Fallen Angel of Mine (27 page)

"They did something to
babies?"

His voice rose to a hoarse whisper.
"They vanished."

I gagged as the reality of what he was
saying hit home. "My god. They were using those people as
food."

He nodded. "I had to check the health
of the incoming workers and people they kidnapped. They brought in
women, some of them pregnant. Sometimes they'd bring in a tourist,
but they always ransomed those types."

I couldn't stand around any longer,
especially with a gun battle raging not far away. "Point me toward
the place they keep the slaves. I'll meet you at the
plane."

"I can help."

I almost refused him. But his knowledge
of the layout might help me direct those poor souls out of this
wretched place. He gripped the dart gun in a trembling hand. His
shaky trigger finger fired a dart into the dirt, narrowly missing
his foot. His shoulders slumped as he regarded his shaking
limbs.

"I'm a sodding mess." He offered me the
gun. "With your speed, you could hit anyone before I even saw
them."

I pulled the belt off one of the
unconscious vampires along with the pistol holster and put it on so
I could secure the gun. If I tried to tuck it into my pants, I'd
probably end up tranquilizing my ass. I motioned for the doctor to
proceed. "Let's do this."

We ran behind a tin shed. Scanned for
bad guys. Ran to a copse of trees. Looked again. Five minutes
later, we arrived at the doors to an underground cellar. The steel
doors were locked and inset into the ground against a concrete
frame, but I ripped one off the hinges with a few hard jerks. I'd
expected a filthy root cellar filled with grubby starved people and
rats—lots of rats. Instead, I found a set of bleached concrete
stairs leading into a polished, marble-tiled hallway. A large
communal bathroom with showers and stainless steel toilets without
partitions filled the first room. Doors lined the rest, like a
dormitory.

"The other end leads into the mansion,"
the doctor said.

"Wow, this place looks
nice."

"Looks can be deceiving."

I knew that all too well. I bashed the
first locked door open with my shoulder, glad that it was wood
instead of metal. A woman on the other side screeched and hid
behind the bed. A television hummed in the background. She
assaulted us with a stream of Spanish. The doctor replied in kind
and after a moment she calmed down. When she neared us, I realized
that her eyes flickered between normal brown and vampiric red. I
also noticed the hump in her midsection and my stomach
clenched.

"Ask her if she's pregnant."

He did and she replied
affirmatively.

"She's turning into a vampire," I told
him. "I think Franco is trying to make baby dhampyrs."

The doctor's face blanched and he
backed away from the woman, terror in his eyes. "She's a bloody
vampire?"

I grabbed his arm. "It's not like the
movies," I said. "She's not going to freak out and attack
you."

"How do you know?"

"Because not all vampires are pure evil
like the jackass who runs this place." I noticed an empty blood
pack on the dresser nearby. "Plus, she just ate."

He turned a shade of green I'd never
seen before and ran out retching.

Even if the woman wasn't going to
attack anyone, I didn't know what to do about her. Someone else
would have to break out the vampire handbook and give her the
lowdown, because I wasn't exactly a fountain of knowledge. It was
really too bad Shelton's place wasn't nearby because I'd gladly
dump these newly fanged females on his doorstep. I could imagine
the panic on his face if I turned his hideout into a halfway home
for pregnant vampires.

The doctor and I went through the rest
of the rooms, freeing what turned out to be nearly a dozen women.
Some were pregnant. Others cried about having their babies taken
from them after birth. At least a couple others showed signs of
vampiric turning.

"Did you deliver their infants?" I
asked the doctor, clenching my fists and trying to decide just how
innocent he was in the wretched scheme of things. My lack of
Spanish prevented me from questioning the women, but at least none
of them had attacked the doctor on sight which would have been a
clear indication to me his hands were filthy with this dirty
business.

He shook his head. "I don't know who
delivered them."

I led the group of ten women to the
back. Most of them wore only bed robes, lingerie, and slippers.
Apparently, the vampires used them for their blood and other
sickening purposes I didn't want to think about. This Victoria's
secret was one I didn't want to know.

Before we left this place, I was going
to do something about Franco and Marcel. Much as I hated to do it,
the only way to ensure they never did this again was to kill them.
My guts knotted at the thought, but I felt like I had no
choice.

The women and doctor gathered in a
tight circle around me as we stood near the exit. I felt their
expectant eyes on me, like bayonets pressing hard against my back,
urging me to show them a way out of this hellhole. I didn't have a
clue what I was doing. For all I knew we'd be mowed down by
automatic gunfire twenty feet from the compound. The jet might be
gone, leaving me stranded in the middle of the jungle with pregnant
women who were turning into vampires. I couldn't think of anything
stranger or more frightening.

One of the pregnant women took my hand
and squeezed. I looked into her eyes as they cycled between honey
brown and crimson red. She smiled. It was a weak, worried smile,
but a smile nonetheless. I didn't know this woman. I owed her
nothing. But she was counting on me to rescue her from a life of
degradation and slavery and, damn it all, I had to try. I might not
be able to plan my way out of a paper bag without burning it to the
ground, but for these people, it really couldn't get much worse. I
would burn this place to ashes if I had to.

I smiled back. Squeezed her hand.
"We'll get out of this," I said with more confidence than I
felt.

I don't think she spoke much English,
but she nodded anyway and let go of my hand.

The gun battle had dwindled to an
occasional random shot punctuating the night. Our return to the
airstrip necessitated passing by the unconscious vampires, so I let
the doctor lead the way while I thought about the best method for
executing the evil duo.

Franco and Marcel still lay where we'd
left them.

One of the women shrieked and rushed
Franco, kicking the unconscious vampire in the ribs as tears poured
down her face. Another woman shrank behind me, sobbing, while yet
another grabbed a nearby shovel and pounded Franco on the face
until blackened blood oozed from the ruin of his nose.

I grabbed her arms and took the shovel
away. "Doc, get them out of here. I'll meet you in a
minute."

"What do you plan to do?"

I sighed and found the pistol Franco
had tried to shoot me with earlier. "We can't let them
live."

One of the women, a short pregnant girl
who couldn't have been much older than me, said something in
Spanish and held out her hand, presumably for the gun.

"She wants the honor of putting them
down," the doctor said.

I almost gave the scrappy
chica the gun, but what kind of man would I be, letting a woman do
the dirty work? Maybe I was being a pig for not letting her, but it
just seemed wrong, letting a pregnant woman shoot two unconscious
people—rotten disgusting jackasses or not—in cold blood. I aimed
the gun at Franco's head. My hand shook and sweat gathered on my
brow. A cramp tightened in my guts and a little voice in my head
screamed,
No! You'll scar yourself for
life!

My mind flashed back to Diego and his
muscular friend, Jose. I'd killed them. A sick feeling rose in my
stomach and I tasted bile. Things had been so hectic and crazy I
hadn't given it much thought. Strangely, I didn't feel all that
guilty about Diego and his pal, even though the gruesome memory
played over and over in my head. But I remembered Sherriff Skinner.
I'd killed him by slamming him into a wall. Then again, he'd just
tried to kill Elyssa. He'd tried to harm someone I
loved.

Just because these two deserved death,
did that mean I had the right to carry out their sentence in cold
blood?

A gentle hand touched mine and I
flicked my gaze away from the vampires to see the pregnant girl
looking at me with big brown eyes. "Bad."

I nodded. "I know. Dammit, I know, but
I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can kill them like
this."

Something whistled through the air.
Instinct took over and I swayed left as a silvery dart flashed past
my shoulder and caught one of the women in the cheek. She stiffened
and collapsed even as my ears detected more projectiles coming our
way.

"Duck!" I shouted, and followed my own
advice by diving to the side and rolling behind the tin shed the
doctor and I had used for cover earlier.

Unfortunately, none of the others were
as quick and slumped to the ground like a pile of abandoned
marionettes.

"He's behind the shed," someone
shouted.

"Flank right!"

A dark figure flitted beneath one of
the street lamps and my heart seemed to pause mid-beat. I'd
recognize the wearers of that night camo anywhere.

Templars.

Demonic energy thrummed in my blood.
Even so, I doubted I could race through the forest at top speed,
make it to the jet, and convince the pilot to take off before a
dozen or more well-trained Templars caught up and beat the snot out
of me. Then again, these guys weren't giving me much of a choice. I
looked down the road leading to the jet. The doctor told me it was
less than a mile. I hoped he was right.

I'd already learned the perils of
running blindly through a rainforest. Namely, I would be more
likely to beat myself bloody against branches than get anywhere
very fast. So I sprinted down a nearby path and raced behind a
garage, hoping to reach the road leading to my destination. A
nearby shout told me they'd spotted me. My legs spun beneath me,
churning up loose gravel and mud. I dashed down the awful excuse
for a road. Risked a glance back and spotted several dark specters
streak beneath one of the few street lamps bordering this
area.

The Templars were probably
as fast, if not faster. Sure, football practice trained me not to
fall on my face every time I ran at super speed, but I hadn't
exactly honed my skills to ninja level ninety-nine. Running from
hellhounds and evil shadow people
had
, at least, taught me to run
without wetting my britches.

What in the hell were the Templars
doing here, anyway? Either this was a raid on rogue vampires or
Thomas Borathen had found me and sent a squad to finish me off once
and for all. Elyssa's father took the definition of
"overprotective" and "obsessive" to terrifying new
levels.

Despite the wind rushing past my ears,
another noise caught my attention: the roar of jet engines powering
up. The pilot must have heard the shooting or been alerted by radio
because it sounded like my ride out of here was going
buh-bye.

I invented a few new curse words and
sped up. The road terminated at a clearing the length of several
football fields. A narrow strip of asphalt ran down the center. I
saw a small jet turning around at one end of the runway, prepping
for takeoff. Veering right, I angled for my last chance out of
here, some hundred yards away. The plane straightened out. Turbine
engines roared at full blast. The vessel charged down the
runway.

My brain recalculated my escape plan.
The only way to get inside that jet was to somehow open the door on
the side, maybe even rip it off all while it was moving. Such
damage would undoubtedly make the aircraft hazardous to fly. I
looked back. My night vision picked up at least six dark figures
racing across the field after me, their legs blurred with speed.
Flying in a broken plane suddenly seemed like a very viable plan.
My brain analyzed my assessment and pointed out the swirling
turbines just behind the wings and the tiny external handle on the
door I'd have to grab to avoid being sucked into the deadly blades.
Super healing or not, those things would inhale me and spit out
incubus-flavored chop suey.

I'm going to do this whether
you like it or not,
I told my brain. It
responded by flashing gruesome images of my body whirling like a
frog in a blender after my sweaty fingers slipped off the red
handle on the jet's hatch. I wondered if the door was locked from
the inside. Considering the way things usually went for me, I felt
certain that it was locked. Or jammed.

It didn't matter. In a few seconds, the
jet and I would intersect and I'd have to hope I was quick enough
to grab that door handle. I focused my eyes on the target and
noticed the handle sat in a shallow circular recess on the door.
Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. The pilot, however, had other plans.
Maybe he'd noticed the ominous figures dashing after him, or maybe
he was just a jackass who hated me, because the jet lurched forward
with a sudden burst of speed. My breath came in ragged pants as I
willed my tired legs to speed up. But they were already going flat
out. I reached the runway a split second before the aircraft roared
past.