Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (34 page)

I threw myself at the two of them, wrapping my arms around Griff. The vampire seemed to think I was trying to pull my assistant free and I heard a rough dark laugh escape him, amused by my futility. He stopped laughing, however, when he realised I was just trying to get a decent angle on him.

I slammed the second syringe into his thigh as hard as I could.

Shocked, the vampire jerked away from me, twirling Griff through the air like a ballroom dancer. His face came up from my assistant’s torn neck, suddenly horrified. I scrabbled backwards, trying to put some distance between us before he exploded.

An exemplary exothermic reaction, I would later think. At the time, all I did was shield my face from butchered vampire chunks flying through the air and watch Griff as he was thrown by the blast across the room. He skittered along the floor and came to rest against the wall, winded and grabbing for his neck, drenched from head to foot in vampire juice – but most importantly, alive.

Allesandro’s hand gripped my arm from out of nowhere and hauled me to my feet. I hadn’t even realised he was close to me.

“Move,” he said. “We have to go!”

“But Griff!”

I tried to shake him off. I looked back to see Oscar also, still a crumpled heap. I couldn’t leave them here.

“They don’t want Griff, they want
you
! They can’t complete the ritual without you.”

Allesandro thrust me towards the door, following close behind.

I heard Gio screaming obscenities behind us. Allesandro has left him bloody on the floor, but Gio was older and stronger, and would not stay down for long.

We ran.

The corridor which I had been marched down earlier now seemed nightmarishly long as we raced back down it, heading towards the elevator.

“How … how are you here?” I managed, still winded from the exploding knife-happy goon and struggling to keep up with the vampire. “And Griff? What the fuck? I told you not to follow us!”

“I know,” he glanced down at me. “I didn’t listen.”

He hauled me through the doorway and into the long corridor beyond it. The red lights flicked by us as we ran, as though the air was misted with blood.

“I made a bit of a mess upstairs,” he said. “I didn’t know where you were, so I went to your lab. Lucy let me in. Even deactivated the ultraviolet corridor for me. Your team had no idea what had happened upstairs but I could follow your scent. Your boy wanted to come too. We took a couple of guns from the humans in the lobby.”

“You killed them?” I asked. “Gio’s Hired guns?”

“They were only human, it wasn’t difficult. It’s the ones behind us that are the problem.”

The elevator was in sight. I glanced back over my shoulder.

They were after us. Jessica, like a Greek fury, was tearing along the corridor, her face contorted with rage. We had ruined their resurrection. Their great leader lay decomposing at the feet of the Bonewalker. I had the very certain notion that if Jessica got hold of me, she would tear my head clean off, carry it back to the chamber, and shake my teeth out onto the floor like loose change.

When I looked forward again, my brain could hardly register what I saw. The elevator door was open and Lucy, who loved vampires but was too squeamish to clean up exploding rats, was standing inside, her foot holding the door for us. She looked terrified.

Allesandro practically lifted me up and ran with me the last few yards. We threw ourselves into the lift and Lucy swiped for the doors to close.

They slid shut with agonising slowness as Jessica raced for us, covering the corridor with inhuman speed. I almost thought we made it but as the last sliver of space closed, white fingers thrust into the gap and began to force the protesting doors back open.

Allesandro pushed Lucy and me behind him, crushing us up against the wall of the lift, using himself as a barrier between us and the furious vampire tearing the doors open like tinfoil. Jessica’s face appeared. She looked feral, her fangs bared, her eyes wide and alarming.

“You fucking traitor!” she screamed at Allesandro. “You bring shame on the clan, on all of us! You filthy human-loving Judas! Give me the bitch!”

She was trying to force herself into the lift with us. Lucy screamed behind me. I didn’t blame her. Jessica was like a foaming snapping dog, any pretence to humanity lost in her anger and desperation to reach me.

“You’re a worm, Allesandro! A traitor to your own kind! You’re worse than the humans you bow to!”

His hand reached back to mine, grabbing the final dart syringe from between my fingers. I had forgotten I even had it. Bringing it up swiftly, he grabbed the top of Jessica’s dark hair in one hand and with the other, he rammed the dart into her wide, gnashing mouth.

“Jessica,” he said, “shut the fuck up.”

It lodged in her throat. She gagged in surprise, pulling herself away, falling backwards onto the floor of the corridor outside. As the doors finally slid shut, I glimpsed Gio appear round the corner. He looked as beat up from his tussle with Allesandro as my vampire did, but was staggering along the corridor towards us, blind fury on his face.

The doors closed and we heard a muffled, wet thump, as though someone had thrown a bucket of pasta against the other side of the doors.

That would be Jessica and her explosive temper. I heard Gio scream with fury, and then the lift was ascending.

“I’ve called Cabal,” Lucy stammered, “and the police, and the fire brigade. I wasn’t sure who else to call. Where’s Griff? What’s happening?”

“How did you all even get down here?” I asked breathlessly.

Bits of vampire were dripping in my hair. I was way past caring.

“Gio opened all levels,” Allesandro said. “Was that the
Minister
stood down there?”

I looked up at him, noticing for the first time how damaged he was. Gio had done a class one vampiric number on his face. One eye was swollen shut and already blackening.

“Yes,” I said, getting my breath back, “only he’s not really, he’s just a ghoul. It was Gio playing puppet master from the get go. Oh, and he used to be Rutheridge. That makes a full house. Five sinners, right? Told you they already had him somehow.”

In the crazed adrenalin of the moment, I grinned up at him. In return, the vampire brushed some lumpy gunk from my shoulder in what might have been an affectionate manner had it not been so gross. Something fell from my shoulder to the floor with a plop.

“Wait,” I looked to Lucy. “Gio opened
all
levels?”

She nodded, still looking shell shocked. I jabbed the button for Level 10.

“You can’t hide from them,” Allesandro said. “They’ll follow your scent.”

“I’m not hiding,” I said.

The elevator let us out on the Military Applications floor. I left Lucy inside, making her promise to go straight up to the atrium and get the hell out of the building. The police would be here any minute, Cabal, backup. She nodded frantically and continued upwards.

Allesandro refused to go with her. He followed me along the cell block corridor, with its heavy metal doors on either side.

“Still protecting your investment?” I asked.

I fired up a workstation in the semi-circular area where I had discovered some of Cabal’s dark secrets the last time I ventured down here.

“Still saving your sorry arse,” he said, but he was smiling. “What are you doing? They’ll be coming for you.”

I logged on to the workstation as Trevelyan and accessed the file I wanted. I knew we only had seconds before Gio reached us. I searched for the door number I was looking for. Each cell faced another. The cell opposite the one which interested me was empty. Perfect. I unlocked it, hearing it whoosh open behind us.

Then I told Allesandro what to do.

When the lift pinged open several seconds later, Gio stepped from it looking like a demon from Hell. His clothes were ripped and shredded from his fight with Allesandro. His face was torn and bruised, his hair was sticking up all over like a scarecrow, but his eyes were bright and shining. I felt his presence roar down the long corridor to where I stood alone at the workstations.

I was caught like a rabbit in headlights.

He bared his fangs at me in a snarl, his white hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He was breathing heavily.

“Found you,” he growled. “Did you really think you could get away from me
again
, you difficult little bitch?”

I didn’t move. The only way off this level was through him, back through the elevator and out of the pit.

“You killed my people,” he spat. “Helena, Jessica … they had been with me for longer than your pathetic human mind can conceive. Amano and Christopher, they were brothers. I brought them into the clan myself. You just can’t stop, can you? You can’t stop killing my kind!”

“Says the psychopath trying to start the apocalypse,” I replied.

I hadn’t moved away from the workstation, I stood with my back to it, facing the vampire along the corridor.

He started towards me slowly, limping. He was in no hurry. He could see I had nowhere to run.

“I want vengeance,” he hissed. “Justice! I want your kind to pay the price for what you did, for bringing this world to its knees!”

He advanced, passing doors, coming ever closer to me. I felt his mind begin to push into mine.

“I will drag you back down there, Doctor, and we will
finish
this!”

His voice was inside my mind as he passed in front of door number four.

“Gio,” I said. “It
is
finished. Stop living in the past. In fact, do me a favour, stop living altogether.”

My hand found the screen behind me and I hit the button I had set up in anticipation. No observation this time. This time I wanted interaction.

The metal door to Gio’s left whooshed open, startling him. With a frown he turned his head to peer into the room. No plate glass barrier this time, you fucker.

My hands found the screen behind me again and door three, set in the opposite wall, also opened. From this empty cell, Allesandro erupted like a demonic jack in the box. He blindsided Gio, crashing into his shoulder at full force. Taken by surprise, Gio lost his footing and flew headlong into cell four landing sprawling on the tiles as Allesandro scrambled backwards.

I whirled at the workstation, my fingers flying over the keys. The safety glass barrier slid swiftly closed, sealing Gio in. I heard him roar with anger as he got to his feet within the cell.

I raced back along the corridor to where Allesandro waited and, standing side by side, we peered within. Gio threw himself against the glass, which shuddered, but did not break. His eyes were wild, he was practically foaming at the mouth.

“Open this now! Open this fucking door!”

He screamed angrily, so loud that his voice seemed to tear. He threw his fists against the glass in furious blows though the sound was muffled.

“Do you really think you can keep me here? That I won’t get out? I will tear you both apart! There is nowhere you can run that I won’t find you!” he bellowed.

“We’re not going anywhere,” I said grimly, shaking.

Allesandro and I stood in the corridor staring into the cell, I was aware we were both liberally splattered with dripping vampire chunks.

In his desperate fury, Gio hadn’t noticed the figure huddled behind him in the corner of the small room, which now began to stir, slowly unfolding from its crouch. It growled, deep and low in the darkness of the cell.

Gio heard the growl. He stopped attacking the glass and turned to see the Pale standing slowly behind him. Its smooth grey skin damp with fever, it regarded him curiously with its black on black eyes, its head tilted enquiringly on one side. Its mouth was a deathly grin, as though it saw the joke that Gio didn’t.

The vampire looked back to us. The fury previously frozen on his face had been replaced with shock and fear.

“You were a terrible clan master, Gio,” Allesandro said. “Tassoni would have been
ashamed
of you.”

He leaned close to the glass.

“I will be better.”

“You don’t have much luck with my family, do you?” I said to the trapped vampire. “My father ruined your world and I’ve been a difficult bitch. Well, now you get to meet my half-brother.”

I managed a humourless smile. My voice was thick in my throat.

“Enjoy your family time.”

Gio opened his mouth to speak, his eyes wide and bloodshot, but the Pale leapt.

We stood and watched, Allesandro and I, like visitors at an aquarium. It wasn’t pleasant. It took a long time. Gio was strong and he fought back but the Pale was stronger than his kind or mine. We made them that way, after all.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, it was quiet and still in the cell. We couldn’t really see much anymore anyway. The glass was too smeared.

The heavy metal door finally slid shut with a definite and very ultimate thud. Observation over.