The bars abruptly gave way beneath his weight. Unprepared for the sudden release, he stumbled forward and nearly hit the ground. He was stopped from doing so and jerked back when a bar snagged his jeans and sliced open the flesh around his ankle and calf.
Hands skimmed his back, but they weren’t her hands. With a sinking sensation, he realized the delay would be his death. It wouldnotbe the end of her.
Yanking her from his shoulder, he tore his skin further open as he jerked his jeans free of the bar. Blood spilled down his leg as he shoved her toward the beckoning rays of the sun. The woman cried out when she hit the ground on her ass and bounced toward the end of the tunnel. She came to a stop only feet away from the exit.
“Get in the sun!” he shouted at her.
Callie shook her head as she tried to figure out how she’d gone from hanging upside down to being thrown across the ground. Then his words pierced through her mind, and her heart lodged in her throat.
The sun! Freedom! Vampires hated sunlight, or at least that’s what so many things said anyway. And right now, she was willing to go with that myth as she’d always believed vampires were a myth too, until now.
On her hands and knees, she scrambled forward and threw herself into the day. Bursting out of the tunnel, she almost fell over the ledge running along the outside.
She blinked as she tried to get her bearings. Her eyes stung, and tears filled them as she remained on her hands and knees, staring down the rocky hill leading into a dry riverbed.
She clambered back before recalling that put her within arm’s length of the tunnel. Throwing herself forward, she clawed at the dirt beneath her and pulled herself up the pathway running along the rocky wall against her left side. Though her nails were short, one of them tore as it bent back.
Gritting her teeth, she rose and flattened her palms and back against the wall. She panted for breath and tried to control the riotous beat of her heart before she risked a peek back into the tunnel.
Straining to see, she spotted the man coming toward her, but before he made it to the end, those creatures pounced on him and brought him down. However, not all of them were content with their prize as some ran past him and toward her.
She ducked back from the entrance and turned to flee, but it wasn’t easy to run along the slippery, jagged rocks. It had rained overnight, and that rain had turned the surface of the stones into something akin to ice.
Her feet slipped, and she nearly went down, but she caught herself and pushed onward. She traversed twenty feet before she chanced a glance back. It felt like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over her head when she discovered one of the creatures following her.
She blinked at the smoke spiraling from it as she tried to understand if what she was seeing was real. However, the more she blinked, the more it remained. The thing wassmokingas it hunted her.
She couldn’t decide if she wanted to laugh or cry more as it closed in on her.
Lucien’s chains rattled as he kicked and punched at the Savages pulling and grasping at him but they provided enough room that he could fight with them on. He would not go back to that cell. He was weak, but they’d have to kill him before he ever allowed them to imprison him again.
Grasping the heads of two Savages, he grinned as he bashed them together. Bone gave way as the skulls caved in and their eyes bulged. He shoved the Savages away before turning over.
Clawing at the dirt, he rushed forward. One of his hands brushed against a broken piece of bar as a hand landed on his shoulder. Gripping the bar, he spun and plunged it straight through the vamp’s eye before yanking it free again. He turned it in his hand and used it to batter the temple of the next Savage coming at him.
His body thrummed with pleasure as he beat and maimed more Savages. It had been so long since he’d killed; he needed this release almost as much as he did blood. He relished the brutality he unleashed and the screams of his victims as he released the demon part of him.
Thiswas what he’d been born to do. He was a killer, and helovedit.
Staggering back from the crush of bodies, he used the foot-long section of bar to beat away the Savages pursuing him. He was almost to the end of the tunnel when hands clawed at his back.
Unwilling to tear his gaze away from the horde of assholes pursuing him, he twisted his head to discover that one of the vamps who chased after the woman had returned to the tunnel. The sun had probably driven it back inside, but the other Savage was not with it. Which meant it was still chasingher.
Lucien’s mouth went dry, and his hands constricted on the bar. He’d beat every last one of these things to death if that’s what it took to keep her safe. He twisted away from the clawing hands of the vamp and, ducking low, sank the bar into its stomach.
With a loud bellow, he lifted the Savage off the ground and ran toward the end of the tunnel. The Savage clawed at him over the top of the bar. Its fingers tearing into his arms shredded his skin, but he didn’t feel it as his pulse thundered in his ears.
Where was the woman? Had they done something to her? He’d make them pay if they had.
Rushing into the sun’s rays, he gave another angry shout as he threw the Savage away from him. It howled, and its skin blistered and smoked as its body bounced down the rocks to the culvert below.
The sound of rocks bouncing against rocks drew his attention to his toes hanging over the edge of the ditch. One more step and he would tumble down boulders and to the bottom of the fifteen-foot ravine where he would join the now flaming Savage.
When he threw himself away from the edge, hands grasped his arms and tried to pull him back into the tunnel. He tore free of them and lurched to the side where he plastered himself to the rocky wall running along the edge of the culvert.
The scrape of sneakers against stone drew his attention, and he looked up to discover the woman forty feet away from him. The Savage pursuing her was smoking, but it tolerated the sun better than the rest of its friends.
“Shit,” he whispered when he realized he was on the opposite side of the tunnel opening than them. He had to cross back in front of it to get to her.
