AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So I walked inside the building to see what we were dealing with. Dana didn’t follow. She remained behind, drumming her hands against the hood of the van, staring determinedly out at the water.
The building—a harbor station—seemed to be one room, fairly small, with a raised area closer to the water and a deeper hollow in the back that had obviously been used for storage. The walls and floors were concrete—the floor so old and heavily used that it was ragged and worn to a dull brown.
As Balthazar sagged to the floor, Milos worked with the chains around his wrists, and then his arms flopped free. For one second, I felt hopeful. After all, if they were going to kill him, wouldn’t they have done it already?
They could’ve killed Balthazar during the battle, and I’d never have known.
The terror of that thought washed over me, but it was instantly replaced by dread. Milos wasn’t making Balthazar more comfortable; he was latching handcuffs around one of his wrists. While I watched, aghast, he latched the other cuff around the metal railing that surrounded the storage area. He then did the same with the other arm, so that Balthazar was bound with his hands above his head. His head lolled forward, but his body twitched slightly.
“He’s waking up,” said one of the hunters.
Milos walked toward a nearby bucket, one that seemed to have been placed beneath a leak in the roof. Water rippled inside.
“How about we help him with that?” Then he tossed the water, hard, onto Balthazar.
The water hit him and the concrete with a loud, wet slap that made me jump. Balthazar jerked his head upright, gasping and disoriented. At his first glimpse of the hunters in front of him, he pulled backward—before realizing that he was bound. Trapped. His face shifted from surprise to anger.
“Don’t like it when the odds change, do you?” Milos jeered.
Balthazar’s voice was slurred as he said, “Go to hell.”
“I believe that’s your team’s stomping grounds,” Milos said, “not mine.”
Balthazar was still dazed from his injuries. Vampires healed faster than humans, but it took a while to recover from something serious. Balthazar struggled to hold his head upright, and though his dark eyes were unfocused he was clearly trying to get an idea of where he was, what chances he might have to escape.
His eyes sought the door, and he saw me.
The force of his gaze hit me hard. Gripping the doorframe so I wouldn’t fall, I hoped desperately that he would understand. I’m not helping them, I’ll try to get you out of this, you have to hang on, Balthazar, please—
Balthazar’s eyes drifted from me to Milos and the other hunters who surrounded him. Then he ducked his head, as if he didn’t even want to meet my eyes.
For one second, I thought he was angry, but then I realized the truth. Balthazar was trying to hide the fact that we knew each other. Had the Black Cross hunters understood that—understood that I was, like him, a vampire—they would’ve chained me up, too. While I had completely failed to protect him, he was doing the only thing within his power to protect me.
“He’s still out of it,” one of the hunters said. “I say we give him a while to think over the situation he’s in. Come back and talk to him later.”
“Sounds about right,” Milos said. “I’ll stand guard.”
Should I stand guard, too? Make sure that nobody lost his temper and did something stupid? No, I decided, because I didn’t actually have any idea how to stop the guards from hurting Balthazar.
What I needed to do was find the one person who might know how to get us all out of this situation before it was too late: Lucas.
As I mutely followed Dana and the others around during the next hour or so, helping make up pallets for people to rest upon later, I learned two important things.
First, about twenty of the Black Cross hunters would end up staying here in a few old storage vaults that turned out to lie in the basement of the harbor station. There was actually a lot of room down there, but mostly that was used for weapons storage. I felt confident that, if I only stayed put, Lucas would find me. Since the other hunters would be in other locations all around the city, I figured that improved our chances of being able to help Balthazar. Better two against twenty than two against two hundred, right?
Second, we had to move fast. Because I soon heard their plan for Balthazar, and it was worse than I’d ever dreamed.
“Did you put him someplace where he’ll be in the sun, come dawn?” Eliza said, talking about Balthazar. She had arrived here only a few minutes after the rest of us and was inspecting the new rooms, while I meekly unfolded scratchy blankets in the far corner. “That’ll make it worse.”
“Not if he’s had blood lately,” somebody said. “And how long do you think a strapping guy like that goes without blood? I’m guessing a day or two tops. Besides, it’s bad enough for him tied up like that, and we can make it a whole lot worse.” In the corner of the room, Dana paused in her work like she might object, but she didn’t.
Eliza shrugged. “We need him able to talk. We’ve got to find out why they chose to attack now.”
I already knew, but confessing that would have left me chained to the wall beside Balthazar.
Finally, around 3 A.M., the last hunters to remain with our group staggered in. Raquel came through the door first, and she bounded into Dana’s arms like they’d been together for years instead of a couple of weeks. The smile on Raquel’s face was so brilliant that I would’ve been happy for her, if I could’ve forgotten the danger Balthazar was in.
Lucas and Kate walked in last. The flickering light from the one bulb in the room painted strange shadows on their faces. Kate seemed to have aged ten years in the past day. Her dark-gold hair, usually slicked back, was disheveled, and her expression was empty. With his hand around her forearm, Lucas gently guided her to one of the pallets. His jeans and T-shirt were smeared with blood that I knew wasn’t his own.
