Anna Strong - Retribution Part 13

Williams releases a long, pent-up breath. "Jesus. She got Ortiz."

I feel like knocking my head against the wall. "I never should have taken that file. I should have made a copy. I've let Burke know we can connect her to Eternal Youth. Is she going to kill every one of those test subjects? Why? It can't be simply to get even with me."

Williams shakes his head. "Maybe we'll know when we get an a.n.a.lysis of the product. I dropped it off on my way here. I put a rush in.

We should hear in three hours or so."

"I can't wait that long. I'm going to the warehouse. There were personnel files that should tell me where the receptionist lives."

If she hasn't gotten rid of those, too. I rub my eyes as if to rub away the thought and look up at Williams. "Where will you be? I'll call as soon as I get to that receptionist."

"I'll be at the park. I'll get the witches started on another locator spell." He looks toward the house. "I'll give Brooke my cell phone number, to let her know as soon as we reach Ortiz."

His tone is lower, huskier than I've ever heard. His concern for Ortiz is genuine.

Maybe there's hope for Williams yet.

CHAPTER 25.

THIS SEEMS TO BE A MORNING FOR SURPRISES.

This time, I'm looking down at the warehouse from my perch on the frontage road and even the security car is gone.

Now, that doesn't mean one of the guards didn't drop the other off or go for coffee, but it does give me a window of opportunity.

One guard, with or without the mutt, is better than two.

I head for the back. It's still deserted. Eerily different from my first visit yesterday when the parking lot was full and trucks came and went like ants at a picnic.

I launch myself upward. The windows on the first floor allow me a peek into the factory. I 'm looking for the security guard. No one in sight. It isn't until I've allowed myself a scan of the area that I'm aware of what else I'm not seeing.

I'm not seeing anything on the conveyor belt.

The conveyor belt is completely empty.

About the same time that registers, the hair on the back of my neck rustles as if touched by the hand of G.o.d.

It's the last thing I feel before I'm blown off the building and slammed into the ground.

CHAPTER 26.

THE FORCE OF THE EXPLOSION BLOWS OUT EVERY window and covers me with shards of gla.s.s.

I lay on the ground a minute, taking mental and physical inventory. My skin burns, my ears ring. Don 't see any blood. I'm lying on my side, twenty feet from the building. I try to roll on my back, straighten out. My left arm aches and I realize it's twisted above the elbow in an unnatural angle. Probably broken, though no bone protrudes.

I sit up.

My back protests, but follows my mental command to move. That left arm is what 's really protesting. I pa.s.s fingers gingerly up the arm until I find the point at which bone pushes against the skin. Grasping the arm with my right hand, I give it a sharp tug.

Pain causes my vision to go black. There's a popping sound and the bone shifts into place. It's all I need to do. Accelerated vampire healing will take care of the rest.

Except for the pain.

It hurts like a son of a b.i.t.c.h.

The ringing in my ears subsides to a dull roar, and I shake my head to clear it.

At first, I think what I hear next is a result of the blast. Some shift in decibel or tone that sounds less like percussion -induced noise and more like- Screaming.

Screaming?

I'm on my feet and racing back toward the flames.

It's not my imagination. It's in my head.

In my head. Vampires. Inside. Trapped.

The building is fully engulfed. Flames shoot out of the windows. Smoke and heat don't scare me. Flames do. Burning is one of the ways a vampire can be killed.

I race to the front. Maybe I can get in through the door. It hangs open on an explosion -warped frame. No flames here, not yet. But there's no one here, either. Not in the reception area, not in the office area in back.

I send out a mental probe. Where are you?

An answer comes back from a chorus of frantic voices. The bas.e.m.e.nt. We're in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Bas.e.m.e.nt?

The corridor at the end of where I'm standing leads only to the factory floor. I know. I traveled it last night.

I don't know where that is. Tell me.

An anguished cry, from a female voice: We don't know. We were drugged when we were brought here. Please. Help us.

Frustration and panic claw at my heart. I can't go back down those stairs into the factory. The flames are too intense. I feel the heat through the soles of my shoes.

Maybe there's another way.

Outside, I race around the building, circling, looking for anything that might be another entrance. I tell the female vamp to keep talking, hoping her voice can guide me.

She babbles, crying, begging me to find her.

I can't.

There is no other way in that I can find.

Nothing. I find nothing.

The vamp's voice becomes shrill with fear.

I beat my fists against the loading dock. Why can't you free yourselves? Exasperation fuels my feeling of helplessness and it comes out in an angry wail.

We can't. The collars.

There is such despair in her reply, it floods me with remorse and determination. I start again. At the front, circling, searching, running my fingers along the base of the bays in the loading dock, ignoring the white-hot metal that singes my fingers.

Until I find it.

A seam in the metal of the middle bay.

There is no latch, no hinge, no keyhole. I pound at the metal with my fist.

Yes! A chorus of frenzied voices. We hear you!

I beat at the metal until it caves. Then I tear a great rip in the metal and bend it back. It 's dark inside and smoke pours out like a genie released from a bottle. When I step inside, and my eyes have adjusted to the smoke and light, I follow the screaming voices filling my head.

Follow them to a scene straight from h.e.l.l.

CHAPTER 27.

THERE ARE TWELVE OF THEM. YOUNG, FEMALE. They are naked, hanging upside down, hands bound behind their backs with silver chains. When I break into the room, I'm hit with their relief. It's so tangible, it fills me with panic.

Panic because they think I can save them. Their expectation and grat.i.tude swamp my senses.

But I don't know if I can save them.

I don't know how. I shut down my thoughts while I move from one to the other. My own senses are recoiling so violently, it takes all my strength to shield them. I force the revulsion down. Look at them, Anna. Figure out how to set them free.

Each vampire has a metal collar around her neck. Each collar is a small trough with a spiked spigot. The spike has been driven into the vampire's jugular, piercing it. From the spigot hangs a tube. Blood drips from the tube into collection bags. Or, in the case of the two vampires on the end, a stain where the last drops fell onto the floor. For those two, there's no help. They have been drained lifeless.

I squeeze my eyes shut. For a moment, I've forgotten the reason I'm here. Forgotten the heat that grows more intense, ignore the cries of the vampires that the flames grow closer. All I can think is, Why would Belinda Burke do this?

Does she hate vampires so much, she came up with this elaborate, horrifying way to kill them? Did she plan to bring me here after she finished her revenge against Culebra and Frey? The thought fills me with horror.

So what changed her mind? Why did she decide to destroy her demonic torture chamber now and let the vamps trapped here either bleed to death or be destroyed by the flames?

The flames.

The anguished voice of one of the vampire's brings me back. I push the fear and hatred to the back of my mind. How can I save these women?

I do the only thing I can think of. With shaking hands, I go from one to the other, turn the spigots until the blood flow stops. I avoid looking in their eyes. I'm afraid of what I'll see.

I unhook the tubes and chains and lower each gently and carefully to the floor. I don 't touch the collars. I have no idea what might happen if I try to take them off, but the fact that just touching them brings shudders of agony numbs me. I unbind their hands. The four nearest the front get to their feet on their own. The ones behind are shakier and I help them to stand. Slowly, clumsily, we start to make our way outside. The stronger of the injured help the weaker.

We step outside under an apocalyptic sky. Smoke and ash turn day into evening. We cling to each other as we make our way to the shelter of some trees at the edge of the parking lot.

Only when we are away from the building does one of the women grasp my arm.

"There is another," she says.

I look back toward the building. Smoke is thicker now, pouring out the entrance to the underground torture chamber. The draft caused by my breaking in draws the flames downward.

"Another?"

"Brought in just before the explosion. Unconscious."

"I don't think I can go back."

She nods sadly. "I doubt he'll know what happens."

My heart jumps. "He?"

"A young male vampire. In a policeman's uniform."

Time stops. I dig my cell phone out of my pocket, hit speed dial, and thrust it at her. "When a man named Williams answers, tell him where we are and what happened. Tell him Ortiz is here at Burke's warehouse."

I don't wait for a response or to see if Williams picks up. I'm running full speed back to the warehouse.

The smoke can't hurt Ortiz, the heat, either.

But the flames licking at the back of the chamber can.

"Ortiz!" I'm screaming it at the top of my lungs. He's got to hear me, got to let me know where he is.

There's no response-no verbal or mental path for me to follow.

He must still be unconscious. I push back beyond the two dead vampires still hanging like broken dolls from the ceiling. I didn't look any farther into the chamber than this before. I didn't think I needed to.

Vampires don't breathe. The smoke and heat are an annoyance, they blur my vision, dull my senses. I have to keep wiping my streaming eyes, focusing on the dark beyond the corpses. Where could he be?

There's a flash and a roar. The draft from the broken loading bay door finally succeeds in drawing the flame to its source. Fire races down the back stairs and across the floor as if following an invisible trail.