“We can’t outrun them,” I say, drawing my stake. Victor does the same. “But maybe we can—”
A blur of motion, black eyes and bloodied fangs moving up the stairs. I can’t tell if it’s one or two or all of them. It’s heading toward me, so I hold out my stake, adrenaline replacing any training that I had. But my stake never connects; rather it’s Victor who appears in front of me, stopping the Chosen with his own strike. I don’t know if it’s fatal or not because the next moment I feel another attack coming.
By the time I turn to face him, it’s too late. The Chosen slams into me and I’m catapulted off my feet and down the stairs. I watch Victor and his quarry grow smaller as I’m carried away from them.
Everything slows down for me, and I hope that this fall is too great for me to survive. I don’t want to be knocked out, I want to be killed. If this is truly it, I’d rather die than see Victor meet the same fate, and I’d rather die than ever see the smile in Sin’s eyes.
When I hit the ground, all the wind escapes from my lungs and I struggle to bring it back in. Short gasps that grab at nothing. I try to get up, and the Chosen, John, helps me by squeezing my neck and lifting me high. My vision is shattered, as though I were looking through shards of glass and mirrors. I want Victor to appear behind John and ram a stake through him, but I can still see him fighting at the top of the stairs, which seem so far away. Especially because we’re separated by a great swath of sunlight. Victor is young enough, strong enough that the sun will burn him slowly as his body continually reheals. But the pain will be debilitating, unimaginable.
John throws me across the room and I hit the far wall, the back of my head slamming brutally against it before my entire body slides to the ground in a heap. My stake is out of my hand, lying somewhere between him and me. I reach for another one, but it feels like all my bones are rebelling, and I’m slow to grab it. When I finally do, I barely have the strength to stand on wobbly legs.
The other two Chosen have tackled Victor and now hold him in the sunlight. Smoke rises from his body, making him look like a demon from hell, his fangs bared, teeth clenched, and anger stretched across his bleeding face. His legs begin to give out on him, his face scorched from the sun, red and splotchy; blood runs across the furrows on his face and chest, the razor claws of the Chosen having cut deep. Then John approaches him and the others let go. With a horrendous sound, he delivers a right hook to Victor’s temple, and the vampire I love falls to the ground.
The Chosen look at us. We must seem so pathetic in our beaten state. I search them, looking for any weakness. I can tell Victor’s done all that he can. Some of them, the leader included, bleed from wounds received, and one yelps as he dislodges a stake deep in his ribs, just below the heart. They’re weaker now, but far too powerful still.
“So this is where it all ends, Victor,” the leader says. “In the sunlight.”
They laugh as one, preparing for their finale—when we all hear it. A roar in the distance. Something coming this way.
I look out the window and see the dust swirling into the air and, against the horizon, a black form taking shape. It’s bulky and cumbersome, flying along as though unsure if all four wheels are supposed to be on the ground.
I look at the Chosen, and they’re just as mystified. So this wasn’t part of their plan, this isn’t their friends showing up. Then, maybe, it’s ours.
When I turn back, I see exactly what it is: a black van. Not exactly the cavalry I would’ve called for, but I don’t have much time to consider it; the van turns sharply and screeches to a dead stop.
The door immediately slides open, and a black-clad Michael steps out. And in his arms is something I’ve only ever seen in pictures, the thing my brother once spoke of using in the war. It was a weapon used against the vampires in the trenches. One of the few ways to kill them, and one of the most stomach-churning.
A flamethrower.
I jump as far away as possible; Victor follows my lead. Just in time. Michael squeezes the trigger and unleashes liquid hell onto the Chosen. I can feel the searing heat so acutely that I check my clothes and hair to make sure nothing has caught fire. I look to see the entire room engulfed in yellow flames, turning things black.
And I hear the screams of the Chosen. It won’t kill them right away, but it will give us time.
“Get inside!” Michael yells, his finger never letting up, the fire growing across the floor, catching anything remotely flammable and igniting it.
I run toward the van; Victor meets me there. The Night Watchmen waiting inside grab our hands and pull us quickly into the vehicle. Michael jumps through the opening last, slamming the door shut. The tires spin, and we’re gone.
Chapter 25
The entire ride back I’m taking calming breaths, steadying my hands. I look at Victor: His wounds have worsened, the run from where he was to the van exposing him to direct sunlight, further burning his vampiric flesh. His perfect skin is now nothing but a patchwork of various blackened shades and raised scabs, blood and pus running from them.
“I’ll be okay,” he says to me, his words deep and gravelly, almost unrecognizable, as though even his voice box has been singed.
“Here,” Michael says, handing him a packet of blood, the Agency stamp on it.
“No,” Victor says, turning it away. “I want the people to see me as I am. Let them see how vulnerable even I am to the Chosen.”
The van has been heavily modified. All of the seats, except the front two, have been removed. Most of the windows have been blacked out, and metal stakes line a magnetic strip. There are four Night Watchmen plus the driver.
“How did you guys know we were in danger?” I ask.
One of them looks up. “Ever since we got your report about the Chosen, we knew that the manor could be easily compromised during the day. We’ve had a scout watching it at all times. He saw several vampires breaking in early this morning and came back to the city as soon as possible. We moved out once we received word.”
“Well, we’re extremely grateful,” I say.
“We’ve been practicing the mission for months,” he says, then pauses. “Of course, we always assumed we’d be attacking the Valentines, not rescuing them.”
I’m not surprised that an assassination plan was always in the works in case the Valentine family got too greedy.
“You have my eternal thanks,” Victor says, sitting against the thin metal wall, looking not far from death—though I know he’s a long way from knocking on its door.
“We’re allies in this fight now. We aren’t planning on leaving you behind,” Michael says.
In the director’s office the thick shutters are drawn across the windows.
“Are you sure you won’t take any blood?” Clive asks Victor.
“No. I’m healing.”
“And what of you, Dawn? How are your injuries?”
I touch the bandage around my head, where a nasty gash had to be sewn up. I don’t bother feeling for the bruises on my neck; I know they’re there.
“I’ll live.”
Clive leans back, looking so different in this dim light that suits vampires over humans.
“Dawn,” he begins, “I’d like to offer you the small apartment here in the Agency building. It’ll be safer than the one you share with Rachel, and it’ll be easier to contact you if needed.”
“Thank you. I’d love it.”
It won’t have any of my things, and it won’t feel like home, but that doesn’t matter. Clive is right; it’ll be safer, and I have a feeling I’ll be in this room most of the time. I’m not the delegate anymore, but my role within the Agency, my role within the entire city, is more important than ever before. As delegate, I was the ambassador of the people to Valentine. Now I feel like the ambassador of all people to all vampires. I’m in the center of something strange and new, on the cusp of an even newer World Order. The question is whether it will be mine, and the dream born in Crimson Sands, or whether it’ll be Sin’s, a world of walls and monsters worse than any that have ever walked beneath the sun or stars before.