The room was cool, too—blues, grays, darkness in corners, one small source of light overhead. My nose twitched, calling it to me, only to be flooded with the ozone taste of electricity. I growled and then ignored it.
But something else gleamed, in brilliant flashes here and there. I walked through the writhing mass of humans toward it. One grabbed my arm; I tossed him against a wall. Another raised a weapon at me—slow, slow, they moved so slowly I could have ripped his throat out before he finished the motion. I settled for taking his rifle away and batting him across the room with it.
I reached the source of the light, but I still couldn’t see it clearly. I growled again, and this time something answered. A strange, haunting cry, and then a hand, bright, bright like flame, emerged from nothingness. And started feeling around the floor.
I cocked my head to the side, nonplussed. I had seen many hands move about on their own, torn or cut off of vampires, or spasming from soon-to-be-dead humans. But they didn’t glow.
Only I glowed.
I growled and grabbed it.
Something gave a shriek, and the hand jerked back. And there was muscle behind it, oh yes there was. Not like the humans, two of whom jumped me a second later and forced me to release the hand in order to crack their skulls together. And by the time I threw them aside and turned back, the hand was gone.
I growled.
Something whimpered.
Something else moved, and I caught a gleam again, like a candle behind a curtain.
I jerked at the fluttering thing and it slithered easily through my fingers. Cloth; waxed. I pulled some more and something on the other side grabbed it and pulled back. But I was stronger, and when I gave a jerk, it came away in my hands.
And the glow flooded the room.
Golden light, like looking into the sun, spilled everywhere, so bright I wanted to shield my eyes. It made it hard to see features—hard to see anything. But features didn’t matter; I normally barely noticed them. Power I did.
I went down on my haunches and reached for it, but something was in the way.
Bars. Iron. New. I could still smell the solder. I pulled them aside and felt around in the box—why was it in a box?—and finally grasped it.
It bit my hand.
“No,” I told it. “Bad.”
And then I snatched it out.
I still couldn’t see it very well; in fact it was harder up close where the light hurt my eyes. But it smelled wrong. I pulled it close and sniffed it, mentally filtering out the stink of blood and urine and peppery fear radiating off it, but for once, scent didn’t help. I pawed at it, checking its limbs. It whimpered again, and the light flickered.
“Hurt?” I demanded, because I couldn’t find any unclosed wounds.
It didn’t reply.
“Hurt!” I said again, louder, because maybe it was deaf. But no. It flinched; it had heard me. And then some gunfire hit the cage, sparking off the bars, and it flinched again. And kept doing it, in little motions that flickered against the canvas like firelight.
Oh. It didn’t like the noise. I stood up and tucked it under an arm. I would take it away from the sounds, and then it would be better.
I scanned the room.
The humans were dead or as good as. The vampire, of course, was not. Injured, but not mortally so, which made it more dangerous. I narrowed my eyes at it. There was a faint tinge of pink around the blue now, blended by the currents of its power into mauve tendrils that smoked up from the surface of its skin.
I kept the small thing close as I skirted the field of bodies. The vampire turned as we did, but made no forward movement. But the currents shivering through its veins increased, as its power surged.
I growled a warning.
The vampire was unhappy; I could feel it in the heat it suddenly gave off, in the way it charged the air with ozone. My nose wrinkled. I hated that smell. How humans lived in cities steeped in the scent of those who hunted them, I would never understand. How could they not know they were stalked, when every house reeked of the hunters? When every streetlight hummed like the stolen energy in their veins, making it almost impossible to tell the difference?
I would take the small thing somewhere with no false lights. With nothing but trees and wind and scurrying things even smaller than it was. With sounds of the earth that would not make it shiver and mewl.
The vampire hadn’t moved.