Captiva Craving - Vampire Werewolf Menage (Six Feet Under Series Book Two) (9 page)

Sixten eased closer, picking up crumpled and bloodied papers next to his booted feet. Lizards jumped on his arm. He slung them so hard and fast that they exploded when they hit the wall.

“Were those shifters, we didn’t scent?” asked Kash, lifting his lavender eyes from a file he was attempting to translate.

“Nah, not that small,” Sixten answered, concentrating on the ancient script scrawled across the yellow-lined papers. “This facility wasn’t always used for breeding,” he decoded for their benefit. “Usually, humans were housed here as feeders. And if they were feeders” – he stood up, accepting the file Kash handed over and scanning it – “they…shit.”

“What?” Qudir asked, stepping over an upturned chair.

“They, uh, were Donors,” Sixten whispered, rage shaking his body.
My Blythe is a Donor.
Qudir’s heavy palm fell on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “I don’t want your fucking pity, just grab more intel. Let’s move on it.”

Ocher came to their doorway, his leathers covered in dust and a strange, sludgy fungus. “I find no life here, but an oddly scented creature has been around recently.”

“How odd?” Kash handed another file over to Sixten.

“Something I’ve never encountered,” Ocher said.

Sixten folded the papers and two abandoned files, wedging them inside his leather duster next to his favorite blade. He turned to Qudir. “You smell anything different?”

“I didn’t until I got to the other exit,” Ocher snapped, his beads rattling in his long hair. “Follow me and smell for yourselves.”

“Go,” ordered Qudir, instinctually moving his hand over his Stavz.

Ocher led them beyond an armament room to another set of metal doors once locked by alien mechanisms.

“Of course, all their weapons are missing,” observed Kash, “which is never a good sign no matter the situation, but we’re dealing with supernatural power and supernatural weapons here. We have more than fifty Vojaks down for at least another forty-eight hours.
Fort Myers is toast.
”

“If the freed organize themselves, then I’ll agree,” Sixten said, his voice sounding far away to his own ears. He could think of a number of things he
wanted
to say. Optimism faded when faced with the unthinkable, but stubbornness replaced the will to give up. He studied the heavy doors in front of him. One remained embedded into the wall, while its counterpart lay on the floor with its thick bolts scattered about. “Their cells are beyond this corridor?”

“Yeah,” Ocher said, cutting a sideways glance under his mahogany lashes, “that’s where I picked up on the peculiar.”

A rat ran across Sixten’s foot, but it wasn’t a shifter. “Ignore it,” he told the others, while scanning along one wall. Countless claws scourged the immortal metal, digging deep and leaving their mark. “They’re definitely territorial.” Perhaps the Donors who endured captivity with them stood a chance at survival. Though they went from one prison to another if the mixed bloods kept them and refused to release their claims.

“True,” Qudir said, rubbing his thumb over a dark stain. He brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Donor, definitely a female,” he said on a slow, dangerous hiss.

Sixten knew in his bones that Blythe hadn’t been here, but Kash, who had drunk from Blythe and knew her flavor, sniffed anyway. Kash shook his head no, obviously relieved, and they moved forward. Malted milk hit them like an invisible wall, its stench not exactly rotten but getting there. “Milk, aged leather,” said Sixten, cocking his flaxen head to the side, “and I can’t decipher the combination, one element I cannot name.”

“Burnt feathers,” Ocher said, approaching the corridor slowly, mentally categorizing anything they couldn’t take with them. “Told you. Peculiar.”

“Agreed,” Sixten said to the others. “No mixed bloods or pure bloods could have taken other shapes due to the metals, so that scent definitely belongs to one unique individual.”

“Think Maestru could pick up on its genetics?”

“As old as he is, it’s worth a shot,” Kash muttered, waving a hand over three rubber pipes dangling from the ceiling. “There’s still power here, not electric. At least, the way we know of electricity.”

Sixten nearly tripped, rare for a vampire to do, at Kash’s words. “Free flowing power, not electricity?”

“Yeah,” Qudir exhaled, waving his hand over the same conduits. “I’m feeling it.”

Sixten smiled crookedly, kicking a chair out of his path. “We should harness this power, redirect it toward the Sanctuary, give these newly roaming fuckers, as well as the Weres, something to think about the next time they sniff out our miasma and attack our warriors.”

“On it,” Qudir said, sending out another blinding text with a gratified flair.

They arrived at the first cell, expecting to see rotting corpses by the smell, but it was empty. A humming eased over Sixten, slowly caressing his right arm and working its way to his face. “Something’s off here.”

“This whole place is off,” Kash muttered, pushing past him and stopping at the next cell. “It’s worse than when the humans started asylums. Grey, no light, no hope, no reason left to live.”

“Except for serving,” Ocher added, “an insane leader hell-bent on eradicating other immortal races.”

Sixten’s heart started to thump abnormally, and it wasn’t from lack of feeding. The humming transformed into static power, similar to what he always felt when his brother was around. “But this isn’t Rave,” he said aloud to no one in particular.

“What isn’t Rave?” Kash asked, searching the next cell.

His hands were sweating, his eyes expecting to see a scentless shapeshifter. Kash glided over, touching his arm. Sixten’s sinuses burned, though not from any recognizable scent. “Run,” he told the others.

“Vojaks never run,” Qudir snapped, now breathing down his neck.

“At the moment, we are
not
the predators.” Something was here, powerful, and hunting them. There was no foreseeable way for them to mist, so they would have to leave the human way and quickly. “Run. Turn back and run.” Sixten would not turn tail. Since Maestru was elsewhere, Sixten was the only one powerful enough to kill a shapeshifter. He spun around, pulled a long blade from his belt and waved it in front of Kash. “Go,” but his words died out when he saw Kash’s face, his eyes glowing with horrific excitement. He was not looking at Sixten, but behind him, his mouth trying to form a warning. “I hate being right all the time,” Sixten hissed. “Go, now!”

“Brothers-n-arms!” Qudir yelled, suddenly spinning two blades over his knuckles and charging forward.

Sixten whirled, staring head-on at the
thing
. “Qudir!” A glittering giant blocked the corridor, bumps and scales resembling barnacles littered his skin. Tattoos in an ancient script rippled over its torso, warning them in the same way orange stripes did on a Coral Snake. However, vampires would survive a bite from a deadly reptile, surviving this creature was debatable. It flung their commander forward, tumbling him through the air before smacking him against alien metal with a sickening crunch.

The creature’s eyes turned to Sixten. “Brother of Rave,” he said, pointing an incredibly long talon at Sixten. “Your father seeks you.”

Sixten stared in momentary confusion. “My father?”

It clearly did not appreciate questions. It reshaped, molding monstrously. Dark, rolling shadows formed on the walls, inching toward them. One wrapped an oily hand around Ocher’s ankle and pulled, effectively yanking him down. Just like that, Ocher disappeared through the floor.

“You have my full attention!” Sixten shouted, tearing his eyes away from where Ocher disappeared. He pointed behind him for the others to leave. “Move!” A grey, swirling fog was forming at the creature’s feet, the oily shadows pulling back. Whatever it planned next; Sixten was not sticking around to find out. Qudir and Kash backed up fractionally, but they refused to leave him.
Very, very stupid.
Sixten crouched down and eased his blade back in his belt with a soft snick. “Where is my father? Cough up the specifics, Habaline.” The floor heaved under their feet, and considering they were well below sea level, that was profoundly disturbing. He swore fluently in two languages before steadying himself.

A deafening noise exploded when talons scraped metal. Sixten fought not to hold his sensitive ears, but his eardrums were rattled. It spoke in a tongue only Sixten could understand, that belonging to the Habalines. His father was considered sacred, the true Habaline King. Only by his father’s pure, cunning strength, did he overrule evil and reform a monarchy in the human realm.

“Get the scroll,” he demanded in the same alien tongue.

Though he did not say, Sixten suspected the scroll’s rendering denoted the whereabouts of their entry point, the wormhole Sixten wanted to find in order to shut down their inter-realm highway. None of the scrolls he had read had those specifics. Meaning, there was another one out there. “You expect me to produce a needle in an immortal haystack?” Even if alien intelligence did not rule his brain, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for that. He wasn’t playing for the other team. Killing this creature and finding the scroll for the Vojaks would be a matter of public service. Firstly, he had to get the others out of there. “Okay, then, you got it, but I need what’s left of my team,” he explained, nodding towards Qudir, whose arm was bent the wrong way, and Kash, “in order to find it.”

Its eyes swung to stare at the other two Vojaks, and Sixten knew he had to make his move. It’s eyes narrowed as it reached for Kash. Sixten blocked its way, looking at it up and down. “I
said
I need them.” He brought something to the surface, an inner glow he always pushed down when he was his angriest, suspecting it to belong to his Habaline side. It was just a feeling, but he was going with it. His teeth changed, not punching down his incisors, but introducing several rows of terrifying, razor-sharp shards. A howling erupted from his inner glow as if a demon leaped inside him, waiting to break free. His dear mother had taught him to restrain himself in any situation, and by instinct, his Species side fought against this transformation. In that brief moment of indecision, the creature leaped at him. Kash jumped on its back, and it struck him, knocking him into Qudir where they both landed into a far wall of steel. Sixten jabbed his elbow into what he thought might be the creature’s throat and rolled underneath him, rising to his feet. Allowing only a quick, sideways glance, he could see that Qudir and Kash were seriously hurt and unconscious.

“Bring me the scroll, brother of Rave, or they die.”

Darting forward, it brought a spiked tail around and struck Sixten’s side wickedly, instantly draining blood he could not afford to lose. Sixten had a sudden realization. “You’re the one who killed my mate’s brother,” he gasped, spitting out opaque blood. “You are called Poison.” Rave’s right-hand thug stood before him, his power unfathomable. He managed to dig out a Stavz. It would not even begin to kill this thing, but distract it until Sixten could wrench its head off. Considering his injuries, even that move was questionable. He dodged another vicious swipe from its deadly tail. Keep it talking, he thought, while freeing more of his inner Habaline power, though he feigned weakness while remaining on the floor. “Where do… I even begin to find this scroll?”

It opened its mouth, and in vampiric speed, Sixten snapped the Stavz’s switch clear off and hurled it inside Poison’s mouth. It shrieked crazily, undulating under brutal spasms. With a snarl, Sixten struck, piercing its throat with his shapeshifter teeth and swallowing incredible, pure Habaline blood. Power hit him in waves as he gorged. His mind shifted into an extraordinary dream-like state where nothing existed but predator and prey. No longer was Sixten concerned about anything except feeding on this creature until it crumbled lifeless to the floor. It bucked wildly, forming those oily, black shadows. When one reached for Sixten’s throat, he snapped out of his feeding frenzy and backhanded the creature, sending him spinning into a far metal wall. Poison screamed at Sixten, shifting into its human form and pushing a hand to its ravaged throat.

“
Remember me
,” Sixten growled menacingly. “Remember my dominion over you this day.” He was close to killing him, but since Poison could still produce the same shadows that swallowed Ocher, he reigned in his savage need to destroy and held back. “Be gone before I finish you, Poison.” Sixten snapped his odd teeth, which overfilled his mouth. “My brother, your former leader, had no chance against me,” he snarled, “
never forget that
.”

Poison smiled coldly. “Your brother was
nothing
compared to your father, and he impatiently awaits you.” Poison sank into the floor, the ground opening and swallowing him as it did Ocher. Before he completely disappeared, he pointed one jagged talon at Sixten. “Find him before he finds you. She lives. When you are ready to bring your mate home,” he rasped, “summon me while holding the scroll. Only with your
own kind
, will you save Blythe.”

“Wait!” In a blur, Poison disappeared, shattering the floor. Swearing in disbelief, Sixten reached Kash and Qudir, stepping around buckling concrete and unearthly mortar. Glancing in every direction, he hurried away as quickly as he could with the added weight and inability to mist. Sand hit his head, showering overhead like a dirty, mist of rain. “He’s collapsing the fucking facility!” he screamed at them, shaking their comatose forms. “Wake the hell up!”

After blurring through corridors and dodging falling plaster and pipes, he somehow made it to the entrance. Then he was running up the stairs, the Vojaks heads cracking on anything and everything, but he could not be concerned about that.

“Go, Six! Go!” Oycher yelled from behind, darting through falling debris. Dirt caked on his blood-drenched skin.

“How?” Six turned his head back around, running at a breakneck speed without dropping his two comrades.

“Stavz weakened him. I managed…to stab him…underground,” Oycher gasped, unable to carry one of the fallen, “but he’s just pissed.”

Finally, they were above ground and possibly out of a sinkhole’s reach when Sixten stopped and dropped a good five-hundred pounds of cumbersome weight. He sent his senses out, hearing a human boy playing near the beach. Where there were children, there were adults. His vision, sharper than any eagle, picked out prey in no time at all. “Come to me,” he summoned three males cooking hotdogs over a beach fire, leaving the females there to watch over their young. “Hurry.” They sped up, striding purposefully through the soft sand. He fed quite well off Poison, and his injuries already healed, but Qudir, Kash, and Oycher were in sorry shape.