From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (42 page)

“Word does get around when something happens to someone in a supernatural community who is well known,” I said. “If I’m right and he’s killed or imprisoned her, he’s hiding behind her name, continuing to do business in her name because his own has no power.”

Caroline scoffed, and pride swelled in my chest when I saw a spark of fire come back into her eyes. “Pathetic,” she spit harshly.

I stopped talking to concentrate on the knot. Caroline, either needing to fill the silence or perhaps simply feeling the need to talk in order to shore up her nerves, said as I worked, “I think it took us three, maybe four hours to get here—though I’m not sure where ‘here’ is.”

I paused long enough to tell her, “We’re in Cleveland. It’s where Race and I both lived before we went back home.”

Cocking her head to the side, Caroline contemplated that for a moment. I went back to tearing at the knot, and found myself longing for the destructive capacity of my canine teeth.

“If Race was still in Dayton when you talked to him, when that—that asshole Merrick talked to him—that means he was at least an hour behind us,”
Caroline observed. “It must be about six-thirty now, or just after. Nightfall is in about ninety minutes.”

I couldn’t help but wonder how she knew that, but then realized that anyone who paid attention to the movement of the sun and moon throughout the year would be able to figure it out. She might also have taught herself and Race to judge the time by the position of the sun or moon
so that he could go out and spend time in animal form whenever he felt the need.

I stopped what I was doing and grabbed her hands. “Caroline, look at me,” I said, and waited until her eyes had met mine. “Race will come for us. I know he will. And he was with his pack—our pack—so he’ll bring help. You have to trust him—he’ll be here.”

She smiled a brittle smile. “I know he will. In truth I’m a little afraid of that. He’ll come here, and in his anger at what’s happened he will be forced to do more bad things. He might even…”

Though her voice fell silent, I knew what she’d been about to say: “He might even have to kill.” I could not deny that was a very distinct possibility, so I didn’t bother to try and convince her otherwise. I knew Race well enough in the short time we’d been together that with mine and his mother’s life at stake, he would not hesitate.

I went back to the knot in the cord binding my wrists, a thrill of triumph zinging its way through me when I managed to finally loosen it. I pulled with more enthusiasm, and when at last the binding was not painfully tight, I made use of my inhuman strength and snapped it the rest of the way, freeing my hands. I rubbed my wrists for a moment to help restore proper circulation, then turned my attention to the binding around Caroline’s hands.

“Juliette,” she said after a moment. “I—I’m worried about what they’ll do to us while waiting for Race to come. I don’t…I don’t want to be raped.”

“I don’t want to be raped again,” I said as I tugged at the knot in her cord.

Caroline gasped.
“Again? What are you talking about? Sweetheart, please don’t tell me you were…”

I nodded, surprised that I wasn’t feeling the familiar rise of panic clawing at my throat.
“Almost a month ago, by two vampires working for another crazy bitch vampire. One night they kidnapped me for a few hours, bound me in chains, drugged me, and beat the shit out of me. Next day they tied me to a bed and raped me.”

“Oh, you poor child,” Caroline rasped, and a tear fell on the top of my hand.

“They’re dead now,” I said casually. “Saphrona’s brother ripped their heads off with his own two hands after Saphrona herself killed the bitch. We piled the parts in the corner of her father’s back yard where I lit them fuckers on fire and sent their worthless souls to hell.”

“Good riddance. If only we could do the same to these three, and whoever else they’re
bringing in as backup,” Caroline seethed, rubbing her wrists as I had mine when I finally pulled the cord away, tossing it to the floor.

“They’ll get what’s coming to them,” I told her, standing and helping her to her feet.

“That’s another thing I’m afraid of. That Race is going to get himself hurt trying to rescue us.”

I looked at her. “He’s not going to just try, Caroline—he will. But in the meantime, we’ve got to do our part and try to get out of this on our own.”

She took another deep breath and nodded. After a brief touch of my hand on her arm, I moved past her to the nightstand on the right side of the bed, opening the single drawer to look for something I could use as a weapon. There was nothing in it. Caroline watched me as I rounded the bed and looked in the other nightstand, where I did my best not to slam it shut upon finding it also empty.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Something—anything—that can be used as a weapon,” I replied, heading for the dresser.

“This may seem a bit presumptuous, but what about breaking the legs off the vanity chair?” she said, pointing to the dressing table to my right, where there was a chair pushed under it. “Can
’t vampires die from being staked?”

“Only temporarily, unless their heart is somehow destroyed in the process,” I replied, though finding the dresser also empty had me contemplating the chair as well.

Caroline frowned. “What do you mean temporarily?”

I paused and looked at her. “I’m
afraid that the only way to kill a vampire for good is to cut off the head or destroy the heart, as they can’t live without either. Staking a vampire will certainly cease his or her bodily functions, but if the stake is pulled out, they’ll reanimate in three days.”

“But… You said you burned those others. If they were already dead, why did you burn them?”

“It ensures they stay dead. A vampire’s severed body part—even the head—can be reattached and the body reanimated if they’re not burned,” I explained as I went to the single window. I knew that the likelihood of escaping that way was zero, but… it couldn’t hurt to have a look. Of course I was right—not a chance. Not even a window-washer’s cart.

“Oh good heavens,” Caroline muttered, moving to sit on the end of the bed. “I suppose they don’t burn in the sun, either?”

I’d moved to the closet by then and found only empty hangers inside, growling as I was forced to accept that unless I did as Caroline suggested and break the legs off the single chair in the room, there was nothing I could use against Merrick and his thugs. Running a hand through my hair in frustration, I moved to that chair and dropped into it.

“No, vampires don’t burn in the sun. But sunlight weakens them. Becoming a
vampire reverses the body’s natural melatonin production cycle—melatonin being the hormone that makes us tired—and they produce more of it in the light than they do in the dark, whereas normal humans and my own kind produce more in darkness. It’s why we’re biologically inclined to be up during the day and to sleep at night.

“But vampires… Not only is the cycle reversed, they produce so much during daylight hours that they can fall into a deep sleep that’s very much like a coma. When they’re that deep asleep, it’s almost impossible to wake them. Back during the Dark Ages, that’s how a lot of them were killed—people just waited until they were asleep to stake them and set them on fire,” I explained.

“If that’s true, then why are these ones awake?” Caroline asked. “Shouldn’t they still be in their coffins or something?”

I tried not to laugh at her suggestion that vampires slept in coffins, something she’d obviously culled from her knowledge of popular vampire lore. Besides, I had no doubt some of them did.

“My guess is that Merrick planned this well in advance, which means that he and the other two have fed recently,” I replied.

“You… you mean they’ve been drinking blood?”

I nodded. “And a lot of it. I’m afraid it’s quite possible that they’ve each killed at least one person, maybe two. Drinking a large quantity of blood and/or drinking it at regular intervals allows them to stay awake during daytime hours.”

Caroline made the sign of the cross. “Oh, those poor people,” she said softly.

We’d been talking softly for a while—that and my futile search for a weapon had distracted me from the passage of time. Glancing at the window, though I could not see the sun itself, I could tell from the fading light that it would be down within minutes. Caroline and I looked at one another, each of us wondering the same thing: Where was Race?

It was then that a commotion
sounded from out in the living room. I jumped up and ran to the door, putting my ear to it and hearing what sounded like Al’s voice saying, “
Boss! They’re in the building!
”

“Race!” Caroline shouted, flying off the bed to join me at the door.

“Quiet!” I told her. “They’re in the building, not on this floor yet.” Moving away from the door, I went over to the chair at the vanity. Picking it up, I turned it and easily snapped off a leg, put that on the table, then snapped off another. After tossing the chair aside, I grabbed the first leg and walked back to the door, holding a leg in each hand like a club.

“Caroline, get behind me,” I said firmly. “From what Al just said, Race is here and he’s not alone. Once they get to this level things will go to hell in a hand basket in a flash; Merrick or one of his cronies might come for us, and I want to be able to take them out fast.”

She nodded and ran back to the bed
. Thankful she didn’t utter a word of protest, I stood just a foot or so outside the door’s opening arc, holding the chair legs ready to swing or stab. I felt adrenaline pumping furiously through my veins, once again awakening my canine heart. The animal inside wanted to be free, wanted to rend and tear vampire flesh, and given the opportunity I would let her do so with abandon. But right now I had to ensure Caroline’s safety.

“
Get back there and stand by that door
,” I heard Merrick say. “
I don’t want that fucking freak anywhere near them bitches of his until I’ve got him on his knees
.”

“
Got it, Boss
,” said a voice I didn’t recognize; backup must have arrived while I’d been educating Caroline about vampires.

Just minutes after Al’s shout, I heard a loud noise, what honestly sounded like a body being thrown into a wall. Having heard the sound before, I had a good basis on which to judge, and so I tightened my grip on the chair legs as well as the thin leash of control I had on my
Sibe. There was a reason beyond their looks that Siberian Huskies were often confused with wolves: the domestic ones were, in truth, very closely related to wolves genetically. So were Alaskan Malamutes. It was because of this relation between our “one-natured cousins” that some of the older members of my mother’s pack liked to say we might look like dogs, but we had the spirit of the wolf inside of us. That thought made me suddenly realize that it truly was the hand of Destiny that had led me to Race, and to Race becoming the leader of a wolf pack.

For a reason or reasons I might never understand, becoming the Alpha Female of the Dayton wolves was where I was always meant to be.

There were more sounds of fighting coming back to us—crashing furniture, the breaking of glass. Hisses and snarls told me that Race had indeed brought some of his wolves with him, and I was thankful. That he hadn’t come alone meant that at least some of the wolves had accepted him as their leader and were willing to join him in his efforts to rescue his mother and me from captivity. Then again, I knew how much werewolves loathed vampires; the enmity was based mostly on centuries of simple racial hatred, and they might have come on principle alone just for the chance of killing a few of them.

It sounded like one hell of a brawl was going on, and my
Sibe was practically screaming at me to join in the fun. I’d always enjoyed a good sparring match, and the chance to exact some revenge by tearing off a few vampire heads was something I really didn’t want to miss out on.

“I can’t stand this!” Caroline said then, her nervousness palpable in the way her hand clasped at my arm. “Where is Race? Is he okay?”

I searched for Race through our bond, and sensed that he was in quite the tussle with one of Merrick’s goons in the foyer. His sole focus was getting through all the vampires to find Merrick, so that he could tear him apart personally.

I threw a grin over my shoulder at Caroline. “He’s mopping the floor with them,” I told her.

“How do you know?” she countered.

My eyes back on the door, I said, “Remember what I told you about imprinting? A bonded pair is linked telepathically. I can feel
him, he’s right outside the apartment in the foyer.”

I turned then, and gave her condition serious consideration. “To be honest with you, I’m getting sick of waiting to be rescued. My animal side is itching to join in, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to control myself if it takes much more time for Race to get back here.”

She stared back at me for a heartbeat—maybe two—before saying, “Do what you have to, Juliette. Help my son get us out of here.”

I nodded and handed her the chair legs. Next I removed my shoes, jacket, shirt and jeans, handing them over as well. “Get in the closet and stay there until Race or I come for you. Bar it from the inside with one of those chair legs if you can—you should be relatively safe there while the fight is going on, but if someone other than Race or I tries to open the door, you scream as loud as you can.”