Aidan held a single finger up to his lips. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “This will be less painful than what happens to you in the prison shower.”
Faisal wrapped one arm around my neck and pulled a makeshift knife from one of his pockets, pressing it against my neck. “Don’t be too sure about that.” He pushed the knife until I felt a trickle of blood run down my neck. “Now, why don’t you and your crew turn right around and head out that door? I’d hate to kill Simon. Well, not really…”
Aidan hesitated and held a hand up to keep his posse in place.
“I don’t think this is going to look good in front of your parole board,” I croaked out to Faisal.
Faisal tightened his arm around my neck, causing my vision to blur as the pressure made it harder to breathe. “I think this is all a bit beyond that, don’t you?”
“By the way,” Aidan said, holding up one of his hands. He held several rolls of Life Savers in it. “Connor says hi.”
Seeing instant salvation in candy form, I knew I could chance a shot of using my power, if only for a distraction. Using my psychometry on the undead ferals back at the castle was one thing. Using it on the living was a sure way to push myself to almost immediate unconsciousness, but at least if I did that, it also took its toll on who I was reading as well. I raised my arm, my fingers finding the torn opening in the long leather sleeve. I grabbed Faisal by the exposed flesh of his arm and pushed my power into him, knowing this was going to hurt me a lot, but I figured it was better than a knife in the throat. As my power flared to life, I fought like hell to stay conscious as my mind’s eye opened up and caught fleeting glimpses of Faisal Bane’s past.
Visions of my ex-thieving partner, Mina Saria, flashed by from when she had been a prisoner here, the two of them sharing their mutual hatred of me. I felt my body weakening as my psychometry wigged out from reading the living, but I pushed further, attempting to pull forward more Canderous-centered memories like the Come-As-Your-Favorite-Dead-Celebrity Ball at the Met. Weakness tore at me and I struggled to stay conscious. Flashes of Jane dressed as Marilyn Monroe came forward from that event and I latched onto that image of her to pull myself back to the reality of the prison, hopefully before I passed out. Letting go of Faisal’s arm, my power faded away and I opened my eyes. I could barely keep conscious, but Faisal looked even worse than I did from the toll it took on him.
Before Faisal could recover, Aidan sped across the room and blurred into action. He was moving so fast that when he attacked Faisal it looked like Faisal himself was flinging the knife out of his own hand, then throwing himself to the floor. Five other blurs came into the room and the four goons suddenly found themselves fighting for their lives. The dark laughter of all the vampires echoed off the walls as Aidan put his foot on Faisal’s neck. He handed me the Life Savers.
Shaking from the loss of sugar in my blood, I could barely hold them. I started crunching down the first roll I managed to unwrap.
Aidan ground his heel deeper into Faisal’s throat, choking him until he stopped moving. I shoved at Aidan, hoping to stop him from killing anyone, but it was like shoving at a stone statue.
“Stop it,” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Aidan said, grabbing one of the other men like he weighed nothing and tossing him across the room. “Don’t you recognize a prison break when you see one? Your Jane came to us. She said they carted you away. Brandon seems to think you’re worth saving.” Klaxon alarms rang into life, drilling straight into the center of my brain. The vampires slowed and winced, their supersensitive hearing overwhelmed by the sound. “Beatriz… watch the door!”
Beatriz and several of the other vampires blurred into speed again, heading toward the doorway as guards started to pour in the room. To my surprise, the guards were actually pushing their way into the room, faring well against the vampires as they struggled with fighting off the effects of the sound of the alarm.
“Are you sure they aren’t going to need saving, too?” I asked.
Aidan turned to me and laughed. “And just how much danger do you think we impervious little vamps are in here?”
“Mostly impervious,” I reminded him. “Try to meet me for lunch in the middle of the day tomorrow, why don’t you?”
Aidan gave me a pissy little look.
“Sometimes I fail to see my brother’s interest in you.”
“It’s simple,” I said, not willing to let him have the last snark. “I’ve been there for him while you haven’t.”
“That’s not fair,” Aidan said. “I…”
A bloodcurdling scream rose from the doorway and the two of us turned toward it. Beatriz was holding one of the guards by the neck with one hand. Her other was on his left arm, which was bent at an unnatural angle. That was when I noticed a shard of bone sticking out from it, fresh blood dripping from the wound. The guard’s face went white and the scream died only when his eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious in her grip.
“For God’s sake, Beatriz, put him down. Don’t hurt the guards!” I shouted, but they weren’t listening. One of the males of Aidan’s group grabbed the next guard storming into the room and threw him with such force into the far wall that I was sure I heard bones breaking over the alarms. “Aidan, tell them! Those guards are just doing their job.”
“And so are we,” he said. I could feel the disdainful chill in his voice. The look in his eyes had turned to ferocity as he took in the violence of the situation.
“Screw this,” I said, stepping around him and running toward the doorway. “I’ll handle it myself.” Before I could get very far, Aidan appeared before me and I slammed into him.
“Is this how you want things?” I shouted, pushing away from him. “Your lord and master is trying to convince us that you’re not a threat and that you need our help. I was thrown in here because I was defending your right to a peaceful existence, and this is what you give me? Breaking the law and busting up the good guys? Make your people stop.”
Aidan’s eyes cleared and he shook his head like he was breaking free of something. “Leave the guards alone!” he said to the rest of his people. They turned to him, Beatriz included, fangs popped and hissing, but they did as they were told. Aidan glanced at me. “I’m sorry. After dealing with your inmate attackers, the bloodlust is upon us, and fighting that off is not so easy.”
“So I see,” I said. “It’s like chumming for sharks and starting a feeding frenzy.”
Aidan’s face turned dark and angry. “We are not animals.”
A wave of terror washed between him and me, but I fought to keep my cool. “Of course not,” I said, my voice barely audible in the commotion of the room. I looked to the doorway again. The guards were being held off, but since the vampires were ordered not to kill them, the entire battle was at a standstill. “So now what?”
“Now we leave,” Aidan said. “Time to get you out of here. Follow me.”
Moving at his natural speed, Aidan was off to the far side of the room in a shot, pounding at the metal of the wall. By the time I had reached him, he had forced a small hole in the metal and was shoving his hand into it. With an earsplitting sound that rang out over the Klaxon alarm, he tore a section of the thick wall away. He threw it over to the empty side of the room like I would have thrown one of my case files. It landed with a heavy metal clang, screeching across the floor for several feet before stopping.
I moved to the hole in the wall and looked out. We were well above the waterline. I looked down to see the Hudson River several stories below us, and my grip tightened on the edge of the wall as wind began whipping through the hole. We were much higher up in the complex than I had thought.