Bloodshifted (Edie Spence 5)

The only way I could get the cuff off myself was to tear my own hand off. Raven’d made sure the cuff was too tight for anything less.

Or I could rip off Lars’s arm. He was dead, or dying, or whatever the fuck it was now that was happening to him inside—it wasn’t as if he’d feel it. It also wasn’t as if I could kill him—he was technically already dead. But as I crept closer to him, contemplating somehow putting my feet against his ribs and neck and just pulling on his arm like a reluctant drumstick, my conscience got the better of me.

Baby, I don’t know if I can do this. Even if it’s for us.

“Just tear it off,” said a voice. I almost jumped—I’d forgotten about the Shadows. Their voice was coming from inside my left shoe—they must have tagged along from inside my cell. “Yours, or his. Either way there has to be tearing. Or we can kill you, if you’d like to just give up now.”

“No,” I protested, sitting up. I saw them slide out into the shadow my leg had cast. “Shut up. Just let me think.” I had all day to come up with something, he wouldn’t wake up until it was nightfall—

“Technically, we’ve satisfied our promise to you, Edie. Even we can’t get you free, and if you’re no longer free, then you cannot help us.”

I closed my eyes, blocking out the entire room, trying to ignore the rusty metal cuff cutting into my wrist. “That’s fair.”

“Not fair enough yet,” said a female voice from behind me. I whirled to see Celine leaning against the door. Her face was perfectly healed now, and she was dressed in her club gear, with the addition of opera-length black gloves. “It’s beginning to be fair, but—” She stepped into the room, her head shaking at my predicament. “—not yet.” She was swinging a heavy cross on a chain, and I realized she must have liberated it from one of the people being changed into a vampire soldier upstairs.

I wasn’t afraid of the cross, but I was afraid that it might be silver.

I carefully grabbed hold of the chain between Lars and me. If it came down to ripping his arm out to protect my baby from Celine, I’d do it, no question. “Anna’s coming for me.” No need to hide it now, since Raven knew.

“But she’s not here right now, is she?” Celine made an arc around the room. I might have been stronger than her, but I was a sitting target.

She darted forward, and I jumped back, bumping into Lars, only able to use one arm to protect myself. My arms were bare and she had the gloves and her dress on. I felt the sting of silver as the chain wrapped itself around my forearm, before she yanked down and ripped it away to swing again, this time for my face. I yelped, bringing up my chained arm, but not fast enough: Silver slapped against the back of my hands, and I closed my eyes trying to protect them. She lunged for my throat and I felt a freeing snap from behind my neck at the same time as a line the length of my forearm burned, bone-deep. I swung for her blindly, but she was back at the door.

“That’s what you get for hurting my face,” she shouted. “See how long it takes you to heal that without blood.” The cross dangled from one of her hands, spattering drops of my blood on the floor with each swing of its chain. Her other hand held my necklace, the gift Asher had given me after his proposal on the Maraschino.

“Have a fun time meeting Lars. I can’t wait to hear you scream,” she said, stalking out the door. She stepped in a shadow and I saw the Shadows surge to join her, as if they’d been sewn on. They were leaving with her, because she could leave. I couldn’t blame them.

It’s just me and you again, baby.

And Lars.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I could smell my own blood. I hoped that that wouldn’t encourage Lars to wake up faster. My skin was trying to heal, but some property of the silver wasn’t allowing it to suture up—I could move my arm and wrist but it stung, and I was sure I’d scar.

I put my hand to the spot on my neck where my necklace had been. I’d taken it for granted this whole time. One more piece of my former life, gone.

Well, baby, there goes your inheritance.

I wanted to cry—out of exhaustion, frustration, and pain—but was too afraid to. And I needed to make a choice, sometime—I checked my watch—between now and about ten hours from now. About ripping a man’s arm off or getting eaten alive.

It would be one thing if there was a way to get out after leaving here. Even if I could bludgeon my way out, pulling Lars’s dead arm along behind me, I’d still be trapped by Raven’s command to stay in the building. Until Anna killed him—and to do that she’d have to fight through who knew how many baby vampires upstairs first?

I sighed and put my head against my knees, my chained arm listless on the floor.

“There has to be a way,” I whispered to myself, hoping that faking that there was one would give me greater strength.

“Glad to hear it,” said a very small disembodied voice. I blinked and jerked upright. “Over here,” said the voice. There was a tiny oilslick of blackness behind Lars’s ear, a thumbnail’s worth of Shadows.

“What are you still doing here?” I crouched down to their level. What remained of them would only barely fill a thimble.

“We have followed you this far from home. We are not giving up on you quite yet,” they said, swirling as they spoke.

Their faith in me was as charming as it was misplaced. “Thanks.”

“Protect us over here, will you?” they asked, and despite my desires to be anywhere else at that moment, I moved closer to Lars so that they could have the run of him and the wall.

“You’re a lot more polite than the rest of them.”

The tiny patch of darkness made an affronted snort. “We never liked them anyhow.”

* * *

I couldn’t see what they were doing as they dispersed, but they gave me occasional commands to move right or left, and I did so, within the confines of the chains.

“Your cuff and his are beyond our capacity, and yours. But the bolts that shackle him to the wall are short and old. It is possible you could pry him off it.”

Thus giving me mobility, as long as I was willing to drag a corpse around. I knelt down beside the chain around Lars’s ankle, grabbed it, and pulled with all my might. Nothing gave. I tried again, setting both my feet on opposite sides of the bolt and hauling again. Chain ripped through my fingers, friction burning to no avail.

“Try harder,” the Shadows encouraged. I dusted my hands

off on myself, and on Lars’s pant leg—and that’s when I realized that his jeans were still covered in a fine layer of Rex’s dust. And I still had a lighter in my bra.

“Hang on,” I said, and started undoing Lars’s belt. If I could knot his flammable pants around the bolt and light them as I pulled, I might be able to rattle the anchor bolts free.

I was concentrating so hard that I didn’t hear Jackson sneaking up behind me. “What are you doing?” he asked, enunciating each word.

I looked down at Lars, whom I now had half naked. No wonder Jackson was surprised—it looked like I was about to have sex with a corpse. “Um. It’s not what it looks like.”

“I should hope not.”

I stopped disrobing Lars and tried to act nonchalant about being chained to him. “What happened upstairs last night? And what’s happening now?”

Jackson squatted down to talk to me at my level. His eyes were serious and dark. “They closed the doors before last call last night and trapped everyone inside. Then they held up each room, taking all their phones, and drugging them, a floor at a time, even the DJs and bouncers. We’re the only people left awake—and Natasha’s been making us bring everyone downstairs and divide groups of people by weight.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Seventy or so. Lying down side by side, they’re taking up all of Hell and most of Purgatory.”

How many people was Anna bringing along? “You know what he’s doing, right?”

Jackson nodded. “Turning them.”

I yanked on the chain between Lars and me. “You’ve got to help me get free, Jackson—”

“And then what?” he asked, not moving an inch.

“Then we get out, we stop Natasha and warn Anna and—”

Jackson started shaking his head. “And what happens when night comes?”

“We can find where Wolf sleeps between now and then.”

“Can we? Wolf, and Raven, and Estrella? And Anna won’t get here until nightfall—you forget that she’s one of them, too. Will she be able to protect you in time?”