Page 6 of Crimson Storm

“Someone took it from you?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was probably unreasonable to assume every vampire in here was an upstanding citizen who’d been falsely accused. I guessed sometimes my mind reverted back to my human days and the community I’d grown up in where crime was nearly non-existent and everyone shared what they had.

“Who was it?” I demanded to know.

Margaret looked around then whispered under her breath. “Over there. The big one with the long, black hair.”

I followed her gaze to a huge male vampire leaning against the wall of the barracks. He was laughing with another male I’d never met.

Both of them looked rough, scary, like the Bloodbound soldiers I’d known back at the Bastion. Like Reece.

They were the type of vampires the anti-vampers always pointed to when they tried to stir up fear. The type who gave us all bad names and made us targets.

Bullies.

Aggressive energy charged through my muscles, causing me to clench my fingers into fists and grind my teeth together. Part of me would have loved to march over there and demand restoration of Margaret’s missing rations.

The smarter part of me decided to follow my own advice and not draw attention to myself. I picked up Margaret’s discarded bag from the grass, opened it, and handed it back to her.

“Take this one too. It’ll help you recover faster.”

She stopped drinking. “No. I can’t. You’ll have no rations. You’ll get weak.”

Giving her a smile, I got to my feet. “I’m not hungry. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to be running any marathons. I’ll eat tomorrow night.”

She clasped the second bag gratefully. “Bless you child. What is your name?”

“It’s Abigail Byler. My friends call me Abbi.”

“Abbi, I won’t forget this. When we both get out of here, I’m going to repay your kindness,” she vowed.

“Oh, that’s not necessary. It’s really not that big of a deal—”

My sentence was cut off by the roar of a loud motor followed by a crash of metal and the sound of screams.

4

Out of Time

At first I thought it was a terrorist attack.

I’d seen news reports about incidents where radical anti-vampers had driven vehicles into crowds of vampires at popular outdoor nighttime gathering spots.

But no, that didn’t make sense. For one thing, we were already incarcerated, which I assumed would make the vamp haters happy.

For another thing, the armed men who emerged from the SUV after crashing it through the western fence were motioning to a group of vampires nearby, encouraging them to get inside the vehicle.

One of the men simply stood outside of it, his arms spread out to the sides, head tipped back to the sky, no gun in sight.

“Come on,” one of the other men yelled toward the inmates and waved his arms above his head. “We’ll get you out of here. Don’t worry about the fence. It’s deactivated.”

No one seemed to be taking him up on his offer. Vampires poured through the opening in the broken fence, bypassing the men and escaping the grounds of the Safety Center into the foothills that lay beyond it.

Some stuck around long enough to kill the guards stationed around the perimeter and up in the watch tower. I couldn’t see Phillip. I hoped he’d made it back inside before the chaos erupted.

One escapee stopped just outside the fence where Gatlin now lay injured and bleeding. It was the large, black-haired soldier-type.

He knelt to the ground and started drinking from the man’s wounds, ignoring his screams of terror.

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