Bel grabbed Ethan’s arm and roughly pulled him into the house before slamming the door shut again. Bel turned to Ethan, his expression intense. “Who grabbed him?”
“Marcus called one of them Zale. There were so many vampires. They just sort of flooded the house.” Ethan shook his head. “He made me run. He kept fighting them and he was screaming for me to run.”
“You did the right thing, but you’ve got to help me.” Bel released him and jogged through the house with Ethan following on his heels. Ethan didn’t see much of Bel’s home. The rooms they passed by seemed to be filled with boxes even though Bel had been in his new place for close to two weeks.
At the back of the house, Bel reached a room and waved for Ethan to quickly follow. When Ethan stepped into what turned out to be a lab, Bel placed his hand against an electronic panel. A thick metal door slid into place. There were the sounds of other metal plates slamming down around the house.
“Holy shit! Did you turn your lab into a panic room?” Ethan said. He turned around, taking in the long table loaded with glassware, microscopes, burners, and equipment he couldn’t even begin to name. It looked a hell of a lot like those labs from the CSI shows he would occasionally watch.
“The Ministry has been against my work almost as long as I’ve been a vampire,” Bel grumbled. “They keep perpetuating this myth that we’re some kind of magical beings, and it’s utter bullshit. They’re afraid that if I find a way to treat vampirism like a disease, they’ll have to actually act like civilized creatures instead of mini gods. Every time we move, I have to reinforce my house, especially my lab. I’ve always been sure that one day they’d just attack.”
Ethan gave Bel a wobbly smile. “Marcus has had his hands full with his family. Rafe the rebel. Bel the mad scientist.”
Bel sighed heavily and nodded. “And then Julianna.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re right. Marcus has always been the calm, collected go-between for our family and the Ministry, keeping us all from being executed for treason or whatever the hell they wanted to call it.” Bel rushed around the large table in the center of the room. He was picking up things and shoving them into his pockets.
“And he ends up with a guy who claims to love him but abandons him.”
“Ethan, those were vampires. You were not equipped to deal with them. If you had stayed, you would have put Marcus in even more danger. We both know he’d do anything to save you.” Bel held up a matte black handgun and gave Ethan a smile that was wicked to its very core. “I say we equip you better.”
Ethan slowly walked around the table and came to stand next to Bel. He watched as the vampire pulled on a pair of latex gloves before he started shoving bullets into a magazine. “What…what are you talking about?”
“I made a discovery quite by accident, not that the Ministry would believe that,” he muttered at the end. “I’ve designed a formula that attacks the blood. Specifically, vampire blood. It spreads very quickly through the blood…and well, the end result is that it turns the blood in the vampire to an acidic goo. Quite disgusting.”
“Wow, that’s an insane discovery.”
He wrinkled his nose as he finished loading the magazine and shoved it into the butt of the gun. “I’ve coated the bullets with the substance. There are ten in the magazine and one in the chamber already. I’ve also got a spare magazine. That’s twenty-one bullets. The good thing is that I think this would be most effective if you hit center mass.” He turned toward Ethan and held out the gun. “You do know how to use this thing, right?”
“Are you just assuming that all humans know how to use a gun?”
“Pretty much.”
Ethan groaned and took the gun from Bel. “You’re lucky one of my foster fathers was big into guns. Took me to the shooting range when I was a teen. Thought it would keep me out of trouble.”
“Never warned you against vampires, did he?”
“Yeah, for some reason, it never seemed to come up.” Ethan checked that the safety was in place before snatching up the spare magazine and shoving it into his pocket. He was still in the damn suit when he’d much rather be in jeans and a T-shirt. “So, what’s the plan? Do you have any idea who this Zale is? Where he might take Marcus? Do we even know if Marcus is still alive?”
“I know he is,” Bel said firmly. He grabbed his cell phone and a set of keys off the table. “I got this text from Rafe just a couple of minutes before you arrived on my doorstep.” He held up the phone and Ethan only saw “Williwaw” typed there.