Chapter Two
The vampire's lair was located just outside San Fran, in an abandoned warehouse on a busy freeway. Call me crazy, but if I was a vampire with almost a thousand years of accumulated wealth and power, I would have picked someplace nicer for my daytime resting place than an old warehouse.
There were two guards posted at the front entrance when we arrived. The eight of us piled out of our vehicles, weapons drawn, ready for a fight, but the guards just sneered at us. "The master has instructed that we let you inside," one of them, the shorter of the two, told us. Guards posted at the door, waiting for us? That was a bad sign. I got the feeling that Mikhail was mocking us without even having to be there.
The guards let us inside, and immediately we met two more guards, more laden down with weapons than the eight of us put together. They motioned for us to go ahead of them so that they could watch us and kill us from behind if we tried anything funny. As I passed, one of them looked me over like I was a piece of meat. I felt an incredible urge to pull out my gun and blow his head off, but I didn't. We had to take care of Mikhail and the other vampires first, and then after that was done we could kill the human--or humanoid, at least--guards.
The vampires had been doing some redecorating inside the warehouse. It was now divided into a series of hallways and rooms by tall, cardboard walls. Sheets of plastic served as doors to most of the rooms, and as we walked past I caught a few glimpses of things I would rather have not seen. Torture. Feeding. Death. My hands tightened their grip on my bow, my weapon of choice. It shot arrows tipped with silver nitrate at speeds of up to two hundred miles per hour. Since The Legion was made up of eight different individuals, there were eight different styles of slaying that we used, which meant eight different weapons of choice. For me, it was my bow. Donovan preferred a machine gun that could shoot regular bullets, silver hollows, or bullets that emitted UV rays whenever they punctured something. Vann used a magical chain that only she could control. Don't ask me how it worked, because I still have no idea. Elle used a mix of black magic and originality, no weapons for her, save for her hands and mind. Cassandra liked to use daggers. No one knew more about daggers and knives than Cassandra. Jay was more of an old school kind of guy; stakes and crosses and holy water all the way with him. Nick liked to use swords. He was real handy when it came to sword play. And since Seth was new, a baby in The Legion, he was still using stakes until he developed his slaying skills more.
After what seemed like hours of walking through cardboard tunnels, we came to the back of the warehouse, which seemed to be untouched, at first glance. But then I spotted it; the door in the middle of the floor. One of the guards walked over to it and opened it, motioning for us to come forward. Donovan went down first, disappearing from sight far too quickly for my taste. Vann followed, then went Seth, Elle, Jay, Cassandra, Nick, and then me. The two guards brought up the rear, shutting the door after them. As soon as they shut the door, we were plunged into complete darkness. It was a straight shot down, with only a rickety old metal ladder to keep us from falling to our deaths. Climbing down that thing in the dark was one of the most difficult things ever. I had to climb slowly so that I could find where my foot needed to go before descending anymore, and several times I almost got kicked in the face by the guard above me, who was doing the same.
I reached my foot down, but didn't find another rung to put my foot on. I emitted a small squeak. "It's a little bit of a drop," Nick's voice came out of the darkness. I felt his hands grab my waist, and I let go of the ladder, trusting him to bring me safely to the ground. When my feet touched solid ground, Nick hugged me to him. I'll admit it now--even though I'm supposed to be a big, bad vamp slayer, complete darkness--we're talking absolutely pitch black, here--makes me uneasy. I felt a person push past us, and then a light was shining up ahead. One of the guards had moved to the front of the group and was holding a flashlight. Behind us, the other guard pulled out his own light.
I should have known right away that Mikhail wouldn't put his precious coffin in such an unsafe place as the warehouse. Why risk your neck when you can just build catacombs under the city and put the entrance in an inconspicuous place like this?
The tunnels under the warehouse were cold and damp. The continuous noise of dripping water followed us the entire way through, and every once in a while we heard the squeak of a rat running away from the light. Strange thing was, the farther we went into the tunnels, the cleaner they got. Eventually we ascended a little concrete staircase with metal rails, and found ourselves in clean, dry stone tunnels, with torches mounted on the walls. This new tunnel wasn't very long, and in no time we had come to a large wooden door.
"The master advises you all to stay out here," the guard in front said. "Except you. You are to come with me."
He was pointing at me, and I saw for the first time that his hand, although humanoid in nature, did not have a skin tone that was natural for a human. It was a pale green color. I couldn't see his face, except for his eyes and his mouth, because all the guards wore masks and heavy black clothing. I started to step forward, but Dononvan stopped me and stepped forward instead.
"Where she goes, we all go," he told the guards.
"Then the little one dies," the guard said simply.
Reluctantly Donovan moved back so that I could come forward. The guard eyed my bow suspiciously. "Don't worry," I said. "I'm not going to shoot you--at least, not yet. Not until your master's dead."
The guard stared for a minute longer before pushing open the door and motioning me inside.
The room was a large stone chamber with a high, domed ceiling. Something told me we weren't anywhere near being under the warehouse anymore. The warehouse I had been in, hunted in. But this place was strange to me, and I didn't like being in strange places. I didn't have time to look closely, but as I walked in I counted at least fifteen or twenty coffins, raised up on pedestals of different heights, probably noting rank. Across the room sat a large throne--no kidding, an honest-to-fucking-God throne. And on this throne sat San Francisco's master vampire.
Mikhail.
He looked up at me and smiled. When he was human, he would have been considered very handsome. Blonde curls, blue eyes, tall and slender, but with a quiet presence of muscle. He had only been sixteen when he was turned. Handsome though he may have been, when I looked at Mikhail I only saw a monster.
"Kayla, how wonderful of you to drop by," he said, his voice still retaining a faint murmur of a Slavic accent. "Necressius was just providing us with some entertainment."
I swallowed. In the center of the room, bloodied and battered, lay Necressius Winterbourne--the teenager that I had affectionately nicknamed "Cassie." She was covered in blood, and I hoped that at least some of it wasn't her own. If it had all been spilled by her, I didn't see how she could still be alive now. Her clothes were covered in blood. Her hair was matted with it. It stained her pale skin. She struggled on the stone floor, attempting to get to her feet. At Mikhail's mention of my name, she turned her gaze to me and looked up at me pleadingly.
"Let her go," I demanded. Quicker than what a normal human could have done, I had an arrow from the quiver on my back ready to fire and aimed straight at Mikhail's heart.
Mikhail laughed, and the sound sent shivers down my spine. "Silly girl," he said. "You cannot kill me with a simple bow and arrow. Even if you managed it, you'd never make it from this chamber alive."
I didn't look around, but I could sense the presences of at least fifteen vampires surrounding us. Most of them were ones I recognized, vamps I had fought before. He was right. If I did manage somehow to kill him with a simple arrow to the heart, they would rip Cassie and I to shreds before we could even think.
"What do you want from me?" I asked him. "What do I have to do in exchange for you to let Cassie go?"
"Take me up on my proposition," he said.
The bow slipped a little as my hands flexed in shock. I felt Cassie's questioning gaze on me, but I didn't dare look down at her. I should have know this was what he wanted. A couple of years ago Mikhail had made me an offer to become his human consort. I refused, of course. Not only would it have been wrong, because he was inherantly evil, but I would have also felt like a pedophile. Looking back, I realize I probably should have told someone about Mikhail's offer, but I never did. Oops.
"I'll never be your human slave, Mikhail," I told him.
He laughed at me again. That was really starting to grate my skin--I hated it when people laughed at me. "One of these days, Kayla, you will change your mind." When I gave him a stony look, the smile on his face faded away, leaving him slightly less beautiful than he had been before. "All right, Kayla. I'll make you a deal."
I tightened my grip on the bow. Making deals with vampires was never a safe business. "I'm listening." Ok, so I was willing to do pretty much anything to get Cassie out of there alive. Another mistake.
"If you and Necressius can kill all of the lesser vampires in this room, I'll let you leave with her, safely. You and your Legion."
The other vampires in the room looked to him with what to my amusement seemed like incredulousness. They must have taken offense to being called "lesser vampires" by him, but that couldn't be helped. Like most master vampires, Mikhail considered any vamp who wasn't a master to be less than him, hence the name "lesser vampire." It was a kind of insult in the vampire world.
Cassie had stood up by this time, and she looked worse standing up than she had laying down. "Kayla..." she said, her voice raspy. "Don't take the deal. Just leave. We don't stand a chance against them."
Poor girl. She had taken quite a beating. It appeared as if Mikhail had already broken the spirit I had worked so hard to build up. "That doesn't sound like the girl who is my student," I retorted, throwing a gun and sword at her. She caught them both, and I let out a breath. Even when she was severely injured, her skills didn't leave her. She shoved the gun into her pocket and grasped the sword in both hands.
Mikhail watched us like a hawk, a small smile playing on his lips. "Excellent," he breathed, and then motioned towards us with his hand. The vampires charged. One came right at me, and I pulled a stake out of my belt and threw it at him. It hit right in his heart, and he turned to ash with an animalistic scream. Cassie cut one in half with her sword, and just as it turned to ash another descended on her from the air. She screamed. I turned and put an arrow through his heart a split second before he got to her. He ashed, raining embers down upon her. More came for me. Some wielding weapons, others flashing fangs. I took out two more with arrows. One grabbed me from behind and spun me around, attempting to sink its fangs into my neck. I brought my knee up and connected it with his groin. Even vampires could be hurt there, you know. He stumbled back, and I plunged a stake into his forehead. He didn't ash, but blood poured out from around the stake and he sank to the ground. He didn't move after that.
A female vampire flew at me, eyes flashing, fingers curled and slashing like claws. I drew out my short sword and sliced her with it. She dropped to the ground with blood gushing from the wound, but she kept coming. I lashed out at her again, but she side-stepped me and the blade barely nicked her thigh. I felt another vamp's presence behind me, and I pulled out my gun and pumped a UV bullet into his skull. The female vampire was almost upon me now. I turned as soon as the other vamp was ash and caught her by surprise, lashing out with my sword and slicing through her neck. Her head rolled and came to a stop at the foot of Mikhail's throne. He looked livid.
