Bound by Night (The Moonbound Clan Vampires) (25 page)

“Weaken your struggles gradually,” Riker murmured against her skin. “In about sixty seconds, stop struggling and play passed-out.”

She obeyed, slapping him weakly instead of punching. She kicked but in less frequent intervals, until she finally stopped . . . but threw in a few twitches for fun.

I hope you’re watching this, Chuck. I hope you lose a lot of sleep, you bastard
.

“Don’t kill her!” Chuck’s shout blared over the din of her own thoughts, making her even angrier. The mere sound of his voice irritated her. Had he always had that whiny, nasally tone that made everything he said come across like a complaint?

Riker tucked her close. “No matter what happens, stay still,” he whispered.

Her gut rolled. The next instant, Riker grunted and jerked, and she knew he’d been struck by a shock dart.

“Get back,” Chuck warned, and a moment later, Riker let out another pained grunt.

Nicole cracked her eyelids just enough to see Riker stiffen and collapse onto the concrete in a sprawl of flailing limbs. It took every ounce of self-restraint
she had to remain limp and unmoving, when all she wanted to do was leap to her feet and help him.

She heard the sound of flesh-on-flesh strikes; Chuck was beating Riker.

Don’t cry . . . don’t cry . . .

By some miracle, she managed to keep her lids squeezed tight and not shed a tear. An endless minute later, she felt herself being lifted, and she risked another peek to see Chuck slamming the chamber door, locking an unconscious Riker inside.

Chuck plopped her unceremoniously onto an exam table and put his fingers to her throat, feeling for a pulse. “Nicole?”

She lifted her lids. “Surprise, asshole.”

Chuck’s eyes widened in disbelief. Lifting her leg in a powerful surge, she bashed him in the face with her knee. Blood spurted, and he fell back with a shout, clutching his nose. “Bitch!” He came at her, but she dodged his fist and rolled onto the floor.

She hit the tiles hard. Pain speared her hip and shoulder. Flailing like a marionette having a seizure, she made it to her feet, but Chuck nailed her with a kick to the back of the knee, and she spun into an instrument tray. Her fingers found a scalpel.

She didn’t hesitate.

Spinning in an uncoordinated circle, she swung the blade, catching Chuck in the neck. The wound was barely a scratch, but Chuck screamed like he was dying, grabbed his throat, and staggered toward an exit.

“Nicole! Hurry!” Riker’s strangled shout drew her attention away from her fleeing brother. She bolted to the chamber, where thick jets of fog were
spewing from holes in the ceiling. Her heart nearly stopped.

Boric-acid gas. The dozens of vampires Chuck had killed using her “order” had died that way, suffering in gas chambers, all caught on video.

Hands shaking so hard she was barely able to work the control panel by the chamber door, she punched buttons, cutting off the gas and unlocking the door. Riker burst out of the room, gasping for breath.

“I know where they keep the antidote.” She ran across the room to a glass cabinet and swept boxes of meds, vials, and first-aid items onto the floor, desperate to find the container marked as . . . yes, right there! She raced back to Riker, who was slumped against the wall, struggling to breathe.

“This . . . sucks.”

“The gas is highly concentrated.” She measured five CCs of antidote into a syringe. “It’s ten times the strength of the powder I used on you. You’ll need an injection and a nasal application. Hold still.” She plunged the needle into his shoulder and pushed the medicine into his muscles. When the syringe was empty, she tossed it to the ground and broke open an ampoule of powder. “Sniff hard.” She put the little glass container up to his nose and inhaled with him, as if that would help.

Almost instantly, he stood up straighter, and his color went from ashen to tan. “Better.”

“It’ll take about an hour for all the symptoms to disappear, but we can’t wait. We’ve got to get out of here. Chuck will send the police and VAST.” She shot a glance at the supply closet. “But first, we’re destroying this lab.”

A
S RIKER CAUGHT
his breath, Nicole kicked open a locked file drawer and loaded a plastic garbage bag with thick files. When the drawer was empty, she hit the meds cabinet next and swept dozens of pill bottles and vials into the open bag. Moving quickly, she left the stuffed bag next to the exit and then began hauling gallon-sized jugs out of a closet.

“I’ll start a fire with these,” she said, “but if there are any vampires in these chambers, we need to free them first.”

She darted to the cage in the center of the room, where a scrawny, gangly male vampire, a teen by Riker’s estimation, huddled inside. He wore only a pair of loose navy sweatpants and a stained white T-shirt that showed way too many ribs through the thin fabric.

Still feeling like he was breathing fire, Riker blocked her. “I’ll do it. We don’t know how he’ll react. Stand back.”

Bracing himself for a launch attack, Riker opened the door. The kid inside shrank against the wall, the acrid scent of his terror coming off him in waves.

“We won’t hurt you,” Nicole said, but the kid just stared with wide, crystal-blue eyes, his thin body shaking so hard his teeth chattered.

Fuck
. They didn’t have time for this. “Come on, kid. We’re rescuing you.” When the male didn’t move, Riker snared him by the arm and dragged him out of the cage.

“No!” the kid shouted. “No!” He wriggled like a spitting-mad kitten and tried to claw his way back inside the cage.

“Hey,” Nicole said softly. “It’s okay—”

The kid’s croaked “Help” cut her off.

“Shit,” Riker muttered as he wrapped his arms around the kid’s body to stop his struggles. The boy rocked his dark head back and caught Riker in the mouth hard enough to make his ears ring. Too bad his hypnotic ability only worked on humans and some animals. “Got sedatives around here?”

Nicole dashed to the cabinet where she’d gotten the boric-acid antidote and spent a few precious moments locating a sedative and measuring it out into a syringe.

“Jesus,” she muttered as she injected the kid. “Do they even feed him?”

The boy immediately settled down enough that Riker could prop him against the wall and leave him. “Start the fire,” Riker said. “I’ll get Neriya and handle any other vampires.”

An alarm blared, and
shit
, their time had run out. Riker put on a burst of speed and tore open the refrigerator door. Cold air stung his cheeks as he darted inside . . . and found a chamber of horrors.

Dead vampires hung from hooks in neat rows,
and body parts sat in metal bins or were wrapped in plastic and stacked neatly on shelves. Riker had seen a lot of gore in his life, had witnessed atrocities that still haunted him to this day. But this . . . this was worse than anything he’d ever encountered.

Save your mental trauma for later
.

Shoving the gruesome scene to the back of his mind, he searched for Neriya. When he found her, hanging at the back of the fridge with her throat slit, the boiling of his blood countered the freezing temperatures. Rage and hatred and horror mixed like volatile chemicals that threatened to tear him apart and take down everything around him.

He’d failed.

The room spun and closed in around him as the reality of the situation crushed him in its cold, dead fist. His mission to rescue Neriya had met with disaster, and now, not only was a valuable, gifted female dead, but his clan was doomed to war.

War and, likely, extinction.

“Riker, hurry!”

With the icy deliberation of someone with nothing left to lose, he strode out of the meat locker and checked the remaining chambers. Empty. All except the conjoined breeding chamber where the naked male watched them, his gaze glued to Nicole. In a few strides, Riker was inside the vampire’s cell. The male, no more a vampire than a corpse was a living person, crouched, his fangs dripping with drool.

Behind Riker, Nicole splashed something on the floors and walls, and the harsh reek of chemicals burned his nostrils.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked the creature. “My mate was put into a cell with you.”

The only reply was a bloodthirsty growl. Riker should hate the vampire, should want to rip him apart with his bare hands for what he’d done to Terese and countless other females. Instead, Riker felt only pity. This male was as much a victim of Daedalus’s cruelty as Terese had been.

With lightning speed, he slipped behind the vampire and snapped his neck. When he stepped out of the cell, he found Nicole staring at him.

“You killed him.”

“I put him out of his misery.” The kid was still sitting where Riker had left him, his eyes glazed. Maybe it would be best to put him down, too.

“Don’t even think about it,” Nicole snapped. “Where’s Neriya?”

“Dead.”

Nicole fumbled the lighter in her hand but caught it before it hit the floor. When she looked up, her eyes were liquid with regret. But they both knew there was no time for mourning or useless apologies.

“Pick up the kid.” She flicked the lighter mechanism and lit the corner of a paper as he threw the skinny male over his shoulder.

With one last look around, she dropped the flaming sheet and grabbed the garbage bag full of files. The place went up in a flash. Searing heat licked at their backs as they fled the building through a rear exit.

Once outside, Nicole stopped on a grassy knoll at the edge of the property. The clan’s beat-up Jeep was parked within sight, but Nicole didn’t even look in its
direction. Despite the blare of sirens bearing down on them, she very slowly swung around and stared at the flames engulfing the lab. He expected to see grief in her face. Or pain. Or even anger. Anything but what he saw reflecting in her eyes.

Acceptance.

Nicole had just willfully destroyed part of her life, and now she was watching the remains burn to ash. Her strength humbled him, and when she finally turned her back to the crumbling skeleton that had belonged to her family, she did it with a finality that astonished him.

They didn’t look back again.

NICOLE WASN’T SURE
how far they’d run with Riker carrying the kid over his shoulder after they parked the Jeep on property discreetly owned by MoonBound. But every time she faltered, tripping over branches or stumbling from exhaustion, Riker would catch her. It hadn’t taken long for VAST to swarm the forest, and the sounds of pursuit kept her moving. Now, with the shouting voices practically upon them, her panic made her even clumsier.

“It’s okay,” Riker said, steadying her with a hand around her biceps. “Clan warriors are attacking our pursuers.”

She sucked in a panting breath. “You could have told me earlier.”

“Didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“In the future, keep in mind that I don’t like surprises,” she muttered.

They continued on, thankfully at a slower pace, and
after a few minutes, the boy came around, his groggy gaze unfocused and confused.

“Hey, kid,” Riker said. “We’re almost home.” He lowered the boy to the ground.

Standing, the male was at least six feet tall, but he probably weighed no more than Nicole. His shaggy black hair fell in a mop to his jaw, and he had to push it out of his face to see. He wobbled as he looked around, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.

“Where are we?” The boy’s strained voice was barely audible. “What
is
this?”

“We’re in the forest outside of Seattle,” Riker said. “We’re safe. The humans can’t touch you here.”

The boy backed away from them in a panicked scramble, and when he bumped into a tree trunk, he yelped and leaped away as if he’d been bitten. He sucked air in huge gulps, his gaze darting everywhere at once, as if he was looking for somewhere to run.

“You’re okay,” she said, in a low, steady voice. He reminded Nicole of a stray kitten she’d once coaxed out from underneath a bush. “You’re safe now. Where are you from?”

The question seemed to stump him. “From?”

“Yes.” Reaching out, she took his hand. It was cold and bony, and her heart broke. “Where did you live before you were captured by humans? Where’s home?”

The boy frowned. “The lab is my home.”

“Are you saying you were born there?” Riker asked, incredulous.

A crow cawed nearby, and the kid gave a start. “I-I was born in a human house. But the lab is all I remember.”

The lab was all he knew?
Jesus.
“Where are your parents?”

“I don’t know who my sire is.” The boy’s voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear. “My mother is dead.”

Nicole wanted to hug him. Losing a parent was awful enough, but then to be raised in a lab . . . She couldn’t even begin to imagine that kind of nightmare. “Did she die during childbirth? How did Daedalus get you?”

“She was a servant. A wild vampire broke onto the grounds and killed her. Humans cut me out of her belly before I died.” He gave her such an honest, innocent look that her eyes stung. “They saved me.”

Good God, he was actually grateful for how Daedalus had treated him. She cut a glance at Riker . . . and gooseflesh erupted from her scalp to her toes.