"Unbound" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Kim, Frost Jeaniene, Pettersson Vicki, Drake Jocelynn, Marr Melissa)

10

Bones edged down the hallway toward the sound of the heartbeat, careful to watch for any hint of an imminent attack. So far, he didn’t see anyone, but all his internal alarms were ringing. The trap would be where Becca was, true, but he couldn’t just abandon her. After all, it was his fault Delphine took her in the first place.

The heartbeat was coming from the room at the end of the hall. Four menacing, open doorways stood between him and it. Bones pulled two knives from his coat, one steel, one silver. He gripped one in each hand as he kept low and moved forward. Come out, come out, wherever you are…

Everything in him tensed as he crept up to the first door, his nerve endings anticipating a sudden slice of pain from a knife or other weapon. Bones sprang into the room, braced to counter an assault—but there was nothing. Just more furniture with dust covers over them and that noxious embalming odor that neutered his ability to track anything by scent.

One down, three to go.

Bones repeated the same routine with the next door. This time, he was hit in the face by a spiderweb, but nothing more threatening than that. The third room was empty, as was the fourth room, but the fourth room had blood in it. A lot of blood.

Bones knelt by one of the wide, pooling spots, giving it a deep sniff. Even above the chemical fumes in the room, he knew it was Becca’s blood. Which meant the pieces of bones tossed almost casually in the corner were hers as well.

He rose, the swell of killing anger in him making him calmer, not crazed. Bones approached the last room with the heartbeat just as slowly and cautiously as he had the others. If the LaLauries had thought the grisly display of their leftovers would have him dashing in with reckless abandon to save her, they were wrong.

This room was empty of furniture except for one long, dark coffin where the heartbeat came from. Bones waited before entering, his senses tuned for any nuance of noise or movement. Nothing. Then again, a ghoul didn’t breathe, and could hold as still as a statue if need be. Delphine and Louis could both be in there, waiting for him.

Bones dove into the room, rolling immediately to counter any frontal assault, the blades gripped in his hands seeking flesh to bury themselves into. Nothing. Not even a whisper, except for that steady heartbeat. The closet in the room had no doors, so no one was hiding in there, and unless Delphine or Louis had acquired Ralmiel’s dematerializing trick, they weren’t in this room.

He approached the coffin, taking in another deep breath. There was the scent of the embalming fluid, Becca’s blood, and something else. Metallic, though too faint to decipher over the stink of the chemicals. Muffled noises consisting of mmph, mmphh! interspersed with ragged breathing from inside the coffin. Someone was alive in there. Gagged, from the sounds of it.

Bones ran his hand along the coffin’s lid. This was too easy. Was Delphine in there with Becca, waiting to thrust silver in his heart as soon as Bones lifted the lid?

If she was, she’d soon find out the futility of that.

He cracked the lid, heard a faint click—and then flung himself away the instant before the blast. Silver fragments from the specialized bomb were embedded all over the back of him. So were the body parts of whichever unfortunate soul had been in that coffin. Only Bones’s Kevlar vest kept the ragged silver pieces from shredding his heart. For a stunned moment, he lay on the ground, mentally calculating his injuries. Then Delphine and Louis burst into the room, swinging away with silver knives.

Bones staggered to his feet, wincing at the pain in his legs where chunks of flesh had been torn off by the bomb. His head was both ringing and throbbing; some silver must have embedded in his skull. He whirled, making the stab Louis aimed for his heart slice into his shoulder instead. But it was a mistake, since the blade pieced deeply into his skin when it would have only bounced off the Kevlar on his chest. Bones shook his head to clear it, mentally lashing himself. Quit being stupid, or you won’t have long to regret it.

He’d lost the knives in his hands during the explosion. Bones received two more deep swipes before he could secure a blade and attack back. Louis LaLaurie was quick, dodging the blade and kicking Bones in the thigh, where a particularly large piece of silver was still lodged.

It cost him a step as he spun again to avoid Delphine’s attack from behind. Her knife cleaved into his upper arm instead of through his neck. It bit deep, though, almost severing the limb. Delphine was strong, and she wasn’t fighting like a novice. She slashed at him while Louis attacked from the front. All the silver in his flesh was using up his strength as his body automatically attempted to heal itself—and heal the new injuries that were being inflicted, one after the other.

Delphine and Louis forced him back, causing him to almost trip over a piece of rubble. His left arm, hanging by a few ligaments, took a few seconds to repair itself, but those seconds were costly. Bones couldn’t use the arm to fight, and Louis and Delphine were pressing their advantage. More silver hacked at him, until every inch of his body felt like was burning and his blood spattered the ground around them, weakening him further.

Sensing victory was close, Delphine leaped onto his back, savagely tearing at him with both her teeth and her knives. Bones couldn’t dislodge her and keep Louis at bay. He couldn’t even get more of his knives, since Delphine had managed to rip his coat off in her rabid attack. He couldn’t reach the ones strapped to his legs, either, without Louis taking his head off as soon as Bones bent down.

Louis smiled, feral and satisfied, as an upward swipe bit deep into Bones’s gut, making him hunch instinctively at the blast of agony. Delphine redoubled her efforts and focused on hacking at his neck, realizing she couldn’t penetrate the Kevlar on his back or chest.

A blur in the corner of the room made Bones drop down on one knee. Louis let out a triumphant laugh, but Bones wasn’t kneeling in defeat. It was because he’d seen what Louis, with his back turned and his attention fixated on Bones, hadn’t noticed.

Delphine saw it, too. She started to scream even as Bones sprang back, slamming both of them against the wall behind him—while a long, curved blade arced its way through Louis LaLaurie’s neck.

Louis’s head turned to the right and kept going. It rolled off his shoulders even as he slumped forward, a dark, viscous hole facing Bones where his head used to be. Ralmiel held a red-smeared blade behind him.

Delphine screamed again, in a piercing wail of rage and grief. Bones didn’t hesitate. He reached into his boots and pulled out the two oblong canisters they contained, ripping the tops off and stabbing them into her chest.

The twin flares erupted, lighting her clothes on fire as they burned her from the inside out. Bones held on to them, pitilessly pushing them deeper. A ghoul’s body didn’t have enough blood in it to put them out. Delphine’s screams became frenzied, her legs and arms scissoring madly as she tried to escape. Bones pinned her to the floor, ignoring the licking flames on him as she continued to burn. He’d fed well before tonight; he wouldn’t burn as easily. The fire spread through Delphine’s body, splitting and blackening her skin faster than she could heal.

Something savage in Bones made him want to prolong this. To keep shoving flares into Delphine and burning her until there was nothing left but ash, except there wasn’t time. Sirens wailed, getting louder. The police would be there soon. That bomb, though relatively small, hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Bones pulled a long blade from his boot, letting Delphine see the gleam of the metal as he held it above her. Then Bones cut deeply through Delphine’s neck, feeling little satisfaction as her head rolled across the floor to stop at Louis’s decapitated corpse. After all the evil the two had committed, it was too quick and merciful an end for them.

But Jelani, at last you have your vengeance.

Ralmiel walked over to him and held out a hand. Bones, after a pause, took it and let the other vampire pull him to his feet.

“Aren’t you supposed to be trying to kill me?”

Ralmiel didn’t smile. He glanced at the ceiling and shook his head. “I came in by way of the attic and saw her. She doesn’t have much time.”

Becca.

Bones ran out of the room, following the sound of the other, fainter heartbeat. The explosion actually helped in this regard. The chunk it blew out of the hallway revealed a metal staircase inside the walls, Becca’s heartbeat sounding louder in there. Bones pulled back some of the drywall to slip through, then raced up the narrow stairs. He flung back the hatch at the top of the stairs that opened into a small, box-shaped room on top of the house’s roof.

Becca was lying on a bench. Bones’s face twisted as one glance revealed the extent of her abuse. He knelt beside her, turning her head so she could see him.

She was awake, though in her state, that was a curse instead of a blessing. Bones stared at her, letting the power in his eyes capture her mind. In her condition, it took a few moments. He waited, murmuring, “It’s all right, luv. You’re safe now,” until the horror and terror left her gaze and she quit trying to move or talk.

She couldn’t do either, though. Her lips were sewn together with what looked like fishing line, and her arms and legs were gone. The only reason she was still alive was that Louis—or Delphine—had used some of their own blood to seal the gaping wounds left where her limbs used to be. What used to be her arms and legs were now hideously smooth stumps.

Bones closed his eyes. He could save Becca’s life…by taking it. She wouldn’t survive the transition if he tried to turn into a vampire, but he could make her a ghoul. All it required was her drinking some of his blood before she died, and that wouldn’t be long. She was very near death as it was.

He thought of Jelani. Of the ghoul’s admitted pain over trying to live as someone who would always be helpless compared to even the weakest of their kind. And Becca didn’t know there was another world that existed on the fringe of hers. How could Bones condemn her to wake up trapped in that body, changed into something she didn’t even know existed?

A slow sigh came out of him, then he forced himself to smile. His gaze brightened while he harnessed all his energy into making Becca believe everything he was about to tell her.

“It’s all right,” Bones said again, stroking her face. “You’re safe, Becca, and there’s no pain anymore. You’re not injured. You’re not even here. You’re in a beautiful field, flowers all around you. Can you see them, Becca?”

She nodded, her features slipping into relaxed planes that were completely at odds with the ragged stitches around her mouth.

“…you’re warm, and you’re lying on the ground looking up at the sky…look at it, Becca. See how blue it is…”

Her stare became more fixed. Bones leaned forward, his mouth settling on her throat. Her pulse was so faint, he could barely feel it against his lips.

“Sleep now, Becca,” Bones whispered, and bit deeply into her neck.