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Her elbows bent at the pressure of meeting flesh, muscles, and bones. Blood splattered on one side of her face. He snapped at her, scarlet blood dripping out from his mouth. The sight transfixed her for one second, and then she screamed.
Why wasn’t he dead? Just die. Die right now. Then three heartbeats later, he collapsed on her legs.
Nina shoved him off and climbed over the gurney. Every limb hurt, and though her mind hollered get out, an idea had sparked from Kara’s words. No supernatural being nor any experimental beasts can save him.
Kara was a bloody mess, red pooled around her head. Nina had worried one of the soldiers might try to hurt her, but she never expected it to be Kara. She genuinely liked her, the only semblance of a friend she had. Kara’s betrayal hurt more than she wanted to admit.
Nina could run, but where would she go? She had no family. No nearby relatives. She owed Victus everything. And if Asmodeus came to the vampire lair, they were all doomed.
The people, her people too, who lived underground only wanted to live a normal life in peace. What she too wanted. And if she could make a difference in this war, she would not hold back.
Nina rose, wiped the blood off her face with one swipe from the hem of her dress, and ignored the bloodstain. Then she grabbed a thick, big metal key from a drawer inside her lab room and ran toward the dungeons where the experimental beasts were held captive.
Chapter Forty-One
Creature Friends
Nina
Nina trudged along the dark and damp tunnel, her grip tight on the metal key. As she passed the torchlights, her shadow danced on the wall, until she reached a large chamber with a thick steel door embedded with hematite crystals. Beyond the doors, secure stables housed the experimental creatures Nina had accidentally created.
She shoved the metal key in the hole and turned it with a click, then she pushed to enter and shoved the key inside her bloody dress pocket. Metal groaned against the stone floor and the pungent stench of blood hung in the air. She attempted to cover her nose with her thumb and forefinger, but it was of no help.
More metal doors lined the hallway on either side of her. Frenzied beasts threw themselves against the doors. Nina jolted back, shuddering and folding her arms together.
The beasts scented Joseph’s blood and wanted out. Wanted to eat her. But the hematite crystal doors kept their growls from penetrating through and sealed them in. Nina’s fear lessened though her heart pounded and goose bumps rose.
When Victus visited the other vampire royals, Markane and Abacus would take out a beast on the verge of death from the disease and put it against a prisoner—thieves, rapists, and murderers—for entertainment. The two Eva had fought had only a few days left to live. The vabies had entered their organs.
Upon Victus’s request to find a cure for vabies, the dosage she had used from angel, human, and demon blood had created some hideous creatures from these vampires.
Nina didn’t mean for the vampires with vabies to become giants. Some sprouted skeletal wings with no feathers, or even grew rows of canines. But instead of euthanizing them, Victus had them locked up. He had said one day they might come of use against Asmodeus. How right he was.
She wouldn’t set them all free, but she would release a few that she could control with her sweet motherly voice. After all, she made them and they trusted her.
Nina opened the fifth metal door, revealing a massive room with three large containers set to the back wall where the groundskeeper dumped food through the small latched door. Well, not food, but pig’s or cow’s blood. Never human blood, by Victus’s order.
“Hawk. Willa. Licker. It’s me, Nina.” She opened the door wider, and stepped to the side where the torchlight highlighted her.
Nina had often visited them, but it had been days. Though the vampires turning into beasts wasn’t her fault, she felt responsible for she had no idea what she was doing.
If only her father was alive. He would have found a cure, she was sure of it. She loathed the vampires who had given themselves over to savagery, but not all were that way.
By some miracle, though these three went through a physical transformation, they had preserved their mental facilities. Nina wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, for they knew what they had become.
Nina raised her hand in greeting to the hairy creatures five times taller than her. They were lazily crouched in a corner, but leaped up.
Hawk's oversized canines extended past his lower lip as he tried to smile. But Nina saw beyond his imperfection to his handsome face and the sweetness she recalled before he got vabies. He fell to his knees and sniffed her, and those once beautiful blue eyes that had turned inky gazed upon her with longing, then widened.
“What happened to you, princess?” His voice sounded deep, hoarse, like something scary from a nightmare, but she wasn’t frightened.
Heat flushed her face as she smiled back at him and she couldn’t lie to him about the blood on her dress and likely spotted throughout her hair.
“I’ll explain later.” Nina brushed it off like it was no big deal.
Willa marched toward her with six legs, her body round like a potato but segmented like a spider, and her striking features still visible and not of a monster. Next to Willa, Licker. Since Nina didn’t know his name, she’d given him a nickname.
Licker’s tongue hung past his chest and he liked to … his tongue swiped her face once and before he did it again, Nina commanded him to stop.
