Chapter 25
Leandro
I blinked at the lights in my face and then noticed the cameras rolling.
We were being filmed. Before they could get much more footage of it, Tess had used her last crossbow bolt to shoot the main camera.
Petros threw a blade at another. It didn’t hit entirely true, but it knocked the camera over and there was enough of a breaking sound that I was sure it wouldn’t be filming any more.
Despite taking out the cameras, there were still several vampires on their phones, holding them up.
Leandro took them all in, making a mental note of their faces to destroy as many of them as possible, before he noticed the vampire who had run from them was held in the grip of the vampire with the relic.
He was using the relic to make the wall incorporeal just long enough to shove the vampire who’d fled through it. As soon as the vampire was in the wall, the head honcho turned the relic off and trapped him there.
“Now see if you can run away like a coward,” he said. The vampire began to shudder, slowly dying.
“This ends here,” I said. “I’m not letting you leave with that relic.”
“Are you really going to try and stop me? I can walk through walls. And you’ve already lost. This footage has already gone where it’s needed. Everyone will know that you’re traitors within a few minutes.”
I growled and took a step closer, trying to size up the fight before us. “You’re the traitors. We’re trying to protect the Brethren and humans.”
There were yet more turned in here and I knew that some of them were more powerful. We’d killed a lot of them, however, and there were a few who were on the fringes of this and appeared nervous enough they could flee if the fight went the right way.
Around me, the rest of the team started to form up. Anais still had a dagger in hand although it didn’t look as if she had any other weapons anymore. Naomi had switched to a dagger and a stake, Alan had his long sword out, and Tess was wielding two more curved swords I didn’t know the name of.
All of the blades were silver and would have been treated with garlic oil, not to make them do more harm, but to stop the vampire healing as quickly. That was enough of an edge in a fight with people this skilled.
There was a pause as the vampire seemed to also study the scene. He slowly began to laugh.
“Do you six—”
“Now,” Anais yelled, her team seeming to know what she was shouting about as all four of them hurled a weapon right at the main guy with the relic.
The weapons all hit him in various places, a stake, a dagger and two different blades protruding from his chest. One of them was through his heart and the rest were close, but the vampire was a stronger turned than I’d expected or possibly had another relic, because this didn’t kill him outright.
He staggered sideways as I rushed to close the distance. Anais must have put the ring on once more, because she kept up with me at first.
The vampire in charge didn’t seem to know what to do at first, but while we were closing the distance between us, he reached down to grab the hilt of the longest sword now sticking out of himself and tried to pull it out.
Pushing myself as hard as I could, I closed the gap and shoved the hilt as hard as I could back into his chest. I hit it with so much momentum that I pushed it all the way back to the hilt and the back of the blade speared another vampire running up to help.
Before the vampire could recover, I grabbed for his wrist and the relic he wore.
Anais reached the other side of him and tried to take back her dagger by pulling it out of his chest. As the vampire twisted away from me to try to avoid me taking the relic, Anais was there to take another attack and keep the vampire distracted.
Between us we attacked and attacked, keeping the vampire from being able to do anything but fight.
Slowly, we circled him until I could finally seize the moment and grab his wrist. I took hold of his arm in both my hands and spun him to overbalance him.
Anais rushed toward me, her dagger already gripped tight.
I held on, keeping the vampire overbalanced by walking sideways slowly. Anais run up and with incredible accuracy, cut the vampire’s arm off above the relic. The man screamed at the top of his lungs but I shoved him to the side, letting go of the part of his arm still attached to him.
Anais stepped back, and let me take the relic as she focused on the vampire in case he was going to retaliate. Instead, he staggered back and practically wept, cradling the remains of his arm.
This wasn’t the best way to get a relic as I slid it off the limb I still held. The rest of the vampires stopped and stared as I put the relic in my pocket and then rounded on everyone else.
“You all might want to rethink who you’re allied with.” I slowly turned around the room as the fighting stopped. The vampires all looked around at me and then at the hunting team with Anais.
Petros disengaged from his fight and pushed the vampire nearest him away.
“Want to be done?” he asked, acting almost as tough as I was. I grinned, knowing it was all a little fake, but he had earned it by being brave enough to come in here with the rest of us and take on an unknown number of turned with an unknown level of strength.
I waited to see how they’d all react and most of them backed up.
“I need your phones,” I said, motioning to a pile of tech on a table that had been controlling all the filming equipment. “I hope you understand.”
“It won’t matter,” the vampire in charge said as he sank to his knees. “It’s too late. I’ve already told you that. The Brethren and academy will already know by now. And you taking the relic is only going to make it worse.”
Although he had a point, I shook my head. No matter what this man threatened, I wasn’t going to let it get to me. We would find a way to prove our innocence. We had to.
Before I could stop them, some of the vampires fled. None of the hunters went after them, instead all coming closer to me and the vampire who had been in charge for a while. I was sure they were going to finish him off, but instead they waited, looking toward me and Anais to see what we would do.
“Tell them we’re innocent,” Naomi said, holding out her weapons as if it was a threat.
The vampire laughed. “Why would I do that, sweetheart? I’m dead now either way. There’s no way any of those vampires are going to help me feed and I’m down an arm. In this world where only the strongest survive, I’m done for. Nothing you do or say could make me even attempt to undo this.”
“Will you at least tell us who is behind this plan?” I asked, focusing on him to read him.
“If I knew, I probably would. No way you can change it now. You’re the distraction. While the Brethren and academy are hunting you down to stop you using the relic on them, they will be massacred by all the turned waiting to take them out and put a stop to their meddling.”
I frowned until I noticed that Tess was recording on her phone just off to one side and slightly behind the vampire.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” I added. “I’ll make your death swift if you help give me the answers we seek. We’ve been set up. We don’t mean the Brethren or the academy any harm. We’ve just been trying to do our jobs.”
The vampire shook his head and chuckled again.
“A Brethren, turned and four vampire hunters all teamed up just for the good of the current order? No one will believe you. That’s why it is so perfect.
Kill me or don’t. There’s nothing more I can say.
You’ve already lost everything and I will die knowing I achieved my final mission. ”
Anais shook her head and Alan stepped forward to cut the vampire’s head off.
“Sorry,” Alan said a few seconds later. “I couldn’t listen to his crap anymore. If we’re going to get framed for a crime, so be it, but I don’t need someone like him making a big deal of it.”
I nodded and put the relic on, pretty sure we were going to need it.
“We should leave, before we get arrested and have that to worry about on top of everything else,” Anais said, looking toward the lounge door. There weren’t any vampires left in the area, and any staff that served in here weren’t about yet, or had also fled.
I looked around, knowing that we couldn’t walk out the main door if we didn’t want to get arrested.
We were going to have to go somewhere else.
But we’d also been seen coming from our suite at this point.
And identified by everyone on board. If we were going to get off this ship, we needed to do it carefully and without being detected.
Petros couldn’t daywalk, and I wasn’t about to abandon him here when he’d helped us.
“We need somewhere to hide, don’t we?” Naomi asked. “Until we can sneak off the ship.”
“If we can hide until nightfall, I can get us off and get us somewhere safer. At least to begin with,” I replied. “But I don’t have anywhere safe on this ship to go. Not anymore.”
Once again Petros stepped up. “I’ve got somewhere we can hide. Not the most comfortable for six of us, but we’d be safe enough until the ship sails again.”
“Does that mean we’re going to be trapped on the ship until it’s even harder to get off?” Anais asked, frowning.
I shrugged, not sure what Petros had in mind.
“What choice do we have? If we’ve been set up, you’re right, we can’t get arrested.
No one will bail us out and if anything, they’re likely to use the opportunity to send more Brethren in to kill us while we’re vulnerable.
The Brethren court don’t usually ask questions before they kill anyone they wish. ”
“Sounds wonderful,” Naomi replied. “So, we came on this mission because of you. You better keep us from getting arrested so we can all work together to fix this mess and clear all our names, got it?”
Although there was little Naomi or the rest of the vampire hunters could do to stop me if I wanted to abandon them and try to figure this out on my own, and technically I had been dragged into this right alongside Anais, I wasn’t about to argue, or let them down.
“All right. We’ll use this relic to take whatever shortcuts we need to get out of here,” I said. “All of you will need to stay close to me. Petros, please lead the way.”
The turned vampire looked about the room briefly as if trying to take in the carnage and see if there was anything else we should do to minimize the damage.
I didn’t know if we could stop any of the footage getting out now, but I knew that I would try to mitigate some of the damage it might do as soon as I had the team safe. I’d promised Anais that I would keep her people safe and I intended to keep that promise.
Petros took us over to a sidewall and motioned for all of us to be quiet.
“I can’t promise that the coast is going to be clear at first, but this will take us to some staff stairs we can go down a few floors.
We need to get where it’s quiet and, this time of day, nowhere is more quiet than where the crew sleep. ”
I couldn’t fault his logic, and I knew we had the advantage of being able to walk through walls now. We were going to have to be careful not to end up in the water if we were on the lower decks and didn’t know where we were going, but one problem at a time.
It took me a few seconds to activate the relic the first time, but I hoped it would be easier after. Petros hurried through the wall while I held it open with my arm and then I followed just far enough that I could see on the other side as well. It was a kitchen area, no doubt to serve the lounge.
There were staff there, but it was as if they were used to this sort of crazy and they only glanced our way and went back to their jobs.
I didn’t doubt that they’d talk about what they’d seen if they were asked, but they weren’t about to draw the ire of some vampires and a bunch of humans wielding silver weapons.
Petros didn’t delay. As soon as the entire team were in the kitchen he led us onward, taking a route he was obviously familiar with.
It made me wonder how much he knew about the ship we were on.
I had some knowledge of it, but I hadn’t memorized every last detail of every cruise ship in the clan’s company.
We didn’t have to walk through any more walls for a while as Petros led us through staff areas and again, the staff all acted as if they were too busy to have time for us or as if we weren’t even there, at least after their initial reactions.
I knew we must look awful. All of us had blood splatters, and we all carried some kind of weapon or another with the exception of me.
Eventually we managed to walk through a few more walls to cut across the ship and get out of the area where people were. We found a lot of cabins and eventually there were some so far below decks that it was clear they weren’t all being used right now.
“The ship is short-staffed and no one is sleeping in these last few right now,” Petros said. There was plenty of evidence of this as they had been used for storage, judging by the stacks of empty suitcases.
There were bunk beds that gave us all a place to sleep without anyone having to go anywhere else for now.
Petros offered to take the first watch and let the rest of us sleep, but I shook my head.
The second part of our fight hadn’t been as difficult for me as I’d feared it would be, and of the two of us, I had fed more recently.
“You should all get some sleep as well,” Anais told her team. “I can keep my eyes open a little longer and I’ll wake one of you as soon as I can’t.”
I almost insisted she sleep as well, but the selfish part of me wanted some company from her for a short while.
As soon as everyone else was into a bunk and settled down, Anais came to sit beside me.
I pulled her in close to me, not speaking as I simply held her.
She must have been exhausted and it was partially my fault.
Somehow, I had walked us right into a trap and I had to figure out how to get us out of it before it did too much damage to her life and her team’s. On top of that, I had endangered Petros in a way he might not be able to survive.
I had to hope that the academy would deal with Anais and her hunters not too harshly, given they’d only killed vampires and that wasn’t really a bad thing when they were vampire hunters, but Petros and I would be hunted down and killed if the Brethren decided we posed a real threat.
He was as good as dead unless I protected him or took him somewhere we could disappear. And the problem with that was that vampires had long memories. Mostly because we had long lives.
I had time to think of a solution now though. We couldn’t go anywhere until it was dark, and by then this ship would be sailing again.