Bloodshifted (Edie Spence 5)

“You’ll scar then.”

We reached the light of the hallway. It made my eyes burn, and Gemellus had to let go of me to shield his eyes from it. I realized he hadn’t seen any light in centuries—and it’d been over a thousand years since he’d seen the sun.

The light finally gave me a chance to look at him. Lars’s blood had filled him out. He wasn’t the resplendent man from my dreams, but he could be, if he were given more blood. He was a little shorter than I was, which made sense—back when he’d been born, he’d probably been considered tall. He was lean and covered in muscles and naked, which would have been awkward except that as a nurse I’d had occasion to see far too many naked men. I was more concerned with his limp. I hadn’t felt it when we’d been walking—he’d hidden it from me—but now that we were going forward, I could see his left foot drag a little with each step.

“The injury is old,” Gemellus said, brushing away my gaze.

“Do you know where Raven is?”

“Somewhere above us. The blood calling is not as precise as we led you to believe.” He looked around the hallway, specifically at the light. I didn’t know if electricity was common yet when he’d been trapped. “Where is Raven likely to hide? Assuming you’ll grant me permission to kill him.”

If the Catacombs were a castle, I’d guess on the battlements. He knew Anna was coming into town—I hoped I still had time to warn her. I needed to get to the computer in Natasha’s lab, though; what was there was more important. “You can kill him on sight—but I need you to get me into somewhere else first.”

He opened his mouth to complain, then remembered his promises. With Gemellus at my side, I raced up the hall.

* * *

The door to Natasha’s lab was open. I’d assumed it’d be locked, but why should it be? Raven’s army was rising above. I was sure if you asked Natasha there was no way he could lose. I walked in, listening, but all the machinery was silent.

“Who’s here?” a female voice shouted from the back. “Jackson? Come back here!”

Gemellus started forward, but I put a hand out and called, “Natasha?”

“Edie! Come save me!”

Compelled, I ran into the next room.

Natasha was on the table, shackled as test subject sixty-four had been, with a swelling black eye. She looked hopeful when she saw me, less so when she saw Gemellus. “Set me free,” she pleaded—and then remembered she could order me to do so. I saw it cross her face, but my hands were already reaching for the latches of my own accord. They were buckled, but not locked. Her charm bracelet had been bruised into her skin.

“What’s happening upstairs?” she asked me, then looked at Gemellus. “Who’s he?”

“You mean you don’t know?” She shook her head, and I looked back at the naked Roman. “Have you seen her before?”

“I would remember if I had,” he said lecherously.

“I thought you’d tested on him.”

Natasha wiped tears off her face. “No. I didn’t know where my samples came from. Raven told me not to ask, so I didn’t. Jackson’s the one who brought them to me—”

“It was never a woman,” Gemellus said. “Always a man.”

I whirled on him. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”

“Who would trust a woman more than a man?”

“I forgot you came from an incredibly misogynist time.” I had to resist hitting myself. Or him. Jackson made the most sense. Of course Raven wouldn’t risk Natasha, or make her burn herself picking up silver. I just hadn’t wanted to ask him, because I’d wanted to have a friend—

“If your sleeping place is being threatened, you want men fighting on your side,” Gemellus explained.

“Shut up.” I stalked over to a drawer, pulled out a fistful of individually wrapped gauze, and handed them to him. “Open these,” I demanded, and then refocused my attention on Natasha.

“What happened here?”

“Raven locked me in here for my own safety. And then Jackson came in with his keys and said he needed something, and stole my computer. I tried to stop him but—” She was trying to stop herself from crying at the memory. He’d hit her. And then shackled her to the table. Jackson had had blood more recently than she had—because Raven never needed to curry favor with her. “He didn’t even lock the door when he left.”

“How many are there upstairs?”

“I dosed seventy people. I didn’t get to the last five. It should be enough, though. The Beast’s only bringing five vampires, our spies said so—Raven’s going to be fine, right? He’s going to win?”

Natasha was looking to me to support her power-hungry boyfriend. I didn’t know what to say.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Because the stories are true, aren’t they?” Natasha said, fear growing in her eyes. “If we were going to win, why would Jackson betray us? Maybe he knows something we don’t. The Beast’s a killer. We knew this was dangerous—” She touched her swollen eye, and then hopped off the autopsy table.

I looked over and found Gemellus watching her like a cat, gauze packets unopened in his hand. “Natasha—Raven’s right. You should hide.”

“She is one Raven cares for?” Gemellus said. I could almost read his mind.

“No.” I couldn’t let her get out of here with everything she knew. But I wasn’t going to feed her to Gemellus either. “Just let me think, okay?” I announced to the world at large.

But the world wasn’t into waiting for me. Natasha walked into the next room with purpose. “Wait!”

She had the refrigerator door open in a second, and a syringe in her hand a moment after that. There was no needle on it, but you don’t need a needle if you’re willing to hit yourself hard enough.

“Stop!” I shouted, and Gemellus lunged, but it was too late. She started sinking, three inches of syringe embedded in her thigh, plunger depressed. “Shit—” I ran to her side just as her head hit the ground. Her body went still, and there was no light in her eyes.

“Natasha?” I shook her, and pulled the syringe out. Blood, her own and whatever vampire concoction she’d been using on test subjects, welled sluggishly from of her wound. If I were willing to suck on it like a snakebite, could I get the venom out? She still had her charm bracelet on, and the heart with a C was twinkling under the fluorescent lights. I understood it now—it was a gift from Corvus.

“She’s dead. How?” Gemellus stood over us both, then slowly turned around, placing a hand against the metal of the nearest refrigerator. “What is this place? What happened here? How were these made?”

“I cannot even begin to explain all this to you right now.” I set Natasha down and stood. Looking up, I saw that the camera from the EEG machine had tracked us, and was watching us from inside the autopsy room. Gideon was still on.

Now that there was no computer I didn’t have another way to communicate with him. All I could do was draw a big 7-0 in the air between us. The camera nodded, and then went limp.

Seventy against five. The odds were going to suck.

But if you counted Gemellus and me, that made it seventy against seven.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Give me those,” I said, and snatched the packets of gauze from him, to rip off all their tops at once. I shoved the gauze inside my silver wound with a hiss—it wouldn’t heal it but it might stop me from smelling like blood—then I wound the rest of the chain around it.

“You should have let me kill her,” he said.

From my position on the ground it was easy to see the injury that’d broken his leg and healed wrong. And then his leg lashed out to kick her, sending her body skidding across the room.

“Hey!”

“I made no promises about desecrating the dead,” he reminded me. It occurred to me that there was probably a reason for the scorpion inlay on his silver grate. I hoped the promises I’d had him make were tight enough—no time to think about that now, though. “I need to feed, if I’m to fi

ght him. How did she change herself?” He swept up the syringe she’d held. “What tool is this? Did it once hold blood?”

“Yes—I’ll explain later.” Maybe. The fewer people that knew, the better. We needed to find Jackson—

Gemellus crushed the syringe in his hand. “This is what I will do to him. Can we continue?”

“We can—but we need to destroy everything here first.” This whole room was too dangerous to leave intact. I didn’t know who Anna’d brought with her, or who would survive tonight. Everything in here had to go.

I had no idea if Natasha kept off-site backups. I hoped not, but I couldn’t guarantee it. All I could do was destroy what was here. I started opening up the refrigerators and yanking out the contents, letting petri dishes and Erlenmeyer flasks fall to the floor, spilling sticky contents. I opened up a drawer full of blood draw supplies and stared into it. Test tubes, needles, tourniquets …

“If we may help,” the Shadows at my ear asked.

“Yes?”

“We can destroy all that is in here, if you but turn off the light.”

“Everything? Inside the machines too? I need you to ruin all of it, make it unworkable, unsalvageable.” There wasn’t much of them left; they’d be spread very thin.