Page 122 of Slayer

Luna sidled up next to me, daggers in each hand. “How do you feel?”

“Like I wanna tear these bastards in half and burn them,” I growled, my voice barely sounding like my own.

“Okay…but I mean like nausea, dizziness?”

I shook my head, jaw clenched, vision sharp and unblinking.

“All right, I read that to use Lux Compulsim, you have to be close to the vampire, and you only need to speak the command, and they will follow it as if compelled. This rune only lasts about fifteen minutes, so time is our enemy,” Luna instructed.

“Sweet.”

“But,” Luna urged, “using it pulls on the power from your marks. It can be dangerous.”

Not sweet.

“Got it.” I ran ahead, adrenaline roaring through my veins just as a doctor in blue scrubs and a white lab coat turned the corner. He looked at us and frowned, confusion flashing across his face.

“There’s an active shooter situation here, sir. You need to lock down the building,” Celia told him.

His eyes bugged as he fumbled for his cell phone, hands shaking as reality caught up with him. We passed him and turned the corner just as Harper yelped. I glanced up to see three vampires at the end of the hallway, their bodies glowing blue on Harper’s camera. Without even thinking, I raised my harpoon gun and shot three bolts in rapid succession, muscle memory taking over. They whizzed past Harper and Asher. One hit the female vamp’s neck, another missed, and the third lodged deep into the shoulder of a male vamp with glowing red eyes.

“Behind me!” Asher called as he stepped in front of me and ran for the injured vamps at lightning speed. He crashed into them like a bowling ball, slashing left and right, steel flashing as he took two of their heads in brutal arcs while the third slipped past him and came straight for me.

I met him full force, refusing to give ground, and when I slammed my stake into his chest with my left hand, I simultaneously punched him in the stomach with my right. He collapsed inward with a guttural snarl, driving my stake farther up into his heart.

Red lights began to flash in the hallway, and I hoped it was some type of silent alarm.

“The rest are ahead and to the right,” Harper said from behind us. “They seem to be gathering in a tight group.”

I sucked in a deep breath, thought of all the children we would be helping, and picked up speed, bypassing Asher and taking the lead.

The second I turned right, I skidded to a stop.

The hallway opened up into a giant research room, surrounded with glass walls.

We stood at the mouth of the open double doors. Sterile white light flooded the room, and lab tables lined both sides of the giant space, the interior glowing with soft blues and silvers. On top of the stainless steel tables were…cryogenic pods of some sort. Incubators humming with quiet precision.

And vampires.

At least fifteen of them formed a loose perimeter around the lab, bodies unnaturally still, like guards protecting a crown jewel.

On the table in the center of the ring of vamps, something moved, and I stepped forward without meaning to.

There were trays arranged in careful rows across a central worktable.

And inside them…

Hearts.

Human hearts.

Some no larger than a small plum, others full-size, all translucent and pale, suspended in clear solution. Thin fibers of muscle twitched rhythmically as they beat on their own, slow and wet and wrong.

My stomach roiled.

Runes had been carved directly into the stainless steel trays, glowing faintly as they fed rune magic into the living tissue. Tubes ran from the hearts into rune-etched canisters already half filled with blood.

At the center of it all stood a woman.