Emily McKay - The Lair

“You want to keep her safe with you, you’re welcome to try.”

Price looked at me suspiciously. “You’re really just going to let me take her?”

The doctor looked at me and said, “There’s room in the helicopter. You could come.”

Price looked like he wanted to swallow his tongue, but then he nodded. “We could use a guy like you. With your combat experience.”

For a second, I was tempted. The best way to make sure Price didn’t take Lily too far away for me to find her was to go with them myself. But I’d seen the copter. It wasn’t that big.

“If I came, you wouldn’t have room for all of them, would you?”

Price shrugged. He obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead. He was too used to thinking only of his own interests. But the doctor shook her head.

In the end, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice lives, especially the life of a kid, to be with Lily.

“I’ll help you load the helicopter. Lily first, then Marcos. You take as many as you can. The doctor here stays with them.” I got right in Price’s face. “You find the closest Farm and you let me know where you’re going. As long as she’s still alive when I get there, I’ll let you live. But if you try to keep me away from her, I will find you and destroy you myself.”

“You’re so sure you could do that?”

“Yeah, I am. Don’t forget, I’ll have your other daughter.”

Something hard and soulless lit in Price’s eyes and I knew he’d been planning on snagging Mel on the way out.

“Mel won’t go with you,” I told him.

“She will. Mel and I have always understood each other.”

“Maybe. But you’re the one who said you should never underestimate the great things a human abductura can accomplish when working with a vampire.”

It took several seconds for Price to understand my point. I’d been right. He hadn’t figured out yet that Mel had turned into a vampire. The shock on his face might have been enough to make me smile, but I was already helping the doctor wheel Lily’s bed out to the helicopter.

Mel

I sneak back to the square as the fight between Roberto and Sebastian rages on. Of course, all the sneaking in the world is pointless. Neither notices me. They are completely engaged in the battle, relentlessly focused on each other. The clang of metal on metal echoes through the square, and the closer I get, the more it blocks out everything else. The howls of the approaching Ticks. The roar of the helicopter’s engine. The report of rapid gunfire in the distance. All of it fades.

Roberto and Sebastian appear to be evenly matched. Roberto is smaller, of course, but the katana gives him a longer reach. Sebastian, I know, has battle experience that should give him an edge, but Roberto is fantastically good with the sword, wielding it with an easy confidence that I never managed.

As evenly matched as they are, I have no doubt this could last for hours. Days maybe, before one of them tires enough to make a mistake. They slash and swipe and parry with a grace and agility that no Hollywood special effects department could hope to match.

Their battle is a thing of beauty.

But I don’t have time for this. My sister needs that cure. All I need is a few minutes alone with Sebastian to find out where the cure is, so that Carter and I can leave here to go get it.

We need to get out of here soon. There are—literally—hundreds of miles of fence around this compound, but eventually the Ticks will find their way through if they haven’t already. They’ll swarm over this town and when they do—if Carter is still here—he’ll be torn apart. He’s protected me often enough. It’s time for me to return the favor.

I have to either interrupt the fight or find a way to tip the balance to end it more quickly. Neither of which I am going to be able to do unless I find some kind of weapon. I know the guard station will be well stocked, but undoubtedly there are guards there also. I’m not going to count on them handing me a crossbow so I can go murder their leader.

Instead, I sneak back around the edge of the square toward the one building I know: Roberto’s mansion.

I don’t know what I’ll find there. My trek through the downstairs of his house was somewhat impeded by the fact that I was dragged along behind a raging maniac. I don’t remember seeing anything I could use as a weapon, but even crazed vampires needed brooms, right?

Sure, Roberto doesn’t seem like the type to do his own cleaning, but the cleaning staff has to keep their stuff somewhere.

I dash up the steps and in through the front door, which stands open. My eyes adjust quickly to the darkness and I stare around the foyer. There is a front parlor off to the left with a massive entertainment center and sleek, leather furniture intermixed with elegant antiques. I guess his taste is eclectic. I am about to walk on past and look for a broom closet or something when the gleam of metal on the back wall catches my attention.

I walk into the room, feeling along the wall automatically for a light switch before remembering that the electricity is off. I am most of the way across the room before my mind processes what I am seeing.

The wall is covered with weapons, from the ceiling all the way down to the display case. Swords, daggers, crossbows. Most of them look like antiques. All of them have a cross somewhere on them, everything from the crudely painted slash of red on the wooden handle of the crossbow, to the mother-of-pearl embossed on the handle of a sword. The display case is the wood-and-glass kind you’d see in a museum. It contains a series of Victorian-style boxes. The most elaborate of them is closed to show off the carving. The others are opened to reveal the contents: daggers, pistols, vials of mysterious powder, carved pieces of wood. More crosses. Crosses on everything.

That’s what does it for me. That’s what gives it away.

They are vampire hunting kits. Once in the Before, I’d seen a TV show about them. They’d been a curiosity item popular with paranoid Victorians after the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula . And Roberto collects them. By the dozens. I look at the weapons on the wall again. All those crosses. That’s what this whole display is. The tools of vampire hunters.

What kind of idiot collects weapons specifically designed to kill him?

An egomaniac with a well-equipped personal army, I guess.

I reach for a sword most like my katana. As I pull it from the wall, I notice a tiny nameplate beneath it. Kimura 1704 . They all have labels with names and dates. So then this isn’t just a collection of vampire-slaying tools. It’s a personal collection. These are the tools of vampire slayers who came after him and failed.

I don’t take the time to count them. I don’t need to know how many have failed before me. Besides, I don’t really need to kill Roberto. I only need to distract him long enough for Sebastian to do it.

Obviously, one of the bows would be my best bet in terms of not needing to be close to Roberto to use it, but I don’t have Lily’s archery experience. Besides, I think I’d read somewhere that bow strings needed to be oiled regularly to be kept in working condition. Even if I could hit a target, having the string snap when I notch the arrow will do me no good.

I take the katana and a wicked-looking dagger. Then, just to be sure, I knock out the glass in the display case and grab a fistful of stakes. Maybe I am being paranoid, but I don’t want my katana added to this wall.

I think for a moment, but I am not sure how I feel about Sebastian’s Arkansas Toothpick. When it comes to him, I am still torn.

How am I supposed to feel? In some ways, Sebastian seems to know me better than I know myself. He understands me like no one else ever has. And he’s used that knowledge against me. He’s turned me into a killer.