Chapter 366
"You will get down on the floor!" The guard commanded. His right hand hung at his side, the fingers bloody and bent at odd angles. He still looked capable of causing plenty of damage.
"And you will go to hell," Micah tossed back. With a loud snarl he threw himself at the guard and swung. His fist slammed into the guard's face with a loud crack and a spray of blood splattered both the vampires and the plaster wall.
Katelina pulled herself up and shuffled backwards like a crab. She could see the second guard in the corridor. He shouted into his radio, the words so fast she couldn't tell where one ended and another began.
Micah landed a second punch to his opponent's gut, but when he tried for a third, the guard deflected the blow and sent him flying. Micah tumbled backwards and landed on top of a stand. The spindly legs gave way and with a crash he fell to the floor, bits of broken lamp scattered around him.
The second guard shouted something and bolted into the room. Micah recovered in time to knock his legs out from under him, but the first guard was able to get ahold of one of his arms and pin it behind his back.
Micah roared and swung his free fist. It took both the guards to try to restrain him, and he laughed as he struggled. "You better get the hell outta here, Lunch, before their buddies show up."
She climbed quickly to her feet and ran to the door. She hesitated and looked back to see that they had Micah pinned down, his legs and one arm waving wildly. He caught one of the guards in the chin with his boot, so hard that she heard his teeth clack.
"Get outta here, you idiot!" he bellowed. She tore down the hallway, dodging past the few onlookers, until she came to the elevator bank. She skipped the shiny cages and ran up the stairs, with no idea where she was going or what she was going to do. She remembered the holding cells at The Guild; cement walled rooms with only a toilet, if the prisoner was lucky. She knew what they did to them, how they kept them trapped without food. She thought of those experiments Sadihra had mentioned and pictured stone walls, pools of blood, and a symphony of screams.
Terror prodded her on. The stairs were empty and she raced upwards, too preoccupied with fear to notice the floors flying past her, or to realize that she should be lying on a landing gasping for breath.
She burst out at the top into the marble entrance hall. A mob of vampires was gathered before the information desk, shouting in many languages. Katelina caught a few words in the noise, "What's going on? Why can't we leave?" News of the lockdown was spreading and no one was happy.
She took advantage of the chaos to catch her breath, and try to formulate a plan. Where could she hide? She needed to find Jorick. He would make everything okay. He'd find a way to get out of the stronghold. But she had no idea where to look for him.
Her two options were to hide and hope he wandered past, or to stumble around blindly and hope luck brought them together. If only they were still linked! When they had been, she could sense him and he her, but the link had been undone with Kateesha's blood and he'd never redone it.
She decided that no matter which option she chose, standing in the writhing crowd of the entrance hall was useless. There were too many vampires, and she'd never see Jorick, even if he walked in. She took a deep breath for courage and plunged into the back of the crowd. She wormed her way past unhappy vampires, angling for the arches on the other side of the room. She told herself not to think of the crowd's true nature and pretend it was the mosh pit at a rock concert, like the one she'd been to back in high school.
The thoughts did little to comfort her as she passed the stairs that led up to the secret entrance. Two guards stood on each step, with a pair of Scharfrichter at the top. Weapons gleamed in their hands and their expressions were cold and unbending. She could feel an aura of power emanating from them, saying, "don't even think about messing with us."
With a gasp, she ducked behind a pair of women arguing in French. They gave her an odd look, then went back to their discussion. She was only a human, after all, and not worth notice.
Katelina made it to the archways and hurried inside. There was a long, sharply curving hall, lined in a handful of doors. That she'd made it this far without a map was amazing, but she was out of semi-familiar ground and into completely new territory.
Footsteps echoed ahead and she ducked into the nearest doorway and flattened herself against the wall. A pair of Scharfrichter walked past, talking in low voices, their words foreign. As their footsteps faded, Katelina relaxed and only then looked to see where she was.
The room was paneled in dark wood and the floor was covered in emerald carpeting. Two heavy wooden desks faced each other, and plush green chairs were situated in strategic places. A marble topped counter, littered with computer monitors and other equipment, formed an L on top of a platform. Behind it, phone pressed to his ear and mouth open in surprise, stood the white haired Scharfrichter Hethin.
Her eyes went wide in panic. Where the hell was she? God, please not the Scharfrichter Office!
"Um, sorry," she muttered. "Wrong, room."
As she dashed out the door she heard him call to her to stop, but she had no intention of it. She imagined him shouting into the phone that he'd found the escaped human. Shit, shit, shit!
The hall ended in a set of elevators and a pair of gracefully curving stairs. She stopped to catch her breath, and glanced back as footsteps sounded. She had a momentary glimpse of the guards before she uttered a cry and dashed down the stairs. She took them two and three at a time, but it wasn't fast enough. She could hear the feet of her pursuers pounding after her.
The suffocating heaviness that she associated with the stronghold pressed down on her, strangling the air from her burning lungs. Her legs started to ache, and her heart pounded in her ears, louder than the approaching footsteps. She knew she couldn't keep it up much longer.
As she rounded a corner she came face to face with four guards. She skidded to a stop and spun around, only to meet the other group. She looked back and forth frantically, but there was nowhere to go.
She was aware of words, "State your name and master!"
With a gasp, she fell against the wall and tried to grab coherent thoughts. They'd asked her name. They didn't know. They
"That's her."
She looked up to see a guard holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. His hand was wrapped in bloody cloth and his eye and lip were swollen. It was the guard Micah had attacked.
"Take her below!" he bellowed furiously.
"No, no." She held up her arms, as though to fight them off. "Leave me alone."
A guard grabbed her and she managed to get loose, but a second and third followed. She tried to slide down the wall, as if she might crawl between their feet. It was a useless defense that left her curled in a tiny ball, her back against the wall, with nowhere to go.
They hauled her up by her arms. She fought, but there were too many of them, and they were too strong. "Let me go!" she shouted as she twisted in their grip. "Let me go!"
"This would be easier if you would cooperate!" one of the guards snapped impatiently.
She was aware of footfalls, and the guards parted for Hethin, the white haired Scharfrichter. He drew to a stop, and met Katelina's eyes. His own were pale blue, like ice, and she couldn't move. Not in a pleasant way, like when she was with Jorick, but in a terrifying, paralyzed sort of way.
She noticed one of the guards snap open a case and remove a syringe. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't, even as he stabbed the needle into a bottle and drew up clear liquid.
He handed it off and a second guard lifted her useless arm and jabbed the needle into the soft skin at the inside of her elbow. It hurt for only a moment, like Jorick's fangs, but the pain was replaced by a burning sensation that moved up her arm to her shoulder.
No! No! No!
Suddenly she could move. She pulled away from the guards and knocked aside the surprised Scharfrichter. The room tilted and spun, and she stumbled and grabbed the wall for support.
"They said she can fight off mental attacks," one of the guards was saying, but his voice sounded strange in her ears.
No! No! No!
"It is a drug," a voice whispered in her mind. "You cannot resist. But do not fear. I will come for you."
"Jorick."
She fell to her knees and looked up at the collection of pale faces. The red of their uniforms smeared and blurred, and then faded into blackness.
