“No…It’s Annie. You remember me, right?”
Gabby nodded, taking another step forward. “You brought me here.”
“No. I’m your friend!”
“Friend?” Gabby cocked her head to the side, her red eyes narrowing to slits.
Annie nodded. “I was tricked, betrayed by one of our own.”
“Ah…” Gabby paused thoughtfully. For a moment Annie harbored hope that her reasoning had broken through, her grip loosening infinitesimally on the scalpel, but then Gabby lunged. Annie raised her arm but Gabby was quicker, her hand tightening around Annie’s wrist and squeezing tighter and tighter until the bones popped, the scalpel falling uselessly to the floor.
“That’s the thing: They. Always. Betray,” Gabby hissed, eyes smoldering as she visually caressed Annie’s neck. “But never again. Never again will they betray me.”
Annie’s eyes widened, her cry of disbelief muffled beneath the sudden pressure of Gabby’s fangs as they bore down on her throat.
Chapter 21
Valin bolted for the door at the first scream, ignoring Roland’s curses as he and Karissa struggled to catch up. Valin might have completely outrun them—regardless of their vamp strength—except he was ten feet from the door when he smacked up against the wards surrounding the mansion.
“Not a good sign for the null,” Roland said behind him as Valin cursed and stumbled back to his feet. “You guys thought her powers would negate the ward, right?”
“Fuck.” Valin shook his head, not wanting to think about what it meant if Annie wasn’t in there. “I’m shifting,” Valin said, knowing he could cross the wards that way—the shade didn’t play by the same rules.
“Valin, wait!” Karissa grabbed his arm. “We can take this down if you work with us. And your knife alone will be worth the cost of time.”
Valin’s hand closed instinctively over the blade. His knife, the one Gabby had given Bennett with instructions to return to him. If she’d kept it, brought it with her, instead of sending it with a fucking I’m-so-sorry message, would she be in there now?
Now who’s wasting time?
“One minute,” Valin growled, knowing Karissa was right. Fighting hand-to-hand took time, but since he did have his knife, he could cut through a horde of vampires as if they were nothing more than tissue paper.
She nodded, slipping her hand into his and reaching across for Roland’s, like they were at some sort of kumbaya jamboree or something. Not that he gave a shit how corny it looked as long as it got the results.
He took a deep breath, easing back on his shields until he felt the heady mix of her light and Roland’s power. Beyond was her link to Bennett and the echoing support of Jacob’s soldiers lending their aid. That was good; a double-fronted attack on the wards should weaken them quicker.
They began chanting, the spell to dissolve the wards no more than a banishing spell. Unlike the various wards the Paladins used to keep baddies out of their home, these wards were formed from evil, their power coming from decades of blood spilled. Just touching them with the edge of his power made him feel sick to his stomach, but it also gave him the incentive to put his all behind it. This had to end now. No more pain. No more suffering. The bastards who’d made this place were going to crawl back into the hellhole from which they came.
The ward fell. Valin dropped Karissa’s hand and launched himself at the door. Cocky bastards hadn’t even locked it, let alone barred it, so it was a short trip into the front hall of horrors where he drew up short. Bodies and blood. The destruction was so ultimate he had to pause and really look to assure himself that one of the bodies wasn’t Gabby. Someone must have been in a real pisser of a mood to mete out such violence. And though he could appreciate the poetic nature of these monsters ending their existence this way, he sincerely worried for the mental state of the person doling out this kind of justice.
“She’s not here,” Roland said, even as he moved past Valin and bent to inspect one of the corpses.
“Yeah, got that.” Valin breathed deeply through his nose, then cringed. Death was never pretty and it normally smelled worse than it looked. A half-dozen bodies, and unless his mojo was completely shot, not another soul in the place. “The question is, where is everyone else?”
Roland didn’t respond, his focus on his examination of the corpses.
“I don’t sense anyone either.” Karissa drew up beside him. “Well, other than…” She jerked her chin toward the doors at the back of the cavernous foyer. Bennett, Jacob, and their team pushed through, their attention immediately catching on the rather morbid attempt at decoration the last living party in the room had done.
Bennett was the first to recover, his gaze lifting to meet Valin’s. “I’m getting a whole lot of nothing—you?”
“Not a thing.”
“It’s possible the others took the hidden tunnel out, but…” Roland trailed off, moving on to another dead vampire.
“Hidden tunnel?” Jacob asked sharply.
“But what?” Valin prompted, figuring the tunnel was the least important part of that statement.
Roland sighed, twisting the vampire’s head to the side and exposing the relatively intact bite marks flanking the ripped out throat. “Fang marks are kind of like a primitive form of fingerprinting. I can’t definitively tell who bit whom, but I can tell you that all these,” he gestured around the room, “seem to match.”
“What are you saying?
“I’m saying whoever killed them was one person. And I have to wonder, why would a coven numbering close to a hundred flee from just one little vampire?”
Little vampire. “You think Gabby did this?”
“I do.” He stood, his face pulled tight as he averted his gaze from the corpse. “Which leaves us with one question.”
“Why?” Bennett ventured.
Roland turned his hard gaze on the Paladin. “No, I know why. The question is where is she now?”
They didn’t have to wait for the answer. A second later, from deeper in the house came the most bloodcurdling scream Valin had ever heard.
Bennett jerked as if he’d been hit with a live wire. The next second he was bolting past the closest soldier and running headlong down the nearby hall. Never had such a short distance seemed so long. Bennett knew it was Annie who’d screamed. Not because it was truly discernible from any other female in distress, but because he hadn’t sensed another soul in the mansion. She was alive—though only barely to not have broken the wards—and in immediate danger.
His gut, already twisted and cramped, churned. Acid pooled at the base of his throat. Whether the unprecedented chink in his composure was from guilt or something more, he didn’t bloody know. All he knew was the annoying organ in his chest that was pounding like it was on its last leg might as well just give up the ghost if he couldn’t get to her in time.
He reached the end of the hall, the pure absence of power announcing he was at the correct room. The others were behind him, but he didn’t wait, setting his shoulder to the door with all the force of his rage behind the assault. Hinges and bolts groaned and gave, the old hardwood cracking and tearing free from the frame. The door burst in, Bennett right on top of it. And there she was: his Annie.
All doubts that she wasn’t his were answered. Because there was no way he could stay detached after seeing the ruin of her body. And no way the creature sucking the life out of her was going to leave this room alive.
With a roar, Bennett drew his knife and launched himself across the room.