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Dominique brushed the back of one finger over her sunken cheek and waited for despair to rise. None came. There was only a pinch of sadness for the life cut too short, for the husband who would mourn her, for the daughter who would grow up without her.
“I don’t understand,” Jackson said. “I saw Adilla feed on her. How can Esteban have been her serum sire?”
“Adilla rarely bestows the honor of being sired by him,” Isao said. His face was hard with grief and anger. “When he fed on her in public, it must only have been that once and only to exercise his power over you, my lord. Nothing more.”
“Esteban was her true sire,” Dominique said.
“And I killed Esteban.” The sword in Jackson’s hand trembled. The stunned euphoria of moments ago drained away as quickly as his blood left his face. “I…I killed your sister.”
“Non, you did not.She was dead the moment they found her.” Geneviève’s body felt light as nothing when he lifted it from Douglas’s arms and placed it on the ground. “If you had not killed Esteban, I would have. And if Geneviève had not died this night, she would have died a thousand deaths every night hereafter. Her spirit would have broken in this life.” He kept his gaze on her beautiful black hair, the only part of her that still looked alive, and stroked his hand over it in farewell. “It is better for her this way.”
He turned away from the corpse of his former life and reached out for Garrett. The old hunter was unmolested and had been busy with his phone. “Everyone else is safe,” Dominique told Jackson. After processing his own relief, he added, “Your sword saved Cassidy and my mother.”
Jackson gave a grim nod.
The group gathered around Dominique, another body short now, with the loss of the gentle giant, Kostya. They were spattered with blood, their weapons soaked in it, but all looked ready for more.
“We finish this tonight,” Dominique said. “But we kill only if necessary. Too much blood has been spilled already.”
Douglas nodded and Makoto said, “As you command.” Lyle still looked disappointed at having survived, but he, too, gave a grudging nod.
Isao met Dominique’s gaze but committed to nothing. Beneath that quiet façade, barely contained emotion boiled. There was an emptiness in his soul where Kostya had dwelled for over two and a half centuries, and only one entity he blamed for that. “We should go, my lord.”
“What about him?” Lyle asked, pointing at Jackson with his machete.
“He’ll be useless,” Makoto said.
“Gee, thanks.” Jackson checked his shoulder, which was soaked in blood. “Thanks for this, too, while we’re at it.”
She raised one of her fine brows.
“I can find my way back to the campground.”
“We cannot protect you if we separate,” Dominique said. Though no vampires lurked nearby now, that could change if there were others farther out returning to the colony. Leaving Jackson to wander the woods, smelling of blood and gore, could be condemning him to death. “You have to remain with us.”
“I’ll only slow you down.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll take you,” Lyle said and handed his machete to Douglas. In the next instant, he had slung the much larger Jackson across his shoulders as though he were no more than a sack of feathers. “I owe you.”
The sack of feathers grunted and flailed, his sword swinging erratically.
Makoto grabbed the blade out of Jackson’s hand. “I’ll take that. Before you disembowel someone.”
No more needed to be said. Isao vanished into the cavern. The rest followed.
They got as far as the room with the prison cells, where Douglas pulled the thin chain hanging from the ceiling fixture. The light confirmed what their night vision had already revealed. Where the lift cage should have been waiting, only a hole in the floor remained.
Isao pushed the call button. Nothing happened. “It’s locked at the bottom.”
“Their way of keeping us out?” Douglas wondered. “They have to know what happened up here.”
“There is another way into the lair,” Isao said. “But it’s treacherous.”
“Treacherous” was a colossal understatement if Isao’s random memories were any indication, but the alternative was to wait for Adilla at the surface and lose the element of surprise. “Lead the way.”
After the briefest of hesitations, Isao streaked away. They followed him out of the mine shaft, through the cavern, and into a labyrinth of caves full of perilous dips and narrows, loose rubble and crumbling cliffs. The darkness was complete, and it was cold, rendering their infrared vision dim and unreliable until suddenly that, too, was gone.
They stopped to consider the abyss that lay before them. Freezing cold air gushed out of the fissure, appearing to them like an impenetrable black wall. A challenge even for blood-drinkers, the drop-off would have been impossible for mortals. It was a security system more effective than any gates or locked lifts or an army of human guards. Those who had tried and failed to breach it in the past were still here. The faint, musty odor of their deaths rode on the icy currents.
