods of some sort. Incubators humming with quiet precision.
And vampires.
At least fifteen of them formed a loose perimeter around the lab, bodies unnaturally still, like guards protecting a crown jewel.
On the table in the center of the ring of vamps, something moved, and I stepped forward without meaning to.
There were trays arranged in careful rows across a central worktable.
And inside them…
Hearts.
Human hearts.
Some no larger than a small plum, others full-size, all translucent and pale, suspended in clear solution. Thin fibers of muscle twitched rhythmically as they beat on their own, slow and wet and wrong.
My stomach roiled.
Runes had been carved directly into the stainless steel trays, glowing faintly as they fed rune magic into the living tissue. Tubes ran from the hearts into rune-etched canisters already half filled with blood.
At the center of it all stood a woman.
Tall. Elegant. Raven hair pinned at the nape of her neck. A white lab coat hung over fitted black armor, sleeves rolled to her elbows.
In her hands…
She held a heart.
Not dead.
Growing.
Its surface shimmered like glass as new muscle fibers formed and fused in real time, knitting themselves together while it pulsed softly against her palm.
Harper sucked in a sharp breath behind me, and I followed her gaze. Two runes glowed brightly across the stainless steel table, and I was fluent enough now to read them. Cardiac regeneration.
Luna’s face drained of color.
The woman with the dark hair slowly turned.
Her eyes were a cold, glowing red, and she held a rune-drawing wand in her hand.
An arcanist vampire.
She studied me with open fascination, as if I were simply another specimen that had finally wandered into her lab.
“They always said the heart was our weakness,” she said softly. “So fragile. So easily pierced.”
Her fingers tightened around the living organ in her hand until it mushed like putty, ripping, tearing, bleeding.
The muscle then began to stitch back together, small fibers curling and growing, weaving like a run on a loom. It contracted, pulsed.
Healed.
“But what if,” she continued calmly, “it could grow again?”
My blood went cold.
They were trying to make hearts that couldn’t be destroyed?
Around her, the vampires grinned, anticipation rolling through the corridor like a held breath.
“Imagine it,” she said, eyes never leaving mine. “A heart that re-forms around the stake. Muscle that expels foreign objects. A body that remembers how to live…even after death.” She tilted her head. “Immortality at last.”
The rune in my palm ignited.
And for the first time, I realized exactly what would happen if she succeeded.
“Kill everyone else but the marked one,” the arcanist vampire said, and the vampires flanking her moved.
“ Stop! ” I screamed, and an actual light wave of power lashed out from me. The light hit the vampires one by one, and they froze in midair.
“Work quickly!” Celia barked behind me as Asher and I rushed into the room, killing the bloodsuckers as fast as we could.
I realized too late that the arcanist vampire had never stopped moving when I’d given the command. She was immune. She grabbed some vials and then jumped into a shadow portal before I could end her.
I was just driving a stake up into the chest of a frozen male vamp when a splitting headache hit me. I collapsed to the floor as something warm and wet dripped down my nose and onto my lips.
“Stella!” Luna ran to my side and began to fiddle with the wafer tin. The edges of my vision blurred, and then suddenly Celia and Asher were standing over me, concern etched across their faces. “I shouldn’t have given her that rune.” Luna pulled out two other wafers and shoved them into my mouth.
I let them dissolve on my tongue, and the headache pain eased but I still felt unwell. Dizzy, out of it.
“Is your heart racing?” Celia asked.
“No,” I croaked. “I just feel off.”
“I… What I just gave her should have worked to heal her.” Luna frowned.
“We don’t have a lot of data on Ascendant wafers. It might just take time to flush out of her system,” Celia said to Luna. “Can you stand?” Celia asked me.