A Wicked Night (Creatures of Darkness 2): A Coraline Conwell Novel (24 page)

A harrowing image invaded her brain: this entire place submerged in blood. She smashed her eyelids shut, trying to banish the thought, but the darkness only made it easier to envision.

Bray moved then, sloshing past her toward the door. “I hear something. Sounds like a waterfall.”

“Oh, goddess,” she hissed under her breath. “We have to go.”

“Agreed.” He moved to the foot of the doctor and ripped off his sneakers and socks, stuffed the socks into one of the shoe holes, and then tucked the bundle under his arm. Then he took her hand and led her out the door.

When her feet met the rocky ground of the outer cavern, she was about to ask if she could put the shoes on, but the sight that greeted her turned that into objective B.

Objective A? Mad dash for the exit!

A massive amount of dark liquid—was that blood?—poured in from the far end of the corridor, as if someone had opened a hatch in a submerged submarine. Around them, the walls and ceiling dripped like an indoor rainstorm. Her new clothes were already stamped by a pattern of red dots…and on her arms, oh goddess, it was warm.

Bray ushered her past the seeping walls. By the time they made it a mere ten yards their legs were sloshing through a river of rising liquid.

The whole place was flooding!

She yelled for it to stop as Bray dragged her along, hoping there was still power in her words, but nothing happened.

The threat of drowning spurred a rush of adrenaline. The deluge was up to her waist now. They continued to trudge forward. The blood continued to rise. Soon they would be swimming toward wherever Bray was leading them, which turned out to be an elevator.

Bray stabbed the button with his index finger and glanced back at her. “You alright?”

She nodded, too freaked out to speak while ripples licked her chin. She stood on her tip toes.

I did this?

She glanced behind her to the ever-darkening cave. Some of the lights along the ceiling were starting to flicker and go out.

She found her voice. “What of the other vampires?”

Bray let out a wearied breath. “I can do nothing for them.”

“But they’d drown!”

“They will cut through me to get to you,” he exclaimed. “Do you understand?”

She swallowed a lump in her throat and gave a tiny nod.

“They might survive yet. If this is truly blood, and it doesn’t rise above their heads for too long…. Are you able to stop it?”

“I…I’ll try again.” She called out down the hall, working to make her voice confident and steady. “Uh, this spell has served its purpose! It can end now!” She was almost about to add
thanks
to her underwhelming effort. Who did she think she was talking to, anyway?

The blood rose another inch. Cora started to tread, keeping her head up. Bray pulled her to him, giving her something stable to hold onto. At some point, Bray had tied the shoe’s laces together and had them draped around his neck. Keeping them dry. For her?

Soon no part of them would be dry.

Why hasn’t the elevator opened yet?

She hoped it wasn’t broken.

Clearly Bray was of the same mind because he shoved his fingers into the slit of the sliding doors and attempted to pry them apart while she clung to his back. The blood rose yet another inch.

“Bray!”

The elevator doors whooshed open. The blood besieged the small space. The current dragged Cora under, past the doors. She slammed into the back wall.

Stunned, she desperately pushed off the ground to break the surface, spitting out what she would now refer to as red water. It was sweet, like some kind of juice, but also tangy and metallic, and she thought she might have swallowed some.

Just rusty water!

Bray had gone under too, yet his arm jutted up from the liquid, holding the shoes above the surface. His head popped up, his hair slickened and skin gruesomely stained.

“Yup, that’s blood alright,” he said, and then pressed the top floor button.

The doors closed.

Cora was still treading the
red water
, whereas Bray merely had to stand up to keep his head above the surface.

She felt the elevator begin to climb, and as it did, the level began to slowly lower. Her feet found the bottom. Muffled sloshing and dripping noises sounded from below. Cora leaned against Bray as her adrenaline dropped with her relief. He placed his arm around her shoulder for support.

The ride was shorter than she had expected. When the doors slid open, the remaining red water rolled out in a small wave.

Exhausted, stained head to toe by the rust colored liquid, they both stepped out into another cavern.

Cora nearly fell to her knees when she saw natural sunlight through a cave opening to their left.

They were in the parking garage.

Cora raced for the cave opening, wanting to get as far away from this place as her tired legs could carry her. It wasn’t until she was several feet outside, the sun beating down on her, cold, crisp air filling her lungs, that she realized Bray wasn’t with her.

She turned to see his dark figure shaded just inside the entrance to the cave, watching her with a grim reluctance.

“What are you doing? Come on!” she called.

His head lowered. A mixture of his fear and sorrow flooded her subconscious. Did he have some sort of Stockholm syndrome-like attachment to this place? Institutionalized? Like when jail-bird lifers find it difficult on the outside?

Against her instincts, she returned to the cavern. “What’s wrong? We have to go.”

“The sun is out,” he said simply.

“So? I thought that whole vampire sun thing was a myth.”

“Not a myth,” he admitted. “But it hasn’t been a problem in decades, for most.”

She cocked her head.

“Unfortunately, if we want to walk in the sun, we require monthly vaccinations.”

The image of Mace injecting himself sprang to the forefront of her mind.

“And you haven’t had a vaccination,” she surmised absently, recalling how Mace had bargained with Knox—her blood for a dose.

“Not since my capture.” He glanced back toward the elevator. “I don’t know if an alarm has sounded. Reinforcements could be on their way even now.”

Her stomach suddenly snapped and twisted, terror battling her insides.

His expression went blank. “This could be your only chance for escape. If you want to leave me…I will understand.”

Unexpectedly, her heart felt odd. Too full of something she couldn’t explain. She wondered if it was all her, or if she was picking part of it up from Bray.

Certainly some of it was her emotions. The idea of abandoning him made her want to wretch. She’d been discarded, abandoned, and left behind too often in her own life. Doing it to someone else was unimaginable. Especially to someone who had risked his life, his freedom, merely to find an antidote to her suffering. Beating the doctor had undoubtedly been pleasurable for him, a long time fantasy come to fruition, but he hadn’t done it for himself. He’d done it for her.

A tiny piece of that barbed cage that had entombed her heart so many years ago snapped away.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she assured, then glanced around nervously as a sense of foreboding whispered along her nape.

His curt nod might have appeared aloof if his immense relief hadn’t engulfed her, flooding her with so much heartbreakingly intense emotion that she had to allay their bond.

Still, it softened her further and solidified her decision. However this escape played out, they were in it together.

Only then did she consider a secondary fact. After the grievous last few weeks, she didn’t think she had it in her to manage on her own. No doubt they’d be traveling through a backwoods landscape. She knew how to survive in an urban environment, but the country? And, to top it off, icy air brought in the hint of snow. She already thought she’d seen a stray flake float by her outside. If they needed shelter, who knew how far the nearest town resided?

“Here,” Bray said, handing her the shoes he’d somehow managed to keep dry. “Put these on.”

Her feet were severely cut and bruised from their brash sprint over the sharp underground terrain. Slipping into the well-worn sneakers was a kind of luxury. They were a couple sizes too big, but a firm knot would keep them well enough in place.

“There’s water here to clean off with,” he said, indicating a small pool that had collected at the back of the cavern. “No good for drinking, though, and a bit cold for a decent wash.”

Their clothes were hopeless, but they managed to clear most of the
red water
from their arms and faces. Her long hair was a bit trickier, but Bray kindly offered to assist.

Per his instruction, she laid back with her head just over the pool, her hair submerged. Using his good hand, his thick fingers gently folded through her strands and massaged the muck from her scalp. She stifled a moan at the first tender contact she’d received in weeks.

By the time they finished, she was almost back to her natural golden color. Russet tints marred some of the strands.

“How long till the sun sets, do you think?” she asked.

“Three, four hours maybe.”

She glanced at his bandaged hand. “Is it bad?”

He shook his head. “The stuff in that bullet was made for a swift kill.” He tapped a finger against his forehead. “Anything other than a brain shot would have little effect. I’ll heal soon enough.”

That was a relief. They found a spot and settled against one wall near the entrance, just out of the sun’s range.

“What do we do if someone bad shows up?” Cora asked.

“I’ll kill them if I can,” Bray said. “Or you could conjure up more of that seriously scary magic.”

Her cheeks flushed. For one, because the
seriously scary magic
—and that couldn’t be overstated enough—had been as unintentional as breathing, and two, because Bray had rested his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close.

She made no protest. She was already starting to shiver, and his heat was comforting. It would be a while before her hair and clothes dried, and by then, the sun would be long gone, taking what little warmth it offered.

“If I thought I could give a repeat performance, I’d say no problem,” she said.

“Yes, I saw your shock. Felt it too. That was something new.”

“What was new?”

“I’ve heard others try to explain the dark bond, an unbreakable and mystical connection. Some spoke of it as if in awe.”

“So you’ve never been bonded before?”

“Never got the urge. ’Spose that makes me a bit of a commitment-phobe.” He gave her a boyish grin. “But it’s not so bad from this angle.”

She was unable to return his jubilance. “We’re not…you know, like a couple or anything.”

He frowned. “’Course. I wasn’t expecting anything like that. I only meant to say that most people who engage the dark bond are typically in committed relationship. Obviously our situation’s different.” Some of the buoyancy left his expression.

“Right.” She paused as an awkwardness took up residence between them. “Thanks, by the way. For knocking me unconscious. I was a little out of my mind back there.”

He nodded, but didn’t look at her. “All better now?”

“Mostly.” Heavy arousal still pumped through her system, but she was able to keep a firm grip on it…and her urge to run her palm over Bray’s chest. Would it be as firm as the steel it resembled? She cleared her throat. “Can you tell?”

“How hard up you are? God yes.” He practically sighed the last.

Heat blasted through her cheeks again. On some level, she’d known he could. His own lust was building off hers while feeding it back to her and kindling them both. The situation couldn’t get any more precarious if she were enticing him with a strip tease.

The stray image had desire flaring again.

His grip on her shoulder stiffened ever so slightly, but he gave no other indication that he’d sensed where her head was at.

He must have some mega control. Mace would have been all over her. But then, Mace was a little insatiable and more than infatuated with her—for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

He called it love, but she suspected it bordered on obsession. She wasn’t complaining though. Before her capture, by each day, her feelings for him had been growing.

However, there was a lot that sat ill with her regarding Mace. Like all those pictures of her on his phone. And why had he guarded so much information from her? With the first, she could chalk it up to his unnatural interest. He’d told her he’d been watching her, that wasn’t news, but it should have just been for his case, and the images hadn’t appeared investigatory. In many of them, she’d just been reading on her back porch. Nothing nefarious to report there. Except that she wasn’t fond of bugs flying in her face.

With the second, she had learned more from Bray in only a few weeks than all her months with Mace, and that probably was what hurt the most. Mace willfully kept her in the dark about the shot he had to take, about his rivalry and past relationship with Knox, and about the vampire law that stated Knox was allowed full access to her blood whether she liked it or not. He hadn’t even bothered to inform her that she should take care with her thoughts around Cortez. She hoped she hadn’t thought anything bad about the vampire, though, undoubtedly she had.

How much more information would she acquired from Bray that Mace had failed to share?

Her ire, overshadowed only by her continued worry for Mace’s wellbeing, managed to douse a bit of her lust.

Bray seemed to relax then.

Where he touched her arm, his thumb began a languid, almost unconscious, stroke. She realized he must be dying for physical contact, having been alone in that cell for so long, so she didn’t check him, even though it felt too good and reignited some of her desire.

And anyway, it was comforting.

Finally, the last of her lingering adrenaline began to drain, leaving her achy and tired.

Bray said, “If you need to sleep, I’ll keep watch. When we’re able to leave sometime around dusk, we’ll be on the go nonstop till we get far enough away for comfort. Then there’s the matter of finding shelter before the sun rises tomorrow.”

She figured she was too keyed up for any kind of beneficial slumber, so she was unprepared when sleep took her almost as soon as she closed her eyes.

She slumped onto Bray’s shoulder. As she slipped into unconsciousness, she thought she heard, “Sleep well, my angel.”

——

Cora jerked in alarm as the earth moved beneath her.

Thinking the cave was crumbling around them, she almost hurled herself toward the exit, but there was no ground to push off of.

Thick arms cradled her.

She found the sky was wide open above her. A darkened, starless sky that was lit only in one small section by a hazy patch of moonlight, muted behind thick cloud cover.

Night’s gloomy influence leached away color so that everything was a monotone in gray. Except for Brayden.

His expression was focused with determination as he marched them through what appeared to be a ravine surrounded by towering mountains. A stream softly babbled nearby. The temperature had plummeted drastically.

Her body was curled against him as if she’d been unconsciously seeking his warmth.

He greeted her with a simple, “Good evening,” though he stared straight ahead. His tone was deep and rumbly, yet he didn’t sound out of breath.

“Hi,” she replied, sending him gratitude through their bond.

He smiled then. “You badly needed the sleep. I didn’t wish to wake you.”

He leapt over something—a fallen log perhaps—and continued at a steady pace. She marveled that her weight didn’t seem to slow him. Then again, she wasn’t sure how fast vampires could run when not burdened by the weight of a second individual.

“How far have we gone?”

“Several miles,” he replied.

Thank the Goddess!

She hadn’t realized till this moment she’d had a one-hundred percent expectation of being recaptured back in that cave—torn from freedom and strapped back into that evil gurney.

But that hadn’t happened.

Thanks to Bray.

Her relief was so great that she began to shake, and like a stampede, the gravity of all that she’d endured—mental and physical abuse, weeks of torture—bombarded her.

She gleaned Bray’s urgency to put more distance between them and the cavern. They weren’t free and clear yet.

At the thought, renewed fear sprouted wings and soared through her veins, flooding her with chaotic and unexpected anxiety. Her chest filled with pain and her breath came in arduous gasps.

Even now someone could be racing after them!

Her pulse jacked up as her windpipe narrowed.

It was as if all her emotions over the last few weeks had been bottled, sealed, and marked for reopening at this exact moment. Her shaking intensified.