Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9 (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

I got my shoes, shouldered my backpack and jumped into my car. I’d just turned into the hospital parking lot when my phone rang. “Hello?”

A voice I barely recognized, it was so dark with pain, whispered, “A-alexis?”

“Lizelle?” I pressed the phone hard to my ear and listened with all of my being.

“Th-thank God. At last.”

“Lizelle, what’s wrong?”

“John…” Her voice cracked. She swallowed audibly and it sounded thick, dry. “He’s got my daughter.”

My first thought was AMBER alert. “We’ll find her, Lizelle, don’t worry—”

“No.” Another swallow. “They’re here. H-he…oh, God. He’s
experimenting
on her.”

Lizelle’s terror bled over the phone into my veins. My heart throbbed in my ears and my flesh turned to ice. “What are you talking about?” I wanted to whimper in a corner, to shriek
I told you so
, to tremble with all the emotions crashing through me like ocean waves meeting a cliff.

Yet somehow, maybe because I was exhausted emotionally from shrieking and crying at Luke, it hurt less. My insides roiled less. I found it easier to set my feelings aside—emotions running amok hadn’t helped Lizelle before and wouldn’t help her or Una now—and clicked almost seamlessly over to Crisis Time.

“No, scratch that. Lizelle, where are you?”

She laughed, a little hysterical. “The hospital that doesn’t exist. Oh, Alexis, you were right.” Her words were punctuated by sobs. “He said he’d help but…he wanted to know about you. About your new boyfriend. I told him I didn’t know anything, but then he…he hurt me more, ways he’d never done before. Not anger, but as if he’d practiced…”

Good heavens. And I’d thought nothing could be worse than Lizelle going back to her husband? How about that husband torturing her for information about
me?
Guilt burned my veins, nearly disabled me.

Feelings just are.
I pushed the guilt away and headed for the lot exit. “Lizelle, I’m coming for you.”

“He says he’s doing it for
us,
” she whispered. “Says this will help Una and all our children when the new order comes… He’s gone insane.”

“Can you tell me anything that will help me find you?”

“He wants you too,” she sobbed. “I think that’s why the phone didn’t work before but it does now. Why he let me keep it. I think—I think he’s expecting you.”

My heart beat a sharp rat-a-tat, hearing that. But Lizelle needed me. “I’m coming anyway. Where are you?”

“The hospital that doesn’t exist. The floor doesn’t either, but the elevator stopped with a turn of the key.” Air sighed over the phone, once, twice, as she made an audible effort to control herself. “The sign out front says BlooDrug.”

“I’m coming.” I stomped the pedal to the floor.

Luke slid into the deepest shadows he could find outside the office buildings and surveyed the area. At least three security cameras watched, two exterior and one visible through the glass fronting the lobby.

The parking lot was empty of people, the few dark cars cold and vacant. But in front of Marrone’s tower, at the curb directly in front of the revolving door, was a black van.

The stink of hot oil and metal told Luke it hadn’t been there long.

He glided closer, keeping to the shadows and misting the surface of his body as Elias had taught him to confuse the cameras, all his senses on full alert. It took insane amounts of concentration, but Elias had taught him that too.

As he drew near the parked van, at the edge of his hearing, he began to pick up the beat of hearts inside the building, one in particular that was child-fast but determined.

Rorik.

Luke stilled in the shadow of the van, closed his eyes and accessed his blood-awareness. If Sarah Jane was inside, she’d ping on his internal map… Instead, a fuzz of possibilities moved across the ground floor, like an electron’s probability cloud.

Fists clenched, he opened his eyes. Damn it, Marrone must have discovered a way to interfere electronically or chemically with the blood-scent/taste. Luke hadn’t sensed any vampire deterrents when he’d been in the building earlier, but maybe it was something first activated now.

Or maybe Owun had injected the girl with an antivampire drug.

Rage threatened to ignite Luke’s blood. He had to clamp down ferociously on the need to mist instantly to Sarah Jane’s side, to stay beside the empty van, hidden from the cameras, and consider his alternatives.

Call his brother for backup? No, he’d left his earbud with little Jaxxie Emerson.

Try to flag down a passing motorist and voice away his or her phone? A good idea, but any conversation would be open to the airwaves. What if Marrone’s techs were listening in? Did he want even the possibility of Marrone knowing he was nearby, of giving up his single advantage of surprise?

But waiting, hoping that Emerson or Strongwell found Luke’s scent and followed, wasn’t an option. Every second, his and Rorik’s scents were being overlaid with more and more motor exhaust.

Which left entering himself, alone without backup, against an unknown number of assailants, into the fortress of Giuseppe Marrone.

Marrone would have the home-turf advantage. If Luke had designed the place, that would mean a
Home Alone
stew of surprises; exterior electrified against vampire mist and booby traps automatically triggered by specialized motion detectors for objects moving at super-human speeds—and that would be before Luke even got through the door.

Marrone didn’t have Steel Security’s expertise, but the male did tap the Eastern European equivalent, Steale Programové. And he’d proved himself a cunning adversary.

Then the fast lib-dib-lib-dib of a boy’s heart made Luke think—if Marrone’s defenses were state of the art, how had Rorik gotten inside?

Alarms raised in Luke’s mind. Even with defenses aimed primarily at vampires, Marrone would have taken measures against human thieves as well. No matter how extraordinary Rorik was,
he shouldn’t have made it inside.

Unless…

Marrone had
wanted
Owun followed here,
wanted
someone to get in. No, correction—Jaxxie had said the kidnapper called, “Steel’s coming” before they’d driven away.

Marrone wanted
Luke
to follow Owun here.

A chill seeped into Luke’s flesh. Rorik had gotten inside because Marrone had left the building open to Luke. Good fuck.

All Internet memes aside, it was most certainly a trap.

But what choice did he have? He had to rescue Sarah Jane. She was inside. Therefore, trap or not, inside was where he’d have to go.

He blew his body apart and sought the invisible cracks around the door. If he hit a wall of electricity, he’d be seen by the cameras, but if he broke in manually, he’d have the same problem. This way, there was at least a chance for surprise.

No electrical vampire barrier stopped him. He flowed through the openings, his target an angular planter near the boy’s heartbeat, where a cultivated tree’s shadow concealed him as he reformed.

Tensed for battle, he collapsed his mist, slowly, making no sound.

Yet a sixth sense must’ve alerted Rorik, crouched behind the marble wedge of the tree’s planter.

The boy turned serious brown eyes on him, a hint luminescent in the interior’s half-light. Seeing Luke, Rorik’s tense crouch eased. He pointed toward the elevators.

Three armed, muscular men, one Marrone’s prow-nosed lieutenant, one carrying a large weapon and one the traitor Owun, moved in tight formation toward the bank, slowed by a small, struggling, kicking bundle of fury wrapped in Owun’s arms.

Sarah Jane.

Emotions threatened to swamp Luke—fear, pity, rage. The cocktail burned through him, triggering a wild urge to dash out and slash kidnapper flesh.

Only three males; he’d kill them all in less than five seconds.

No, stop.
Even if he misted directly to her, a goon could shoot her in the heart or Owun could knife her carotid artery in an instant.

Also, he’d just misted, after using the technique to blur himself in the parking lot. If he tried to use the form too many times too quickly, the ability would go numb and he couldn’t use it for fighting.

Luke shuddered, an almost physical tug-of-war inside him between the imperative to go to her
now
and the need not to be rash. A deep breath, pressed out, slowed his heart. A second filtered some of the acid of adrenaline from his veins. As he cooled, he sent his senses out, listening and smelling, and more problems came to him.

The elevator was thrumming, obscuring any heartbeats. And Prow-nose’s scent was a rancid wash across the entire area.

These three goons might be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it was late and all the regular workers had gone home. But who knew how many minions Marrone might have? Hidden inside the elevator, scattered throughout the building, that was part of the home-turf advantage. How many vampire underlings, how many innocent humans simply hypnotized for cannon fodder? He couldn’t tell.

To get Sarah Jane out alive, Luke had to be at his best. So, as the men wrestled the girl through open elevator doors, he filtered from shadow to shadow toward them, ruthlessly crunching down one more level from cool fighter to the instant cunning of an apex predator.

Testing the air as he neared, he sorted out the scent of Sarah Jane, the two humans, and the tang of one…no,
two,
vampires.

Only three males were visible. Was the fourth hidden in the elevator, ready to hit him with silver or a heavy-duty stunner? Had they deliberately left the little girl conscious exactly so she could struggle so piteously, enraging Luke and making him charge rashly to her rescue?

If so, it meant these weren’t simply bad guys—these were smart bad guys.

Double fuck.

Luke did not want to play into their hands. But as the doors slowly began to close, he pictured Sarah Jane alone, frightened, dragged by these goons into the bowels of the building, and imagined what they might do to her. He rationalized it—if
he
could sense the hidden vampire, a smart vampire could probably sense Luke. He filtered nearer, prepared to mist into the car and wreak devastation.

Then Sarah Jane bit Owun’s hand and wiggled loose. Owun snarled and grabbed for her, meaty fingers surging out to wring her neck. Maybe even enraged enough to kill her. Luke had to act immediately.

He burst from the shadows into the gap of closing doors, reaching for her wrist to rip her from the traitor Owun’s reach.

A
whoosh
was his only warning.

Luke threw himself to the side as the charge shot past him, launched from an assault weapon. It clipped him in the shoulder, taking a bloody bite from his deltoid, shoving him skidding sideways into marble.

A few inches over, and he’d have had a hole for a chest.

Dying now wouldn’t save Sarah Jane. He covered his head to shield himself from shrapnel when the charge hit marble.

The rocket poofed midair.

He raised his head cautiously. That was
so
not good. Marrone’s goons had gotten hold of computer-chipped smart charges, able to distinguish between hard and soft targets. The fact that the charge was programmed to explode flesh and blood but not stone made Luke slightly sick.

The muzzle of the weapon disappeared from the crack between elevator doors as the panels slid shut. The elevator began to rise.

Blood boiling, Luke misted one floor up. The elevator passed by. He misted another. Watched the elevator rise beyond. As he misted up each floor, his blood cooled; his hot rage turned to icy fury.

When he reached his limit for successive mistings, he ran up the stairs, stopping on each floor to check the elevator. He ran the next thirty flights, checking for the elevator each time—until he reached a floor with a locked stairwell door.

Fury drove his fist into the knob. He punched the whole thing out, lock and knob both. Swinging the door open, he stepped into air heavy with chemicals, only to find there was no elevator door.

He’d gone up thirty-eight flights. This should have been the thirty-ninth floor. The office penthouse.

Instead, he faced a blank wall.

He stood there, almost figuring it out too late. Marrone, using two clicks of the elevator key to get from thirty-eight to thirty-nine. Alexis, saying there were forty floors. Puzzled, Luke stared—as a vertical line appeared and the wall seemed to crack open.

Hell. Alexis is right. A floor was missing, and this is it.

He dove to the side just as the wall panels retracted fully, revealing the elevator doors, already opening.

Seaming his back to the wall, he waited until Owun shoved the struggling child out.

Luke tucked and rolled into the man, springing into an uppercut that practically took the traitor’s head off. Owun stumbled back, releasing Sarah Jane. As she lurched forward, into the hallway, Luke spun and delivered a sharp rake of claws to the second human’s face. Two humans down, two vampires to go…

Another
whoosh
alerted him to more incoming.

He twisted mid-slash to dive after Sarah Jane, tumbling her safely to the ground.

A hand almost instantly clamped his ankle and hauled him away from the little girl. He twisted and curled a sit-up to deal with the impediment—right into Owun’s fist, augmented by a set of lead knuckles.

Muscle-driven metal slammed Luke between the eyes, a
whack
he could feel to his toes.

Luke pill-bugged, his skull ringing, his brain confused. Owun, recovered too quickly from Luke’s uppercut. Owun, strong enough to pull Luke across the floor. Owun, a human, should have been weak even with lead knuckles, yet the blow had hurt.

Shaking off the worst, Luke rolled to his feet. He used the movement to hide drawing weapons—his backup blade from his ankle and a throwing star from a wallet of goodies in the underside of his belt. Judging the armed Prow-nose the most dangerous, he sprang past Owun and hurled the star. He hadn’t reloaded from the evening previous so this star wasn’t explosive and wouldn’t hurt a vampire, but Luke threw it into the wall
beside
the gun-vamp as a distraction. Prow-nose corrected instantly, training the tube on Luke, but it was already too late.