Sarafina opened her mind as she searched the house. She knew that Rhiannon was with Amber, and the slick and slimy Joe was dead. She knew that Willem had gone below to search for the vampires being held there, and that Rhiannon had gone to back him up.
And she knew, from the conversation she had overheard, that Stiles was in a laboratory somewhere in the house. Once assured the others were holding their own-confident they could handle the one mortal thug still unaccounted for-she honed her focus, drew it in until it was as sharp and attuned as a pinprick of light. Within that pinprick, she placed an image of Stiles as she remembered him, with the left half of his face mottled and pink with scars, the left half of his head smooth where no hair could grow. He'd been inside DPI headquarters when the vampires had burned it to the ground all those years ago. He hadn't escaped unscathed.
She wished fervently that he hadn't escaped at all. He'd singlehandedly recreated the DPI, though whether he still used the name, she didn't know. It didn't matter. What he had created was born of the same fear-based hatred. If anything, this new organization of his was even more despicable than the original had been. But it would end when he did. And she intended to see to it that his end found him soon.
She owed the man.
Her instincts led her through the house, her senses guiding the way, until she found herself in a corridor lined with doors on either side. Moving through it, she held her palms to each closed door, feeling the vibrations on the other side-or not feeling them, since most of the rooms were empty. But then, she had help from an unexpected source.
Ahead, around a corner, a man-not Stiles-lifted his hand to pound on a closed door. She moved toward him in a flash of speed, caught the hand before it could make contact, covered the man's mouth so he couldn't cry out and held his nose so he couldn't breathe. It was the quietest method she could think of, but her patience was stretched to its limits by the time his oxygen-starved heart finally stopped beating.
She dragged him around the corner and left him there. Then she returned to the door, put her palm to its surface and knew that Stiles was inside.
Closing her hand around the doorknob, she tried to turn it, found it locked. She took two steps back, turned slightly to one side and kicked. The door burst open, wood splintering along the locked edge.
Stiles whirled to face her, his eyes wide. He stood on the far side of the dimly lit room. She took rapid note of computers, shelves lined with bottles and jars, microscopes and more sophisticated laboratory equipment and books. There were endless rows of notebooks like the one the two had been perusing in the library. One such book lay open on the table that stood between her and Stiles. There was a syringe in his arm, its plunger fully depressed.
"Funny," she said. "I didn't take you for an addict."
He pulled the needle from his arm, tossed it to the floor and casually rolled down his sleeve. "And I didn't take you for an idiot-Sarafina, isn't it?"
She nodded, just once. "You remember me, then.''
"I never forget an enemy. This is going to be a supreme pleasure. Of course, you realize you're completely surrounded. Trapped."
"By those soldiers you have stationed outside, you mean? They didn't stop me from getting in, Stiles. I doubt they'll give me much trouble when I decide to make my exit. Not that you'll be alive to see it."
"I think I will." He lunged for the counter behind him, grabbing a small handheld radio. She shot across the room, clearing the table easily, landing beside him and closing her hand over the one that held the device. When she squeezed, Stiles's face contorted and the radio crumbled into pieces.
He shouted then. "Nelson, Joe, get in here!"
She released his hand, brushing her own as if to rid it of dirt. "Nelson. That's the big blonde with the broken neck, isn't it? And I believe Joe has, well, as someone dear to me put it, he's simply lost his head.
In fact, I'm fairly certain all your household staff have decided to...take the rest of the night off."
"You killed them. You murderous bitch." He was backing across the room as he spoke, toward the right wall. There were numerous items strewn on the counter there, and a small refrigerator, as well.
"I'm not the one who kidnapped a teenage girl, Mr. Stiles," she said, picking up the open book from the table as she followed him. She glanced down at the pages.
"Dr. Stiles."
She ignored him, noticing the phrases that stood out on the page.
...tenth injection...noted increase in strength and stamina...no aversion so far to sunlight or solid food...
Frowning, she looked up at him. "What is this? Exactly what were you injecting into what's left of your pathetic body when I walked in here?"
He smiled very slowly. "You'll never live long enough to find out," he muttered.
She tossed the book aside, and in a single burst of motion she was on him, had him by the throat, ready to choke the answers from him. Stile drove his fist into her belly with impossible force. Her grip broke, and she flew backward, airborne, until her back hit the table, breaking it in two. She lay on the floor, the jagged wood beneath her, stunned. He couldn't be that strong. He couldn't be....
"What have you done?" she whispered.
He started toward her, and she sprang to her feet, defensive, ready. He made as if to attack, but instead pulled a gun from inside his jacket. An ordinary handgun. He fired it, and the sound was deafening to her sensitive ears as the muzzle flashed blue fire. A red-hot brand seared through her midsection. Pain screamed, and blood flowed as she fell to her knees.
She looked down at where her hands clasped her belly, saw the scarlet lifeblood oozing from between her fingers. "You'll die for this...."
"Not likely. You will, though. I guarantee you that."
Even before she lost consciousness, the bastard had hauled her up and thrown her over his shoulder as if she were weightless, and at such close range she smelled him even more acutely than she had before. His scent was off-there was something familiar, something beloved that shouldn't be there. And then it hit her. He smelled like Amber Lily!
He carried her toward the wall. Not the door, but the wall.
Willem heard the gunshot. They all did, and they raced through the house toward its source. Sarafina. Jesus, something had happened to Sarafina. He felt it in his gut-and it burned.
They ran into a hall, down it, the others opening doors as they went. Will didn't bother. He felt pulled, and he followed that feeling, running on his injured foot, completely oblivious to the pain. He nearly tripped over a dead man lying on the floor. Leaping over the corpse, he kept moving and came to a door that was already open. Splintered but open, revealing a laboratory.
"Here!" he shouted, and the others came running.
Silently they took in the surroundings, the equipment, the broken table and the small pool of blood on the floor near it. Amber, rousing now from the mild dose of tranquilizer she'd been given, bent to pick up the notebook on the floor.
"That's Sarafina's blood," Rhiannon said softly. "He's taken her... somewhere.''
"But where?" Will looked frantically around the room, his heart racing, his head in chaos. But then he checked himself, fell back on his training, called up every ounce of will and self-control in him. He went still, closed his eyes and let his experience take over.
"Roland, go to the front of the house, where you can see outside through the windows. Check the troops outside, see if they seem to have heard the gunshot."
"It's doubtful, given the thickness of these old stone walls."
"Make sure. And don't be seen."
Roland nodded and left the room.
Will glanced at Jameson. "We left one alive. The woman, in the room upstairs. Get her and bring her down here."
Jameson nodded and left, moving fast.
Angelica said, "We know he didn't carry her out the way we came in or we'd have passed them. I'll check the other way along this hall, see if there are any other exits that he could have used."
"Look for blood on the floor, as well," Will told her. And even as she hurried away, he was looking at the floor, his eyes narrow. There were droplets of blood between the puddle and the wall on his right. Nowhere else.
He shook his head. "This doesn't make any sense."
"My God," Amber whispered.
Rhiannon and Willem both turned toward her. She was standing in the doorway, her eyes moving rapidly over the pages of the book she held.
She looked up slowly, at each of them in turn. "He's been-he's been injecting himself with...with my blood. My blood."
"What?'' Rhiannon took the book from her, reading for herself.
Will understood. "He says you're animals, evil demons and that he wants to eliminate you all. He uses that rhetoric to draft men to his cause. But what he really wants is what you have."
Rhiannon looked up. "He wants to be a vampire?"
"He wants to be immortal," Will said softly.
"But why would he think my blood would give him that?" Amber asked.
Will took the book from Rhiannon, flipping backward through the pages, skimming rapidly until he found the section that stopped him. What he read there made him sick to his stomach. They'd been trying to kill the beautiful teenage girl with the piercing eyes ever since they'd had her here. Food laced with poison. Electric shock while she was under sedation. They'd even tried drowning her. Each time, she had revived.
"What?" Amber asked. "What is it, Will?"
He shook his head. "Later. We'll discuss it later."
Jameson arrived, carrying the still-unconscious woman in his arms. He'd removed her bonds and gag. "I'm not sure we can wake her," he said.
"You can. There's an antidote to the tranquilizer. They used it to rouse me when they needed me awake a couple of times," Amber said.
Rhiannon went to the shelves, then to the tiny refrigerator, knocking bottles and jars to the floor in her haste. "Here," she said, picking up a labeled syringe. "This must be it. It seems to be premeasured."
"Premeasured for a vampiric dose," Angelica said from the doorway. "I checked, there are some windows in some of the rooms, but all closed and locked from the inside. No other doors he could get to from that direction. The hall just ends."
Rhiannon brought the syringe to Jameson, glanced at him. He nodded. "Her heart's barely beating. She had a full dose of the tranquilizer, after all."
"Not a full one," Amber said. "They had to dilute it for me. And probably the antidote, as well. If that's premeasured, it was probably meant for me."
"Either way, it will kill her soon enough if we don't try," Will said. "Go ahead, it can't hurt."
Rhiannon injected the woman; then Jameson laid her down on the floor. Roland returned, looked around at them. "The guards outside haven't moved. I don't think they heard anything."
"Good." Will set the notebook on a counter and bent over the woman on the floor. He tapped her cheeks. "Wake up. Wake up now, come on."
She moaned softly, moved her head from side to side. Finally her eyes fluttered, then opened, then opened wider when she saw them all standing around her.
"If you want to live, you'll tell me what I want to know," Will said.
She looked around frantically.
"There's no one left to help you. The others are dead, Stiles has escaped, and the guards outside don't even know we're in here. Now look, see the room you're in? The lab?"
She nodded.
"Stiles escaped from here, but not through any of the exits we can find. How did he do it?"
She blinked, foggy, unfocused, scared as hell. "I don't...I can't..."
"Oh for pity sake, let's just eat her and be done with it!" Rhiannon knelt beside the woman, gripped a handful of her hair and tipped her head back, her eyes blazing and aimed at the tender arch of her neck.
"No!" the woman cried.
"Talk or die, mortal. It's of no consequence to me."
Will had to admit, the vampiress was good. She might have been able to make even him talk.
Nah.
The woman on the floor nodded rapidly. "There's... a hidden panel...in the wall." Her hand rose, gesturing weakly in the direction of the wall where the blood trail ended.
"How does it open?" Will asked.
"The...light switch."
Willem crossed the room and saw the ordinary-looking switch plate hidden in plain sight. He flipped the switch, and a section of the wall slid into itself, revealing a downward staircase.
Roland said, "That wasn't here before."
"Stiles...had it built," the woman said.
Suddenly there was a muffled roar from somewhere in the distance, and the floor seemed to shake beneath them.
"What the hell...?" Roland began.
Willem glanced at his watch. "Shit, it's the diversion. I set explosives on a timer at the far end of the other tunnel-not this one. The one Eric used as an emergency exit from the rooms below. Not enough to blow it open. I only had a small amount of explosive and-"
He was interrupted by a tinny sounding voice emanating from a small box mounted to the wall just inside the door.
"Stiles? There's been some kind of an explosion nearby. How do you want us to proceed?"
Willem glanced at the woman. "Explain. Fast."
"Intercoms," she said quickly. "They're spaced throughout the house so we can communicate with the soldiers."
Will marched across the room to the intercom, depressed the button, spoke into the box. "Someone blew the sealed tunnel. The prisoners are escaping. Take all your men and go after them."
"But the house, sir."
"There are six of us in here, all armed. I think we can handle one little girl. You have your orders, soldier. Go."
"Yes, sir!"
Roland shook his head. ' 'Unbelievable. You sound nothing like Stiles."
"Not to you, maybe," Will said. "But to an ordinary mortal, most deep male voices sound pretty much the same over a cheap intercom. Besides, mercenary or not, a trained soldier doesn't stop to think too much when given a direct order. He just obeys."
A thud drew his gaze, and he turned to see Amber, standing over the book, which she'd just dropped to her feet. While they'd all been involved with the woman on the floor, she had, apparently, been reading about the things Stiles and his monsters had done to her.
"I...I don't understand," she whispered, her eyes welling. "They tried...they tried to kill me?"
Angelica gasped and wrapped her daughter in her arms. Jameson said, "What's in that book?"
"Take it with you," Will said. "There's no time now. It's not going to take those troops long to realize the tunnel is still sealed. Get out of here, all of you. Go find the vehicles. Close the door behind you and they'll never know anything happened."
"What about you?" Amber asked.
Jameson smoothed his daughter's hair. "He's going after Sarafina."
"Not alone, he isn't," Rhiannon said. She shot Roland a look. Roland only nodded once.
"There's no time to argue about this," Will began.
"Then don't," Rhiannon told him. "Angelica, Jameson, take Amber and go. Take the car and get out of here. We'll meet you at Eric and Tarn's when this is finished. Go."
"No." It was Amber who spoke. "We're wasting time. Sarafina saved my life, and I'm not going to go off safe and sound while she faces Stiles alone." She broke from her mother's embrace, gripped Will's hand and pulled him to the secret passage.
"Stubborn little..." Rhiannon rolled her eyes; then she bent to haul the woman to her feet. "Go on," she told the others. "I'll tuck this one safely in a closet somewhere and catch up."
"Hurry, Rhiannon," Jameson said, even as he and Angelica moved into the dark passageway where Will was still trying to dissuade Amber. "Those troops..."
Roland shook his head. "Not to worry, Jamey, I'll stay with her. Go on. Go with Will and help him save his woman."
Rhiannon turned back to the woman on the floor, "Just a few more questions, and then we'll be on our way."
The others ran down the tunnel, and Roland flipped the switch on the inside to close the entrance.