Birth of Jaiden (37 page)

There, like a statue, a
male vampire stood with his mouth posed into a smirk.

Shocked, Deanna knew he
could have already bitten her if he had wanted to; she knew that
one was a fighter. He wanted to toy with them.

He grabbed her by the
throat and swung her around so her back was pressed up against his
hard chest. With a loud scream, she swung her stake backward, in
hopes of grazing him enough to let her go.

“
It’s gotta be the heart,
baby,” he whispered to her while Michael and Chris aimed their
weapons at him.

Michael had his crossbow
and Chris a sword but neither of them would be able to get to the
vampire with her in the way and they both knew it. The UV light
would burn the vampire but he might hurt Deanna if he saw it
coming.

The man who had been
weeping now hollered at the top of his lungs, “Release me and I
will fight. Please. Angel!”

Chris ignored him and
focused on Deanna.

Michael did the same. They
both tried their hardest to figure out how to get around
Deanna.

Deanna forced herself not
to be afraid. Those vampires, much like dogs, could sense
fear.

“
Come and get her.” The
vampire teased them in a low voice. “Come on, play with
me.”

He roughly tilted her head
to the side and ran his tongue all the way from her jaw line to her
cheekbone. His strong fingers found their way from around her waist
up to her breasts, grabbed one and dug his fingers in.

Deanna felt like her boob was
going to explode from the weight of the vampire’s fingers. She
wanted to cry on the surface, but deep down, she was
pissed.
With her teeth
clenched and her breath ragged, she tried again to at least
puncture the vamp enough for him to let her go.

“
Angel
, I know you have been sent to free
me. Please, release me now.”

“
Struggle all you want,”
the vampire whispered, “you are still going to die.”

She felt his hand move
from her breast and crawl down her midsection until he reached her
upper thighs. He rubbed her thighs hard and licked her
earlobe.

Deanna couldn’t help it;
tears escaped and fell from her eyes down her cheeks.

“
Aw, honey, don’t cry.”
His hand ran across her thigh and upward. He slipped his hand
inside the waistline of her pants. “You’ll have a reason to cry
later, but not now.”

She sucked back a
sob.

The whole time he was
feeling her up he kept an eye on Michael and Chris. More than
playing with her, he was playing with them.

Michael held his stance
with his crossbow raised. Deanna caught his eye and silently begged
for help. It was one of those times when she really wished she had
telepathy.

Suddenly, with a loud
screech, the vampire holding Deanna released her by tossing her
forward, into the air.

Simultaneously, Michael
fired into the vamp’s heart while Chris sped forward to catch
Deanna. She landed hard, safe but hard, in Chris’s arms.

Meanwhile, the vamp lay
face down on the stone floor. Blood oozed from a large wound on his
back. Behind him, Damion waltzed into the room swinging his sword
with Corrine close by his side.

Deanna wanted to press her
face into Chris and let all the sobs out.

The man began to weep
again.

“
You aren’t an angel, are
you?” he said in a weeping voice into the air.

Chris set Deanna on her
feet and lifted the curtain aside.

“
No,” he whispered sadly.
“I’m not an angel.”

Damion stepped forward with his
sword still in his hand. He leaned in over the man’s face so he
could look him in the eye. “But, I
am
. I have been sent to set you free, and you, sir,
have a job to do. You are to show us where they are keeping the
prisoners locked up.”

Damion raised his sword
and slid the tip of the blade over the chains. No other sword could
have ever cut those chains. They fell away, freeing the man of his
shackles.

“
Yes, yes.” The man nodded
excitedly. “I will take you there.”

Damion nodded and stepped
back. “Thank you, but we must hurry. Can you walk?”

Deanna glanced at Corrine
who stood motionless in the doorway with her crossbow in one hand
and a flashlight in the other. She flicked it on and destroyed the
vampire’s bloody body.

The man, now out of his
bed and clad in only a hospital gown, ran through the room. “Come,
this way! Hurry!”

“
Wait!” Chris grabbed the
man’s arm. “What is your name?”

The man looked up at
Chris. “My name is David. Now let’s go!”

He ran in front of them
with no concern for himself or oncoming vampires. Damion, by far
the fastest and most durable of them all, stayed right behind
David. Chris stayed in the back to help Michael place the
bombs.

David passed through a
door, then down a stone spiral staircase. Soon, they crept down a
long hallway.

Deanna could hear
screaming and moaning and also what sounded like the weather report
echoing though the caves. Why in the world would those people want
to know what the weather was like? That was just plain mean to rub
in the outside world like that!

Finally, the man passed
through another door, and just as Deanna was beginning to believe
they were lucky there weren’t that many vampires in the caves,
another heavily guarded door appeared before them.

Three vampires. Deanna
knew they could take three of them.

The vampires were not
surprised to see them; as a matter of fact, they looked as if they
were expecting them. They raised their own weapons.

“
Seriously?” Damion
demanded. “You have guns?” He looked back at his group. “I thought
we were old school here. You know, swords and crossbows, that sort
of thing.”

Then, one of the vamps
fired.

The bullet hit Damion in
the chest. He covered the wound with his hand and closed his eyes.
Then, he pulled his hand away from his chest and opened it, showing
the vampires their bullet.

“
What the…” one of the
vampires muttered.

Damion flicked the bullet
at them and let his hand linger by his waist.

“
Back up,” Corrine ordered
sternly.

Then, Deanna’s eyes went
wide as Damion pulled the biggest sword she had ever seen from an
invisible sheath at his hip. It was like pulling a sword out of
thin air, appearing a little at a time.

One of the vampires
screeched as loud as he could before he was decapitated along with
the other two from one swift swing of Damion’s demon
sword.

David jumped up and down like a
little boy hyped up on candy. “
Yes
!” He stabbed an invisible sword and straightened
up. “Let’s go.”

They opened the unlocked
door. Inside, about forty men and women stood milled around like
zombies. The screaming seemed to come from farther down the hallway
where they had just come from.

Deanna, and everyone else,
could only stare in shock for a moment. Those were the people they
were going to have to leave for dead. And there were more, a lot
more.

David raised his voice.
“Friends. We are free, come look. These angels have been sent to
free us.”

People turned their heads
and shook them. It appeared it wasn’t the first time they had heard
David screaming about angels.

“
Look, friends!” He ran up to a
woman and yanked on her arm. “
Please,
look, they are angels and we can leave here. We
must
fight!
”

The woman yanked her arm
back and gave David a dirty look. Deanna watched closely as the
woman scanned her eyes over Damion and Michael, as well as everyone
else in their odd little group. Then, her eyes went to the door
which still stood wide open.

The group stood
motionless, silently watching a disaster unfold in a sort of slow
motion which was hard to put a stop to.

“
The door is open!” she
yelled at the top of her lungs.

Like zombies to the smell
of human flesh, the people trapped in the room for what they
thought was eternity slowly turned their heads and saw the open
door waiting for them.

“
Fight the evil ones,
fight them!” David yelled. “Use the fire in the halls.”

“
Oh no!” Corrine
whispered.

The prisoners rushed the
door, filing through and grabbing any kind of weapon they could on
the way out. Chairs, torches, lamps, it didn’t matter.

Damion caught David on his
way through the door. “David, we are looking for the other
prisoners, the ones who the demons would be threatened by. Do you
know where they would keep such people?”

David raised a torch into
the air. “I do,” he whispered, eyes darting back and forth. “Follow
me.”

It felt as if they were
following him for a long time behind the running humans who killed
any vampires who stood in their way. They followed down several
long hallways, then another spiral staircase.

Deanna felt Chris touch
her back. “There is human blood close by.”

He slowed and walked
closely to each doorway they passed. The group, following David,
had entirely passed them by when Chris finally stopped in front of
a door.

“
In here.” He pointed at
the door. “Someone is in there.”

“
You want to go in?” she
asked him.

“
You bet I do.”

“
All right.” She pulled
out a couple of stakes from her bag while Chris kicked open the
door.

When the door shattered,
they found themselves face to face with three very large vampires
who guarded a crib. Inside the crib lay a very contentedly sleeping
Jaiden.

Deanna let both stakes fly
at the same time and hit both guards on either side of the one in
the middle.

“
Damn it.”

She cursed when she
realized as the guards only grunted and pulled out the stakes that
the wounds weren’t fatal ones. Chris took up her slack while she
snagged a few more stakes from her bag. She wished she had dipped
them in holy water; she didn’t care if that was supposed to be a
myth or not. It certainly would have made her feel
better.

Jaiden sensed the
commotion in the room and began to make little whining noises,
which would soon lead to a full out crying jag; Deanna was sure of
that.

Chris charged the one in
the middle, and was charged in return. He dropped down low,
stretched out his sword and tripped the guard. When the guard fell,
he whipped his sword over the top of his body and right through his
neck, decapitating him. That happened just as Deanna let loose her
new stakes and lodged one into the heart of the guard on the
left.

The guard she had hit fell
solidly to the ground while the other one threw himself atop Chris,
trying his hardest to stake Chris with one of the stakes Deanna had
thrown.

Deanna knew how hard it
was going to be to get a stake to pierce the skin of a vampire and
continue the plunge through his back. To gather her momentum, she
gave herself some space to charge forward. Then, she jumped as high
as she could force her legs and brought her stake down into the
vampire’s back while he wrestled with Chris.

Immediately, the vampire
fell down dead on top of Chris. Deanna ran to the crib. Chris flung
the body off of him and jumped up, running to the crib as well. He
lifted Jaiden and one of her blankets out of the crib. “Let’s get
the hell out of here.”

Deanna stepped over the
doorway rubble. “I couldn’t have said it better.”

They ran in the direction
of where they heard the shouting of humans killing vampires come
from. It led them to a chamber practically drowning in blood and
among all the blood were the bodies of dead vampires and one human
still chained to the wall.

Damion, Corrine and
Michael stood in a silent group and stared sadly at Stewart’s body.
Deanna choked back a mouthful of vomit. Stewart lay up against the
wall, his stiff body left in a sitting position with his head
twisted in an inhumane position. Even in death, he wore a defiant
grin.

“
He was laughing at his
end,” Corrine whispered to no one particular.

Jaiden protested against
her newfound cradle in Chris’s arms with a loud wail. The other
three finally drew their attention away from Stewart’s
body.

“
You have her!” Damion
exclaimed. “Well, Isabella isn’t here. I thought this would be
where we found her.”

Deanna examined the wall.
Loose chains still hung from the wall with flesh hanging from the
razor sharp prongs. “I think she was here at some point. They must
have moved her.” She eyed Chris. “But, we need to get Jaiden out of
here. We have to let Alex know we have her so he can get out
too.”