She would get the woman to the surface and out of danger, and then she was coming back down to give Tor hell for thinking he could order her around. That wasn’t how things were going to work between them.
She was going to have his back and he would have hers, and they would fight together.
“Come on,” Eve whispered, willing Angelica to move faster.
They made it to the buckled metal steps and Eve breathed deeply as they hit fresher air, the smoke dissipating around her. She kept moving forwards, dragging Angelica, forcing her to move with her.
Someone had opened the main doors of the warehouse, leaving a huge gap for the smoke to pour out into the night. Eve trudged onwards and reached the threshold of the warehouse.
The ominous rumbling beneath her became a roar. Heat blazed across her back and the blast sent her sailing through the air with Angelica, twisting them around each other. She lost her hold on the woman and somersaulted, a scream burning up her throat as the world spun around her.
Eve grunted as she landed hard, pain exploding through every bone in her body, and tumbled across the tarmac. Intense heat rolled over her as another explosion shook the ground, quickly followed by another and then another.
She rubbed the grit from her eyes and shoved herself up, ignoring the pain that shot down her left arm, warning her that she had broken more than one bone.
She didn’t care.
Didn’t feel the pain as numbness swept it away. Didn’t hear the growl of the inferno over the ringing in her ears.
Flames engulfed the entire warehouse, huge explosions twisting the remaining metal and greedily consuming any wood. Debris rained all around her.
Her whole world fell down.
CHAPTER 21
The shockwave slammed against Tor’s side, hurling him into a darkened room. He smacked into the wall and hit the tiled floor, rolled onto his front and covered his head with his arms as a fireball roared over him and huge chunks of the ceiling rained down. Heat licked his skin, blistering his bare arms and singeing his hair.
The moment it abated, he did a mental body check and shoved to his feet. He rolled his shoulders and stretched to crack everything back into place, shut down the pain echoing through his tired body, and stumbled to the door. The blast had taken a large section of it out, leaving a huge gap in the wall.
He squinted against the smoke and searched for the vampires he had been fighting when the explosion had interrupted them.
Their broken bodies lay buried beneath what looked like most of the concrete ceiling, fire consuming what was left of them, turning them to ash.
Tor coughed to clear his lungs and scrambled over the rubble. The entire warehouse was ablaze above him, the intense heat warning him he wouldn’t make it out that way. He quietened the primal instinct burning within his heart, demanding he go that way despite the danger and ensure that Eve was safe, and focused on his blood and their bond.
She felt distant. It wasn’t just the concrete and steel dampening his senses this time.
She was in shock, and hurt. He could feel her pain. It was concentrated in his left arm, separate from his own pain, the constant ache of the right side of his ribs. She had broken something in the blast and so had he. It was times like this he was thankful that he didn’t have to breathe.
He scanned his surroundings again.
His only option was to head deeper and hope there was another exit.
He could sense vampires down that way, some of them strong. The Law Keepers. Tor held his ribs and stumbled down the corridor, following his limited senses towards the strongest signatures, hoping he was right and it was the Law Keepers. He was in no fit state to fight. The drug still infested his body, weakening him, and he needed blood to heal the wounds from his captivity and the fight that had come after his escape.
Tor pressed his right hand to the wall, skimming it along the rough plaster to support his weight as he walked. The signatures grew stronger and clearer. There were three. Definitely the Law Keepers.
The red lights above him flickered, barely holding on. He switched to his true guise and his vision sharpened as his eyes changed, driving back the darkness. The red light hurt his eyes but it was better than walking blind whenever they faltered.
He banked right and then left, and frowned as he found himself in a new area of the compound, beyond the room where they had held him.
Voices sounded ahead.
“They have offsite backups,” Serge said.
“Can you track them down?” Vincent this time.
Tor followed the voices to a room, leaned against the doorframe and grimaced as pain ricocheted along his ribs.
“Given time.” Serge nodded towards Tor.
Vincent looked his way, his blond hair a mess with tufts coming out of his ponytail. Black soot smudged across his cheek and up his arms, mingling with blood. Serge looked just as grim, his cold blue eyes meeting his across the room before he went back to his work, destroying data on the laptop in front of him.
Daemon lounged shirtless in the corner of the room on the table top, covered in soot and lacerations from head to toe, playing with what looked like a home-made Molotov cocktail in a white plastic bottle. Beside him, a stack of servers were merrily blazing, crackling and spitting molten flames onto the concrete floor. He figured it was Daemon’s handiwork.
“You look like hell,” Tor said to him and he shrugged. “You responsible for me nearly getting wiped out up there?”
“No.” Daemon picked at the black material sticking out of the top of the bottle.
Tor took that no as a yes.
“I was.” The voice came from behind Tor and he moved in an instant, leaping forwards over two metres and spinning to face the owner.
The brunet grinned at him, blood plastered down the left side of his face, trickling from a wound that darted across his temple and into his hair.
“Now I have all the powerful pure blood I need.” He eyed them all.
Daemon popped to his feet, sliding off the table, and palmed the bottle. Vincent straightened and covered Serge, giving him time to continue tracking down and erasing the data.
“You’re insane,” Tor said, keeping Adam’s focus on him, unsure what the man would do if he realised that Serge was busily destroying his years of hard work. “The entire building is about to come down on top of us.”
Five vampires appeared out of the gloom behind Adam. If the man thought six weaklings to four purebloods was enough to tip the balance in his favour, he truly had lost his mind.
Vincent palmed his sword. Tor flexed his fingers. Daemon set his bomb down and drew a blade from the sheath strapped to his thigh.
“Detain them,” Adam said and the five vampires rushed forwards.
Tor blocked the punch a young dark-haired man threw at him, grabbing and twisting his hand. He shoved his other palm against the man’s nose and blood burst over his lip. The vampire stumbled backwards, clutching his face and howling. Tor pushed him aside into Daemon and growled as Adam rabbited again.
He ran after the bastard, following him around a corner.
Pain erupted across his shoulder and chest, the air knocked from him as the steel pole smashed into him and sent him stumbling backwards. Adam laughed.
Tor snarled.
He launched himself at Adam, slamming his shoulder deep into the man’s stomach and tackling him to the ground. Adam’s breath left him in a rush as Tor landed on top of him. Tor shoved himself up and started hammering away at Adam’s face, landing relentless blows, pouring all of his anger into each strike.
Adam bowed against him, knocking him off balance, and managed to wriggle his legs free. He kicked Tor hard in the gut, propelling him backwards. Tor hit the ground, curled his legs into his chest to keep the motion going and rolled over, landing on his knees. He kicked off, growling as he ran at Adam.
The bastard grabbed the metal pole from the floor and swung at him. Tor sidestepped to dodge it and then ducked as he swu
ng again. The pole smashed into the wall, raining plaster down on Tor’s back. He shoved upwards and caught Adam with an uppercut before he could pull the bar free, knocking him on his arse.
Tor yanked the pole from the wall and trailed it behind him as he stalked towards Adam, the metal scraping sound ringing around the corridor. Adam scrambled backwards, fear lighting up his golden eyes and tugging a grim smile of satisfaction from Tor.
“I wanted Eve to kill you,” Tor said in a low voice, one filled with menace and every ounce of his fury. He tightened his grip on the pole, his knuckles burning from the force of it, and kept advancing slowly, watching the bastard squirm. “I wanted her to make you suffer in the way you deserved. Hell, I wanted to teach her how to make you suffer the most… but now… now I don’t want you anywhere near her. Now I’m going to kill you myself.”
Adam pushed onto his feet.
Tor swung and Adam blocked with both arms. The pole connected hard with his forearms, slamming into bone with the force of a freight train. Adam stumbled backwards and cried out, the sound shrill in the smoky air.
Tor grinned and flexed his fingers around the pole, his nails becoming claws as he gave himself over to the darker side of his nature. His fangs emerged, punching long from his gums, and hunger for violence and bloodshed rose like an unstoppable tide within him, obliterating all of his pain and his fatigue, and imbuing him with strength.
Adam backed away, boots shuffling on the dusty ground and the fear in his eyes increasing.
Tor swung again and something tugged on the pole, holding it back. He growled and swiftly faced the vampire behind him, and ducked as one of Adam’s thugs threw a fist at him. It caught him with a glancing blow across his cheek and Tor twisted the pole, forcing the man to lose his grip on it.
He brought the pole up in a fast arc, using all of his strength, and smacked the thug across the side of his head, sending him down in a heap.
Tor turned on Adam before he could think to escape and growled as a crack echoed along the hall and pain exploded in his right shoulder, jerking him backwards. Cool liquid cascaded down his chest, saturating his ruined black t-shirt and sticking it to his skin. He growled at Adam.
“How does it feel to get shot by your own gun?” The bastard smirked at him, waving the black semi-auto in front of him.
To be honest, it hurt like a bitch, but he wasn’t about to admit that to the piece of filth wielding it. He snarled, flashing his fangs. Adam could shoot him full of bullets and it wouldn’t stop him from killing him.
The vampire started to pull the trigger again. Tor hefted the pole into his hand, brought it above his shoulder and launched it like a spear, throwing all of his might into it. The gun fired, the bullet whizzing towards him, aimed higher this time.
For his head.
Tor threw himself forwards, narrowly missing the bullet, and hit the ground, pain shooting from his wounds as the impact jarred him.
Adam howled in agony, the sound divine to Tor’s ears. He looked up. The male gasped as he gripped the pole skewering his side. Not quite where Tor had aimed. Having to throw himself out of the path of the bullet had altered the flow of his makeshift spear. He had meant to send it plunging into his dead black heart.
Tor carefully pulled himself onto his feet and slowly approached Adam. The male tugged at the pole, grimacing and growling as he tried to wrench it free of his flesh. Tor could help with that. He reached Adam, grabbed the end of the steel pole and yanked it hard, ripping another scream from the weakling vampire.
A scream he cut off by plunging the pole into Adam’s chest, straight through his heart, and straight out of his back, dislodging the vital organ completely.
Tor’s senses blared in warning.
He grabbed the gun from Adam’s hand, released the pole to let the dead vampire fall to the floor, and spun on his heel. He fired off a round as the thug launched at him, a blade in his hand aimed straight for Tor’s neck, and nailed him between the eyes. The man dropped at Tor’s feet, his short sword clattering across the tiles.
Tor flipped him over with his boot, pressed it against his chin and shoved upwards, snapping his neck.
He stumbled left and leaned against the wall as pain ricocheted through him, coming back stronger than ever now his mission was done and the fight was over.
He stared off to his right at Adam where he lay in a pool of blood that slowly spread across the dusty floor.
He should have brought the bastard to Eve and let her kill him. She needed her vengeance and he had taken it from her. He only hoped he had done enough to convince her that life as a vampire was one worth living, with him.
He shoved his gun down the back of his black jeans and held his ribs, pinning his wounded right arm to them this time, wincing with each step he took back towards the room.
Vincent was finishing off the vampires as he arrived, decapitating them with a little too much enthusiasm. Blood sprayed up his body, splattering across his face. Tor had considered becoming a Law Keeper once, when he had grown weary of his bloodline and the way they treated him. Now he was glad he had remained a hunter.
His reward for years of service, for endless pain and loneliness, was waiting for him aboveground.
“We think there’s an exit this way.” Vincent wiped his blade on a dead vampire and sheathed it. He pointed towards a corridor filled with rubble and smoke, opposite the room.
Tor hoped the man was certain they were heading towards freedom and not their doom. He didn’t have any choice but to follow him as he led the way. Serge and Daemon brought up the rear, silent and wary, on high alert. Tor was too. It was hard to quieten the ache in his heart as he moved further away from Eve. Each step he took across the uneven ground, scrambling over the chunks of concrete and the decomposing bodies of vampires, took more effort, filling him with weariness as his strength began to fade.
He would see her soon. He kept telling himself it to soothe his need, the compulsion to turn back and go the other way, towards her. He was going towards her, just in a roundabout manner. It was easier to tell himself that than to convince himself to believe it. He wished again that they had completed a mating, sealing their bond with the ultimate connection that would have allowed him to tell her telepathically that he was safe.
He could still feel her hurt and it wasn’t a physical pain. It was emotional and it was ripping her apart from the inside. She was suffering because she thought he was trapped in the blazing warehouse, or worse.
She thought he was dead.
The knowledge that she might think such a thing increased his need to reach her, driving him to keep moving despite his pain and weakness, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He had to take her pain away. He had to show her that he was still here and that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Fire consumed the corridor ahead, filling his mind with replays of his nightmares. He squeezed his eyes shut and fought them. She wasn’t in the building. She was outside. She was safe. He would see that with his own eyes soon enough. His senses weren’t lying to him. She was out and she was safe.
Daemon shoved him in the back. “Keep moving. I do not like that noise.”
What noise? Tor focused and frowned at the deep grumbling coming from below them. He moved faster, his senses screaming in warning. He knew that sound and the building couldn’t take another explosion. The whole thing would collapse with them in it.
“You should like it,” Tor said in an attempt to lighten the mood and shove his fears away as he pulled himself up a rocky incline, following Vincent. Vincent grunted, or it might have been a chuckle, and hauled himself up a seven foot high wall to the floor above. Tor grinned. “You make enough explosions. It should be like music to your ears.”
Daemon huffed and scrambled up behind him as Tor hefted himself onto the next floor with Vincent’s help, gritting his teeth against the pain. Tor reached over, grabbed Daemon’s hand and pulled him up. Serge sprang up onto the ledge as if it had been a mere two feet
above the end of the rubble.
Vincent picked up pace, the red lights flickering over him, making him stutter in Tor’s vision. Tor gripped his side, pinning his arm in place, and started off at a jog that quickly became a sprint as the ground shook and buckled beneath their feet. Daemon growled something in German and Serge answered. They both ran harder. Fresh cool air swept past them.
Tor’s heart lifted and he pushed himself to run faster, keeping up with Vincent. Vincent rushed up a set of metal steps and Tor followed him, breaking out into another warehouse. The weaklings had a back entrance. It made sense. Having two warehouses would have drawn less attention to their activities, giving the humans less reason to become suspicious and making it easier to ferry victims into the buildings and come and go.
Daemon and Serge climbed the stairs and didn’t stop. Tor looked back down at the corridor as the earth shifted violently beneath his boots and then ran after them, following them out into the clear night air with Vincent bringing up his rear.
The other warehouse blazed directly in front of them, nothing more than a mass of twisted metal. They sprinted as one off to the right, out of the path of the impending explosion. It came hard and fast, jolting and fracturing the tarmac between the two buildings. Flames shot up out of the cracks and threw debris in all directions. Tor dodged all of it, moving further from the scene as the other warehouse went up in an inferno and sank into the collapsing earth.
Tor left the Law Keepers behind and raced around another warehouse, using it as a shield against the metal and concrete erupting from the explosions. The ground settled, the rumbling ceasing, but he didn’t slow down. He sprinted around the front of the warehouse and spotted Eve ahead, sitting on her knees with her hands hanging limp in her lap and her wide eyes locked on the buildings going up in flames before her.
He slowed to a walk.
Tears streamed down her dirty face, cutting through the blood and the grime.
His beautiful Eve.
She was alive.