Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9 (18 page)

Luke slashed hard, blade biting so deep into the vampire’s neck that the male had to drop the weapon to hang on to his head. With a second herculean chop, Luke slashed off both vampire head and fingers.

Sarah Jane might be traumatized, but he couldn’t worry about that now. Life-saving first, trauma counseling later. Now for the second, unknown vampire.

Lead knuckles flashed in Luke’s periphery, coming incredibly fast. He bobbed barely in time and not quite far enough. Metal scraped his cheek.

Owun punched again, eyes narrowed like a seasoned fighter, unnaturally fast and strong for a human.

But he was still only human. Luke delivered a smoking jab-cross, rocking the man onto his heels, then plowed a foot into his midsection and planted him in the opposite wall like a lily.

Owun slumped unconscious to the floor.

“Help, Uncle Luke!”

Luke spun. The second, hidden vampire, a blond male, had come out of hiding to grab Sarah Jane. He lifted her off her feet and ran with her down the hallway.

“
Stop,
” Luke shouted and dashed after.

The vampire turned the corner. Inches shy of the intersection, Luke slowed and slid cautiously around the edge, slicing visual wedges of recon while scenting and listening for clues.

The hall was empty, brightly lit and lined with closed doors. Ammonia, sour urine and bleach punched his nose, and he couldn’t smell anything else. But his ears…

A small, rapid heartbeat told him Sarah Jane was here
somewhere.

He cursed. Most likely behind one of those doors, though it was hard to pinpoint which with his head still buzzing from Owun’s lead knuckles and the bleach doing a body slam on his nasal passages. He tried his blood-awareness, but location continued to be fuzzy.

Cautiously, he cracked the first door. A peek revealed a bedroom, bed stripped but rails indicating it was hospital style, a notion reinforced by the wall sporting electrical sockets and hookups ready for medical equipment.

He crept down the hall, teasing open doors one by one, on high alert for traps, laser beams, blade blenders, or poisoned arrows, or worse. Marrone always had an angle and traps within traps.

Luke encountered—nothing. Nothing at all. The lack was almost more troubling.

As his vampire healing eased the effects of the concussion and the buzz in his brain faded, he began to smell whiffs beyond the ammonia and bleach.

Outside the third last door, he sniffed—and recoiled. Stale. Sick. Human. Like the sick-human smell wafting from the elevator yesterday, only more concentrated.

He cracked the door and peered through.

This bed wasn’t empty. An older man lay there, his stomach a barely rising and falling mound under the white covers. The man was alive but the sweet-sour stink under the antiseptic sting meant he’d been very sick indeed. Luke took another cautious sniff. The stale sick was fading; the man was better now.

But more—Sarah Jane’s scent was stronger here. The vampire had brought her into this room.

Perhaps she was still here. Perhaps the vampire was too.

Keeping his eyes constantly moving, Luke edged inside the room. The strong scents made it impossible to smell location with precision. His visual slices found no Sarah Jane, no blond vampire, but there was a darkened bathroom beyond the bed.

Back pressed to the wall, Luke eased cautiously toward the half-open door. Not a sound reached his ears beyond the soft wheeze of an IV pump and the torpid breathing of the man, still asleep despite the gunfire from the elevator area. Probably drugged.

Luke didn’t like this at all. But what choice did he have?

He melted into the shadows of the bathroom with another rapid inspection and assessment. Toilet, medicine cabinet, shower.

A second door, across from where he’d entered, was ajar. What waited on the other side?
Or who…
He tiptoed to the second door, claws ready, nostrils flared—and threw it open.

It was another hospital room, empty, bed stripped.

Returning to the sink, he grabbed the sides and huffed a breath, shaking out some of his tension.

A flash of motion in the mirror caught his eye. His gaze slowly raised.

Only the physical vampire legends were true—he showed up perfectly fine in mirrors. The motion was his own blond head, shaking…and a second face behind him, in the bedroom doorway.

Two faces, exactly the same, from the red-gold eyes to the gleaming fangs and angular face plating.
Two Lukes.

The shock froze him for a bare instant.

Then his brain kicked in and he realized it wasn’t his concussion returned, making him see double, but Marrone, who loved to play dress-up, with Luke-like makeup, wig and mask.

Growling, Luke spun, talons raised to shred his enemy.

The clack of a weapon as it hit a small skull froze his breath.

Marrone stood about ten feet away, one arm wrapped around the struggling silent bundle of Sarah Jane, hand smothering her mouth. Luke would’ve slashed him for daring abuse her, but the vampire was in a position to snap the girl’s neck before Luke could get her safe.

He deliberately relaxed into a ready stance, raising hands in surrender as he considered the situation. Marrone had a heavy-duty stun gun pressed to Sarah Jane’s head, the kind of stunner that could drop a rhino—or a vampire. Not for the girl, then, though Marrone was using it to threaten. But Luke was well within the fifteen to thirty-five feet most cartridges would shoot.

So he was half-prepared when, too fast for normal human eyes, Marrone flicked his wrist and the direction of the stunner changed, and he pressed the trigger. Two barbs shot out.

Sailing toward Luke.

Luke had already dropped, feet first, into a slide that swept his legs into the other male’s.

Marrone stumbled. He didn’t go down, but Sarah Jane was her father’s child—she slammed her elbow into the vampire’s gut. Marrone’s grip opened long enough for her to take a step away.

The vampire would recover quickly. Luke had mere instants to gauge his next move, but in a fight, split seconds, used well, made all the difference.

So. Roll to his feet and run off with the child—and hope Marrone couldn’t reload the stunner fast enough to stop him? Or fight the creature to give Sarah Jane time to escape?

She took a second step.

The wildcard was that stun gun. If he grappled with the other vampire, Marrone could press its bare prongs to Luke’s skin and down him. Then Sarah Jane would be vulnerable.

Luke could scoop her up and run, but he’d have to do it slowly enough to not injure her, potentially giving the vampire time to load another cartridge, adding five to ten yards’ distance to the stunner’s bite.

Fighting, no. Running, also no.

That left distraction.

Marrone’s shoulder twitched, the beginning of a grab for the child.

Luke surged to his feet—and stumbled, choking back what he hoped was a convincing cry of pain.

Marrone hesitated.

Beyond the vampire, Rorik appeared in the room’s doorway.

Sarah Jane took another step.

Rorik gave Luke a sober nod far beyond his years. Whatever enemies stood in their way, if Sarah Jane reached the door, the boy would see her safely out.

If Marrone didn’t stop her. She was, after all, an easy target. An easy hostage.

If she was to escape, Luke had to be an
easier
target. He’d have to let himself be taken.

The blond-wigged vampire began to turn. Now or never.

Luke took a deep breath and, like a lame mother duck, stumbled within reach of the stunner. “Shit.”

Marrone whipped toward Luke, jabbed the stunner’s tines to his skin and hit the button.

Luke’s entire body lit up with pain. He wavered on his feet, none of his limbs working. But Rorik swept Sarah Jane into his arms and darted away as Luke began to fall.

Luke hit the floor, eyes open on Marrone, whose face was contorted in ugly triumph.

A gloating laugh echoed in Luke’s skull as his consciousness faded. Not Marrone’s usual cackle, but someone more familiar…

Chapter Nineteen

I jerked to a halt in front of Marrone’s lab, mindless of security cameras, and threw my car into Park. Popping the door, I barely paused to sling my backpack over my shoulders—hoping Lizelle wouldn’t need the first aid inside but knowing emergencies favored the prepared—before charging to the front door.

Locked.

I paced the front walk in frustration, hating myself for the emotional steam but unable to completely suppress it.

Movement inside caught my attention. I froze. Marrone or his goons or worse?

A sturdy, black-haired kindergartener burst up to the door, carrying Sarah Jane.
She was safe.
I rushed to them as Rorik set the girl down to open the door. The instant he cracked it I wedged into the doorway, grabbing them in anxious arms. “Are you okay?”

Stupid, stupid. I put on my mental physician spectacles and examined them visually. They looked intact, if shaken.

The roar of a powerful engine caught my attention. A black Mercedes sedan squealed into the parking lot. I tensed.

Then, as the car flashed under strong lot lamps, Bo Strongwell’s set face was barely visible behind the smoky glass of the windshield.

I relaxed. Rorik tugged Sarah Jane from my loosened grip and started running with her toward the car. All four of the sedan’s doors flew open, Bo and Elena jumping from the front seats and Julian and Nikos the rear.

Rorik headed for his father and mother. Bo scooped up Elena and ran toward their child.

The children were safe. Now I just had to get to Lizelle and Una. And thank goodness, I had a team of vampires to help.

I pushed inside the building and held the door open as Julian and Nikos each exploded into a cloud of mist arrowed straight toward me and the open door.

The hairs on my arms rose abruptly.

A sudden jolt seemed to throw the door from my hand, my muscles jerking automatically away from the handle.

I shook my fingers out, pain searing them as if I’d been burned. I only recognized after the fact that the hot buzz along my nerves was from electrical shock.

While I was holding it, the door had become electrified.

Julian and Nikos suddenly solidified, reeling back from the door, as stunned and woozy as if they’d run into a concrete barrier. Nikos shook his head, set his jaw, and blasted into mist to charge the glass wall next to the door—and collapsed back into his body with his limbs twisted, his expression stark, as if every muscle in his body was clenched tight.

Not only the door was electrified. The whole front wall was.

A
shoop
of rollers startled me into jumping back. Metal slammed down between me and the door. Slam, slam, a dozen shutters crashed down around the entire entrance, even the half-circle of the revolving doors.

Quiet descended, all the more frightening for the panicked noise leading up to it.

I was left alone in the dim light of an after-hours building, cut off from my friends and rescuers.

Cut off. I remembered Lizelle, sobbing, “I think that’s why the phone didn’t work before,” and figured out it wasn’t her phone that was broken, but the connection, and frantically pulled out my cell.

No signal.

Panic in the ER was never a big problem for me. Fear didn’t enter into my thinking, one of the things that made me a good doctor.

But Lizelle…not only was she alone with her abusive husband, but she was alone in the kind of place that had electrified doors and automatic metal curtains that kept out the likes of master vampire Julian Emerson and Spartan mountain Nikos. Fear for her threatened to paralyze me.

My breath came in fast, panted rasps. I tried to swallow, found my throat thick and blocky, and managed only to taste my own sour dread.

Monster.
Lizelle labeled me as such, and the pain of that ensured that since then I’d taken care to plan each step of my life, including contingencies for my worst fears.

But who could plan for something beyond their worst fear?

Feelings just are.
Luke’s words came back to me, and the kind of empathy that knew to stroke my head because my skin was all sharp shards. He not only hadn’t rejected me, he’d comforted the glass monster. I drew on the memory of that comfort to steady myself.

I clamped down on my breathing first, forcing everything out, then drawing a bushel of air in. That helped so I did it again. And again.

As my breathing steadied, so did my thoughts. I didn’t have to plan to act. Lizelle’s words returned to me, the hospital that didn’t exist, on the floor that didn’t exist either.

I’d counted forty stories. Lizelle said the elevator stopped with a single turn of the key—while Marrone had used two clicks to get to the top.

The implications goosed me into a run toward the elevators. Unless I missed my guess, two clicks took the elevator to the fortieth floor—and one to the thirty-ninth.

The moment the doors opened I jumped inside and hit the top button. Both thirty-nine and forty were unavailable unless I had a key—by elevator. But maybe not by stairs.

I took the elevator to the thirty-eighth floor, got out and walked up one flight.

The doorknob was missing. When I tried a pull, the door opened easily.

Relief cascaded through me, but I was still cautious, and I dug in my pack for a hand mirror. Shrugging the pack onto my shoulder, I cracked the door and used the mirror to peek out.

An institutional corridor greeted me, not the business kind done in textured vinyl wallpaper and sculpted carpet, but washable paint and moppable floors. Ammonia was sharp in my nostrils.
It smells like an ICU…
I put the mirror away and sneaked out.

A hand grabbed my wrist.

I swung with it, my palm raised to smash nose. A second hand grabbed my other wrist, but not in a good, crashing-into-Luke way.

I was suddenly face-to-face with Lizelle’s husband, John Umbras.

Villains are supposed to have too-close eyes, fleshy lips and piggy noses. Aside from his too-broad shoulders and spindly legs, Umbras was insanely good looking. A rock cliff of a jaw, thick dark hair, clear brown eyes.

Eyes that now blazed down at me. “You’ve ignored and spurned my master’s advances. But now you’ll see how he holds everything in his hands. You’ll be glad to play your part.”

Holy crap. Who’d written this guy’s lines?

I stiffened my spine and spat back, “I’m here for Lizelle. For Una.”

“Then we both want the same thing.” He released one of my hands to yank me into motion along the corridor.

My free hand meant I had an opening to slam a fist or scalpel into his kidneys. Yes, I was a healer first, but for Lizelle’s sake I sneaked a hand toward my backpack.

Then his head turned slightly, keeping me in his periphery, and the opportunity was gone.

As we advanced along the hallway, the smell of urine got stronger, invading my nostrils and sticking, made worse by the abominable pseudo-citrus of antiseptic cleaners. Maybe all the rest of the facility was test tubes and mass spectrometers, but here there was blood and guts.

He dragged me to a closed door. Grasping the knob, he turned it with a click-click that meant the door had been locked, swung it wide open and pushed me through into a narrow, dimly lit room.

I spun to see him pull the door shut. A click came from the door as the lock re-engaged. I grabbed the knob and twisted—futile. What kind of damned room locked from the outside?

Turning away in frustration I realized Lizelle trembled in the middle of the room, her eyes glued to one wall.

As the light came up on the other side, I saw it wasn’t a wall but an observation panel.

Premonition chilled my skin. I stumbled over to Lizelle and wrapped her in my arms, and we both stared through the glass.

The room on the other side was a lab of some sort, work stations with built-in sinks and burners scattered throughout, except for a clear spot of floor near us. Lining the walls were glass-front cabinets containing petri dishes and flasks, solid locked cabinets probably containing more corrosive supplies, and several refrigerators for bio samples. And in the clear spot…

Lizelle’s daughter Una lay on a gurney, eyes closed, her breathing slow and raspy. A hanging bag was probably the cause, IV line running to a taped needle in her hand. A machine looking almost like a slot machine or an armless robot stood to her left.

Or a dialysis machine. That could definitely be a portable blood exchange.

Sick terror wicked into my flesh as the hallway door opened and Lizelle’s husband wheeled in another gurney bearing an unconscious young man, scrawny to the point of emaciation, like a drug addict. But something about him told me this was no ordinary addict, donating a pint of blood for an eight ball of blow.

Behind Umbras was Marrone.

Umbras was talking. “…will make her like me, master?”

“We’ll know soon enough, won’t we?” Marrone pointed to the right of the machine as he activated something on his phone, which must’ve been a recording app because he said, “Trial one. Baseline. Patient is unaltered, but her genetic line has been successfully enhanced. Host is young but strong. Complete evacuation.” He turned to Umbras. “All right, connect the little dear up.”

As Umbras wheeled the gurney into place, the young man’s eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright, his muscles twitching as if he was about to jump off the gurney.

“
Stop.
” Marrone’s voice was rich, echoing. “Stay. Lie down.”

I found myself stepping back, an odd compulsion to lie down creeping over me.
Damn it, I’m immune to vampire compulsion.
Abruptly, I shook off the lethargy.

Next to me, Lizelle was shaking her head as if also trying to shake the compulsion from her brain.

The scrawny man closed his red-rimmed eyes and slowly lay back.

Umbras hooked a length of clear, coiled tubing from Lizelle’s daughter to the machine. Marrone took a second tube from the machine, and I could see there was no needle or delivery system attached. I was wondering what he was going to do with that bare tube when, with a powerful strike, he simply thrust it bodily into the young man’s chest.

The young man’s fist flew to his chest, fingers clutching spasmodically, and he made a sound, half-whimper, half-groan, all tortured pain…even through the observation booth’s speaker it was a sound that would haunt me in nightmares.

A sluggish dark red started to fill the tube.

Blood.

Blood was flowing from the pale young man into Lizelle’s daughter.

Horror threw me at the glass. I nailed the pane with an elbow smash, twisting my trunk and throwing my whole body behind it.

The glass rang like transparent metal, but didn’t break.

Marrone looked up, directly at me
as if he could see me,
and his lips lifted in a mean smile.

Umbras, as if he hadn’t noticed, shook his head. “I’m still surprised you don’t have to infuse it direct.”

“The blood only has to be pushed by a beating heart through a closed system with the recipient, a bit like an electrical circuit.” Marrone sounded more like a medical lecturer than an evil scientist. “As long as the host is alive, the blood will work.”

I returned to Lizelle and clutched her harder. The “host” didn’t look like he’d be alive much longer, his skin papery white, his breathing rapid and shallow. I mentally riffled through my medical backpack for something that might break the door lock or impossibly strong window. Assuming I could get through, I didn’t know what I could do against a man as powerful as Umbras, much less a vampire like Marrone, but I knew I had to try.

“Then why the machine, master?” Umbras said.

“Oh, this?” Marrone shrugged one shoulder. “I’m trying it out. I’ve been having a problem ensuring proper circulation between host and recipient in the final stages.”

Red fluid continued to flow, far past what was safe. At two quarts the average human heart gets stuttery, trying to keep blood pressure up. Two and a half to three quarts, and death occurs. That much blood, Marrone must be draining a like amount from Una to keep her BP stable, but it wasn’t going back into the young man. The scrawny man’s fingers continued to clench past what I estimated as three quarts and even four.

But eventually even that strange, gaunt young man turned white, and his hand relaxed, then slumped and fell from his chest.

And then…he seemed to
crumple in on himself.
Not complete discorporation into dust, but as if key parts of him crumbled and the rest just…fell in. I clutched Lizelle harder.

The scrawny man was a vampire too.

“He’s used up.” Umbras watched dispassionately.

“You’re right.” Marrone pursed his lips. “I’d hoped he’d last longer. Our paying customer is doing better, but he isn’t cured yet—without which, I don’t get the bulk of my payment. Research isn’t cheap, you know.”

I hadn’t thought of anything in my backpack to break the glass or door. I could only watch as Marrone unhooked Lizelle’s daughter from the dialysis-like machine and pulled the tube out of the corpse.

Then Umbras said, “But we have fresh blood.”

His words made me shiver unhappily.

“We do, indeed.” Marrone grinned. “Let’s prep our paying customer, shall we?”

Umbras paused, looking at the girl. “When will we see something?”

“We’ll see something when there’s something to see.” Marrone’s usual oily charm turned sharp. “The old man, please.”

“Yes, master.” Reluctantly, Umbras left the girl to wheel out the corpse. Marrone gave the observation room one final sneer and followed.

Lizelle’s daughter lay there, breathing slowly, regularly. Her blood now mixed with that of a vampire.

Vampire blood healed vampires. But I’d gleaned that in a normal, living human, it did nothing. In fact, all traces disappeared within minutes.

Except for Rorik.

I frowned. Why fill Una with vampire blood when it would do nothing? Well, obviously Marrone and Umbras thought it would do
something,
but I didn’t know what. I strained for understanding, millimeters out of my reach.