The door opened into a large office space broken up into cubicles by partition walls and desks. Multiple phones rang and went unanswered, the jangling of the bells jarring Ashlynn’s on nerves, and the lights on the phones flashing with red impatience and demand.
Screensavers scrolled across computer screens, wheeled chairs were pushed out in the aisles between the cubicles haphazardly, and paper was scattered across the industrial carpet. In a glass room to one side, a large TV screen showed snow, and blood smeared the tabletop. One of the glass windows was cracked, lines radiating out from an impact.
Blood puddled blackly on the floor near the entrance to the stairwell and sprayed along the wall and inside of the door. A trail of bullet holes embedded into the wood and plaster. Someone had been gunned down and had escaped down the stairs. Did they still live? Or had they bled out?
“Something bad happened here,” Ashlynn met Cael’s eyes. “What happens when a vampire loses too much blood?” She wondered. “Do they die?”
“They go into a type of stasis,” Cael answered. “Their bodies shut down. They can survive considerable trauma to the body, regrow limbs, but too much trauma, and they will die, but it is a slow, prolonged death, during which the brain, unless it is damaged, remains aware of what is happening.”
She stared at him.
“There were experiments done,” he said with a shrug. “When they were created. It is common knowledge amongst my people.”
“Your people tortured vampires, to find out what killed them?” She clarified.
“It was not considered torture,” he replied mildly. “It was considered science.”
“Ugh,” she shuddered. “Your people do not sound very nice.” Just imagining someone doing that to Elior would give her nightmares, she thought grimly. She pitied the poor vampires who had been tortured in the name of science.
She picked up a headset that swung from its cord off the edge of a desk and selected the corresponding button to the light on the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello?” A woman’s voice whispered urgently. “Hello, is this the embassy?”
“I guess so,” Ashlynn looked around her and shrugged. Perhaps they were standing in the abandoned embassy call centre.
“Please, help us. We are in the fifth nest and have barricaded ourselves into the basement. There is a vampire in here with us, but he is injured. We have been feeding him, but he is not going to be able to help us…”
“You are human,” Ashlynn deducted.
“Does it matter?” The woman pleaded. “Please.”
“We are coming,” Ashlynn replied. “Which one is the fifth nest?”
“Who are you?” The woman became alarmed realizing that she might have betrayed her location to an enemy. “Oh, god.”
“A friend,” Ashlynn assured her. “We are Elior’s mates.”
“Elior’s mate?”
“Close enough,” Ashlynn decided not to explain. “Where are you?”
“102 Central,” she replied.
“Okay,” Ashlynn could work with a street address, she grabbed a pen and wrote it down on the notepad on the desk. “Hang tight.”
Cael folded a piece of paper into the form of an airplane and sent it soaring across the room watching it wheel and twirl before it divebombed out of sight.
She disconnected and picked up the next flashing light. “Hello?”
“Who is this?” The male was definitely vampire, Ashlynn thought, from the arrogant impatience of the tone. Or, she amended, he was just a really painful human being.
“Who is this?” She replied bristling. “I am the person answering the phone. Who are you, where are you, and what do you need?”
“We are under attack,” the vampire replied. She heard gunshot in the background, and something shatter, and voices yelling. “We need you to co-ordinate reinforcements.”
“Where?”
“Ground floor of your f-king building,” the man snarled. “Have you no clue what’s going on below you?”
“Cael,” she looked at her mate. “There is a fight on the ground floor.”
“Finally,” the devil bared his teeth in a ferocious grin.
“We are on our way,” she disconnected the man. “Let’s go.”
They ran down the stairs following the blood trail. They found its source on the fifth-floor landing.
The vampire had collapsed from blood loss, and sat against a wall, her hands pressed to her midsection, the sight of which curdled Ashlynn’s belly. She was dressed like a female version of Elior, Ashlynn thought, in a fashionable and expensive navy-blue suit, and wore a satin top and a string of pearls with matching earrings. Her hair had been pulled up in a French twist but was tumbling out of the slide. She snarled at them, the Other flashing red in her eyes, as they approached.
“Stay where you f-king are. I do not know you!” She aimed a gun at Cael’s chest, her hand shaking with the effort of holding the weapon aloft. “For or against Elior?”
“For,” Ashlynn said hastily.
The woman’s aim wavered. “You could be lying.”
“Look, we are on our way to aid the ground floor, and don’t have enough time for a lengthy chat, but,” Ashlynn offered her wrist. “Drink from me. Not too much, mind.”
“Yeah, right, and the moment that I lower my gun, you will kill me,” the woman replied, but the Other in her eyes was brilliant. She was dying from blood loss and her need to feed was ferocious.
“Trust me,” Ashlynn encouraged edging closer.
“F-k it,” the woman grabbed her and dragged her onto her lap, sinking her teeth into Ashlynn’s neck.
“No,” Ashlynn gasped, stopping Cael from interceding although the woman’s bite was savage. It made her appreciate how gentle Elior’s bite was in comparison. She counted to ten. “Enough now,” she said to the woman. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
The woman growled, not wanting to release her. Cael snarled back, and she surrendered, swiping her tongue over the wounds, before sinking back against the wall.
“Oh, my f-king god,” she said, her eyelids heavy. “What are you? You are not a vampire. I have never tasted blood like that.”
“We are Elior’s mates,” Ashlynn accepted Cael’s hand up, and blinked as her head swum. She was covered in the woman’s blood she saw ruefully. “I am Ashlynn Grenmeyer, and this is Cael. We are under a glamour.”
“The font’s child, of course, that would account for it, though I have never tasted… Elior guards her and the power she bestows closely,” the woman said it reverently, her head lolling under the influence of the blood. “I am Serena. I manage the embassy. Is Elior here?”
“No, but he is safe.”
“Thank f-k he is safe. We need him. Where is he? We can’t stay here,” she added, looking around the stairwell. Her pupils were pinned, showing her intoxication. “We need to regroup. Oh my f-king lord,” she groaned. “I feel… wrong.”
“You are intoxicated,” Ashlynn explained. “It is a side effect of the blood.” Luckily, Serena did not appear to be horny with it. That might have been due to her injury, however, Ashlynn amended. She had never found out from Elior whether his children had gotten horny off her blood, or whether that side effect was just his because he was her mate. “It will take a while for the intoxication to wear off. What happened here?” Ashlynn asked her.
“Betrayed from within,” Serena replied.
“Who?” Ashlynn asked urgently. “Elior needs to know who.”
“Caleb Roth,” she said it between her teeth, with loathing.
“We have to get to the ground floor,” Ashlynn could see the woman’s wounds healing, the mess of internal organs slowly disappearing behind fresh skin. “When you can, find a way to get onto social media, and get the name out there. Elior will see it.”
“Social media. Clever girl,” Serena’s pupils were pinned. “He will be monitoring social media, of course. I will do as you ask. Why do you need to get to the ground floor?”
“There is a fight there, between vampires and humans,” Cael said cheerfully as if it were the best thing that he had heard all day. “We are going to join it.”
“Be careful. It will be difficult to tell friend from foe.”
“Thank you, we will. Cael,” Ashlynn turned to the devil. “Let’s go.”
He grinned. “You wished to see more of my magic, mate of my heart?”
There was a flash of light, too bright to look upon, and she felt the draw of strong power. When her sight recovered, halos of light still burning black and gold in her vision, he clutched in his hand a sword that glowed with a sparking red current of magical energy. Curls of power coiled up the handle, along his hands, wrapped around his wrists, and lit his eyes with a hectic glow, as if he contained the Other, but more so.
His wings pushed out, filling the stairwell, and Ashlynn could see the magical glamour around him straining and then failing to contain the devil in his might. She could understand the origins of the stories Alatar had relished telling her as a child, filled with vengeful angel warriors – Cael with his wings backlit by the stairwell light and the sparking sword casting a fiery glow into his eyes was a terrifying sight to behold.
“F-k me,” Serena exclaimed as the glamour failed. “What the f-k are you?”
“Very impressive,” Ashlynn was proud her voice did not betray her instinctual fear, her heart racing in her chest. “But impractical for a stairwell. Let’s go see how good you are with that sword.”
“I am as good with this sword, as I am with the other,” he leered.
“Men,” Serena remarked incredulously. “No matter their species, they are all the same. Always they must boast.”
“Truth, not boasting,” Cael replied.
“Alright,” Ashlynn resisted rolling her eyes. “Let’s take both of your mighty swords down these stairs, Cael.”
“Good luck,” Serena said sincerely, pushing herself up the wall to standing and inspecting her stomach. The skin was whole beneath the shredded remains of her top, but she was weak from blood loss. “I will send word to Elior of the betrayer Caleb Roth.”
“Thank you, and good luck yourself,” Ashlynn called over her shoulder.
Noise rose from the stairs below, screams, shouts and gunshots. The acrid smell of smoke itched her nostrils. She met Cael’s eyes. “Don’t be reckless,” she told him. “I want sex later.”
A huddle of human women gathered around a handsome dark-haired vampire on the landing of the ground floor. The vampire met Ashlynn’s eyes over the fussing of his harem and exclaimed upon seeing Cael, wings, and sword on full display.
The women shrieked and threw themselves over the injured vampire, using their bodies as a shield. A devoted harem, Ashlynn thought, intrigued. She had only heard of vampire harems from her father and Raiden’s view on them was largely influenced by the fact that Lia had spent two unwilling weeks in one as a blood slave. These women weren’t slaves, Ashlynn thought.
“It is okay,” Ashlynn assured them. “We are friends. We won’t harm your vampire.”
“Do not go out there,” the vampire said over his shoulder as the women lifted him to standing, his arms over the shoulders of two, and began to move him down the next flight of stairs. Blood stained his shirt from a wound to his chest, pumping out at an alarming rate. From the blood on his teeth as he spoke, he had fed from at least one of the women, and the wound would be healing. “It is certain death.”
“Yes,” Cael pressed his wings tight against his back, preparing to leap, his sword held ready. Ashlynn took the door handle in her hands and met his fire-filled eyes. His grin was gleefully feral. “Theirs.”