Bloodstone (7 page)

I jumped up and went to the door. There was no knob on the inside. We were trapped. More crashes, more bangs shook the cell. Maybe whatever stalked the hallway wasn’t looking for us. Maybe it would pass us by.

I held my breath and waited.

A blow from outside jarred the door. So much for passing us by.

Behind me, Juliet made a strangled sound. “It’s them,” she whispered. “They’ve found me.” She looked wildly around the cell. Her gaze landed on me, darkened with something like sorrow. “I’m sorry, Vicky,” she whispered.

Her words chilled me more than the scream had. Vampires never apologize—ever. Not even as a figure of speech.

Another blow bulged the door inward.

I reached into my purse for a knife—and pulled out my weapons-check receipt. Stupid visitors’ policy. I picked up the chair I’d been sitting in and lifted it over my head, pressing myself as flat as I could against the cinder-block wall beside the door. When whatever was on the other side rushed into the room, I’d knock the crap out of it.

With a screech of tearing metal, the door was ripped from its hinges. A robed figure sped through the doorway. I slammed the chair down on him, and he collapsed in a heap of black cloth.

Right behind him came a second one, this one in a brown robe. He flew—literally flew—over the first, straight at Juliet.

Juliet sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap, her face expressionless except for the terror that screamed silently from her eyes.

What the hell was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she fighting?

She didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, as the brown-robed creature lifted her from the bed.

I picked up the chair and rushed him from behind. As I brought the chair down, the creature flung his arm backward, knocking me sideways. There was ice and power in the blow, and more-than-ordinary strength. I flew across the room and hit the wall headfirst. Stars exploded through my vision. Pain and the warm, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue when I hit the wall. I wiped my mouth, smearing blood across my cheek.

The room felt twenty degrees colder than it had before the Old Ones entered.

I shook the stars away. Brown Robe held Juliet like an undead groom about to whisk his bride over the threshold. But her shackle held her back, the silver chain stretched taut. The creature grabbed the chain and pulled, trying to yank it from the wall. He shrieked as a cloud of black-and-yellow smoke billowed from his hand. The creature dropped both Juliet and the chain. He spun around, clutching his hand to his chest, his bulging eyes searching the room.

His face. I’d forgotten how hideous the Old Ones were. Yellow skin stretched taut across the skull. His eyes protruded from their sockets, the whites tea colored. A hole gaped where his nose should be. But it was the fangs that made the Old Ones redefine ugly. They stretched from this Old One’s lipless mouth past his chin, ending in razor-sharp points. Saber-toothed vampires. Just what I wanted to fight without my weapons.

Brown Robe didn’t share my dilemma. Smoke still streaming from his right hand, he drew a short sword with his left. I tensed, preparing. But the Old One didn’t attack. Instead, he picked up Juliet, threw her onto the cot, and began hacking at her leg with the sword, just above the shackle.

Juliet screamed.

I rushed the Old One from the right. He tried to swat me away again, but I dodged the blow. I grabbed his sword, and we grappled for it.

The Old One’s grip was strong. His icy fingers made my joints ache. Gritting my teeth, I stuck a finger in his eye socket. Brown Robe recoiled, and I twisted my body. I got the sword away.

Immediately I thrust, but Brown Robe jumped impossibly high. Something grabbed my ankle and yanked backward. I fell, cracking my head again on the side of the cot. More stars. They filled the room, swirling over my head like the goddamn Milky Way.

When my vision cleared, I lay on my back, a weight pinning my limbs to the floor. Inches above me, the faces of two Old Ones hovered like a nightmare. The cold, stale smell of ancient death—of mold and rot and grave dust—flowed from them like an arctic wind blowing through a tomb. I struggled, but I couldn’t move. The Old Ones looked at each other. The black-robed one nodded. Brown Robe yanked his sword from my hand and rose. Immediately, Juliet’s screams began again, louder and more frantic than before.

Black Robe lowered his face to mine. A tip of black tongue poked out from between his fangs. Slowly, carefully, he licked the corner of my mouth, tasting the blood smeared there. It felt like an ice-coated slug slithering along my skin. Revulsion clenched my stomach, and I turned my head away. Mistake. Pain stabbed my neck and shoulder as the Old One sank his fangs into me. These creatures could drain a person dry in a couple of minutes. I’d seen the empty husks they left behind.

My neck ached and burned, and I could feel myself weaken as the creature sucked the life from my body. My toes and fingers were cold, going numb. I wiggled them, and my left hand brushed something. I heard a faint
clink
. The silver chain. It had burned Brown Robe’s hand to a cinder. I had a feeling that Black Robe wouldn’t like it much, either.

Black Robe had my hand pinned to the floor, but I got my fingers around the chain. One flick, and the silver made contact with the decrepit yellow flesh. Smoke billowed. Black Robe reared back, batting at his burned hand.

The moment his weight left my arms I was up on my knees. I wrapped the chain around his neck and yanked hard. Black Robe snarled and bucked and clawed at me with both hands. I looped the chain around my own hands so I wouldn’t lose my grip on it. The silver links grew hot in my fists as smoke billowed, spewing the smell of charred, rotten meat throughout the room. The links of chain seared my palms, the backs of my hands. I clenched my teeth against the pain and kept the chain taut.

A blade sliced toward me. I dropped sideways, dragging Black Robe with me, rolling as we hit the floor. With the second strike, Brown Robe drove his blade deep into his buddy’s gut. I kicked Brown Robe’s wrist, and he dropped his sword. In my hands, the burning chain went slack as Black Robe’s head toppled from his body and rolled under the cot.

I held two lengths of chain, one in each hand. Contact with the Old One’s flesh had melted the links, breaking the chain. The Old One’s headless corpse lay at my feet. The contact hadn’t done the creature’s neck any good, either.

The length of chain attached to Juliet’s shackle was the longer of the two pieces. I lashed it like a whip at Brown Robe. The Old One jumped back, but not far enough. The chain hit his face, burning through his cheek. He shrieked and flew up to the ceiling. I whipped the chain at his legs, his feet, whatever I could reach. The smoke that choked the room showed I’d hit him more than once.

Brown Robe swooped toward me. I ducked, spinning the chain over my head like a helicopter rotor. But Brown Robe wasn’t attacking; he was running away. The Old One rocketed through the door. I let go of the silver chain, snatched up the dropped sword, and ran after him.

The hallway was empty. Cell doors hung crookedly, any inhabitants long gone. I ran toward the entrance. The metal door that sealed off the cell block had been torn from its hinges. Beside it, the guard who’d walked me down the hallway lay crumpled on the floor. I passed him, then stopped where the hallway turned right. Keeping my back against the wall, I peered around the corner.

No sign of Brown Robe—except for more bodies left behind. Two here. The receptionist who’d signed me in lay sprawled across her desk. Another guard, one I hadn’t seen before, had been tossed aside like an empty candy wrapper. All three of the dead norms had been drained of blood.

Through a half-open door, I could see the building’s surveillance center. It looked like a tornado had blown through, and then someone had taken an ax to what was left.

What a disaster. After this, Juliet wouldn’t be safe from the Goon Squad or the Old Ones. I had to get her out of here. I gathered up the knives I’d left with the receptionist and returned to the cell block.

The ruined door to Juliet’s cell lay against the far wall, where the Old Ones had hurled it. A quiet moaning issued from the open doorway.

Juliet sat on the cot, her injured leg pulled up and resting on her other thigh. The silver chain trailed from her ankle. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling her leg.

I went over to her. “Let me see—”

She snarled, baring her fangs, and shoved me away. Nail marks scored my arm.

“Juliet, we have to go.”

She snarled again, her eyes flaring with rage and pain but not a spark of recognition.

“Hey, it’s me. Vicky. Come on, you know me.” I stayed out of scratching range, trying to make my voice both gentle and urgent. “We need to get out of here. Those Old Ones killed the guards. The one that got away might come back with reinforcements.”

“The Old Ones,” she whispered, and I saw a flicker of the Juliet I knew. Her forehead wrinkled, like she was considering a difficult problem. “You
killed
one of them.”

I nudged the headless body with my toe. Yup. Killed it dead. Juliet stared at the corpse as if she couldn’t fathom what it was.

I tried again. “How badly are you hurt? Can you walk?”

She extended her leg toward me. The bloody wound where Brown Robe had tried to saw through her leg gaped. The bone, absurdly white, showed in the ragged cut. That wasn’t good. Juliet should have started to heal already.

“It’s the silver,” she said. “It slows healing. As long as that’s in contact with my skin . . .” She hugged herself. “And I’m so famished.”

She looked terrible. Purple crescents, so dark they were almost black, ringed her eyes. Her skin, always pale, looked dead white, like those guards who’d been drained of blood.

The guards. The one who’d let me into Juliet’s cell carried that huge ring of keys. One of them had to open Juliet’s shackle. Once the silver was off her, she’d gain strength and start to heal.

I hoped.

I hurried to the guard who’d fallen in the hallway. His key ring jutted out from his hip. I removed the keys and started back to Juliet’s cell. Along the way, I noticed that one of the gray metal doors was stenciled with the word
Kitchen
. I tried the knob; it opened.

The Goon Squad’s kitchen looked more like a break room. In its center stood a table, magazines and newspaper sections strewn across its top. There was a microwave and a coffeemaker on a counter to my right. Beyond the counter was a refrigerator.

I opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. On the top shelf sat a carton of milk, a couple of brown bags, and a Tupperware container of some kind of pasta. The next shelf down held what I was looking for: bottles of blood. Juliet had complained it was cold and watered-down, but it would give her some nourishment.

With four bottles clenched in my arms, I left the kitchen and returned to Juliet’s cell. She was still on the cot, rhythmically kicking the dead Old One with her good foot. As soon as she saw what I carried, she reached for the bottles. She downed the first two without taking a breath. I started to uncap the third, but she shook her head.

“Can you get this silver off me?”

I sorted through the keys until I found a few that looked like they might fit the shackle. On the third try, the lock clicked open. Juliet sighed with relief as the silver fell away from her skin. I dropped the shackle on the floor, away from her. A puff of smoke went up where some silver links touched the Old One’s body. I picked up the chain again, considering—it made a pretty good weapon against the Old Ones.

I wrapped the length of chain around my waist, like a belt, the perfect accessory for my ruined dress. My kind of fashion statement: Mess with me and you’re dead.

Juliet scooted forward to the edge of the cot. “I’m a bit better now,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I checked her leg. It didn’t look better. If anything, it looked worse: foul-smelling, greenish pus mixed with the blood that ran toward her ankle. I cut a strip of cloth from the fallen Old One’s robe and used it to bind up the wound.

I looked at Juliet’s bright orange prison outfit, PRISONER stenciled in bold letters across the back. Not exactly subtle. “Would you wear that thing’s robe?” I asked. “We could pull the hood forward to hide your face.”

She wrinkled her nose with distaste, but she nodded. I stripped the robe off the Old One, revealing an emaciated body. Yellow, leathery skin clung to elongated bones.

Juliet shuddered. “And to think I once wanted to join them.”

It was the first piece of information she’d given me about the Old Ones. But we didn’t have time for more questions now. Black Robe had been about a foot taller than Juliet, so I had to cut more fabric from the bottom of the robe. But once the garment was on her and the hood pulled up, she was impossible to recognize. You almost couldn’t tell there was anyone inside the robe at all.

Juliet stood and took a step. Immediately her injured leg gave way, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor. She howled with frustration and pounded the Old One’s corpse with her fists.

“Hold these.” I handed her the bottles of blood and then scooped her up in my arms like a child. I tucked Brown Robe’s sword under my arm. As I carried Juliet out of the cell, she twisted around to stare at the headless, dried-out yellow corpse that lay on the floor. Then we were down the hall, up the stairs, and breathing the frosty air of a cold March night.

THE ALLEY BEHIND CREATURE COMFORTS, A MONSTER BAR in the New Combat Zone, is narrow and dark, piled high with trash and reeking with the scents of urine and vomit. Not the kind of place where you want to hang out at one o’clock in the morning.

Lucky for us. I was planning to hide Juliet here until I could talk to Axel, the bar’s owner, about giving her refuge. The scarier and more deserted the alley, the better.