Dead Rising (21 page)

“Dario isn’t going to like this,” I told him in a last ditch effort to get through the hunger to whatever humanity was left in him. “He’ll kill you once he finds out.”

I hoped so, although maybe not. This guy was family. The two of them might have known each other for a hundred years. I was just an intriguing meal. I’m sure Dario would be pissed, but I wasn’t sure he’d be angry enough to avenge me. Would he even survive the battle upstairs? Would anyone come for me at all, besides this vampire who wanted to drain the blood from my veins? Whatever happened, I had no one to rely on but myself.

“Shut up.” The vampire slammed me against the wall. I turned my head just before I hit, taking the impact to the front of my body and the side of my face. Once again I felt blood, this time trickling down my cheek.

I was yanked back from the wall as quickly as I’d been slammed into it, then thrust forward through the doorway. It was dark, so dark I truly couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Vampires must have superior night vision, as I felt myself guided forward and nudged backward into a chair. I tensed, ready to fight if I heard the slightest rattle of chains.

Instead I smelled the familiar scent of cinnamon and myrrh, shuddered as a tongue traveled its way up my cheek. “I should drink from you right now,” the vampire murmured, “but my absence will be noted and others will come. I don’t want to share.”

The only thing saving my life right now was this guy’s greed. If I was going to die at the teeth of a vampire, I’d rather my executioner be Dario, not this guy. Still, every second I lived gave me another second to try to survive, to escape. And as soon as this guy left, I was going to do everything in my power to get out of here.

I felt him step away and took a breath of relief. There was a moment of light as the door opened, then darkness as it slammed shut again.

I couldn’t hear the battle from down here, had no idea how much time I had, but the sand was quickly running out of my hourglass.

I
SAT STOCK-STILL,
holding my breath as I listened for any noise that might indicate I wasn’t alone in the room. Nothing. I couldn’t even hear sounds from the other part of the basement. I stood, holding onto the chair to orient myself in the darkness.

Haxa Luz

And then there was light. Well, not as much light as I’d hoped for, but at least I could explore my surroundings without doing a face-plant onto the concrete floor. Cement block walls made up the tiny six-by-six room. There was the chair that my hand rested on with a pile of chain and locking cuffs next to it, what looked to be a blanket balled up in a corner, and something that I strongly suspected was a dogfood dish.

I blinked back tears. There was no sense in giving up hope now. A dish, iron chains, a blanket, and a metal chair weren’t much, but MacGyver wouldn’t let that stop him from using all this stuff to break free and rain down a world of hurt on these vampires. I was a Templar. That had to give me a whole lot more ingenuity and strength than a fictional television character.

Using my floating ball of light, I flipped the chair over and examined it. If I snapped off the legs, I’d have some stakes, and more importantly supplies to create a makeshift crucifix. The vampires upstairs had been burned by the blessing. If blood-starved vamp came back, I’d light him up and run for it. Or try to light him up. My sword and keychain were consecrated. I’d never done a blessing without a sanctified crucifix, but I was hoping two crossed chair legs would do in a pinch. Hey, it worked in the vampire movies.

Clearly I lacked faith, because I wasn’t willing to put my one chance of escape on a makeshift religious symbol. If the blessing didn’t happen, I’d pivot that asshole around and jab him through the heart…hopefully. Tapping on the chair legs I noted they were hollow. With the cement walls and floor, or the metal of the door, I might be able to squeeze the end together to form a sharp point. It wouldn’t be the traditional wooden stake, but it would give me a weapon.

Crucifix to the face, a few chair legs to the heart, and my attacker would be down. Then I’d get out and hide until dawn. If any of them came after me, I’d call my family and bring the holy wrath of the Ainsworths down on them.

I got to work, wincing at the noise as I banged the chair against the wall. The thing was better made than I had thought, and I’d worked up quite a sweat by the time I managed to snap the legs off and splinter the rest into jagged chunks.

It gave me time to think. Did Dario believe I was safe in my apartment? How long would it be before he knew differently? I hoped he’d go to check on me before sunrise and realize something was wrong. I wanted to be optimistic about my chances of getting out of here, but just in case things went horribly wrong, I’d hoped Dario would avenge my death. Or at the very least let my family know what had happened to me.

Or not. I still didn’t trust my judgement when it came to that vampire. Was I letting my hormones sway me? The murder of the Robinson family weighed heavily on my heart, but part of me
wanted
to trust Dario. He’d said he’d done things in his three hundred and fifty years that he regretted, who’s to say he hadn’t been forced to turn the other way when Shay and her family were killed? If keeping silent was the price for him staying alive or for not being cast out of his
Balaj
, then perhaps he was less to blame than the others.

I’d never been in a position where someone was going to die whether or not I stood up for them. And I’m sure his standing up for Shay would have meant Dario’s death. What if he had no choice in the matter?

What was I doing? I was sitting in a tiny basement cell, bashing a chair against a wall and making excuses for a vampire that I desperately wanted to
not
be guilty of ruthless murder. I was such a fool. How could I be so blind as to think that Dario wouldn’t put his family as well as his own safety before the life of a fourteen-year-old girl? I might desperately want to think him innocent, to forgive him in this crime, but deep down inside I’d always see the face from the picture, the girl-almost-a-woman with the secret in her brown eyes, every time I was with Dario.

He might have had good reasons, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t judge him for doing nothing as Shay Robertson died, as the vampires fed from and kill her parents and siblings.

My head came up, my fingers stilled as I felt the familiar tingle across my skin of a vampire approaching.

Fue
.

With the word, my light was extinguished, hopefully giving me a few more seconds to surprise my kidnapper. I readied my makeshift crucifix and another unsharpened, chair leg. There was the click of a key in a lock. The door opened and I saw a figured shadowed against the outside light before I lunged forward.

“
Ansurb
.”

The original Templar incantation of protection had been
Jesu, pashtpanel indz bolor ansurb eakneri,
which had been so long that it had resulted in a lot of dead Templars. Thankfully the shorter version worked as did my chair-leg religious symbol because I’d barely gotten the word out of my mouth before I was punched in the face.

I heard a scream that sounded more like a roar, smelled the sizzle of burned flesh, then I was slammed against the block wall, my head making an alarming crack on impact. No pain registered, but my legs wobbled, and my left arm felt partially numb. I’m sure the room would have been swimming before me if the door hadn’t slammed shut leaving me blind in the darkness.

I couldn’t hear shit from the ringing in my ears, either, so I let my instincts guide me, stabbing with the chair leg at the scent of cinnamon and myrrh. I hit something with give, felt sticky liquid on my hand, and swung my other hand forward to strike again with my crucifix. Again the aroma of burning flesh.

Hands tried to grip me but I struggled, twisting and attacking with both of my makeshift weapons. Wet ran down my head and into my mouth as I tasted the tang of my own blood. Oh God no. I was bleeding. If the vampire hadn’t been ramped up before, he would be now that he’d scented my wound. I felt a surge of adrenaline at the thought and battled like a cat about to be bathed. I kicked, hit, head-butted, and kneed, determined to subdue the vampire and escape.

As if from down a long tunnel, I heard the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, of our feet, of the vampire’s muffled curses. My blood ran into my ear and eyes, my head began to ache and the floor seemed to sway under my feet. If I didn’t take this guy down soon, I was going to pass out.

I was desperate, so I did the unexpected. I dropped to the floor, taking my assailant down with me, then rolled slamming the end of the crucifix toward where his eye should be. Hands gripped my wrists before the cross hit its mark, and my arms were slowly forced backward and twisted until my weapons dropped. I went to head-butt the vampire, but my head only lolled to the side. So tired.

“Aria.” I heard Dario’s voice as if here were inside a mattress filled with cotton. “It’s me. Stop fighting.”

Shit. I hadn’t seen him in the darkness, nor recognized his voice since my hearing had gone out once my head had hit the wall. It was kind of funny that I’d just beaten the crap out of the only vampire here that might be on my side. I wanted to laugh, but a sob came out instead.

The sob turned into a torrent of tears that drove my headache into migraine proportions. I felt like I was either going to pass out or throw up. It embarrassed me, a Templar not-quite-a-Knight crying from fear and relief in a dark cell. Dario seemed to realize my shame and instead of comforting me, just waited out my flood of emotion with a steadying hand on my arm.

Finally I gulped, regaining control.

“You okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Dario’s hand caressed the side of my face. I winced as his fingers traced cuts and bruises. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the vampire who’d locked me down here hadn’t hurt me nearly as much as he had.

“He was going to come back and drain me. That’s why I attacked you. I thought you…”

Dario pulled me close and I breathed in his cinnamon and myrrh scent, so comforting now that I knew it belonged to him and not some other vampire. “Yeah. Well, that’s
not
going to happen.”

There was a fierce possessiveness to his voice that warmed my heart as well as other, more hormonal parts of my body. Slowly my panic receded and I felt more like a Templar and less like a woman afraid for her life.

“How many of your
Balaj
are injured? Will they be able to heal before dawn?” I didn’t dare ask how many had died. I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t want to think about who the vampires would retaliate against for this night. I wanted to tell them about Russell, to keep innocent people from suffering for tonight’s events, but I saw the necromancer as an innocent, too.

But was he? Yes, his family had been slaughtered, but did that give him the right to kill vampires who hadn’t even have been turned at the time his parents and siblings had died? There had to be a better way to deliver justice—on both sides of this issue.

Sitting there wounded, in the dark, in the arms of a vampire, I came to a sort of epiphany. Well, an epiphany for a Templar, anyway. There was no good guy or bad guy in this thing. Both sides had made horrible decisions, and both were somewhat justified in their stance. This gray area was why our Order had backed away from society so long ago and become the obsolete caretakers of the Temple that we now were. Gray. And where there was gray, we could not judge.

I couldn’t be like that. But I also couldn’t pick sides in this war. There was no clear right or wrong, but there had to be a better way to resolve this than watching Russell and the vampires battle it out until Baltimore was painted red with blood.

“Too many were injured tonight.” Dario sighed. “I’m sorry about this, but I can’t sneak you out of here with an open wound. We’ve got so many hurt and hungry upstairs. Every vampire in the house would come running if they scented fresh blood.”

Dario’s words filtered through my thoughts. I felt him let go of my arms and sit up, pivoting me so I was sitting on his lap, resting my shoulder against his chest. Hands gently turned my head and cradled my jaw as he ran his tongue across the gash on my head.

It felt far more sensual than someone licking my scalp should have. The pain vanished immediately, and a warmth trickled through my veins. I heard myself sigh and I snuggled closer, wiggling my rear end. His arms tightened for a brief second before he released me and helped me stand.

I was pretty turned on right now and judging from the response I’d felt under my ass he was, too. It wasn’t anywhere near the blind lust I’d felt when he’d tried to enthrall me in the dragon bedroom. I felt happy and floating, like I’d just had a big glass of wine.

“Here.” I felt something thrust into my arms and wrinkled my nose as I realized it was the nasty blanket from the corner. Dario chuckled. “I sealed your wound, so don’t worry about germs. I just need you to cover your head with this and wrap it around you as best as you can to hide the smell of blood. We’re going to duck out the back door to my car in the alley.”

I’d worry about the fallout from this evening later. Right now I was just thrilled that Dario was helping me escape.

What price would he pay for his actions, though? Who was the vampire who’d locked me down in this cell as his midnight snack? I realized that I didn’t really know Dario’s position in the hierarchy of his
Balaj
. Yes, Leonora seemed to look to him as a senior member, but perhaps that was just due to his connection with me. Could he be punished for sneaking me out the back door? Would the other vampire lodge some kind of formal complaint against him? I reached out a hand to touch Dario’s arm, tracing my fingers along the curve of his muscles. Once we were out of here, I needed to arrange for some kind of protection for him.

But where? Would he ever be accepted into another
Balaj
? Would he become one of the family-less rogues that wandered the perimeter of the city?