Elle Jasper - Eventide

“Yeah, baby, do me,” he says, his voice thick with excitement. “Take off your shirt so I can see your tits swinging in my face.” Apparently, junior here has watched one too many cheap pornos.

Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I slowly pull it off and drop it on the floor. His eyes glaze over as they lock on my dragons. “Goddamn, baby, that’s hot as shit.” He lifts a hand and fingers the ink markings on my arm.

Just to give the situation an added extra, I palm his crotch. “Oh, you’re so hard,” I say. “Are you ready for me?”

He presses my hand hard against him. “Oh yeah, bitch, I’m ready all right.”

“Good.”

He grunts with what I suspect is a sexually excited moan of pleasure.

Then I rise off him, stand next to the cot, and slowly unbutton my jeans.

“Hurry up, baby,” he says, yanking his zipper down and groping himself. “I’m gonna come all over my– Humph! ”

The wind leaves his lungs in a painful, gurgling gush as I raise my leg and slam the heel of my boot down hard on his crotch. He gasps a few times, ineffective little puffs of wind as he curls into a ball, hands cradling his privates.

Wasting no time, I rear my foot back again and catch him full force under the chin, sending him sprawling off the cot.

“Bitch!” he wheezes, spitting.

Another stomp to the groin sends the guard into a spasm of air sucking and cussing.

Dropping to my knees, I fish in his pocket for the tie-wraps I’d felt while straddling him. Grabbing a handful, I quickly bind his feet.

The guard reaches for something, and knowing he has tendencies makes me not trust him for a single second, or waste a single move. I dive in the same direction, my fingers brushing the cutters, knocking them across the room where they ping off a wall. “Ah-ah, shithead. No getting out of the wraps.”

I stand and put my boot to his throat. “Turn onto your stomach or you’ll be whistling out of a brand new hole in your neck. Now.”

He curses, then turns over.

I drop a knee right between his shoulder blades, wrench one of his arms behind him and pin it with my weight. Quickly, I grab the other arm, then tie-wrap them together. I kneel over him, close to his ear.

“You’re going to tell me a few things,” I say, barely above a whisper. I concentrate, envisioning in my head that I can make this prick do anything I want him to do with no resistance. “And you’re going to do it quietly. Now roll over and be still.”

He does and goes completely motionless. Says nothing. Doesn’t move. But his eyes stay fixed on mine.

“Good boy. Now tell me where we are,” I command.

“The research center,” he mumbles. “Lab.”

“What research?” I ask.

“Experiments,” he says. “On blood.”

“Whose?” I demand.

“All of ours,” he mutters. “Yours. Mine. Those like us.”

The picture became clearer. “Vampires.”

He shrugs.

“Where’s Valerian Arcos?” I ask.

The guard remains silent. I give him a mental shove without even realizing how I’ve done it. Apparently, it doesn’t feel too good to have your brain pushed.

He screams.

I quickly back off.

“I’ve never seen him,” he says, whimpering. “He only talks to me in my mind. Tells me what to do, whose blood to collect.”

“How many others are here?” I ask.

“Not sure,” he answers. “Could be two dozen, could be one. They come and go.”

Just that fast, I’m tired of playing the game. I want answers.

“Where’s the lab?”

“Out and left.”

I pull my shirt back on and take off running, pushing through a single door that leads from the room and into a corridor. It has the feel of an old high school built in the fifties, with long halls and rooms on either side. The doors are closed, and only every other overhead light burns. Throwing open door after door, I find nothing. No one. It’s like the facility is abandoned.

I’m hit from behind.

Not so abandoned.

I fly—not literally, but my body leaves the ground and smashes against the wall. I drop, roll, and leap up. My hand feels for a blade down my waistband. I palm it and look.

Four young vampires. Three males, one female.

All four leap at me at once.

With two quick releases, I fling blades and down the two closest to me. I can tell I won’t make it far—they’re quick and almost on me. So I take off.

I know they’ll have a hard time catching me.

Down the corridor I run. It’s dim—almost pitch-black. I see a stairwell door and shove through and tear up the steps. In seconds I’m on the third-floor landing and I slam against the metal bar and open the door.

Six more young vampires are standing there, waiting.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Poe,” the one in front—a male with blond spiked hair—says. “He called you here for a reason.” He takes a step toward me. “You’re stayin’ a while, darlin’.”

I’ve had enough. Valerian Arcos is a danger I no longer care to have lingering in my life. He’s been able to snatch Estelle right out from under our noses.

He’s capable of anything.

He has to be stopped.

I leap at the leader. His jaws extend and teeth drop. The others follow. I ignore them all. I plunge a silver blade into his chest before my feet bound off his shoulder. As I land behind the group, they turn and descend on me. In one move I crouch, sweep out with one leg and take down the next. The blade I have palmed is buried into the newling’s flesh. She screams and falls with the others.

Three more to go.

Use your other tendencies, Riley. You don’t have to fight so hard.

Victorian’s voice echoes inside my head. For a second, it throws me off. Another newling gets close—almost too close. My reflexes are fast and I take it down, land in a crouch. I don’t wait.

I kill them all.

Their screams as their bodies break down chase me down the corridor as I start slamming open doors, searching for Valerian.

I know you’re here, Arcos! You might as well come out! I yell in my mind to Valerian. A panic grips me—a desperation to find him, to punish him, to send his ass straight to Hell. But each room I find is an empty shell, with peeling walls and broken metal furniture. It reminds me of the tuberculosis sanatoriums they used to have at the turn of the twentieth century until the forties and fifties. An unsettled sensation creeps over me as I slip through the halls. I’m alone, frustrated, frantic. Innocent people have died at this place; I can sense it. Smell it.

Taste it.

As I move, I barely notice the speed at which I’m flying through the halls. I hear the eerie echo of my feet through the emptiness, but it’s hard to register that I’m the one making the noises. I’m so goddamn fast, the walls and doors blur past me. My tendencies are many, and apparently they are as close to vampiric as a human can have.

In the next second, no fewer than a dozen newlings burst from the stairwell. They surround me, and I know then I’m beaten. No way can I concentrate long and hard enough to manipulate all of their minds; just like I can’t possibly fight them all. They descend upon me.

I let them.

One grabs me by my arm and pulls me along. We leave the third floor, down the stairwell, to the second floor. At the end of the corridor, a door stands open. I’m shoved inside, and even though I stumble, I catch myself upright.

The door slams shut. The room is dark. Not one light is turned on.

I immediately sense his presence.

“I need something from you, Riley,” Valerian’s voice speaks from the shadows. “You have something that even I don’t possess. As a matter of fact, I’m positive there isn’t a soul alive—or not—who possesses it. You are…unique that way. Highly desirable.”