Page 22

My heart stuttered. This was my fault—all of it. I should call Julian back and turn myself in right now. I’d deserve whatever punishment they dished out. Sure, I’d meant well, but all I’d done was get people murdered and…changed. Buzzing started in my head as my breath sped up. Flashes of my father’s shocked face as the vamp tore into his throat melted into pictures of White biting Lydia. Her imagined screams echoed in my mind.

But it wasn’t Lydia’s scream. It was the other female vampire on the screen. I dug my nails into my thighs to force myself to focus. Lydia had grabbed the male vamp and was holding a syringe to his neck, a wicked smile on her face. White had done the same with one of the shifters.

I turned up the volume hurriedly.

“Like I said, we have what you want, and we plan to give it to you,” White said.

“I’ll kill you if you kill him,” the female vamp hissed at Lydia. “You won’t walk out of here alive.”

“Oh, I will though,” Lydia said. Her voice held the slightest lisp, making me suspect her fangs had descended. They’d be hard to control in the early stages.

I dug my nails in harder.

“No one has to die today,” White said, his magnanimous gesture at odds with his action.

“You think we’ll let you go after this?” the other shifter said through a low growl.

“No. I don’t.” White said, and I saw it in my head before it happened, but how much time I would have until it did, I didn’t know. It couldn’t be long.

In my mind, it played out. From the opposite corner, I watched three vampires zoom inside and use some sort of gun to shoot both the other shifter and vamp. Within seconds, the female vampire had disintegrated into ash. The shifter, on the other hand, fell to the ground, writhing in pain as his joints bent at odd angles to the sound of cracking bones. When it finished, he stilled, pale but whole. Everyone stared.

“Is it dead?” White asked, breaking the silence. He kicked at the body. The man’s eyes fluttered.

He was alive. Was he human again? Had my vaccine worked on a shifter? My head spun.

White made a disgusted face and stomped on the unconscious man’s head, crushing his skull.

I jerked forward in my seat, trying to control my gag reflex. I had to keep watching. I had to know…

The scene in my mind began to flicker and dull. But before the vision faded out completely, Julian jumped down from the roof of the container into the center of the fray.

“Shit!” Without thinking, I threw myself at the door, but it didn’t budge. I slammed my shoulder against it and grunted with frustration. Then I took a deep breath and focused my intent until the door popped open. If this wasn’t the kind of emergency where I needed my powers, I didn’t know what was.

Aiming for the ocean, I ran and cursed the fact I always wore heels. My vanity would be the death of me—or possibly Julian. When I reached the shipping yard, filled with the same containers, I skidded to a halt and searched both directions for a clue.

The loud bang from my left told me which way to go. I kicked off my shoes, grabbing one in each hand and took off toward the sound. Several more crashes brought me to a stop at the corner of the scene. A body flew by me, colliding with the crate across from me, making a vampire-sized dent. Lydia slid down to the ground, hair over her face and red scratches etched on her arm.

“Lydia!” I hissed, dropping to her side.

Alarm bells went off in my head, and I backed away too late as she pushed the hair from her face and homed in on me, revealing her fangs.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, shaking my head, still searching for the presence of her familiar aura despite knowing it was gone forever. “What did he do to you?”

It was a stupid question, in retrospect. He’d turned her into an undead killing machine. But all I could see was my friend that I’d let down.

Another horrendous bang from around the corner got both our attention and, with a hiss, Lydia flew by me and back into the fray. I peered around the edge to find those left fighting at such speed I could barely make out the blur of bodies and fists.

On the ground were two piles of ash, the corpse of the shifter I didn’t look too closely at, and a headless vampire I did not recognize by the clothing. Though I did notice the injection gun still gripped in his right hand. He was between the fight and me, and I now had a goal.

Do I do this fast or careful? I wondered.

CAREFUL, said Pythia.

Yeah, fast wouldn’t be fast enough with these vamps. I had to have a death wish, I reasoned as I crouched and crept toward the body. But I still had a secret weapon that no one knew about. Not that I’d ever tried it on a person before…only animals. By accident. But I didn’t want to dwell on the rooster incident, just have a plan in my back pocket in case—

The flurry of movement came to an abrupt end. Five vampires and a shifter stared at me, but my eyes fell on White, who had Julian in a chokehold. I froze and swallowed hard.

“Well, if it isn’t the good doctor,” White drawled, tightening his grasp when Julian struggled. “Come to join me? Your assistant has been helpful, but you would make things much easier.”