Vampire Beach Hunted (12 page)

‘I know,’ Jason said. ‘And those are the guys holding Christopher hostage. That’s why we’ve got to save him.’

‘Agreed. But maybe you should just let the vampires handle this,’ Adam argued. ‘They can take the beatings and be better in an hour. You can’t.’

‘I appreciate the concern,’ Jason said honestly. ‘But they’re my friends. I can’t let them do this alone.’

‘OK.’ Adam climbed onto his Vespa. ‘But Jason . . . don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Thirteen

‘WHAT DO YOU
think?’ Brad asked. They were hiding behind the same stand of trees as last night, and the warehouse looked just the same – except that now there was a guard standing under the pale yellow security light.

‘Is that a gun?’ Van Dyke asked.

‘I don’t think so.’ Zach squinted into the darkness. ‘It’s definitely a weapon, though.’

‘Guess we scared them last night,’ Van Dyke said, ‘even if we didn’t hurt them.’

‘I only see the one guard,’ Jason put in. ‘As long as he doesn’t notice us, it should be fine.’

‘Yeah, we’ve been watching for fifteen minutes. If they had anyone else patrolling, we would’ve seen them by now,’ Zach said. ‘Let’s move.’

They moved stealthily down the hillside. Jason could hardly believe how silent the vampires’ movements were. Watching Zach and Van Dyke ahead of him, he might almost have thought they were shadows. When they reached the driveway, Zach stopped. He pointed to the right, where the small parking area curved around the warehouse. Between the building and the steep hillside there was only a space of about twenty feet.

Jason frowned. They had to circle around that way to get to the air vent. Unfortunately, that meant crossing directly in front of the guard.

‘We have to take him out,’ Brad whispered. ‘There’s no other way.’

‘Adam says that when he’s writing a screenplay, the simplest solution is usually the best,’ Jason whispered.

‘Meaning?’ Zach asked.

‘Oldest trick in the book,’ Jason said. ‘We throw something over to the left, the guard turns to check it out, and we run by on the right.’

‘Seriously?’ Even in a whisper, Jason could hear the doubt in Van Dyke’s voice.

‘It’s worth a shot,’ Jason said. ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll try to take him down before he raises the alarm. But that’s risky.’

‘I agree. I’ll do it,’ Zach said. He glanced around, then grabbed a sizeable tree branch lying on the ground. With a simple flick of his wrist, he sent it flying so far through the air that it crashed into the warehouse at the opposite end from where they were crouched.

The sound was loud in the silence. The guard jumped, then jogged over to check it out.

‘Go, go, go!’ Jason whispered frantically.

They all took off running, straight past the yellow-lit door and around the corner of the building to the right. Jason flattened himself against the wall and held his breath. Five seconds . . . ten seconds . . .

‘Is he coming?’ Brad’s whisper was so low that Jason could barely hear him.

Zach, closest to the corner, inched along the wall until he was at the end. He listened for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Let’s get moving.’

They moved down the building, searching for the air vent. Finally Jason shook his head in frustration. ‘We should’ve seen it already. We’re almost to the end and the schematic showed the vent right in the middle of the north side.’

‘I see it,’ Brad replied suddenly.

They all turned to him in surprise.

‘Look up,’ he added.

Jason looked. Sure enough, there was a darker square in the dark wall –
fifteen feet up
in the dark wall.

‘Huh,’ Van Dyke said. ‘I didn’t notice that on the blueprints.’

‘Whatever,’ Zach replied. ‘We’ll just have to jump up.’

‘Um, guys,’ Jason told them. ‘Not all of us can actually jump that high. Sorry.’

‘Right,’ Brad said. ‘I’ll give you a boost.’ He shot Jason a teasing grin, and Jason rolled his eyes.

‘You’re just afraid to go first,’ he joked, putting his foot into Brad’s cupped hands. Brad’s version of a boost practically catapulted Jason into the air.
Sometimes these vampires don’t realize their own strength
, he thought.
Or maybe Brad’s just messing with me
.

‘There’s a grate,’ he called down as quietly as possible. ‘Hold me steady.’ He dug his fingers underneath the metal frame and tugged with all his strength. The grate gave way with a pop, and Jason pulled it all the way off. He handed it down to Zach, who put it on the ground silently.

Jason stuck his arms into the vent and pulled himself up and inside, crawling forward so that the vampires would have room to get in behind him. He heard Brad jump up to the edge and pull himself up, then Van Dyke. Zach brought up the rear.

Jason crawled forward as quickly as possible. It wasn’t easy, as the vent was smaller than Adam had thought it would be, and Jason had to pull himself along combat-style on his stomach. He hoped he wasn’t going too slowly for the vampires. They could probably combat crawl with superhuman speed, too. But nobody said anything and Jason decided not to worry about it. He’d been with these guys in bad situations before, and they’d never complained.

‘We’re here,’ he whispered back when he saw another grate in the floor of the vent up ahead. There was some dim reddish light coming through it. Jason peered at the metal up close and realized that this grate was attached on the other side. ‘Piece of cake,’ he muttered, pushing it down. It popped out of the vent and began to fall into the room. Jason caught it by one corner to keep it from crashing onto the floor below. He pulled the grating up into the vent and put it on the other side of the hole.

Cautiously, Jason stuck his head down through the opening. The vent was attached to the ceiling in here, and the floor was lost in darkness below. The red light came from an ‘Exit’ sign hanging over a doorway in the wall to the far left.
Probably the door with the guard outside
, Jason thought.

Getting down wasn’t going to be fun. The air vent was too narrow to turn around in, so Jason eased himself over to the other side of the opening on his stomach, then let his feet drop through. He scooted down until his body hung from the vent with only his arms and head still inside.

‘It’s a long drop,’ he muttered.

‘I’ll lower you,’ Brad said. He grabbed Jason by the wrists and leant through the opening, lowering Jason another few feet down. Jason took a deep breath, nodded at Brad, then dropped. He fell through the air for a moment, then hit the concrete floor – hard. But Jason was ready for it. He went immediately into a roll, then jumped to his feet. The fall had been jarring, but nothing was broken. Still, watching as Brad, Van Dyke and Zach jumped down and landed lightly on their feet, Jason couldn’t help being a tiny bit jealous of their vampire super-abilities!

Zach glanced around. ‘What a dump!’ he murmured.

Jason took it in. The warehouse was mostly one big room, empty except for a few trolleys for moving stock around. The only light came from the ‘Exit’ sign and a few windows high up in the walls that let in some moonlight from outside. A dark doorway was cut into one wall.

‘Does this look familiar?’ Jason asked Van Dyke, keeping his voice low.

‘No,’ Van Dyke said shortly. ‘But I know for sure that the guys here last night were the same guys that were holding me captive. I’d know that New Yorker’s voice anywhere.’

‘The place is empty, though,’ Jason pointed out. ‘You couldn’t really hold prisoners in here. You said you were in a cell, right, Van Dyke?’

Van Dyke nodded.

‘Then it can’t have been in here,’ Zach said. ‘Let’s see where that door goes.’ He led the way over to the darkened doorway and stepped through. Jason and the others followed. The door led to a hallway that ran the length of the warehouse and ended in another outside door marked with an ‘Exit’ sign.

‘It’s a dead end,’ Brad said, frustrated.

‘No, it’s not.’ Jason felt a thrill of excitement run through him as he pointed to the floor five feet in front of him. ‘There’s a trap door.’

The other guys stared at it. ‘Nice work, Freeman,’ Zach said quietly. ‘The cells must be underground.’

Jason stalked over and tugged on the steel handle. It didn’t budge. He tried again. Nothing. ‘It’s bolted shut,’ he said. ‘We didn’t bring any tools.’

‘Back up,’ Zach said. He grabbed the handle and jerked it straight up. The entire steel door flew up, its hinges busted. Zach put it down next to his feet.

‘Oh, right, you don’t need tools,’ Jason said wryly.

‘Stairs,’ Van Dyke announced, peering into the hole. ‘They look pretty rickety. Go slow.’ He stepped down into the darkness, Brad following him. When it was Jason’s turn, he put his foot gently on the wooden step, feeling it give way a little bit under his weight. He got down about five steps before Zach climbed in behind him, pulling the trap door back over the opening to cover their tracks.

Jason climbed down another few steps in darkness. They had flashlights with them, but everyone had agreed they were only to be used in emergencies. Flashlights were a sure way of getting noticed in the dark.

‘I hear something,’ Brad’s voice came softly from below.

Jason listened. ‘Me too,’ he whispered. ‘Sort of a . . . buzzing noise.’

‘Right. A hum,’ Van Dyke put in. ‘It’s coming from the bottom.’

His voice sounded strange, but in the darkness Jason couldn’t see Van Dyke’s face to tell if he was all right. ‘Do you . . . do you recognize that sound?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. I think so.’ Van Dyke’s voice shook.

‘I can’t see a thing,’ Brad complained.

‘I’m at the bottom,’ Van Dyke replied in a loud whisper. ‘There’s light down here.’

Brad climbed down, then Jason. As he got lower, the ambient noise became louder. When he got to the bottom, he stopped to wait for Zach. He’d been expecting a basement cut out of the rock of the hillside, something dank and rough. But the walls here were smooth concrete. And, just like Van Dyke had said, there was light coming from further down the passageway. It flickered blue and white.

‘The light’s coming from round the corner,’ Brad said. ‘That’s why it doesn’t shine up here.’

‘Go slowly,’ Zach told them. ‘If they built prisoner cells down here, there are probably guards. And the buzzing sound could be a security system.’

They inched up to the end of the concrete wall, then peered around the corner. Jason drew in a breath, shocked.

It wasn’t a small hallway with a couple of rough-hewn cells. It was a wide, sanitary-looking white corridor with closed steel doors on either side, fluorescent tube lighting overhead, and polished linoleum floors. The hall stretched out so far in front of them that Jason couldn’t even see the end of it. He did see another corridor intersecting with it about a hundred feet away, though. The place was huge.

‘What the hell?’ Van Dyke asked.

‘It looks like an office building,’ Brad said, confused.

‘An office building out of some sort of Bond movie,’ Jason replied. ‘Adam should be here.’

‘Does this look familiar?’ Zach asked Van Dyke.

‘No. They had me blindfolded a lot. But that noise . . .’ Van Dyke shook his head and Jason could tell he was freaked out. He shook it off and peered around. ‘This place looks big. I have no idea which way to go to find Christopher.’

‘Then there’s only one thing to do,’ Zach said. ‘Start here and look behind every door until we find him.’

‘That could take hours,’ Jason said. ‘Should we split up?’

‘Could be dangerous,’ Brad replied.

‘Let’s stick together for now,’ Zach decided. He stepped out into the white hallway and moved swiftly to the first door. He peered through the window in the door and turned back. ‘That’s just an office. Hopefully a lot of these doors will be like that and we can rule them out quickly.’

‘Yeah, because when we find the prisoner cells, it will be obvious,’ Van Dyke said grimly. ‘Believe me, they weren’t like this. I remember it being dark all the time.’

Jason glanced into the next door window. A desk, a filing cabinet and a white board on the wall. ‘Another office.’

‘This door has no window,’ Brad said from ten feet further down the hall. ‘And it’s locked.’

‘That shouldn’t stop us,’ Zach told him, reaching for the door handle. Before he could even touch it, the handle jerked down and the door began to open. Zach sprang away, and they all sprinted back to the dark staircase they’d come from.

Jason threw himself against the wall, then inched out slowly until he could see down the white corridor. Two men had come out of the door and were busy locking it again. They both wore crisp white lab coats, and one of them carried a clipboard. When the door was locked, they headed down the hall without even a glance toward the hall with the staircase. Jason watched until they turned left down the other hallway.

‘They’re gone,’ Jason reported to his friends. ‘They were dressed like lab technicians.’

‘Maybe they were the ones doing experiments on me,’ Van Dyke growled.

‘Let’s find Christopher.’ Brad stepped back out in the corridor and they all moved quickly to the locked steel door. With a quick jerk on the handle, Brad broke the lock and pulled the door open. Inside was an examination table and a stainless steel counter, but no vampire prisoner.

‘Keep moving,’ Zach said. He led them back out into the corridor. The next door was on the other side of the hallway – another empty exam room. Zach went to the next door and reached for the handle. As Jason walked over to check out the one opposite, a tinny-sounding voice crackled through the air, gradually getting louder as if it was moving towards him.

‘. . . eye out for intruders,’ it was saying. ‘Four males, possibly dangerous.’

‘That’s a walkie-talkie,’ Jason whispered frantically to his friends. ‘They know we’re here!’

As he spoke, he became aware of the sound of approaching footsteps – footsteps moving in unison, as if an army unit were marching toward him.

‘In here!’ Zach called, yanking open his door and frantically gesturing them inside. Jason rushed in with Brad and Van Dyke, and Zach pulled the door closed behind them.