Like Frankenstein’s monster, he lurched his way down the sidewalk. By the time they arrived at the end, she had to wrap her arm around his waist to help keep him steady. She should let him go and run; he’d never catch her in this condition, but even as she pondered it, she knew she couldn’t abandon him in such a way.
He’d hurt her, the fact he was a vampire was unnerving, but she was alive because of him. She couldn’t repay him by abandoning him while he was weak and drugged out of his mind. Her mind reeled at the complete insanity of helping a drugged-outvampirewalk down the street. Shit did not get more surreal than that.
Then another possibility hit her. Maybe she was the one hallucinating all this. Maybe they’d given her something when they took her, and she was on some kind of trip that made Wonderland look sane. Or maybe she’d hallucinated her capture and she was really at home, passed out in bed, and dreaming this.
However, no matter how vivid some of her dreams had been, she’d never experienced anything this real. And she was pretty sure she would have woken up the second he bit her.
“We have to…. We have to find someplace to stay… to… to hide,” Lucien said and hoped she understood his words.
His vision was getting smaller and smaller. He could barely see more than ten feet in front of him. The final woman’s blood helped dilute the drugs and alcohol in his system, but not enough to keep him going. His head kept falling before jerking up as he struggled against the pull of unconsciousness.
At the end of the road, he turned to the right, but he had no idea why. Blinking rapidly, he tried to push aside the effects of the drugs as he searched the street. He was no good to her right now. In fact, he was more of a detriment to her safety than a help, but he couldn’t tell her to run and hide. They would find her, and without him, she didn’t stand a chance.
She didn’t stand much of a chancewithhim either, but at least he could offer her some protection, and he had experience with what they were facing. She was like a babe in the woods when it came to the Savages.
He needed to sleep off the drugs; when he woke, he would be stronger, but until then, they were both extremely vulnerable. And soon, the Savages would start hunting them again.
They traversed a couple more streets that led them into more of a warehouse and business area of the city before coming across a chain-link fence surrounding hundreds of storage units. When he tipped his head back, he almost fell over, so he lowered it again.
When he staggered to the side, Callie braced her legs apart as she tried to support his weight. He was skin and bones but far heavier than she expected.
“We have to… to…fin… find a way in,” he slurred.
Callie searched the fence, but she didn’t see an opening, and spirals of barbed wire covered the top. “There is no way in, and there are cameras on some of the fence posts.”
“Stay away from them.”
“That might be impossible,” she muttered as she led him to the left.
She tried to keep them away from the cameras, but she had no idea if she was doing a good job of it or walking straight through the video feed of every one of them. The fence bordered the street until they arrived at an area where it ran along the back of a couple of large warehouses. When they turned the corner, an opening in the fence came into view, as did a guardhouse.
“There’s a guard up ahead,” she said.
Lucien had taken control of that woman’s mind while he fed on her, but she’d been mostly asleep and more malleable. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to control someone awake and capable of fighting against him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any other choice.
“Let’s talk to the guard,” he said.
“Yeah, fantastic idea; you’re talking so well now.”
If he were capable of doing so, he would have chuckled, but he barely felt capable of standing right now. Still, he gathered the scattered pieces of his mind and focused his attention on the guardhouse. He had to do this; it was the only way they would survive.
The guard looked up as they approached, set down his paper, and frowned at them over the edge of his glasses. His gray hair and lined face said this was most likely his retirement job, but the look on his face made it clear he wouldn’t take any shit from anyone.
The booth was tucked securely behind a rollaway section of the fence. It had a metal bottom, and plexiglass windows surrounding the top so the man could look out in all directions. Parked next to his booth was a golf cart, but Lucien didn’t see a car. The man had to have one somewhere.
“Are you okay?” the man asked Callie as he stared warily at Lucien.
“Yes,” Callie said.
“Isheokay?”
“I’m fine,” Lucien said as he focused his attention and power on the man. The effects of the drug still had such a powerful hold on him that he couldn’t tell if it was working, but he held the man’s eyes. “Let us in.”
The man blinked at him before laughing. That laughter broke through his drug haze and sent a bolt of fiery rage down his spine. He was tired of being weak and useless. He needed his strength and abilities back to keep her safe.
“Let us in,” he said more sharply.
The man’s laughter abruptly stopped; he blinked at Lucien before shaking his head as if he were trying to shake off Lucien’s words.
