Page 290 of Dragon Slayer

“Nikita Baskin choked one of the boys to death in New York.” And clearly, no one had told Lily that.

Slowly, her expression settled into a hard mask. “He’ll wish he hadn’t done that,” she said, and Anna shivered.

~*~

Jake’s radio crackled to life on his belt and he reached for it lazily, expecting another mundane update about shift changes or some such. But before he could get the thing unclipped, one of the upstairs guards shouted through it:“Major Treadwell, it’s Sergeant Ramirez! She’s badly injured!”

Jake turned away from Talbot and Price, their startled and curious expressions, and headed for the stairs, heart rate spiking. He thumbed the transmit button as he started up at a jog. “Where is she? What’s her status? What happened?” Was he panicking? Yes, a little bit. She’d gone riding as escort with the princes and Talbot’s daughter, and if Jake was honest, he didn’t like the way Vlad looked at Adela. Like she was a meal.

Static. Hesitation. Then:“The prince brought her in. They’re going to wheel her into an operating theater. She, um…”

Jake sprinted through the shadowed, musty subbasement that served as storage. “I’m on my way,” he snapped into the radio, and slapped the elevator button.

The lab, when he finally reached it, was in a state of chaos. Techs and nurses in scrubs rushed around, gathering supplies. A young doctor with glasses and a harried expression guided a group of orderlies pushing a gurney toward the center of the room…

Where Vlad Tepes stood with a bloody, unconscious Adela held bridal-style in his arms. Blood on his shirt, blood all over her.

Jake’s first thought was that Vlad had attacked her. All too easily he could envision those long fangs breaking her skin.

He charged forward. “What the fuck?” he demanded, reaching them, blowing like a racehorse. To Vlad: “What did you do?”

Everyone around them froze. Doctors, nurses, techs, everyone.

Vlad’s mouth was clean, he noticed stupidly. The blood was on his shirt. One of the sleeves of his compression shirt had been torn off and was currently tied around Adela’s shin. He met Jake’s glare with a level stare of his own. “I carried her,” he said, his voice low and unnerving, touched with a Romanian accent. “Her horse fell on her, and I carried her back.”

Jake breathed harshly through his mouth.

“Excuse me,” the doctor said, intervening between them. “If I can just – oh, my. Your grace, if you could please place her on the stretcher…”

Jake got pushed back in the shuffle of nurses as they laid Adela out on a stretcher and surrounded her. Her skin was too pale, her face slack. And she was wet.

Jake’s panic rapped beneath his skin like a second pulse, skittery as a rat. “What happened?” he asked again. Beneath the tourniquet, he saw the white of bone protruding from her leg.

Vlad’s eyes remained trained on her. He shook his head. “There was a bear. It frightened her mount. I frightened the bear away, but it was too late, and the horse fell on her. She needs blood.”

“Sir, we have blood,” a tech said, lifting a cold blood bag.

“No,” Vlad said. He lifted his own hand, his own wrist, his own blood. “That’s not what I mean.”

The bespectacled doctor turned to a tech. “Fetch me–”

“Your serum?” Vlad said, mocking. “Don’t bother. It isn’t strong enough.” And he motioned imperiously toward the OR. “Lead the way, Doctor. I will provide whatever blood you need.”

Jake moved to protest – and was promptly swept aside in the tide of professionals.

~*~

It felt like someone was sitting on her chest. But it was a dull pressure. Nothing hurt; in fact, she felt mostly numb, but she couldn’t breathe, and that was going to be a problem in the long run.

Around her: movement, frantic, but professional voices, beeping.

She cracked her eyes, and everything was a blur. Drugs, she realized. She’d been pumped full of something. Why was she awake? She…

She wet her lips, some sort of instinct, and her tongue passed over something wet and warm that sent a jolt through her entire numb body.

“Your grace!” someone shouted. “I told you we can’t…” The voice flickered in and out. “…untested…vials of the serum!”

“Shut up. See to her leg.” That voice she knew: the low, accented voice of Vlad Tepes.

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