Dark Studies (Arcaneology) (9 page)

The storage room housed a jumble of furniture, clothing, old computers, wooden crates full of empty bottles that had once been filled with human blood, and other bits of detritus. When the door closed, the vampire stood for a moment, listening, then turned to her prey.

“What is your name?” she asked.

None of them had ever wanted to know before. Was this how she intended to begin peeling away her layers of emotional armor?

“Mary,” Sarah lied.

The vampire dropped her voice to a whisper. “Mine is Vanessa. I’m here as an advance scout for a team of vampires working for the Covenant. You’ve heard of it?”

Sarah eyed her. “I’ve heard Alaric and the others laughing at it. They say the new rules are for vampires who’ve gotten old and soft.”

“I’m sure they do.” Vanessa snorted.

Realizing the vampire had managed to hook her into showing interest, Sarah went back to her blank stare.

“I’m going to get you all out of here,” Vanessa promised. “Where do they keep you?”

Should she answer? She didn’t like giving the female what she wanted but couldn’t think of how it would harm her. “The cellar. The stairs we just came up? If you go down instead, that leads to our dungeon.”

A scream penetrated the thick walls. Vanessa scowled. It was followed by another, and with it came the hyena-like laughter of the vampires playing with their food.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Vanessa made it a statement, not a question. “You’re not broken at all. You’re the only one of the bunch who might be able to help us.”

It was growing harder to maintain the façade of indifference. Sarah’s eyes flickered before she retreated once again.

“Three nights from now, your…keepers…are coming to see a club we've offered to sell them. Do they ever leave you alone, or is there always someone watching you?”

“A human companion feeds and guards us during the day. We can’t hear much down there, but I'm pretty sure there’s at least one vampire around at night. I don’t know what they think we’re going to do if they leave us by ourselves. We’re chained up, and the only door is made of steel and locked with big bolts.”

“Are there any alarms? How do they secure the building?”

Interest stirred. Not hope, Sarah wasn’t capable of that anymore, but she told the vampire what little she knew because now she was curious to see what would come of it.

When Vanessa had garnered as much information as she could, she nodded. “We’ll work out a plan. I don’t know for sure how we’ll approach this, but you’ll hear us. Get the other slaves ready. Make sure they go with us when we come. Assure them we’re not here to hurt them, just to get them out.”

Sarah snickered. “They won't believe me, but I’ll do my best.”

“Good enough. Now, we need to put on a show for our hosts. I told them I could get a reaction out of you. How good are you at acting?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah narrowed her eyes.

“What would happen if I really did break through to what you feel deep down inside? What’s in there, Mary?”

Finally, she met the vampire's gaze. “Rage. And the name is Sarah.”

A smile spread across Vanessa's face. “When we go out there, find that rage and set it free, or at least pretend to. Scream, fight. I’ll have to subdue you and feed for this to be convincing, but I’ll be careful not to hurt you too much. Will you trust me?”

“No. But I’ll play along.”

Three days. Probably nothing would happen. Still, Sarah told the other slaves someone might be coming for them, and to follow her lead if that happened. She didn’t tell them why—there was no point in getting their hopes up—but they had to be prepared, just in case.

The third night, the clamor of an alarm shocked them out of their stupor, followed by sounds of violence from above. Sarah cursed. She hadn’t known about the alarm, so Vanessa and her people wouldn’t have expected it. What did that do to their rescue plan? Sarah moved as close to the bottom of the stairs as her chains would allow and strained to hear. The rest of the slaves cringed at the yowls and crashes growing closer to their dungeon.

At the top of the stairs, the door burst open, heavy bolts snapping like sticks. She jerked back in case it tumbled down, but it swung drunkenly on its hinges and held. The light that poured in made her squint. Sarah saw a blur, and then Vanessa was in front of her, shattering the chains with flicks of her fingers. Another vampire followed.

“Don’t be afraid of Mick,” Vanessa told the slaves. “We have to take photographs. Without evidence, the Covenant won’t call a tribunal.”

Her companion raised his camera and snapped pictures, bewildering the humans with its flash. Vanessa led Sarah to the top of the stairs and held up a video recorder. “I’ll film the others as they come out. Keep them together, don’t let them panic. We’ll go out the back dock as soon as they’re all up and we have what we need.”

Once out of the cellar, Sarah looked around. Two human servants lay unconscious a dozen yards away. Emmanuel, the vampire who had stayed to hold down the fort while the rest of the enclave was out, had a silver chain wrapped around his naked chest. It wasn’t very thick, but he was young, and even a small amount of silver was enough to incapacitate him. Fierce satisfaction burst through her at the sight of his skin burning and hissing everywhere the silver touched it.

Another vampire stood at the doors to the back dock and kept an eye out for trouble. He must have been middle-aged when he was turned and had the heavy build of an athlete past his prime. He glanced over his shoulder. “That alarm is going to have them here any second. Hurry up!”

“We’re coming, Carlos,” Vanessa called back. Her cam’s green light was on, recording each slave coming out of the dungeon.

A rushing sound drowned out the alarm.

The vampire at the doors disappeared. An instant later, he was flung across the room, and a roar of challenge followed him inside.

Vanessa dropped her camera and shoved Sarah under the concrete stairs that led to the offices. The slaves emerging from the dungeon screamed. Some tried to run for the loading dock, while others tumbled back into the cellar, too panicked to do anything but hide.

A flash of color ended with Alaric facing off against Vanessa. They snarled, fangs out, but before they could engage, Vanessa’s other friend, Mick, blasted out of the dungeon and knocked Alaric aside. The vampires’ supernatural speed made it impossible for Sarah to make sense of what was happening. She saw only the aftermath: broken furniture, cracks in concrete, a vampire occasionally slowing down long enough for her to recognize it before it burst into motion again.

As the other four members of the enclave arrived, the real carnage began.

Lily, Jacob, and Isabelle went after the slaves who had scattered around the warehouse, like raptors swooping down on frightened mice. Blood gushed, spraying high into the air and making the floor slick. Vanessa snarled, vanished, and reappeared in front of Isabelle to backhand her away from the human she had just killed. Antonio, the leader of the enclave, paused in the doorway.

The camera lay a few feet away from Sarah, its green light still on.

Vanessa had said something about evidence for a Covenant Tribunal. If it was a crime to keep slaves, wouldn’t it be even worse to slaughter them?

A vampire blazed by close enough to set her hair flying, and she froze. It paid no attention to her, though. Perhaps if she went very slowly, if she made no sudden moves…

A roar sounded nearby, then the clatter of chains hitting the floor. She looked around in time to see Antonio set Emmanuel free.

A vampire in a killing frenzy had little control, especially one as young as Emmanuel. Add to that the agony of silver, and nothing but pure animal instinct remained. The maddened creature attacked the person nearest him, but Antonio expected it, and threw him toward the top of the stairs. Emmanuel teetered on the edge. Then he fell into the cellar, among the terrified remainder of the slaves.

Sarah inched toward the camera. She kept an eye on Antonio to see if he noticed her, but if he did, he dismissed her as unimportant. The tips of her fingers reached the camera strap and she began to draw it toward her.

The bright yellow blur of Vanessa’s hair sped toward Antonio, and she hit him like a small freight train. He smacked into a concrete wall, his head making a dent that radiated cracks. His roar nearly shattered Sarah’s eardrums. Mouths wide, fangs bared, the two of them grappled, too fast for a mere human to follow. Sarah tried to track where everyone else was. Mick struggled with Alaric at the far end of the warehouse. Lily and Jacob continued to tear into the human slaves, or what was left of them, enraged by the attempt at escape. They didn’t stop there. The unconscious human servants were savaged as well. Carlos took over where Vanessa had left off with Isabelle, trying to stop them. Sarah’s heart hammered as she lifted the recorder and searched out the humans still being ripped into bloody pieces.

A chorus of screams came from the dungeon.

Her hands shook as she turned the lens toward the top of the cellar stairs. Blood sprayed out of it. Sarah was glad she couldn’t see what Emmanuel was doing down there. Hearing it was bad enough.

A shriek dragged her attention back to Vanessa and Antonio, and she saw he had managed to wrap the silver chain around her throat and drag her to the floor. Sarah didn’t understand how he could do that without hurting himself, until she realized he wore leather gloves.

Carlos was apparently more of a fighter than appearances suggested. A human built like him would be slow and clumsy, but he moved with freakish grace in a dance of violence that left both Jacob and Isabelle unconscious, entrails spilling from their pale bodies. His gaze turned to Antonio, who had snatched up the leg of a broken chair and held it above the helpless Vanessa. Carlos rushed in.

Antonio found this new attacker more of a challenge. The two flickered through the carnage of the warehouse. Sarah looked around wildly and tried to make sense of the chaos. The sounds of animals feeding on a kill were so appalling she couldn’t tolerate the terror. Her mind broke away so that she watched herself from a distance. She had thought herself detached from her emotions before, but now it was as though they didn’t exist at all.

Carlos had Antonio’s full attention. At the opposite end of the warehouse, two other vampires struggled, and for a moment they slowed enough for her to recognize Mick and Lily. Nothing else in the room stirred, except the horror that continued to spew out of the dungeon.

The odds would be even if she could get Vanessa free. Carefully, Sarah set the video recorder on one of the concrete stairs and pointed it toward the opening to the cellar. With the other vampires focused on each other, she didn’t try to conceal her movements. Sarah broke cover and ran to the trapped vampire. She hesitated, having seen how the silver affected Emmanuel, but the detached part of her took over. She yanked the chains away and leaped back as fast as she could at the same time.

Vanessa did not lash out at the nearest thing like Emmanuel had. She streaked toward Antonio and Carlos, and Sarah’s attention was drawn away as something flew toward her from the far side of the room. The object struck the wall with a loud crack. It landed on the floor, looking like a dead skunk she had once seen on the side of the road. It took her several heartbeats to recognize it for what it was: Lily’s head. Even as she stared, the thing disintegrated into gooey red mucus. Sarah crept back under the staircase and made herself very small, peering out from behind it.

Mick left the melting body of his dead opponent and started toward his partners in their fight against Antonio, but Emmanuel chose that moment to emerge from the slaughterhouse below. He was drenched in blood and gobbets of flesh, and his rage had not subsided. If anything, the killing had fueled it. Mick veered away from the fight with Antonio.

The frenzied vampire swatted Mick aside so hard that he crashed onto the stairs just above her and knocked the video recorder from its perch. She couldn’t tear her gaze away, even though the act of peering out exposed her to them. Emmanuel was on Mick before he could recover, raising him high and opening his mouth wide. He paused to snarl his triumph before he sank his fangs in.

Sarah still clutched the silver chain. The thought passed through her mind that this was insane, but she was already moving. A swing of her arm sent the chain flying over the bottom steps of the stairs to tangle around Emmanuel’s legs. If his pants had not been torn from his uncontrolled massacre, he would not even have noticed, but the silver connected with bare skin, and the shock of it made him drop Mick. He shrieked with pain and tried to yank the thing away, but it only burned his hands and clung to his blistering calves.

Mick’s fist plowed through the vampire’s chest. Sarah had sometimes wondered whether it had to be a stake that took out the heart, and now she had her answer. Mick clenched his fist around the red muscle and pulverized it. Emmanuel fell to his knees, weakened but not dead. It was only when his opponent took his head in his hands and literally ripped it from his body that he began to disintegrate into red muck.

She looked at Mick, eyes huge, and he looked back at her. His forehead creased as though he were puzzled. Then he, too, melted into bloody slime, and as he did she saw that a wooden stake had been plunged into his back.

Isabelle stood behind him, a few stairs higher. Sarah froze for an instant before instinct drove her to at least try to seek safety. She wedged herself beneath the stairs as tightly as she could.

Isabelle hissed as she leaped to the floor. She bent to reach under the concrete steps and groped for Sarah, who wriggled to one side, then the other, trying to evade her. Frustrated, the vampire tossed her stake aside and reached in with both hands. One caught hold of the neck of Sarah’s shirt, and Isabelle started to drag her out of her hiding place. Then she disappeared, taking a scrap of fabric with her. Vanessa was back. She left Antonio to Carlos while she saved the one human who remained. In her hand she held the stake Isabelle had used on Mick only seconds before. She screamed in fury as she sank it into the bitch’s heart.