Vampire Beach Hunted (13 page)

‘You’re stepping on my foot,’ Brad complained to Van Dyke.

‘Give me a break, man, this is just like a storage closet or something. There’s no room,’ Van Dyke grumbled.

‘Quiet!’ Zach hissed. He eased the door open a tiny crack, and Jason could see a sliver of the corridor. The marching feet were practically on top of them now. Jason spotted a guy dressed in black, a nasty looking crossbow clutched in his hands. Another man followed, and another, all armed with crossbows.

‘Check the warehouse,’ a deep voice ordered. The three crossbow guards kept going, headed for the staircase, while a fourth big guy stepped into Jason’s line of sight and stopped. He rested his crossbow on his shoulder and pulled out a walkie-talkie. ‘No sightings in the office wing, Mr Norton,’ he said into the walkie, his deep voice echoing in the hallway, ‘but we’re checking upstairs and expect to apprehend the intruders soon.’

The walkie-talkie gave a beep and another voice crackled through. ‘Keep me posted.’

‘Roger.’ The guard holstered his walkie-talkie, gripped his crossbow, and marched off after the others.

‘We must’ve tripped an alarm when we opened the trap door,’ Zach said. ‘Dammit!’

‘They have crossbows,’ Jason added, the memory of Tamburo’s crossbow bolt flying toward him filling his mind. ‘They’re prepared for vampires.’

‘So they know we’re here, and they know what we are,’ Brad said, fear creeping into his voice.

Jason nodded, trying to ignore the growing pit of terror in his own stomach. ‘You guys? They have scientists, cells and guards with crossbows . . . What the hell kind of place is this?’

Fourteen

‘WHATEVER IT IS
. We have to move, and fast,’ Zach said. ‘Those guards went upstairs to search the warehouse for us, which means they’ll be back.’

‘That place is so empty, it will only take them two minutes to see that we’re not there,’ Van Dyke agreed.

‘There are only two doors on this hallway we haven’t checked,’ Jason said. ‘Then we hit an intersection with another hall.’

‘Brad and I will check the door on the right,’ Zach said. ‘Jason and Van Dyke, get the one on the left. Then we’ll turn down the new hallway to put some distance between ourselves and those guards.’

‘The lab coat guys went to the left,’ Jason told him.

‘Then we’ll follow them,’ Zach said. ‘Let’s move.’

He shoved open the door and they all took off at a run. Van Dyke reached the last door on the left, listened for a moment to see if there was anyone inside, then grabbed the handle and pulled. Jason threw himself into the room and took a quick look around. Stainless steel counters, an empty examination table and some lightboards on the wall.

‘Nothing here. Let’s go,’ he said, pushing past Van Dyke into the hallway.

Across the hall, Zach and Brad were exiting another door. Zach met Jason’s eye and shook his head.

Without breaking stride, Jason took off for the other hallway, the three vampires right behind him. He rounded the corner at a jog and glanced around. The fluorescent lights here had a weird lavender tinge to them, but otherwise the corridor was identical to the last one – white floors and walls and a series of unmarked steel doors.

Jason rushed forward, heading for the first door. But suddenly a high-pitched shriek split the air, pulsing in a way that made Jason’s head throb. There was something else in the noise, too, some kind of odd tone that made him instantly nauseous. He spun around to see Zach, Brad, and Van Dyke a few steps behind him, holding their ears in pain. All three of them were doubled over, and it was obvious that they were in much worse shape than Jason.

Super-hearing equals super-painful
, Jason realized.
And that weird sound is obviously meant to hurt vampires
.

He started back toward his friends just as the shrieking sound changed to a strange metallic clang.

Jason stopped in his tracks and looked up.

The ceiling was moving.
Collapsing
.

‘Look out!’ Zach yelled.

Jason leapt back just as a thick steel plate dropped from the ceiling like the blade of a guillotine. He fell onto his back, gasping in shock and relief. The thing had fallen less than an inch in front of him.

Jason scrambled to his feet and stared. Where his friends had stood two seconds ago was only a blank metal wall. For a split second, his brain couldn’t compute what had just happened. Then he hurled himself at the wall, pounding on it with his fists.

‘Zach! Brad!’ he yelled. ‘Van Dyke!’

Dimly, he heard pounding on the other side. ‘Freeman!’ Zach called, his voice muffled by the steel door. ‘We’re trapped in here. There are walls on both sides.’

‘I’m still free,’ Jason called. ‘How can I help?’

‘It’s all steel,’ Brad answered. ‘There’s no way out.’

‘Run, Freeman!’ Zach yelled. ‘You have to find Christopher.’

The high-pitched alarm was still blaring, and Jason felt his heart pounding along with it. The guards would be here any second, obviously. Jason turned and sprinted down the hall. He couldn’t get caught. He was Christopher’s only hope now.

I’m
everybody’s
only hope now
, a voice in his head whispered. Somehow, he had to find a way to rescue Christopher – and all of his friends.

‘Think, Jason,’ he ordered himself. He absolutely could not afford to be found. Which meant he needed to fit in here. Which meant . . . what?

Jason reached a doorway and grabbed the handle. Locked. He raced to the next one . . . it was open! He slipped inside the room and pulled the door shut. A quick scan of the room told him it was another office. Filing cabinet, desk, chair, lab coat . . . Lab coat! As soon as Jason saw the coat draped over the back of the chair, he knew what to do. Running through a secret underground facility looking like an intruder wasn’t going to work.

But walking confidently down the hallway dressed as if he worked here? Well, it was worth a shot.

He snatched the lab coat and slipped it on, glancing at the ID tag clipped to the pocket. ‘Bill Baldwin, hope you don’t mind,’ he muttered. Then he frowned, looking more closely. In the corner of the ID tag was a small logo – an H and a C, intertwined. ‘HemoCorp,’ Jason said, surprised. ‘Guess that pen in the van wasn’t stolen, after all.’

He opened the door and stepped back out into the hallway, then walked as fast as possible away from the steel wall holding his friends, his head spinning. HemoCorp . . . this place belonged to HemoCorp. What had Sienna said about that company – that it was a think-tank?

He came to another intersection of corridors. Without stopping, he turned left, his mind still on HemoCorp.

It doesn’t make sense
, Jason thought.
Why would a think-tank have a bunch of underground offices? Why would they have giant steel doors that drop from the ceiling? Why would they kidnap and experiment on vampires?

‘I think they’re a subsidiary of Medi-Life . . .’ Sienna’s voice rang in his memory.

Jason kept walking, forcing himself to think. Medi-Life was a drug company, one of the biggest and most successful. This place was huge and secret and filled with laboratory rooms, all with an obviously expensive security system. The guys guarding it were humans who seemed to have vampire strength. And in the van they’d found a pen from HemoCorp, a part of Medi-Life.

And a bottle of pills
, Jason remembered suddenly. What did those pills have to do with it all? Could this entire place be funded by Medi-Life?

All of a sudden, Jason felt a surge of fear so overwhelming that he stopped walking. Stopped even thinking. This was bigger than Van Dyke or Christopher. It was bigger than some human guys who were freakishly strong. Zach, Brad and Van Dyke hadn’t just been captured by some little operation with a vendetta against vampires. They’d been taken by a huge company with seemingly unlimited resources. A company that was experimenting on vampires . . . and Jason had no idea why. But the ideas that ran through his head weren’t comforting.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ A voice broke into Jason’s thoughts.

‘I heard there was some kind of break-in.’ Two women in lab coats were walking toward him, speaking in hushed voices.

Jason began walking again, trying to shake off his fears. He couldn’t get caught, so he had to get past these workers without arousing suspicion. He kept his eyes on the ground and walked quickly down the hall, not even glancing in their direction.

The women passed him and disappeared around the corner, and Jason breathed a sigh of relief.

He forced himself to focus. The main thing right now was to find Christopher and get him out of here. Freaking out about who was behind it all wasn’t going to help anybody. For the first time, Jason took a good look around and realized that this corridor wasn’t the same as the others he’d been in. This one was narrower, darker,
older
. The lights overhead were dim, and the steel doors in the wall were solid, with no windows.

The hallway felt damp, more like a basement than like the scientific labyrinth he’d been in.
Van Dyke said his cell felt cold and damp, like a warehouse
, Jason remembered. Maybe he’d looped back around under the warehouse again.

Tap, tap, tap.

Jason frowned, listening. The sound was muffled, like a hammer tapping in an underground mine.

Bang, bang, bang.

It was louder now, a little, but Jason still couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. He glanced behind him. The narrow hallway was empty.

Tap, tap, tap.

Jason hesitated, then kept walking forward. It looked as if the hall ended about fifty feet away. The hammering sound was probably just the HemoCorp people – or the Medi-Life people – doing construction on their big underground lab. Other than this hallway, everything in the place screamed ‘new’.

Tap, tap, tap. Bang, bang, bang! Tap, tap, tap.

Jason stopped. That didn’t really sound like construction hammering. It sounded like a pattern – a familiar pattern.

Tap, tap, tap. Bang, bang, bang! Tap, tap, tap.

‘It can’t be,’ Jason gasped.

Tap, tap, tap. Bang, bang, bang! Tap, tap, tap.

It was – he was sure of it – Morse Code. Just like Adam had shown him at Brad’s party. Three dots, three dashes, three dots: SOS. Somebody was asking for help!

Jason veered over to the nearest steel door. He pulled on it, but it was locked. He pressed his ear against the cold metal, and waited.

Tap, tap, tap. Bang, bang, bang! Tap, tap, tap.

The sound wasn’t coming from this door. Jason moved to the next one, and listened. Then the next.

Tap, tap, tap. Bang, bang, bang! Tap, tap, tap.

This time, the banging was louder, and Jason thought he could feel the tiniest reverberation in the steel of the door. He pulled on it. Locked.

‘Christopher?’ he called.

Silence.

‘Were you banging on the door?’ Jason asked.

‘There’s nothing you can do to me, you know. I saw
Old Boy
, so I’m down with all the torture methods you can come up with!’ a voice called from inside.

Jason gaped at the closed door. That wasn’t Christopher. It couldn’t be – because it was Adam.

That’s impossible
, Jason thought.
How did they get a hold of him?
Suddenly a bolt of fear shot through him. If these people had grabbed Adam, did that mean they were going after all of Jason’s friends? Could they have Sienna, too?

‘Adam!’ Jason yelled. ‘Are you alone in there?’

‘Jason?’ Adam’s voice called. ‘Is that you? I’m alone.’

‘Hang on.’ Jason grabbed the door handle again and pulled with all his strength. It didn’t budge. Forcing himself to calm down, he studied the door. It was thick, and made of steel, and there was no way he could kick it down. He doubted even the vampires, with their super-strength, could knock out a door like this.

A tiny, flashing light caught Jason’s eye. Set into the wall next to the door was a small sensor pad. It had two lights, red and green. And the red light was flashing.

‘It can’t be that easy,’ Jason said. He glanced down at the ID badge on his stolen lab coat. Jason flipped the badge over. There was a magnetic strip along the back. ‘Bill Baldwin, let’s hope you have high-security clearance.’ He pressed the magnetic strip to the sensor pad on the wall.

The light switched from red to green, and the heavy door gave out a distinctive
click
.

Before Jason could even move, Adam shoved the door open and leapt out into the hallway. He threw his arms around Jason.

‘I knew you’d come!’ he cried. ‘I heard people talking about intruders in the hallway, and I figured it had to be you. No one else would be crazy enough to try to infiltrate a place like this!’

Jason slapped his friend on the back and released him. ‘Glad I could help,’ he said, smiling. ‘Although I wasn’t actually here for you.’ He studied Adam’s face. The dude looked even paler than usual, and he was obviously shaken up, in spite of his joking behavior. ‘You OK? I’m glad I was able to get you out so fast. How did they catch you?’

‘I was on my way to Brianna’s friend’s place, and she’s down in one of those winding canyons, you know? So all of a sudden, I see a tree branch down over the road. Which is weird, because it hasn’t rained in months and there’s no wind or anything. But whatever, the branch is blocking the road. So I get out to move it, and somebody jumps me from behind.’

Jason just stared at him. ‘Huh?’ he asked.

‘I know,’ Adam said. ‘What do they want with me? Listen, how long have I been here? Is Brianna OK?’

Jason frowned. ‘Wait. Why were you going to Brianna’s friend’s house? I thought you were heading back to her mother’s office with the blueprints.’

Now Adam stared at Jason. ‘What blueprints?’

‘The schematics. For the warehouse,’ Jason said. ‘Or were you meeting Brianna at her friend’s?’

‘No, I was going to pick her up, remember?’ Adam replied. ‘For the barbecue at Van Dyke’s place.’