Taken by the Others (11 page)

Through the gaping hole where the front door used to be, I could see a pack of thirty or forty vampires standing on the lawn, Royce in the lead.

He looked pretty surprised. The other vamps were milling around muttering to each other. I could tell they were vamps right off since most of them had their fangs out, eyes glittering with that strange reddish light they get when excited or pissed off. I was disturbed to note that they were mostly men, lending some credence to what Max had said earlier. Or maybe Royce was bi? Whoa. Not going there. Really not going there.

The whole pack of them went on the alert as the hunters stepped forward, brandishing their weapons. Twelve White Hats against three times that many vampires? Hoo boy. This wasn’t good.

“Let’s rock!” one of the White Hats shouted, lifting a sawed-off shotgun to his shoulder. The pack of vampires surged forward, Royce’s eyes narrowing as he made a gesture to direct them at the guys with the guns first.

“No! Stop!” I cried, shrinking at the looks I was getting from the White Hats and even some of the vampires. It worked, though, since all of them paused, looking at me expectantly. I added a little more in the hopes it would stop them from shooting or clawing each other up. “We’re all on the same side, sort of.”

The guy with the shotgun couldn’t have looked more surprised if I’d sprouted horns and a tail.

“Let go of her, boy,” Royce demanded, staring hard at the man in the bomber jacket. His hand immediately slid from mine. Was Royce using mind tricks on him? The other vampires started forward again, some of them growling and baring their fangs. To their credit, none of the White Hats flinched or stepped back.

Royce turned to me, his anger fading into concern. “Shiarra, come with me.”

Looking back and forth between the White Hats bristling with weapons and the dozens of vampires surrounding Royce, I realized for the first time why the White Hats did what they did. How scary it must be to them, standing there, expecting to die. Kind of like me.

“No.”

Royce was at a loss, particularly since I took the hunter’s hand again. The guy looked at me with brows arched in surprise at my touch. There was some comfort in feeling that human warmth, and I drew strength from it. We’d survive this.

Frowning, Royce started in again, sounding all too reasonable. “Shiarra, I came here to save you. I can keep Max away, something they can’t promise you.”

“They’re doing just fine so far. They saved me, Royce. I’m going with them.”

He growled softly in frustration, gesturing for the other vampires to back up. Most of them did, one or two staying at his side. I recognized the one on the left as his lieutenant, John, who didn’t look very happy. His gaze slid from me to the interior of the house, and I looked back to make sure there weren’t any baddies sneaking up. The room behind us was empty. My paranoia wasn’t appeased, however–I still had a bunch of trigger-happy fanatics on one side of me and a crowd of pissed off, hungry-looking vampires on the other.

Royce stared at me for quite a while, his black gaze as piercing as, and more unnerving than, Max’s. Somehow I managed not to waver, meeting his eyes and keeping my expression as neutral as possible. Hard to think of him as a monster, looking so human in jeans and a casual-but-tailored shirt, hair swept out of his face by the wind rustling through the trees surrounding the house. Unlike the other vamps, he wasn’t outwardly ruffled, showing no hint of his fangs and no trace of red in his eyes. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He was studying me with such a bland expression that we might as well have been discussing the weather over coffee. But I still couldn’t meet his eyes; it was obvious by his gaze alone that he was still intensely scrutinizing me, maybe gauging what I felt about him after talking to Max. Or maybe he was trying too hard not to show interest in the damage to my neck.

It was hard to see the man in front of me as the murderous beast Max had described, the same one who’d come within a hairsbreadth of drinking my blood less than twenty-four hours ago. He was here to save me. All these vamps at his back weren’t here to kill me. They were here to help him get me free. Well, more likely to help him tear Max and his cronies into itty-bitty pieces.

What had he intended to do once he got me out? If he had gotten to me before the White Hats, would he have tried turning me? Somehow I couldn’t picture him giving me a lift home and dropping me off with simple admonitions to watch my back.

Eventually he relaxed a trifle, waving a dismissing hand. “Fine. For the time being, go with them. I do want a chance to speak with you about this. I’ll be calling you later, as soon as I’m done here.”

Oh, whatever. He sounded like a jealous boyfriend. I frowned at him in disapproval. “Max took my cell phone.”

“I see. I’ll be in touch, then.”

How? I shook my head, not wanting to think about it any longer, tugging lightly on my savior’s hand to lead him and the rest of the White Hats past the vamps. None of the vampires or hunters looked very happy about it. Royce’s followers watched us go with naked hunger in their eyes. If Royce hadn’t kept them in check, I had no doubt they would’ve fallen on us like a pack of ravenous dogs the instant we came into view in that doorway.

Once the last hunter was clear of the shattered doors, the vampires spilled in with Royce in the lead, disappearing into the house using that unearthly speed of theirs. The hunters kept their weapons trained on the vamps, staying close to each other. Obviously they didn’t trust that one or more of those monsters might not decide to grab a snack before battling Max’s minions. Honestly, I didn’t totally trust that they wouldn’t try something like that either.

I shuddered once the last of them was out of sight. The guy at my side gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, his words punctuated with sofft, shaky laughter. “That was really something. For a second there I thought we were toast.”

“For some reason, Royce has a soft spot for me,” I said, my laughter wavering more than his. “It’d be a shitty way to stay in my good graces if he went and killed all the people who saved me just because they got here first.”

He nodded, his nervousness fading as he gave me a lopsided smile. “The name’s Devon, by the way.”

“Shiarra,” I replied, letting go of his hand and taking in the surroundings. We were in the woods. The big house–more of a mansion really–stood by itself in the forest, a whole crapload of cars parked every which way on the grassy lawn and scattered over the dirt road winding through the trees. I could see the moon peeking out between naked branches, illuminating cars in the clearing that varied from jeeps and SUVs to unassuming compacts to high-end sports cars. Where the heck did all these people come from?

“Jack told us you needed help. He’s been … uh …”

“Tailing me?” I guessed. Devon looked sheepish, but still nodded. Guess not all White Hats are equally crazy or use the same methods. “I figured. That’s how you guys found me so fast, huh?”

He nodded again, clearly relieved that I wasn’t pissed. “Yeah.”

The big guy with mahogany skin, who had come along with Jack to bully me into joining the White Hat cause a long time ago, fell into step beside us. “Jack wanted us to give you a message. He said to tell you the offer is still open, if you know what side you’re on now.”

I thought about it. Really thought about it. As crazy as their methods might be, the White Hats knew what they were doing. I had watched them take out a vamp with my own eyes. They had experience, access to all kinds of weapons, and were willing to save my ass if an Other decided to get too up close and personal.

“I don’t know yet,” I said as we stopped beside a beat-up jeep, its dark paint covered with scratches and dents. Devon held open the passenger-side door for me, and I pulled myself up with a groan to settle in the seat. “Give me some time.”

Tiny grinned, a flash of white teeth against dark skin, before opening the rear door to slide into the back. “You’ve got until we get to Jack’s to figure it out.”

Chapter 13

The drive took forever; Devon was concentrating on driving and Tiny didn’t seem to be in a talkative mood. I didn’t recognize the area we were in, and the back roads that cut through the woods surrounding the vamp house were mostly without signs of human habitation. I didn’t see any telephone poles or power lines, so I presumed the house was extremely old, off the grid, abandoned and forgotten. Which would also explain why the only illumination in the place was from candlelight and gas lamps.

The other White Hats were following us in four beat-up jeeps and SUVs. When we finally pulled onto a paved road, we only had to go a few blocks to get onto an expressway but I still didn’t know where we were. Then, after a long time, we pulled onto the 87, a road I recognized.

I must have been out like a light for hours for the bad guys to drag me this far away from Queens. No wonder it took so long for Royce and the White Hats to get to me. We were way out, upstate, in the ass-end of nowhere.

It gave me a chill to think of what might have happened if Jack hadn’t kept a tail on me. Would Max have used me as bait for Royce? Turned me into a vampire? Somehow I didn’t think he planned to keep me around for an eternity.

I pondered where we were going once we got to the George Washington Bridge. The steel beams and cables were lit by glittering bluish lights running along their length, brighter white lights illuminating the two towers that supported the massive structure and cars trickling along both levels. Traffic on it was crawling, as usual, even at this time of night. At the peak of the graceful arch of the bridge, I studied the skyline shining with lights like stars fallen to earth, scattered all along the waterfront. With the moon hanging high in the sky and the mixed lights from the bridge and city far across the span of concrete and steel reflecting off the water below us, a deep sense of relief and calm overtook me.

I was home.

It took a while for us to make it into the city, and I took careful note of the streets when we exited somewhere in the Bronx. We were headed more toward the East Bronx than South, but to my surprise, we ended up on City Island, crossing a tiny three-lane bridge over Long Island Sound.

The minuscule island held a quaint town like you’d see on a picture-perfect New England postcard. The streets were lined with shops selling high-end antiques or boating and sailing goods. Seafood restaurants abounded. Due to the hour, most, if not all, of the shops were closed. There was no traffic, and it didn’t take long until we were cruising down a back road, passing homes out of a Victorian fairy tale.

Soon we pulled up in front of a charmingly rustic house with a gorgeous view of Eastchester Bay. The faintest scent of wood smoke was in the air, mixing with the cool, salty ocean breeze. Lights gleamed from the wide windows across the front of the house. The White Hats who had been following our lead found their own parking spots, scattered here and there along the quiet street.

As we stepped out of the car, parked under the protectively outstretched limb of an enormous oak, someone opened the front door and stepped out on the porch to meet us. With the light from inside the house shining behind him, I couldn’t make out his features clearly, but from the slender frame and blond hair I could tell it was Jack. Clearly he’d been waiting up, expecting us.

Jack was the last person I would have expected to live in a place like this. For one thing, his (very illegal) gun shop was in downtown Manhattan, a hell of a commute. The affluent neighborhood didn’t strike me as his thing either. Did he make enough money to afford digs like this? What was the sort of place I expected to see him living in? A spartan apartment with minimal furnishings and guns and weapons scattered around the empty floors maybe. Not a sprawling, pastoral house with wind chimes hanging from the eaves of the porch and a ship’s anchor leaning against a wooden barrel filled with sand and seashells, propped in place by a thick coil of rope.

A wave of dizziness swept me when I stepped out of the car, and I had to clutch at the door to keep from going to my knees. Silly as it sounds, I’d forgotten how weak I was from the blood loss and wasn’t expecting the abrupt wave of nausea and vertigo that hit me. Tiny, who’d already started walking toward the house, turned back at the little cry I gave. He and Devon were soon on either side of me, supporting me so I could walk. Embarrassing, but without their help I never would’ve made it to the front door.