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Leif’s scent still lingered, but there was no sign of him in the lab. He must have been in one of the rooms off the one they held me in. There were a few doors that led out, and several were open, which meant he could still be nearby.
The vampires hovered around the room like spectral shadows, writing notes, adjusting dials, examining readouts on displays, and creeping me the fuck out. I’d never been a bigot toward other species, but Von Thornton had turned me off vampires. For the time being, at least.
Even as I tried to catch the vampires’ eye, they actively ignored me. Probably for the best. I didn’t have the strength to try and talk to them, either, and I could see it would be pointless. Simon had them right under his thumb in a way no simple conversation could sway.
The room didn’t give up many secrets. It was as generic as anyone could imagine, exactly what a secret lab on an uninhabited dangerous island would look like. I’d have to wait and see what my friends could do to save me or jump on any chance Simon might give me in the near future. Maybe I’d get lucky and could somehow get Abel and Leif out as well. Those were my only hopes.
Thinking about my friends brought images of Wyatt to my mind, sending a pang of longing through me that was physically painful. I begged whatever fates or gods might be listening to keep him safe. Stuck here, I had no way of being there if he needed me. If he had made it out of the jungle and back to Haven alive, I had no doubt he’d come for me.
He’d have to find me first, though. That would not be easy. It also looked like Simon really was as well-funded and organized as Crew had suspected.
My entire world had been flipped upside down in the last hour. Everything I thought I knew had been shown to be false. Now I was lying here, helpless, and it pissed me off. Terrified me, too.
Please be safe, Wyatt.Be safe and find me. Please find me before it’s too late.
Chapter 2
Wyatt
The rotting flesh stink of the wendigo still burned in my nostrils, mixing with the green scent of the jungle. As badly as my lungs burned from running, and as much as I didn’t want that thing to catch me, my mind still screamed at me to go back.
Kira. We’d been separated, the whole group rushing off in different directions. I had to get back to her. Gods only knew what else she might run into out here.
After another hundred yards, I stopped and crouched, listening hard. Silence. Lifting my nose to the air, I sniffed. The wendigo’s scent still lingered, though it was fading.
Fuck it. Kira needed me. Doing my best to remain quiet, I began retracing my steps to where we’d originally been when the creature had come upon us. The going went slower than I wanted, but that thing would still be looking for us. I would be no help to Kira if it caught me and decorated the forest with my guts.
Looping around to give a wide berth to the area where the wendigo’s scent was strongest, I continued on until a faint whiff of Kira touched my nostrils. Hope and excitement flooded through me, and despite the danger, I rose from my crouch and jogged forward.
Beneath a large palm tree, I found the area where we’d scattered. The ground was torn and disturbed from when Kira, Crew, Eli, and I had bolted. From that location, I managed to find Kira’s trail, her scent growing stronger the farther I moved down the path.
“Where are you?” I muttered, worry building with each step.
Several hundred feet on, I froze, sniffing harder, and my worry morphed into panic. Leif. His scent was faint, but easily recognizable. He’d been in this same location. Hands trembling, I knelt and checked the path, pushing aside moss and twigs, looking for tracks. Sure enough, paw prints intermingled with human footprints. Footprints that matched Kira’s size.
“Son of a bitch,” I hissed.
With a huge effort, I tore my eyes from the tracks and saw what lay ahead. Rising above the tree line, black and monolithic—the volcano. Dread and oily fear dripped down my spine, and a flash of memory broke through. Only a few days before, Leif had tried to drag me up the slope toward that place where the whirring mechanical sounds emanated from the cave entrance.
No. Kira couldn’t be there. She would have fought Leif off. She must have.
Bending like someone looking for a lost contact lens, I followed Kira’s path. Rather than finding something to allay my fears, they only got worse. After another twenty yards, I found something that made my blood run cold. With numb fingers, I picked up what lay discarded on the path: a metallic hypodermic dart. For a moment, I thought another storm was rolling in. It took a few seconds for me to realize it wasn’t thunder, but my own heart slamming against my ribs and booming in my ears.
The tip of the dart only confirmed my fears—it was rusty red and smelling strongly of Kira’s blood. Only one person on the island could have done this.Simon.
Tossing the dart aside, I moved along, keeping my eyes glued to the ground. Soon, the picture of what happened formed. I came across another set of tracks—adult male. Leif’s paw prints. Kira’s prints stopped, but a dragging track formed, interspersed with the paw marks. Simon’s dart must have held some kind of sedative. Afterward, Leif had dragged Kira’s body to Simon’s lab. The same way he’d tried to drag me.
Too preoccupied with figuring out what had happened to Kira, I’d allowed myself to forget that I stood in the most dangerous place on the planet. From my right, a dark figure erupted from the jungle, slamming into me. The thing hit me hard enough for every ounce of breath to burst from my lungs as we tumbled over.
Spitting, hissing, and growling, the feral vampire had me at an immediate disadvantage. Unable to draw a breath, I struggled with the creature laying on my chest. It wasn’t as emaciated as others I’d seen on the island, which meant it was stronger and more powerful. Fresh blood that smelled of bear shifter wafted from its mouth as its teeth clacked together at my throat.
“Fuck… you,” I grunted, finally managing a thin stream of air.
The vampire’s wiry strength made it impossible to push him away. With every passing second, its teeth drew closer to my neck. Then, in a spastic surge of twitching energy, the vampire slammed its knee into my crotch. Any strength thathadreturned suddenly flooded out of my body, along with what little breath I’d managed to pull in. An explosive, pain-laden groan burst from my lips, and my limbs went slack. That was all the vampire needed.
The wickedly sharp canines sank into the soft flesh on my neck, a few inches below my right ear. My vision went fuzzy as the vampire’s saliva sedated me, allowing the creature to feed unhindered.
For several moments, I lay beneath it in a strangely blissful state, allowing it to suck my life’s blood from my neck. The snuffling, gulping, and hungry growling noises didn’t seem that bad. It was good to help a fellow creature, to give him what he needed. What was a little blood between friends?
