Voices rumbled above. Ami should have been able to hear them, but the drug muddled everything. She also couldn’t call for help telepathically and worried that no one would hear her even if she could. Seth and David were in Ecuador, most likely unreachable. Étienne and Lisette, the only other telepathic immortals in the vicinity, had both been incapacitated by the drug. Or worse.
Don’t think like that. The immortals aren’t dead. Marcus isn’t dead. You just can’t sense him because of the drug.
A door slammed upstairs. Had the vampire left?
Ami hurried to the closest table and searched the various tools upon it for something she could use as a weapon. She grabbed a pencil—it would do in a pinch—but kept foraging. Moving on to some drawers, she slid them open as quietly as she could.
Score! Scalpels. With one in each hand, she tiptoed to the lab’s entrance and peered down the hallway. It was just long and wide enough to fit a washer, dryer, and folding table, confirming her belief that she was in the basement of a house. The cement stairs on the far side rose to a landing and open door.
Ami crept forward, eyes glued to the doorway.
Wood creaked above her as footsteps crossed the ceiling, accompanied by a great deal of muttering.
One by one, she scaled the steps, glad they weren’t wood so no squeaking would give her away. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest, feeling twice its normal size. This was her only chance. The house—or whatever this was—sounded empty, save herself and Montrose, and there was no telling how long it would remain so. The great vampire king might send some of his flunkies over to keep an eye on her.
Ami paused on the landing. Her legs trembled as a wave of weakness engulfed her. Foul nausea assailed her. Gritting her teeth, she leaned against the wall for a moment and drew the back of one shaking hand across her damp forehead.
Just get it together and go, she ordered herself.
Straightening, Ami took a step forward.
A shadow filled the doorway.
Montrose Keegan’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Oh, shit!”
Ami sprang forward, seeing the revolver he raised too late. A report pierced her ears. Fire burst into life in her stomach as the smell of gunpowder filled the air.
Doubling over in agony, Ami stumbled backward, stepped into dead air, and fell.
Sharp edges slammed into her back, her head, her hip as she tumbled down the stairs. A bone in her left forearm snapped and broke through the skin just before she rolled across the basement floor and crashed into the washing machine.
Tears streamed from her eyes as she curled into a ball and drew her broken arm close. At the top of the stairs, Montrose said something, but she couldn’t make out the words over her own silent screaming. Her breath came in pants, each one feeling like a knife digging into the bullet wound in her abdomen. Blinking hard to clear the moisture from her gaze, she looked around.
Montrose, pale as milk, began to descend the stairs, his hand clutching the gun in a death grip.
Ami had lost the scalpels on the way down, but could see one resting on the last step. Her broken arm pressed to her stomach, she scrambled forward on her uninjured hand and scraped knees and grabbed the weapon. Montrose hurried down toward her. As she rose, more loud reports sounded. One, two, three, four.
More pain exploded in her torso like concussion grenades detonating. Her breath left her lungs as she staggered backward, struggling to remain on her feet. Another report. More agony.
A metallic taste filled her mouth. Black clouds suffused her vision, roiling and wavering in and out. Six shots, she thought dimly. Six shots. He was out of bullets.
Sinking to her knees, she fell backward to the floor and clung tenaciously to the scalpel.
Montrose approached her warily as she choked and coughed and tried to draw a breath. “What are you?” he asked in a high, agitated voice.
Ami strained to speak. “H-h-human.”
He shook his head. “No human could withstand this. No human could have survived that drug.” He pointed the gun at her, either too rattled to realize he had no bullets left or hoping to bluff her into thinking he did. “Are you immortal?”
She shook her head, unable to form another word.
He leaned over her, reached for the scalpel.
When his hand was only inches from hers, Ami lunged upward and buried the scalpel in his stomach.
His eyes bulged. His finger squeezed the trigger convulsively, producing a series of clicks as the hammer fell on one empty chamber after another.
Montrose dropped the gun. Staggering back, he stared in horror at the metal instrument protruding from his paunch.
Ami moaned and rolled to her side, then drew her knees up under her and retrieved the gun.
“Help me!” Montrose cried, staring at her with growing hysteria.
With the aid of the stairs, Ami managed to gain her feet. Dizziness heaved the room around her up and down, side to side. While Montrose pleaded for her aid, she tottered forward and slammed the butt of the gun against his temple.
The scientist dropped like a stone.
Ami tumbled after him, unable to maintain her balance. Weakness sifted through her, numbing her lips. Darkness threatened.
As she struggled to breathe, to find the will to rise again, one word sounded in her mind over and over again.
Marcus. Marcus. Marcus.
Voices.
Taut. Frustrated. Angry. Concerned.
Marcus struggled toward them, feeling as though he were swimming in a sea of viscous tar. He could sense the surface somewhere above him, but it felt as though hands held his ankles, preventing him from reaching it.
A name teased his ears and pierced the blackness.
“Ami,” he murmured hoarsely.
The voices ceased, then flowed anew in a jumble of urgent words.
What had happened? The last thing he remembered was being folded over Sarah’s shoulder and forced away from Ami, who had been left standing in the center of the clearing, wounded and bleeding, surrounded by vampires. “Ami,” he said again and managed to kick free and surge toward the surface, toward consciousness.
Had Richart been with her? Marcus thought he remembered Richart’s being with her. Surely he had teleported her to safety.
“He’s coming around!” a woman called eagerly.
Gentle fingers peeled back one eyelid.
Light as bright as a thousand suns pierced Marcus’s pupil and pounded his head like Thor’s hammer. Moaning, he reached up and shoved the hand away. His limbs felt weighted, clumsy, as though he were encased in a full suit of plate armor.
“Marcus, can you hear me?” Darnell asked.
“What happened?” he rasped.
A collective sigh rippled through the room.
“Can you open your eyes?” the woman asked. Not Sarah. Not Lisette. Who?
“Too bright.”
“Dim the lights,” she ordered. A flurry of movement sounded. “Okay, try it now.”
Cautiously, he opened his eyes. Darnell, Chris Reordon, Yuri, Stanislav, Bastien, and a human woman he had never seen before clustered about his narrow bed. “Where am I?”
“The clinic in David’s place,” Darnell said.
David’s place had a clinic? Was the woman a doctor then? From the network?
“What happened?”
“The vampires have a new drug,” Chris said, “and managed to tranq everyone but Sarah with it.”
Marcus leaned up on an elbow with a groan. Through gaps between the bodies surrounding him, he saw Étienne, Lisette, and Roland stretched out on beds like his. All were unconscious. IV tubing fed blood into the veins of the two younger immortals. Similar IV stands stood near Marcus and Roland, but weren’t currently in use. They must have already been transfused enough to heal their wounds.
Sarah sat beside Roland, holding his hand and staring at Marcus with glistening eyes.
Why had he awakened if the others hadn’t? “Drugs don’t affect us.”
“They do now,” Chris bit out, glowering at Bastien.
Bastien stiffened. “I told you. When Montrose was aiding me, he wasn’t working on a sedative. He was looking for a cure. Why the hell would I want him to develop a drug that could just as easily be used against me?”
“If you didn’t trust him, then why were you working with him?” Chris retorted.
“I don’t trust any of you either, but I’m working with you,” he countered.
“Are you?” Yuri asked.
As Bastien opened his mouth to lambast him, the human woman stepped forward and drew his eye. “Who do you trust, Bastien?”
Bastien hesitated. “Ami. And because these stupid bastards didn’t want me to attend their bloody party, she’s gone.”
Alarm striking him, Marcus sat up and looked at Chris and Darnell. “What? I thought Richart teleported her to safety.”
Darnell sighed. “Richart is missing. He disappeared just before Sarah carried you and Roland away. We haven’t heard from him since.”
Marcus fought to make sense of it. If Richart had left first … He nudged the human woman out of the way and met Sarah’s distraught gaze. “Didn’t she come with us?”
A tear spilled down Sarah’s cheek as she shook her head.
“Marcus,” Chris said, drawing his attention, “reinforcements were on the way. You know we couldn’t risk any immortals falling into the hands of the vampires. Not with Montrose Keegan working with them. Sarah had to get you and Roland away from there before they drugged her, too, and the two of you together weighed over four hundred pounds.”
What Marcus was thinking couldn’t be true.
Again he saw Ami, wounded and bleeding, standing in the middle of the clearing, surrounded on all sides by vampires, tears coursing down her cheeks.
He looked at Sarah. “You left her there?” he whispered, unable to comprehend her doing such a thing.
Her breath hiccuped in a sob. “I’m so sorry, Marcus.”
“You left her there?” Fear and fury drove him to his feet.
The human woman moved into his path and held up her hands. “Marcus, you shouldn’t be up yet. Please, sit down and—”
