28. Maria
Chapter twenty-eight
Maria
All I can do is pace, hugging Sage, inhaling Zinnia’s scent from the old toy as I wait for them to return.
When I hear sounds coming from the garage, I rush down the hallway and stop at the door. Chris steps out of the truck. The passenger door opens, and Tig dismounts as well. Zeke and Colin greet them then return to guarding the busted entrance.
I don’t know if I can be happy when my baby is still in the hands of renegades, but relief floods me as Chris strides over unharmed.
He hugs me and starts talking before I can ask. “Everything went fine. We dropped off the boxes. No trouble, no attack. The video showed Zinnia alive and unhurt.”
“Let me see it. Let me see it.”
I rip the comm device from his hands before he can hand it over and watch the short video of my baby. Tears flood my eyes, making the video blurry.
She’s alive.
Then I watch it again until the tears blur my vision too much to see anything.
“Oh my God.” I can’t stop the sobs. Alive. Alive. Alive. “Thank you. Thank you both.”
Tig squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can to get her back.”
“And I have more good news.” Chris takes the device back.
“Willow reported that satellite images showed a small group exiting the caverns and grabbing the boxes. According to the maps she overlaid, the door is a heavy iron one that the tour guides locked to protect the caverns from wandering tourists and vandals. She can’t get a clear, close-up picture, but she suspects the renegades installed additional hardware both inside and out to prevent an invasion. ”
“So Tig’s right? We can’t get in with a…”
“SWAT team?” Chris finishes for me.
“Special response team.” Tig huffs. “And yes, any attempt to break in would give them time to kill Zinnia—or escape with her through a secret passage.”
“What about a, er, gas?” I’m not sure what to call it, but books we had talked about inhaled gases that could put people to sleep.
“Won’t work on vampires in a cavern with that volume of air space. First, we don’t have to breathe. Second, while some inhalants can affect vampires, we couldn’t pump in enough to put everyone to sleep…and the quantity we’d need might hurt Zinnia.”
“Oh.”
Chris hugs me again. “Sunshine, those are good questions. Keep them coming. But I trust Tig. Her plan is well thought out.” He glances at his watch. “We should get to bed. It’s almost sunrise.”
He’s right, I can feel the pull to sleep. I clutch Sage to me. I hate that my daughter isn’t here. That she’ll have to spend the night afraid.
I’m coming, baby.
Chris glances at Tig. “Have we heard anything about Wolfie?”
I don’t begrudge Chris his concern. Wolfie’s been his companion longer than I have.
“Uh…” Zeke clears his throat. He and Colin have been standing there, listening to our exchange. “Dr. Clarke sent a message that Wolfie is out of surgery and doing just fine. He’ll know more tomorrow.”
Chris turns away, but not before I see him wipe the tears from the corner of his eye. “All right. Time to feed and sleep.”
I look over at Tig. “Is it safe for us to sleep here?”
“Don’t worry, ma’am.” Zeke tips the black cowboy hat he wears. “We have a mortal team coming in to guard against intruders. An engineering team will start repairs on both the tunnel and garage doors. A decon team will clean during the day. Nothin’ for you to fret about.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll take the couch,” Tig says.
We wearily walk past Zinna’s room. Seeing her empty bed just about breaks my heart in two all over again.
When we reach the kitchen, Chris grabs clone blood pouches from an open box and tosses Tig one, then hands me two. “We need to keep you topped off. All this stress—the extra blood helps.”
I lean tiredly against him. “Thank you.”
He kisses the top of my head, then grabs a bag for himself, and we disappear into the master bedroom. The dark wine helps, but I can’t stop thinking about Zinnia. Chris wraps me in his arms as sunrise takes me under.
At dusk, he brings me a warm glass. “What time do we leave?”
He better not argue with me about it.
“Thirty minutes. Time enough to shower and dress. We have advanced, lightweight, bulletproof clothing and helmets. Tig had them delivered. But I want to show you this first.”
He shows me a new video of Zinnia. She looks sleepy but alive. Unharmed. Dirty, but no bruises or cuts. I allow myself to cry again, once, and then I get ready.
My stomach churns as we leave the ark. Chris drives with Tig in the front passenger seat, and I sit behind her. Zeke, Colin, and the others on their team follow in a van.
I like nothing about Tig’s plan.
I can’t believe I originally suggested that we give the renegades a chance.
They’ve taken my daughter from me after I recommended that Tig fight to rehabilitate them.
I nearly hate myself for ever suggesting it.
Now I want them all dead—permanently. But as much as I want to bomb the heck out of the caverns, we can’t. My daughter is in there.
When will I get my arms around my baby girl again? The waiting gnaws at my gut as we drive closer.
We won’t know what to expect until we arrive. Tig went over a map of the original tourist facilities and explained the function of all the buildings. To the extent any remain standing, renegades could hide in them.
I don’t trust them or their enslaved mortals. If they hang the white flag, they could still ambush us. If they’d take a baby girl, they have no honor.
Our truck circles the picnic area and we look for any signs of activity. Nothing, until Chris whispers from the driver’s seat, “Over there. By the bathrooms. The white flag.”
My pulse races, and I twine my fingers together, twisting them. The renegades could kill us as we exit the truck, hoping to steal the vehicle despite our formidable guard. Or try to take us hostage.
We park, and our three guards get out of the van behind us.
Chris points out that they each carry an assault rifle filled with silver ammo.
Using their free hands, Zeke and Colin haul a large ice chest between them to one of the less-deteriorated picnic tables while a woman I haven’t met before acts as lookout.
The two guys go back for the ten boxes of clone blood and add them to the table.
Then they carry a box of pouches to another empty table—the best-preserved picnic bench, although the seats look like they’ll fall apart the minute we sit on the aged planks.
Tig signals her crew, and they fall back into guard positions.
I adjust my helmet and tug at the strange shirt I wear to make sure it overlaps the pants. The weave is tight and hot, but Chris assured me it’s guaranteed to stop bullets and incendiary devices.
The star-filled night sky provides all the illumination we need, and a half-moon helps. Relying on my enhanced vision still feels strange.
Tig leads us to the table where we’ll meet the renegades. She opens the single box and places a pouch at each of three places. Then she straightens, hands at her sides, a determined look on her face. “If we’re going to parley, come out of hiding.”
A woman steps out from behind a dilapidated building. Two men flank her. From the shadows, an armed team is barely visible.
My hands shake as I stand there, anger quivering in my stomach.
I’m facing the vampires who have nightly threatened the lives of my family.
In theory, we’re here to negotiate a truce, but I’m not trained for this.
I want to grab them by the throat and demand my daughter back now.
But for Zinnia’s safety, I can’t. I take a deep breath.
The woman approaches, raising her nose and sniffing at the air. “You brought a new-blood with you?”
“Does she mean me?” I subvocalize.
“It’s a pre-Collapse insult. Ignore it,” Chris replies silently. “Don’t let her rile you up.”
Tig remains standing but raps her knuckles on the warped wooden table. “I’m Tig Anderson. And you are?”
“Rose Thatcher, leader of the Kartchner Caverns.” She gestures to the two men who bookend her. “This here is Ed and Diego.”
Tig tilts her head in my direction. “The new-blood you smell is Maria, the mother of the child you stole.”
“And I’m Chris. We’re here to deal fairly with you. But if anything happens to that child, the people I represent are ready to hunt and destroy each of your cauldron members.”
Rose scowls. “Cauldron?”
“Your nest of vampires.” Then Chris is silently speaking in my ear again. “Rose wasn’t part of the treaty communities, or she’d know the term cauldron.”
“We have no plans to harm the child.” The woman shrugs. “You start anything, she disappears. Make a nice blood slave when she’s older.”
I growl, ready to break a piece of rotten wood from the picnic table, leap across, and use it to stake her.
Chris clasps my wrist, keeping me in place. “As a show of good faith, we’ll share blood together.” He gestures at the pouches in front of each of them, and takes three more out of the box, handing one to me, then to Tig.
“No.” The woman holds up her hand. “We’ll exchange bags.”
Chris shrugs. “Fine with me.”
I hand mine to the man across from me.
Chris takes the seat in the middle, across from where the woman shifts on her feet, and exchanges pouches with her. He shows the three how to remove the straw and punch it through the pouch. Then he sucks it down. Tig and I take the end seats, sandwiching Chris between us.
Rose and her two flunkies wait a minute. When nothing happens—Chris doesn’t fall over dead or anything—they pierce the pouches and drain theirs.
“What is this?” Rose smacks her lips and throws a leg over the bench on her side to sit at the table. “It’s not regular donor blood. It’s better.”
I let out a relieved breath. We’ve made it through this part of the plan unscathed.
“Clone blood,” Chris says. “The Lux have developed a way to grow nonhuman clones who produce blood.”
Rose’s eyebrows rise to her hairline. “The who?”
“I have a lot to explain, including who the Lux are, but first, you need to understand we don’t have an endless supply of clone blood.
It’s a labor-intensive process, and the Lux can’t produce much more than we currently need for the vampires who survived the Collapse and live in the mixed communities.
Which is why vampires like me scavenge and trade with the mortal domes for donor blood. ”
“Well, we’re listening.”
“We know what you want. You’ve been trying to steal my truck since I moved here.
You want a truck of your own. We want Zinnia back.
That is the offer. A new truck in exchange for the girl.
It’s a fair offer. But I’ll sweeten it—you can have your own dome, but only if you release the girl right now. ”
I bite down on a gasp. Why is he offering everything we have to trade? My daughter’s life is on the line. What if they demand more, and he has no room to deal?