“Remember what I told you about sunlight? That we absorb it during the day?”
“And at night you are its moon,” she quoted.
“That was a bit of poetic license. We don’t just reflect its light, we can radiate it like a small sun if we choose.”
The vampire flattened herself to the ground and tried to wriggle beneath the silver bars, but they had not risen far enough. Howling in pain and frustration, she withdrew to wait. Angie watched. With her fear walled away, what she experienced now was a distant curiosity. Would Aaron be able to stop the thing? If he couldn’t, would she rip Angie to pieces all at once or latch onto her throat and drain her one quart at a time until she was nothing but an empty husk?
The instant there was enough clearance, the vampire raced forward in a blur of supernatural speed, and just as quickly, a brilliant golden light blazed forth from the Fallen. The vampire screamed. She scrambled back, her skin smoking, and ran into the silver grate, which made her scream again and fall to the floor, trying to shield herself from the agony of a sun that should not exist here. The light faded. The thing raised her eyes cautiously, but when she darted forward, the light brightened again to force her back.
“She can’t feed on you,” Angie realized. “Even if you weren’t glowing. You’re a creature of sunlight. You’d poison her.”
“Yes.”
“Could you kill her?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to. They’ve done this to her; she can’t help what she’s become.”
“It might be a mercy.”
“I won’t do it unless I have to.” He paused. “I can’t keep this up indefinitely.”
The standoff would have to end sooner or later, and when it did, someone would die. As much as Angie pitied the vampire, she would rather be the one to survive.
“How long?”
“A while. I’ve built up my reserves for a long time, but eventually they will be depleted.”
The deadly little dance continued. He let the light dim, conserving his strength, and when the vampire lunged he brought it up again, strong enough to drive her back. Aaron turned his head toward Angie, though he kept his eyes on the vampire.
“I’ll keep doing this until I feel myself weakening. If it comes down to it, I’ll do what I have to do to protect you. One good flare will burn her to cinders.”
Angie's mind raced. The other room was made to hold a vampire, not a human. If they were counting on the silver to contain their prisoner, they might not have bothered to make the walls as strong. Or the entrances.
“Can you drive her out of the cage?” she asked. “Into a corner of this room?”
“Why?”
“I want to get a look in there.” She explained her reasoning.
“I’ll try. Keep me between you and her.”
Cautiously, he began to circle to the side, angling to encourage the vampire away from her silver prison, and Angie moved with him. The creature started to go back inside, taking the most direct route of escape, but he followed with his light burning brightly until she screamed and ran out into the cement room, as far from him as she could get. The vampire cowered. She kept her full attention on the human so maddeningly close. She tried to creep along the edges of the room, seeking a corner that would protect her from Aaron’s sunlight, and as she did she brushed against one of the doors. Her roar of pain echoed through the concrete, and Angie clapped her hands over her ears. The doors, she thought, must be silver plated.
Aaron stood between the two rooms and faced the vampire. “Hurry.”
Angie checked the walls as quickly as she could. There were no exits, just more concrete. The floor was smooth, too. How had they gotten the vampire into its cage? The answer came when she looked at the ceiling and saw a trap door through which they must have dropped their prisoner. Carefully, she climbed the grate until she could get a better look at it. The silver bars covered it as well as the rest of the ceiling, but upon closer examination, she found they had been snipped around the door’s edges so it could be opened. Hanging precariously, Angie shoved at it. No luck. She knocked her fist on its steel surface and heard only a dull thump. The thing must be thick. She wasn’t strong enough to force it. The vampire would be, though, if the grating could be removed.
Silver was a soft metal. Angie wedged her fingers around one of the many bars that covered the trap door and tried to pry it loose.
It bent.
She pulled harder, grunting with effort, and the grating peeled away from the trap door a fraction of an inch at a time. Angie wriggled her hands between the bars and the steel, got a good grip, and jumped away from the wall so her full weight dragged at the silver. This time it bent more, and she began swinging back and forth, trying to pull it free.
“What are you doing?” Aaron called.
“There’s a trap door. I can’t get it open, but the vampire can if I get the silver off. Talk to her. See if she’s still sane enough to understand.”
“I’ll try.”
He spoke to the thing in soothing tones, and while he did, Angie braced against the wall and pulled harder. Her weight wasn’t going to be enough; she needed leverage. Abdominal muscles trembled as she walked her feet up to the ceiling and tried to get a better angle.
The grate slipped. It jerked away a few inches and held. So close. She shifted, trying to get into a position where the thick muscles of her quadriceps could be used to advantage. Her shoulders and back strained, and her fingers ached. Perspiration made her hands damp, so that she had to tighten her grip to keep from slipping. Dangling upside down, now, legs bent, feet braced on either side of the trap door, she pulled with all her strength.
The silver came away so suddenly she couldn’t hold on. With a cry of surprise, she tumbled some ten feet to the concrete floor. She hit the ground flat on her back, and it knocked the breath out of her, leaving her gaping like a fish on dry land.
“Angie!” Aaron ran to her side, and as soon as his attention was diverted, the vampire rushed forward. His light flared just in time. The thing flung itself away with a screech.
She felt as though a boulder had landed on her chest. Angie lay there, unable to think of anything but the need for air. Finally, the temporary paralysis left her diaphragm and allowed her to suck in a deep, wheezing breath.
“I’m okay,” she managed. “Did you get through to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get against the wall, hug the silver. If we stay close to it, maybe she’ll hesitate to attack. Let’s try to herd her toward the trap door.”
He looked doubtful but helped Angie up and pulled both of them flat against the wall of the cage. They edged along it so they were no longer directly under the trap door. When his light dimmed, the vampire crept closer. Low, animal growls issued from her throat.
“You remember how you got in here?” Angie tried to find some speck of reason in the maddened thing. Despite her veneer of calm, it took work to keep her voice steady. She pointed toward the ceiling. “They dropped you in through there, right? I pulled the silver away. If you hit it hard enough, you can break the door open. You can get out of here and drink the blood of the men who did this to you.”
The vampire feinted toward them, and Aaron responded with a brief burst of light. It flinched back.
Then she looked where Angie still pointed. Looked back at them.
“Go on,” the Fallen encouraged. “You can escape.”
The vampire looked up, more sharply. With a shriek, she leaped high into the air and struck the trap door. The instant she fell to the floor, she sprang again. The door flew open when she hit this time, and the vampire disappeared through it, but the instant she did, a barrage of gunfire erupted. Angie gasped. Of course, Lockhart must have been watching all this with his damned cameras. He would have made sure someone was waiting to deal with them if they managed to get the trap door open. The vampire fell back into her prison and rolled several feet to one side, weak and injured, but still moving. Aaron put Angie behind him and shielded her with his body.
“What the hell was that?” a man’s voice shouted from above. “Some kind of animal?”
“Vampire,” another called. “Bat shit crazy by the look of it. Good thing we loaded up with silver.”
“Dead?”
The muzzle of a gun extended through the trap door, followed by a head.
“Still moving. I’d better finish it off.”
“No!” Angie yelled, recognizing the voice. “Joseph, we’re down here!”
“Miss Clark?” He sounded astonished. “You’re down there with that thing? How the hell are you still alive?”
“Just get us out before it heals!”
“Right.” His head disappeared, and he barked orders. A few moments later, a rope was lowered through the trap door. “There’s a loop for your foot,” Joseph told her. “Step into it and hold on while we do the rest.”
She did as he said. The rope moved in fits and starts as someone hauled her up by brute strength. Aaron stood below and watched. The vampire, close to him, got onto her hands and knees. She saw Angie dangling there like a fish on a hook. A snarl peeled her lips away from long fangs, and she struggled to go after her prey. Golden light suffused the cage, not brightly enough to kill or even hurt much, but enough to make the injured creature curl in on herself, making pathetic sounds.
“Hurry,” Angie urged their rescuers. “I don’t know how much longer he can hold out.”
A grunt sounded, and suddenly she moved faster, so much so that she nearly smacked her head on the edge of the trap door. A second man had joined the first. Joseph caught her under the shoulders and dragged her through. Immediately, the rope was thrown back down.
Aaron didn’t bother putting his foot in the loop. He surged up hand over hand in a display of strength that made their rescuers blink. As soon as he was through the hole, Angie and Joseph peered into the vampire’s prison.
“Why didn’t you let us kill it?” her bodyguard asked.
“She’s been trapped down here like we were. Who knows how long they’ve been torturing her.”
“She doesn’t deserve to die,” Aaron said.
“You know that for sure?” Joseph cocked his head toward them but kept his eyes on the vampire.
“Not for sure,” Angie admitted, “but I don’t want to kill her if we don’t have to. Is there some way to contain her? I tore the silver grate away from the trap door so she could bust us out, so keeping her in it now is going to be a lot harder.”
“What are we going to do, leave her there? Killing her would be kinder.”
He was right. While he kept his gun trained on the vampire, Angie tried to think. “She’s too much for us to handle.”
“No shit.” Ron, who had helped one of the other men haul her from the cage, crouched next to Joseph with his gun out and ready to assist.
Angie looked around. They were in a large room with marble walls, and if she remembered correctly, the stairs into the basement weren’t more than one story. This was the ground floor, then. Two more men stood a few yards away on either side of their little group, facing in opposite directions to cover the doors into the room. They wore bulletproof vests and were decked out like some kind of commando team.
“That’s why vamps handle vampire crime,” Ron was saying. “Only way we humans can deal with it is to kill ’em.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to call in some other vampires.” The men stared at her. Ron opened his mouth, but she interrupted before he could speak. “Where’s Lockhart?”
Joseph grimaced. “He and his buddy took off down an escape tunnel. Looks like they’ve got a damned bomb shelter under this place. Can you believe that?” Unhooking a walkie-talkie from his belt, he said, “Banks. Richter. Any luck?”
A hiss of static, then, “Not yet, sir. This thing’s a freakin’ fortress. I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get them out.”
The vampire below growled. Joseph eyed it. “Those silver bullets are working their way out. It’ll try again soon. We can keep shooting it and keep it in there as long as the ammo lasts, but what’s the point?”
“What time is it?”
“What?”
“How close to dawn?”
Joseph broke into a grin. “Of course. In a little over an hour she’ll be down until sunset. That’ll give us some breathing space.”
“Unfortunately, my allies will be down until sunset, too. Maybe I can get someone here before the sun comes up, if I hurry.”
Cell phones hadn’t worked in the basement, but on the main floor that wasn’t a problem. Angie pulled hers from her pocket and punched in James’s number.
“This is my fault,” he said with a sigh, once she’d explained the situation to him. “I should have checked Lockhart out more thoroughly before you flew to meet him. We were too focused on other threats.”
“James, you aren’t responsible every time I get into trouble. Can you contact the Ruler of the city? We need help cleaning some of this up before dawn, if possible.” Denver was the smallest of the city-states, and she had never met its Ruler. None of Angeline Devereaux’s clients had ever been from this area, so no one would have any reason to think she was anything other than Angie Clark, a human scholar James had taken under his protection.
“All right. It shouldn’t take her long to get there.”
Angie put away her phone and turned to Ron. “Some vampires will be arriving soon, the Ruler of the City and whichever of her people she decides to bring. They can handle the vampire in the basement and probably get Lockhart out of the bomb shelter. Tell your men not to attack them.”
Ron nodded and spoke into his comms unit.
Aaron touched her shoulder, indicating some food he’d brought from the kitchen: a sandwich, water, and an apple. “Sit down, eat. Give yourself a chance to recover.”
“There’s too much to do.” She shoved the apple in her pocket, grabbed the sandwich and water, and took a long drink before turning to Joseph. “He’s got to have a control room for all of the equipment down there. Any ideas where it might be?”
Joseph spared a glance at his partner, who nodded.
“Let’s have a look around.”
Angie, Aaron, and Joseph began near the escape route Lockhart and Abernathy had taken, opening one door after another. They found a media room, a library, a gym, a home theater, an office, but not what they were looking for. Frustrated, Angie suggested they try upstairs.