Blood Hunt (38 page)

Sarah took a harsh, shuddering breath, suppressing a sob, and said, “I want to
see
you!”

Aros gave Rhes a savage grin and said to Sarah, “I can give that to you.”

Sarah drew in another hard breath. She was visibly shaking now, and Rhes realized that in another minute at most, he was going to lose her. Sarah was going to give up, give in, accept the offer. He had underestimated just how thoroughly she hated her blindness and how desperate she was to be rid of it. He was going to lose her unless he did something, and so he did the only thing that he could think of, leaning in next to her and putting his lips to her ear.

“He’s not telling you something,” he said. He kept his voice low and even, not trying to keep his words from Aros, but simply trying to help calm Sarah.

“What?” she asked, her voice miserable.

“There’s nothing at the end of his road but the dark.”

“You know nothing abou—” Aros began, and Rhes whirled to face him.

“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut the fuck up and let me talk, or kill me now and see if she goes with you after that.”

Aros glowered at him, and in that moment Rhes understood that there was no longer any possibility that the vampire would let them go. Unless Sarah chose to take his offer, Aros would have them killed as soon as he had Two in his grasp. This was certain, and their only chance for escape had just walked through the door and out to his seeming death.

Well, fuck it then,
Rhes thought, and turned back to Sarah.

“I’m going to finish whether he likes it or not,” he said. “I love you. I love you more than anything else in the whole world, but I can’t follow you if you choose to go with him. I won’t. That road doesn’t go to our house. It doesn’t go to Molly or to raising a family. There’s no baby at the end of Aros’s road and no normal life. There’s just years and years of looking out into the dark.”

“A prospect you’re faced with in either case,” Aros said. The black humor had left his voice, and he seemed to be growing tired of the game. “This is the last time I will offer, Sarah. I can fix you. He cannot.”

Sarah sighed and leaned the side of her head against Rhes’s shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was tired and hoarse, filled with a terrible resignation.

“Go away,” she said to Aros. “Just … go away. I don’t want to be fixed. I want to spend whatever time I have left with my husband, even if I’ll never get to see him. Go away and leave me alone.”

It was Rhes’s turn to give Aros a savage, triumphant smile. The vampire’s eyes narrowed, but after a moment any emotion seemed to leave his face, and he shrugged.

“Your loss,” he said with an air of supreme indifference and, with that, he turned and left the house.

“Baby, I—” Rhes began, and Sarah turned and pressed a hand to his mouth, her jaw clenched tightly shut.

Rhes wanted to tell her that he understood: she had done this for him. She had chosen him over the very thing that she wanted most in the world. He wanted to tell her that he knew what it meant, this thing she had given up, and that he was thankful, but Sarah didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t hear it, he realized, not right now.

Without another word, he put his arms around his wife and held her. Sarah pressed her face into his chest and stood like that for a long time, her breathing slow and deep.

* * *

The building in which Jakob had been housed had once served as a dormitory for soldiers, and it was approximately a sixty-yard walk from the row of townhouses where Rhes and Sarah had been stationed. Jakob made the walk from their house to his building with four of Aros’s soldiers surrounding him. Each carried a pistol, and two of them also had automatic weapons.

He knew from experience that when they reached the building, the two guards with assault rifles would break off, heading back to positions along the outer wall. The two guards with pistols would bring him to his room, a small space that had once been an officer’s bedroom but now, with the addition of sturdy bars outside the single window, had been converted into an effective cell. Jakob did not know if any other people, prisoners or soldiers, were currently stationed in the building. If they were, he had not heard them.

The entrance did not go as expected. When they reached the building, instead of unlocking the door the group swerved to the right, indicating to Jakob where he was to go by waving their guns. The two guards who normally left the group instead continued with them, and Jakob realized that he was likely in the presence of his execution squad. He felt mildly insulted that Aros could not even be bothered to oversee the event.

“Have you ever killed an Ay’Araf before?” Jakob asked the nearest guard, a short, squat vampire with brown hair and dark eyes who walked with a limp.

“Shut up,” the guard said.

“But surely this must be exciting for you, no? The chance to off an aristocratic pig?”

“I said shut up. You’re not talking your way out of this. We’ve got our orders.”

“Orders. Yes, of course,” Jakob said. They reached the end of the building and turned again, walking along its side. Jakob could see a dirt patch behind it, and a section of the outer wall that was pockmarked with bullet holes.

“Do I at least get a blindfold and a cigarette?” he said to no one in particular, and one of the guards behind him nudged him in the back with the muzzle of his gun.

“When we tell you to shut up, it means shut up.”

“I’m just asking for a little kindness in my final minutes,” Jakob said.

The guard behind him drew up close, shoving the barrel of his gun against the place where Jakob’s spine met the back of his head, and growled. “You’re lucky I don’t just shoot you here and leave the body for the crows.”

“We have differing ideas of luck,” Jakob said, and he spun sideways. He grabbed the guard’s left arm in both hands and twisted, snapping the humerus so violently that one jagged end of it pierced the skin. The guard shrieked in pain and lost his grip on his rifle.

The Burilgi were quick to react, but not as quick as Jakob. He shoved the screaming guard into the other vampire who held a rifle, and the two fell to the ground in a heap. Jakob leapt forward, grabbed one of the remaining Burilgi, and spun him around just as the last was raising his pistol.

“Oh, Jesus,
don’t!”
the guard cried, but it was too late. His companion pulled the trigger, and there was a sharp crack as the gun fired. Jakob heard the vampire he held make a gasping noise as the bullet hit him in the chest. The slug passed through the Burilgi’s body and embedded itself in Jakob’s side, but was slowed enough in the passing to prevent a deep wound.

“Fuck!” Jakob snarled. He shoved forward, barreling toward the vampire who had fired, using the guard as a shield. Before the remaining guard could get off another shot, Jakob was upon him. With his right hand buried deep in the hair of the vampire he was using as a shield, Jakob rammed his arm forward and the two soldiers’ heads collided with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed, and as Jakob let go, both bodies slumped to the ground. He reached down, picked up a pistol, and spun back to the first two guards.

The one with the broken arm was still writhing on the ground, but the other had managed to free himself and was raising his rifle to take aim. Jakob shot him in the face. He knelt again, and quickly put one bullet each into the heads of the unconscious vampires next to him.

The remaining guard was now dragging himself toward his rifle, snarling profanities in pain and exertion. Jakob took a few quick steps over toward the prone figure and brought his foot down on the vampire’s broken arm. The guard howled in pain, and without further hesitation, Jakob put a bullet into his forehead.

It would not be long before he was discovered. The firing would probably not immediately attract attention, as surely the Burilgi on the base knew that Jakob was to be executed, but the screams might have been heard. At any rate, someone, perhaps Aros himself, would be along to check in on things shortly. Jakob glanced down at his side and grimaced. His shirt and pants were stained with blood and there was a bullet wedged somewhere against one of his ribs, but removal would have to wait. At least the flow of blood seemed to be stopping.

Jakob turned and, taking a deep breath against the pain, began to run back toward the row of townhomes on the other side of the compound.

* * *

“It has to be now,” Jakob said as Rhes opened the door.

“Jesus Christ, are you all right?” Rhes asked.

“Yes. No … I was shot, but it was a weak hit. It’s not going to kill me. Rhes, we have to go. Right now.”

“OK, I … Sarah, we have to go. Jakob’s here and—”

“I’m blind, not deaf,” Sarah said from the living room. “Come get me, and let’s do this.”

“She sounds upset,” Jakob said.

“We’ll talk about it some other time,” Rhes replied. “Stay here. Shit, should I get … I don’t know, Band-Aids or something?”

Jakob grunted out something like a laugh and shook his head. “Get your wife and let’s go.”

They crossed the grounds as quickly as they could, Jakob leading, Rhes and Sarah trailing close behind. The grass was flat and even, making things easier for Sarah, but she nonetheless kept a tight grip on Rhes’s hand. Shortly, they had made it to the building that housed Aros’s offices. As of yet, it seemed, Jakob’s escape from execution had not been discovered.

“There will not be time for pulling punches, so to speak,” Jakob said as they reached the door. “If we meet any Burilgi, I am going to dispatch them. Quickly.”

“Jakob, hon,” Sarah said, keeping her voice low, “If we were going to get upset about you killing these people, we probably would’ve stopped letting you into our house a long time ago.”

Jakob made another low laugh and said, “Just warning you.”

“Do what you have to do,” Rhes said, and Jakob nodded. He grabbed the door handle and, finding it locked, leaned against the door to muffle the noise and twisted his wrist in a harsh, jerking motion. The knob splintered away and the door swung inward.

“That’s handy,” Rhes commented as they slipped inside.

“That’s why I’m only worried about the metal doors,” Jakob replied. He shut the door behind them and propped a chair against it. Close inspection would certainly reveal the damage, but at least any passing Burilgi soldier wouldn’t see the door hanging wide open.

They made their way upstairs to Aros’s office slowly, trying to stay quiet, expecting at any moment that the lights would be thrown on as soldiers invaded the building. It didn’t happen.

Aros’s office was dark and empty. Jakob went to the desk, opened the top-left drawer, and a moment later they heard a jingling sound as he picked up the keys. Sarah smiled a little, but didn’t speak.

“You’re entitled to tell me that you told me so,” Jakob said as he returned.

“Yeah, but I’m way too polite for that,” Sarah replied. “Let’s find out what’s behind door number two.”

The third key that Jakob tried unlocked the door. Behind it there was only an empty stairwell, with no sign of Aros or his guards.

“Is it too early to worry that this is way too easy?” Rhes asked.

Jakob shook his head. “No. This won’t last.”

They descended to the second sub-basement and exited quietly into a hallway that held a bank of cells, identical to the ones in which they had awoken four days ago.

“There’s a guard post down the hall,” Sarah whispered. “Be careful.”

They crept forward to find that Sarah was right, the hallway emptied out into a central room that contained, among other things, a table covered with scattered playing cards. The room appeared to be empty, and Jakob stepped into the middle of it, looking around and frowning.

“Yes,” he began. “This definitely qualifies as too—”

With a roar, two vampires leapt from the shadows of one of the other hallways and charged at Jakob. Sarah had no way of knowing it, and never would, but these were the same guards whose conversation she had overheard when she had first awoken in this place.

The Rat and The Dunce came into the room howling, racing toward Jakob, moving at an alarming rate that Rhes had difficulty reconciling with forms that looked so human. He felt sure that Jakob would be torn limb from limb, and realized even as he began to shout a warning that it would surely come too late.

Jakob turned almost casually to meet his aggressors. He reached his hand out, palmed The Rat’s face, and with a flick of his shoulders threw the diminutive vampire across the room. The Rat’s head punched through the plasterboard and his body embedded itself deeply in the wall, pinning his arms against his sides. Rhes had no doubt that The Rat’s head had come through the other side. The vampire’s legs kicked in the air, and the effect was so comical that Rhes’s warning shout became a burst of surprised laughter instead.

The Dunce, not as quick as The Rat but substantially larger, skidded to a halt, looking confused and nervous. He and Jakob circled each other. The Rat was shouting, still kicking his legs, the words muffled and impossible to understand. It would not be long before he did enough damage to the wall to free himself.

“You could run,” Jakob told The Dunce.

“You’re gonna die,” The Dunce replied.

“Surely you’re not
that
stupid,” Jakob replied.

“Don’t call me stupid!” The Dunce roared. He charged at Jakob, swinging his fists, and Jakob easily avoided the blows. His expression of detached amusement never changing, he spun to the side, grabbed one of The Dunce’s hands in mid-swing, and pulled it up behind the Burilgi’s back. There was a loud cracking noise and The Dunce howled, dropping to his knees.

“If not stupid, then at least uneducated,” Jakob muttered. He put his foot against The Dunce’s back and shoved. The Dunce went sprawling, sliding across the floor and crashing into the table. Jakob picked up a chair and, with a jerking motion, snapped off one of its legs, leaving him holding a hollow metal tube, jagged at one end, some eighteen inches long.

The Rat had managed to remove himself from the wall just in time to see his friend go sprawling. He shouted something in a language Rhes couldn’t understand, and moved toward Jakob, who regarded him with an expression that was almost disappointed.