Stealing Time (31 page)

James moved closer to me and his voice had a lot of growl in it. “A Cole Porter
love
song, to be precise.”

Siska threw up his hands. “I was going for humor. You know, to lighten things up? But have you ever noticed that jokes don’t work when you have to explain them?”

“Especially if they’re not funny,” James bit the words out. I ran a soothing hand across the taut muscles of his back, knowing his control was stretched thin by his fear for my safety.

“Yeah, you do tall, dark and glowering a whole lot better than comedic,” Gage trailed off under Siska’s glare.

Suppressing a grin, Jack said, “You forgot to add ‘asshole.’”

Siska gave a long-suffering sigh. “Could we please just go?”

Several of the glass doors at the main entrance were shattered, the broken glass sparkling like dull diamonds on the litter-strewn concrete. While this gave us easy access to the sports complex, it also meant we had to proceed with care so we would not alert our enemies.

In a V-formation, Siska led us deeper into the building. I caught James’s eye, and smiled at his jaunty wink and the reassurance pouring from him—even if he hadn’t been able to sense my anxiety, the energy’s glow made it clear. Gritting my teeth, I focused and it obligingly dimmed.

James froze. “The
whatevers,
” he mouthed silently to me.

Understanding that he had sensed them for the first time, I asked subaudibly, “What are they?”

“Don’t know,” his lips moved, “but they’re bad.”

“Lovely.”

I could not yet pick up on what Siska and James had, but I could detect the humans inside the arena—their delightful scent, the sweet, rolling drum of so many panicked hearts. And I could hear their cries in response to whatever Caleb and his followers were doing.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Gage was getting all of this too as his mouth tightened into a thin line. We were both hungry and the idea of being around humans, especially in the midst of a fight when blood might be spilled, was both hideous and hideously appealing.

Doing my best to focus on the unappetizing, lingering smells of old popcorn, stale beer, and decades of human sweat, I glided silently with the others through the darkened arena. It was so strange seeing it like this—empty, abandoned, forgotten—when my memories supplied images of wildly screaming fans, the JumboTron scoreboard high overhead, scantily clad Mavericks Dancers, and vendors hawking hotdogs and Cokes.

Siska led the way up a set of stairs and out into the wide hallway that wrapped around the arena’s nosebleed sections. Going in at its highest level would keep us in deep shadow as long as possible and give us the high ground in the coming fight.

We silently entered the arena and spread out among the tiers where seats had once stood. My fangs snicked into place when I spotted Caleb down on the arena floor and I swallowed against a rising growl. He stood off to the side, an expression of cruel amusement on his face. His changelings had herded about thirty humans into the center, bringing to mind a pack of wild dogs feinting and snapping at sheep. The humans wept and shrieked, mindless in their terror. Even as I was filled with horror and outrage, my hunting instincts flared at the fragrance of so much prey, and I almost swooned at the concentrated scent of adrenaline and fear in the air.

With hunter’s eyes, I watched the humans flee from one end of the arena floor to the other as vampires charged and fell back, harrying them constantly, calling out insults, snarling and growling to frighten them more. My body trembled against my restraint, and my instincts automatically identified optimum attack angles.

Struggling to see them as something besides prey, I made myself catalog details—their black hair, weathered brown skin, the condition of their clothes, their pleading words—and realized that they were probably illegal aliens, most likely from Mexico. It had become the coyotes’, the human traffickers’, favorite trick to fill eighteen-wheelers with as many people as they could jam inside to enter the U.S. The conditions were appalling and many didn’t survive the trip.

In this case, though, it would have been a blessing to die of heat stroke and dehydration.

The massed humans stampeded toward our end of the court, their frantic passage stirring the air currents and bringing terror’s delectable perfume to our level. Closing my eyes to keep from locking on to the prey—the
humans
—below me, I held my breath and battled for control. This was a dangerous thing to do in the presence of so many enemies, but it would have been much worse to attack the humans and lose the element of surprise.

I sensed movement and braced myself, spinning silently and opening my eyes. Seeing that it was James, I relaxed into his arms, burying my face against his neck to fill my awareness with his scent. With his mouth beside my ear, James murmured, “I know that you are very hungry, but you can do this. Those people need our help.”

I nodded. Our eyes met, then he brushed my lips with his and resumed his position to my left, past Jack.

A piercing scream rose above the moans and pleas coming from the arena floor, and I made myself refocus. A mass of vampires struggled with something in their midst as they moved toward the huddled humans. My breath caught when I saw what they restrained—two creatures that had once been Great Danes, but now were something altogether different. In my short time as a vampire, it never occurred to me what would happen to an animal if it were changed. The answer was in the horrific scene below us—raging beasts driven by uncontrollable instincts and bloodlust to destroy every living thing around them.

The creatures were each secured with four thick chains attached to stout collars and held by four vampires who were taking great care to keep the heavy links taut. Ravening and foaming at the mouths, the vampire-dogs were insane with need as they alternately lunged toward the humans and their handlers.

Caleb howled with laughter as the humans tried to stampede past the vampires guarding them and several were thrown back into their fellows, knocking them to the ground in a tangled heap. One did not get back up, his neck bent at an odd angle.

Siska’s tiny hand movement caught my eye and I nodded. The energy flared and followed the path I set for it, enveloping the humans in a shimmering bubble. This meant, of course, that I was now glowing like a spotlight. My friends were scattered far enough from me that they remained in darkness. But Caleb immediately saw me, and he and seven others started up the stairs, howling their rage.

Although outnumbered, Siska, James, Leo and Jack met them halfway, and the sound of their impact echoed through the arena. In addition to the eight vampires restraining the chained creatures, two others had stayed to test my wall of energy—even now, they were alternately pushing against it and trying to leap over it. If they gained access to the humans, it would be wholesale slaughter, fed by their fury at our interference.

“Caleb is mine!” James snarled, and Siska veered off his attack to grapple with another vampire. Caleb leaped at James and the speed with which he moved, the lethality of his attack, were terrifying to see. The instinct to defend my mate almost shattered my concentration and the field around the humans visibly wavered.

“Evie, hold!” James roared.

Torn between need and responsibility, I fell to my knees and focused. The faltering shield flared bright again, catching one of the vampires as he tried to take advantage of its weakness. The field rose and slammed into him, flinging him across the arena and onto the second tier of stairs. He fell in a tangled heap and lay still for a few moments before gathering himself and standing. Rolling his shoulders, he turned and looked unerringly at me.

Nathaniel.

“Hello, pretty.” The bastard bared his teeth in a parody of a grin and started across the arena toward me. As he came, he shouted to the others, “Release the
cadejos!
”

An angry hiss boiled up my throat as I realized he meant the dog-creatures. In seconds, Nathaniel was on the stairs and climbing, his mad eyes hard on mine.

“Protect Evie!” James bellowed as he dodged a vicious slash from Caleb’s teeth.

Siska finished off his foe and lifted the lifeless body over his head, hurling it straight at Nathaniel and forcing him to dodge.

Cacophonous snarling arose as the handlers released the chains and leaped clear of the vampire-dogs before the creatures could turn on them. Both immediately launched themselves at the knot of humans and I renewed my focus as they slammed into the energy field. I actually felt the impact of their blows like the pounding of a bad migraine. Shrieking, the creatures flung themselves again and again onto the shield, maddened by the proximity of prey and their inability to reach it. The humans didn’t help, with their increased screams and panicked running around, triggering further the chase instinct in the
cadejos.
As their attacks on the wall grew more frenzied, I closed my eyes against the pain and pressed shaking hands to my head.

Gage stepped close. “Evie? Are you okay?”

Holding the field now required total concentration and I couldn’t answer. It was a relief when the creatures, in frustrated rage, spun to find other prey. One of their handlers had not moved far enough away—seeing their attention shift, he made the mistake of trying to do so now and his movement drew their predators’ eyes. In a moment, they were on him, ripping and tearing until there was nothing left of him but an organic stain on the arena floor.

In my periphery, I caught a blur of motion as Caleb launched himself at James and the two went down in a thrashing pile. My instinct to go to my mate nearly crushed me, but I forced myself to remain where I was, maintaining the shield around the humans. Exhaustion and hunger conspired, bringing dizziness to the mix and making it even harder to focus. Lightheaded, I thought for one giddy moment how much the humans under my bubble resembled cake under a glass dome.

The
cadejos
spotted the battle raging halfway up the arena and raced toward the stairs, their muzzles streaked with gore as they whined their eagerness for more blood. Locked in combat with Caleb, James couldn’t see them coming.

Ten feet away, Jack wrestled with a heavyset vampire, their snarls and curses echoing above the cacophony filling the arena. At the last possible moment, Jack spun and threw his foe toward the creatures before leaping clear. Without breaking stride, the vampire-dogs fell on the fallen enemy and tore him apart. It seemed that these creatures would never be sated, would never stop attacking until every living thing was destroyed. Even now, they were looking for their next victim—they’d temporarily lost their focus on James and Caleb’s struggle, for which I was grateful.

My gaze flicked around the stadium, assessing the danger. Leo, his combatant limp on the floor, ran toward Siska as he faced two attackers simultaneously. When I looked back at James, Caleb lay dead by the stairs, a red gaping hole in his chest. Relief flooded through me, as well as pride at James’s skill and strength. Jack finished off his combatant and leaped to join James as Nathaniel and three others tried to get past them.

Meanwhile, the
cadejos
had locked onto the renewed battle and were closing in.

Scavenging every bit of strength left and careful to maintain the field around the humans, I lashed out at the dog-creatures and enveloped them mere feet from James. So insane was their blood-rage that they attacked one another when their bodies touched. This gave me an idea and I tightened the energy net further, forcing the beasts hard against each other.

Their maddened fight flexed the net around them, strobing reciprocal pain through my mind and weakening my increasingly tenuous hold. I found myself lying on the filthy concrete floor, my world narrowed to feeding the dual fields and pouring every last bit of will I had left into it. But as lost as I was to the effort, my instincts roused as an enticing aroma reached me. Lifting my head in search of it, hunger scorched its way up my throat as the scent drew closer.

Nic bent over me and I wondered wildly where Kate was, since the marshal must have somehow followed us to the arena. Seeing me looking at her, she bared her teeth and a feral gleam lit her dark eyes. “Hold them a second longer, Evie.”

Her words, her scent and the luscious, liquid sound of her heartbeat blended together in an intoxicating symphony. A volcano erupted within me and I cried out at the conflagration, the agony of hunger achieving a level I’d not experienced since my first thirst.

Shouldering the big assault rifle, Nic took but a second to aim and fire twice. “Got the furry bastards. Let go, Evie.”

Panting against the pain liquefying my insides, I managed to release the net that now held the
cadejos’
corpses. The energy exploded outward, catching the vampires fighting Siska and Leo unaware, and knocking them to the floor. My friends took immediate advantage and dispatched their enemies quickly.

It felt as if the mental muscles that had held the net were spasming, as actual muscles will do when massively overworked. I lay trembling from pain and exhaustion, holding the humans’ shield with what little strength was left. It was a struggle like I’d never known. In diametric opposition, my survival instincts battled viciously with my will to protect the humans.

The sweet lure of human heartbeats, gasping breaths and panicked voices sang a siren’s song. The intoxicating scent of fear blended with adrenaline and delicious prey, filling my senses and making me keen with excruciating need. It was unbearable, how I longed to bite and feast.

It was wonderful.

The energy skittered, drawing my faltering awareness. I tried digging deeper, tried forcing the shield to hold through sheer will and cussedness. But I’d hit bottom and had nothing left. The field failed a second later and, by this time, it had grown so weak its falling barely stirred the air.

Fresh panic forced my head up and I blinked my eyes into focus—because our battle had drawn Caleb and all of his changelings high up into the arena, the humans were alone on the arena floor.

Then I saw something that made my blood go cold—a single vampire made his way down the stairs toward the huddled humans. One vampire could slaughter the entire group of unprotected humans in seconds. No one else saw his stealthy movement and, with the volcanic inferno in my throat, my voice wouldn’t work to call out to warn them, to tell Nic to shoot the sonuvabitch. She was intently focused, squinting through her rifle’s sights and looking for an opening to fire as the others fought the last of our enemies.

I dragged myself to my knees and, unsteadily, to my feet, staggering down the arena stairs. James called my name, voice and mental touch urging me to stop, to wait.