Bound by Night(70)

Bracing himself for a launch attack, Riker opened the door. The kid inside shrank against the wall, the acrid scent of his terror coming off him in waves.
“We won’t hurt you,” Nicole said, but the kid just stared with wide, crystal-blue eyes, his thin body shaking so hard his teeth chattered.
Fuck. They didn’t have time for this. “Come on, kid. We’re rescuing you.” When the male didn’t move, Riker snared him by the arm and dragged him out of the cage.
“No!” the kid shouted. “No!” He wriggled like a spitting-mad kitten and tried to claw his way back inside the cage.
“Hey,” Nicole said softly. “It’s okay—”
The kid’s croaked “Help” cut her off.
“Shit,” Riker muttered, as he wrapped his arms around the kid’s body to stop his struggles. The boy rocked his dark head back and caught Riker in the mouth hard enough to make his ears ring. Too bad his hypnotic ability only worked on humans and some animals. “Got sedatives around here?”
Nicole dashed to the cabinet where she’d gotten the boric-acid antidote and spent a few precious moments locating a sedative and measuring it out into a syringe.
“Jesus,” she muttered as she injected the kid. “Do they even feed him?”
The boy immediately settled down enough that Riker could prop him against the wall and leave him.
“Start the fire,” Riker said. “I’ll get Neriya and handle any other vampires.”
An alarm blared, and shit, their time had run out.
Riker put on a burst of speed and tore open the refrigerator door. Cold air stung his cheeks as he darted inside . . . and found a chamber of horrors.
Dead vampires hung from hooks in neat rows, and body parts sat in metal bins or were wrapped in plastic and stacked neatly on shelves. Riker had seen a lot of gore in his life, had witnessed atrocities that still haunted him to this day. But this . . . this was worse than anything he’d ever encountered.
Save your mental trauma for later.
Shoving the gruesome scene to the back of his mind, he searched for Neriya. When he found her, hanging at the back of the fridge with her throat slit, the boiling of his blood countered the freezing temperatures. Rage and hatred and horror mixed like volatile chemicals that threatened to tear him apart and take down everything around him.
He’d failed.
The room spun and closed in around him as the reality of the situation crushed him in its cold, dead fist.
His mission to rescue Neriya had met with disaster, and now, not only was a valuable, gifted female dead, but his clan was doomed to war.
War and, likely, extinction.
“Riker, hurry!”
With the icy deliberation of someone with nothing left to lose, he strode out of the meat locker and checked the remaining chambers. Empty. All except the conjoined breeding chamber where the naked male watched them, his gaze glued to Nicole. In a few strides, Riker was inside the vampire’s cell. The male, no more a vampire than a corpse was a living person, crouched, his fangs dripping with drool.
Behind Riker, Nicole splashed something on the floors and walls, and the harsh reek of chemicals burned his nostrils.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked the creature. “My mate was put into a cell with you.”
The only reply was a bloodthirsty growl. Riker  should hate the vampire, should want to rip him apart with his bare hands for what he’d done to Terese and countless other females. Instead, Riker felt only pity.
This male was as much a victim of Daedalus’s cruelty as Terese had been.
With lightning speed, he slipped behind the vampire and snapped his neck. When he stepped out of the cell, he found Nicole staring at him.
“You killed him.”
“I put him out of his misery.” The kid was still sitting where Riker had left him, his eyes glazed. Maybe it would be best to put him down, too.
“Don’t even think about it,” Nicole snapped.
“Where’s Neriya?”
“Dead.”
Nicole fumbled the lighter in her hand but caught it before it hit the floor. When she looked up, her eyes were liquid with regret. But they both knew there was no time for mourning or useless apologies.
“Pick up the kid.” She flicked the lighter mechanism and lit the corner of a paper as he threw the skinny male over his shoulder.
With one last look around, she dropped the flaming sheet and grabbed the garbage bag full of files. The place went up in a flash. Searing heat licked at their backs as they fled the building through a rear exit.
Once outside, Nicole stopped on a grassy knoll at the edge of the property. The clan’s beat-up Jeep was parked within sight, but Nicole didn’t even look in its direction. Despite the blare of sirens bearing down on them, she very slowly swung around and stared at the flames engulfing the lab. He expected to see grief in her face. Or pain. Or even anger. Anything but what he saw reflecting in her eyes.