His smile is wry. “I never said they were.”
“Then what is this? Why are you here? What do you want with the super vamps?”
“Yes, super vamps, that’s how she thinks of them.” His smile is almost fond.
“She?”
“My sister. Her mind is a wonderous place filled with wonderous information.”
Wait…so that’s how he found out about the existence of the super vamps. And then he infiltrated the Magiguard HQ by head hopping to find out where they were located. The guards’ weird behaviour made sense now. They’d tried to resist his influence. They’d known he was in their head somehow.
“Cain, what do you want with the vamps?”
“That is none of your concern. Now…” He raises the control in his hand. “If you’re done stalling, I would like to take my precious cargo and leave.”
Shit, shit, shit. Where is the Magiguard team? We can’t let him leave with the super vamps.
As he raises the control to hit the open cell button, I do the only thing I can. I make a jump to his side and grab for the control.
Pain lashes across my face. My vision blurs with tears, and then I hit a wall of solid muscle.
“Cora!” Hunter hugs me to his chest and yeah, I’m so fucking stunned by the blow that I can’t do any more than cling to him like a fucking damsel. “You bastard.” Hunter’s voice is saturated with venom.
He lunges toward Cain, his body morphing, shirt tearing, and slams into an invisible barrier that propels him back toward me. It’s my turn to grab him, but he’s no lightweight, and we both fall on our asses.
“I warned your friend what would happen if she got in my way,” Cain says. “I’m a man of my word.”
Suddenly I can’t breathe. My throat is tight, like it’s being squeezed, and then I’m being lifted off the ground.
Hunter makes a grab for me, but I’m propelled across the room and into the wall.
“You brought this on yourself,” Cain says.
Hunter is trapped in place unable to get to me, muscles bulging, veins popping in his neck as he tries to break free of Cain’s hold. My vision dims. Breathe, I need to b—
A crack splits the air and I’m free. Jasper stares at me with an unfathomable expression, and my heart swells at the sight of him. He came. He fucking came for me, and I know it’s what he does, because I am what I am to him, but the relief still brings tears to my eyes.
He hauls me into his arms. “If you want my attention, all you have to do is call.”
My body tingles, signaling a jump. “No.” My voice is a croak. “We have to stop him.”
He turns to Cain, and for the first time since I encountered the immortal, I catch a flicker of doubt in his eyes.
“You,” Cain says.
Jasper tucks me to his side. “I don’t like people damaging my property.”
Cain looks from me to Jasper. “She’s yours?”
“Yes, she’s mine. Touch her again, and I’ll obliterate you.”
Cain rakes Jasper up and down, and the tension radiating off him ebbs a little. “No.” he shakes his head slightly. “You won’t. You don’t have the power. Not like this.”
What’s he talking about?
Jasper flicks his wrist and Cain’s arms shoot out, boots sliding across the ground as if someone just shoved him hard in the chest. I look up at my malevolent saviour and yes, there’s confusion on his face. He hits Cain again, and this time the immortal laughs, unmoved.
This can’t be happening. Jasper is powerful. Dark and dangerous power wreathes him like a cloak, but Cain… Cain is more powerful. Then Cain throws up his hands, palms out and a blast of energy ripples the air propeling it to toward us, Jasper counters, blocking the wave. There’s a fizz, and then the smell of burning.
Oh fuck…
Cain tried to incinerate us.
“As fun as this is,” Cain says. “I should be going.”
Shit. “I won’t let you take the vamps.”
He smiles but his eyes are tired, almost as if this whole thing is super tedious.
“Oh, I won’t take them all. There are few that are defective. Those, you can keep.”
What?
He hits the button on the control and the cell doors lining the chamber open with a whirr. There’s a moment of silence, as if the world is holding its breath, and then super vamps spill out into the chamber—crimson eyed, fangs bared, ready to puncture, and… Talons? What the fuck?
The super vamps we fought on the Island didn’t look like this.
Cain vanishes, taking eighty percent of the vamps with him, and there’s no time to analyze the situation because we’re under attack.
Hunter’s roar batters my ears, and then he leaps into the fray, already in half shift, tearing at the fucked up super vamps as if they’re confetti. Nine. No, there are ten of them. I try and break free of Jasper to get to Hunter, but his grip is unforgiving.
“No,” Jasper’s tone is a whiplash.
“I’m not leaving without him.”
“Not my problem.” He wraps me in his arms.
“Damn you. He can’t fight them alone.”
Hunter whirls and slices, lunges and tears at the vamps. But there are too many of them.
Jasper gives a long-suffering sigh and strides forward into the midst of the carnage is if he’s going for a fucking stroll. A series of sharp cracks resound throughout the chamber and every defective super vamp drops dead, neck broken.
Jasper gives me an arch look and holds out his hand. “You owe me.”
“Now isn’t the fucking time, okay? Did you see what just happened?”
“Like I said, not my problem.”
He keeps saying that, like nothing touches him, but it does. I saw it in his eyes when he was face to face with Cain.
Hunter picks something out from between his teeth hawks and spits. “Fucking vamps, taste like garbage.”
But my attention is still on Jasper. He hasn’t left. He’ll want me to go with him, and there’s a huge part of me that wants to do just that. The part that’s depraved and hungry. The part that craves him.
His eyes narrow and he bridges the distance between us, lips curving in a smug smile. Fuck, does he see it? Does he see that I want him?
I grit my teeth and lift my chin. “What? What are you smirking about?”
“Sort out what you need to, but get it done by tonight, because I’ll be back, and I will be collecting.”
And then he’s gone.
I take a breath and look across at Hunter to find him studying me with interest.
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
“For you having to put up with him.” He wipes at his mouth. “I have one too, but he’s just a voice in my head.”
There’s a vulnerability about him that makes me soften, and I get it. I get exactly what he means.
“That voice is no malevolent spirit, Hunter. That’s the dark part of your conscience, and only you can exorcise it.”
He frowns at me. “How?”
“By believing in yourself. By believing you deserve to be happy.”
The thunder of boots drifts through the open door and Magiguard poor into the chamber.
Ursula leads the charge and comes to a skidding halt at the sight of the carnage.
I cross my arms. “Seriously? What took you so long?”
“We had to crack the ward Cain put on the building.” She frowns. “But you got in…”
I don’t even have the mental energy to go there right now. “He got away, and he took a bunch of super vamps with him.”
“He left these behind,” Hunter says.
“They didn’t react well to the antidote,” a small voice says. A woman peers around the doorjamb. “They mutated, and the others were resistant.”
“How many resistant?” Ursula demands.
“Twenty…” The woman ducks her head. “On this floor.”
Shit. The white van outside, the weird noises. Cain had already cleared a floor before we got here.
“This is bad.” Ursula says.
“He took the vials,” the small woman says.
Ursula pales.
“What?” Hunter demands. “What was in the vials?”
“The Reaper virus.”
“The what?” I step over the dead body of a super vamp to get closer to her. “What did you say?”
“The Reaper virus,” the small woman says. “A concentrated version of the virus that enabled humans to see ghosts and decimated the reaper population a couple of decades ago.”
“Why would you have that?” Hunter demands.
“An insurance policy,” Ursula says.
They continue to bicker, but I can barely hear them because the blood rushes in my ears as Cain’s intentions are suddenly clear.
He doesn’t want to hurt humans.
He wants to attack demons.
He’s headed to the Underealm.
Oh fuck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fee
It was so fucking dark. Where was I? What was this place. It smelled bad, like rotting things and the ocean. The air was moist and clung to me as I forged on. This wasn’t real. I knew it even before I began to climb rocks, my hands barely visible, but clearly belonging to a male.
My heartbeat sped up.
I was dreaming.
This was a dream. Part of me wanted to wake up because this was too claustrophobic, but the other part, the one born of instinct kept me rooted in this moment.
The trickling of water drifted to my ears and then there was a light up ahead turning the darkness into a gray haze. What I wanted lay beyond the gray. I had to keep going. The gray grew brighter and brighter until it was a pulsing white light, and then I was in a rock cavern, standing on a ledge that jutted out over an abyss.
But this abyss wasn’t inky and forbidding. No, this abyss was filled with blessed light and the writhing shape of a multitude of ethereal forms that writhed and wove together as if to a symphony audible only to them.