“And I have no strength for whatever you have in mind,” hissed Victor. That pleasant and all-knowing mask vanished, replaced by one vicious and desperate. “Imprisonment involves more than bars, Rose. They starve us of food and blood, trying to keep us weak. Walking here is the only exercise I get, and that’s effort enough. Unless you really do plan on dragging me out of here, give me blood!”
Lissa interrupted any response I could make. “Be fast.”
I stared at her in astonishment. I’d been about to deny Victor, but through the bond I felt an odd mix of feelings from her. Compassion and… understanding. Oh, she still hated him, absolutely. But she also knew what it was like to live on limited blood.
Mercifully, Victor was fast. His mouth was at the human’s neck practically before Lissa finished speaking. Dazed or no, feeling teeth in his neck was enough to wake Bradley up. He woke with a start, his face soon moving into the delight feeders took from vampire endorphins. A short burst of blood was all Victor would need, but when Bradley’s eyes started to go wide in surprise, I realized Victor was taking more than a quick drink. I leapt forward and jerked Victor away from the scattered feeder.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, shaking Victor hard. It was something I’d wanted to do for a long time. “Did you think you could drain him and become Strigoi right in front of us?”
“Hardly,” said Victor, wincing at the grip I had on him.
“That’s not what he was doing,” said Lissa. “He just lost control for a second.”
His bloodlust satisfied, Victor’s smooth demeanor had returned. “Ah, Vasilisa. Always so understanding.”
“Don’t make any assumptions,” she growled.
I shot glares at both of them. “We have to go. Now.” I turned to the compelled guardian. “Take us to the room where they monitor all security footage.”
He didn’t respond to me, and with a sigh, I looked expectantly at Lissa. She repeated my question, and he immediately began to leave the room. My adrenaline was running high from the fight, and I was anxious to finish all of this and get us out of here. Through the bond, I sensed her nervousness. She might have defended Victor’s need for blood, but as we walked, she kept as far away from him as possible. The stark realization of who he was and what we were doing was creeping up on her. I wished I could comfort her, but there was no time.
We followed the guardian–Lissa asked his name; it was Giovanni–through more halls and security checkpoints. The route he led us on went around the prison’s edge, not through the cells. I held my breath almost the entire time, terrified we’d run into someone. Too many other factors were working against us; we didn’t need that too. Our luck held, though, and we ran into no one–again probably a result of doing this near the end of the night and not passing through a high-security zone.
Lissa and Mia had gotten the Court guardian to erase the security footage there too, but I hadn’t witnessed it. Now, when Giovanni led us into the prison’s surveillance room, I couldn’t help a small gasp. Monitors covered the walls, and consoles with complex buttons and switches sat in front of them. Computer-covered desks were everywhere. I felt like this room had the power to blast off into space. Everything in the prison was in view: each cell, several halls, and even the warden’s office, where Eddie sat making small talk with Theo. Two other guardians were in here, and I wondered if they’d seen us in the halls. But no–they were too fixated on something else: a camera that had been turned to face a blank wall. It was the one I’d adjusted in the feeding room.
They were leaning toward it, and one of them was saying how they should call someone to check down there. Then they both looked up and noticed us.
“Help her subdue them,” Lissa ordered Giovanni.
Again, there was hesitation. We would have been better off with a “helper” with a weaker will, but Lissa had had no idea when she chose him. Like before, he eventually sprang into action. Also like before, surprise went a long way in subduing these two guardians. I was a stranger–immediately raising their guard–but still appeared as human. Giovanni was their coworker; they didn’t expect an attack from him.
That didn’t make them easy to take down, though. Having backup went a long way, and Giovanni was good at his job. We rendered one guardian unconscious pretty quickly, Giovanni using a choke hold to briefly cut off the guy’s air until he collapsed. The other guard kept his distance from us, and I noticed his eyes continually shifting toward one of the walls. It had a fire extinguisher, a light switch, and a round silver button.
“That’s an alarm!” exclaimed Victor, just as the guardian lunged for it.
Giovanni and I tackled him at the same time, stopping the guy just before his hand could brush the button and send a legion of guards down on us. A blow to the head knocked this guardian out too. With each person I took out in this prison break, a knot of guilt and nausea twisted tighter and tighter in my stomach. Guardians were the good guys, and I couldn’t help but keep thinking I was fighting on the side of evil.
Now that we were left to ourselves, Lissa knew the next step. “Giovanni, disable all the cameras and erase the last hour’s worth of footage.”
There was a greater hesitation on his part this time. Getting him to fight his friends had required a lot of forceful compulsion on her part. She was keeping her control but growing weary, and it was only going to get harder making him obey our commands.
“Do it,” growled Victor, coming to stand beside Lissa. She flinched at his proximity, but as his gaze joined hers, Giovanni complied with the order and began flipping switches on the consoles. Victor couldn’t match Lissa’s power by a long shot, but his small burst of compulsion had strengthened hers.
One by one, the monitors went black, and then Giovanni typed in a few commands on the computer that stored digital footage from the cameras. Red error lights were flashing on the consoles, but there was no one here now to fix them.
“Even if he erases it, there are those who might be able to recover it from the hard drive,” noted Victor.
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” I said irritably. “Reprogramming or whatever isn’t really in my skill set.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “Perhaps, but destruction certainly is.”
It took me a moment to get what he meant, but then it clicked. With a sigh, I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and beat the computer to a pulp until it was nothing more than a pile of plastic and metal fragments. Lissa winced at each blow and kept glancing at the door.
“I hope that’s soundproof,” she muttered.
“It looks sturdy,” I said confidently. “And now it’s time to go.”
Lissa ordered Giovanni to return us to the warden’s office at the front of the prison. He complied, leading us back through the maze we’d gone through earlier. His codes and security card got us through each checkpoint.
“I don’t suppose you can compel Theo into letting us walk out?” I asked Lissa.
Her mouth was set in a grim line. She shook her head. “I don’t even know how much longer I can hold Giovanni. I’ve never used someone as a puppet before.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to reassure both of us. “We’re almost done with this.”
But we were going to have another fight on our hands. After beating up half the Strigoi in Russia, I still felt good about my own strength, but that guilty feeling wouldn’t leave me. And if we ran into a dozen guardians, even my strength wasn’t going to hold.
I’d lost my bearings from the blueprint, but it turned out that Giovanni’s route back to the main office was taking us through a block of cells after all. Another sign read overhead WARNING–NOW ENTERING PRISONER AREA (PSYCHIATRIC).
“Psychiatric?” I asked in surprise.
“Of course,” murmured Victor. “Where else do you think they send prisoners with mental problems?”
“To hospitals,” I responded, holding back a joke about all criminals having mental problems.
“Well, that’s not always–“
“Stop!”
Lissa interrupted him and came to an abrupt halt before the door. The rest of us nearly walked into her. She jerked away, taking several steps back.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She turned to Giovanni. “Find another way to the office.”
“This is the fastest way,” he argued.
Lissa slowly shook her head. “I don’t care. Find another, one where we won’t run into others.”
He frowned, but her compulsion held. He abruptly turned, and we scurried to keep up. “What’s wrong?” I repeated. Lissa’s mind was too tangled for me to pull out her reasoning. She grimaced.
“I felt spirit auras behind there.”
“What? How many?”
“At least two. I don’t know if they sensed me or not.”
If not for Giovanni’s clip and the urgency pressing on us, I would have come to a stop. “Spirit users…”
Lissa had looked so long and hard for others like her. Who’d have thought we’d find them here? Actually… maybe we should have expected this. We knew spirit users danced with insanity. Why wouldn’t they end up in a place like this? And considering the trouble we’d gone through to learn about the prison, it was no wonder these spirit users had remained hidden. I doubted anyone working here even knew what they were.
Lissa and I exchanged brief glances. I knew how badly she wanted to investigate this, but now wasn’t the time. Victor already looked too interested in what we’d said, so Lissa’s next words were in my head: I’m pretty sure any spirit users would see through my charms. We can’t risk our real descriptions being discovered–even if they came from people who are allegedly crazy.
I nodded my understanding, pushing aside curiosity and even regret. We’d have to check into this another time–say, like, the next time we decided to break into a maximum-security prison.
We finally reached Theo’s office without further incident, though my heart pounded furiously the entire way as my brain kept telling me, Go! Go! Go! Theo and Eddie were chatting Court politics when our group entered. Eddie immediately leapt up and went for Theo, recognizing it was time to go. He had Theo in a choke hold as efficiently as Giovanni had managed earlier, and I was glad someone else was doing this dirty work besides me. Unfortunately, Theo managed a good yelp before passing out and falling to the ground.
Immediately, the two guardians who had escorted us in earlier charged the office. Eddie and I jumped into the fray, and Lissa and Victor got Giovanni in on it too. To make things more difficult, just after we subdued one of the guardians, Giovanni broke out of the compulsion and began fighting against us. Worse, he ran to the wall where I discovered–too late–there was another silver alarm button. He slammed his fist against it, and a piercing wail filled the air.
“Shit!” I yelled.
Lissa’s skills weren’t in physical fighting, and Victor wasn’t much better. It was all on me and Eddie to finish these last two–and we had to do it fast. The second of the escort guardians went down, and then it was just us and Giovanni. He got a good hit in on me–one that knocked my head against the wall. It wasn’t good enough to make me pass out, but the world spun and black and white spots danced before my eyes. It froze me up for a moment, but then Eddie was on him, and Giovanni was soon no longer a threat.
Eddie took my arm to steady me, and then the four of us immediately ran out of the room. I glanced back at the unconscious bodies, again hating myself for it. There was no time for guilt, though. We had to get out. Now. Every guardian in this prison would be here in less than a minute.
Our group ran to the front doors, only to discover them locked from the inside. Eddie swore and told us to wait. He ran back to Theo’s office and returned with one of the security cards that Giovanni had often swiped at the doors. Sure enough, this one let us out, and we made a mad dash for the rental car. We piled in, and I was glad Victor kept up with all of us and made none of his annoying comments.
Eddie stepped on the gas and headed back toward the way we’d come in. I sat beside him in the front. “I guarantee the gate guy’s going to know about the alarm,” I warned. Our original hope had been to simply leave and tell him there’d been a paperwork mix-up after all.
“Yup,” Eddie agreed, face hard. Sure enough, the guardian stepped out of his gatehouse, arms waving.
“Is that a gun?” I exclaimed.
“I’m not stopping to find out.” Eddie pushed hard on the gas, and when the guardian realized we were coming through regardless, he jumped out of the way. We crashed through the wooden arm that blocked the road, leaving it a mess of splinters.
“Bud’s gonna keep our deposit,” I said.
Behind us, I heard the sounds of gunshots. Eddie swore again, but as we sped away, the shots grew fainter, and soon, we were out of range. He exhaled. “If those had hit our tires or windows, we’d have had a lot more to worry about than a deposit.”
“They’re going to send people after us,” said Victor from the backseat. Once again, Lissa had moved as far from him as she could. “Trucks are probably leaving right now.”
“You don’t think we guessed that?” I snapped. I knew he was trying to be helpful, but he was the last person I wanted to hear from at the moment. Even as I spoke, I peered back and saw the dark shapes of two vehicles speeding down the road after us. They were gaining quickly, leaving no question that the SUVs would soon catch up to our little compact car.
I looked at our GPS. “We need to turn soon,” I warned Eddie, not that he needed my advice.
We’d mapped out an escape route beforehand, one that took lots and lots of twisty turns on these remote back roads. Fortunately, there were a lot of them. Eddie made a hard left and then almost an immediate right. Still, the pursuing vehicles stayed with us in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t until a few turns later that the road behind us stayed clear.
Tense silence filled the car as we waited for the guardians to catch up. They didn’t. We’d made too many confusing turns, but it took nearly ten minutes for me to accept that we might have actually pulled this off.
“I think we lost them,” said Eddie, the wonder in his voice matching my feelings. His face was still lined with worry, his hands gripping the wheel hard.
“We won’t lose them until we clear Fairbanks,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll search it, and it’s not that big.”
“Where are we going?” asked Victor. “If I’m allowed to ask.”
I squirmed around in my seat so that I could look him in the eye. “That’s what you’re going to tell us. As hard as it is to believe, we didn’t do all that just because we missed your pleasant company.”
“That is hard to believe.”
I narrowed my eyes. “We want to find your brother. Robert Doru.”
I had the satisfaction of momentarily catching Victor off guard. Then his sly look returned. “Of course. This is a follow-up to Abe Mazur’s request, isn’t it? I should have known he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Of course, I never would have guessed you were in league with him.”
Victor apparently didn’t know I was actually in the familial league with Abe, and I wasn’t about to enlighten him. “Irrelevant,” I said coldly. “Now, you’re going to take us to Robert. Where is he?”
“You forget, Rose,” mused Victor. “You aren’t the one with compulsion here.”
“No, but I am the one who can tie you up by the side of the road and make an anonymous call back to the prison with your whereabouts.”
“How do I know you won’t get what you want from me and then turn me back in anyway?” he asked. “I have no reason to trust you.”
“You’re right. I sure as hell wouldn’t trust me. But if things work out, there’s a chance we might let you go afterward.” No, there really wasn’t. “Is this something you want to gamble on? You’ll never get another opportunity like this, and you know it.”
Victor had no witty quip for that. Score another one for me.
“So,” I continued, “are you going to take us to him or not?”
Thoughts I couldn’t read churned behind his eyes. No doubt he was scheming about how he could work this to his advantage, probably figuring out how to escape us before we even reached Robert. It was what I would have done.
“Las Vegas,” Victor said at last. “We need to go to Las Vegas.”
AFTER THE BITCHING I’D DONE to Abe about always going to remote, crappy places, I should have been excited about the prospect of going to Sin City. Alas, I had a few reservations about my next epic trip. First of all, somewhere like Las Vegas was the last place I would expect a semi-crazy recluse to be. From the bits and pieces I’d heard, Robert had dropped off the radar and wanted to be alone. A busy, tourist-filled city didn’t really fit that description. Second, cities like that were perfect feeding grounds for Strigoi. Crowded. Reckless. Low inhibitions. Very easy for people to disappear–especially when most of them were out at night.
Part of me was certain it had to be a trick on Victor’s part, but he swore up and down that it was true. So, with no other leads, Las Vegas became our next destination. We didn’t have much time to debate the matter anyway, knowing the guardians would be searching Fairbanks for us. Admittedly, Lissa’s charms had altered our appearances enough that they wouldn’t be looking for people with our descriptions. They knew what Victor looked like, though, so the sooner we were out of Alaska, the better.
Unfortunately, we had a slight problem.
“Victor has no ID,” said Eddie. “We can’t take him on a plane.”
It was true. All of Victor’s possessions had been seized by prison authorities, and in the midst of disabling surveillance and taking out half a dozen guardians, we’d hardly had time to go searching for his personal stuff. Lissa’s compulsion was phenomenal, but she was exhausted after wielding so much at the prison. Besides, guardians would likely be watching the airport.
Our “friend” Bud the car rental guy provided the solution. He hadn’t been thrilled to see his car returned with all the scratches from Eddie’s daredevil driving, but enough cash had finally stopped the human’s muttering about “renting to a bunch of kids.” It was Victor who thought of an alternative plan and suggested it to Bud.
“Is there a private airport nearby? With flights we might charter?”
“Sure,” said Bud. “But it won’t be cheap.”
“It’s not an issue,” I said.
Bud eyed us askance. “Did you guys rob a bank or something?”
No, but we were packing a lot of currency. Lissa had a trust fund that doled her out monthly money until she was eighteen, as well as a high-limit credit card. I had a credit card of my own, leftover from when I’d sweet-talked Adrian into funding my Russian trip. I’d let go of the rest of my assets, like the huge bank account he’d set up. But, wrong or not, I’d decided to keep one card on hand, just in case of emergency.