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“I’ll be slow. I’ll try to catch up. Find Jackson. He’ll help you get out of here, and then—”
“No, listen to me, Declan.” I gulped a breath to help give me courage. “We got into this mess together and that’s exactly how we’re getting out.”
He glared at me. “Jill—”
“No.” My throat hurt from shouting over the alarm. “I’m not leaving without you. If you’re going to just give up and die right here, that means I am, too. So if you really want me to live to see another day, then you’re going to have to do the same damn thing. Do you understand me?”
The fire in his gaze, ignited thanks to my stubbornness, faded a bit around the edges.
“Well?” I touched his face, wiping the blood away from a cut on his forehead. “What’ll it be, dhampyr?”
His eye narrowed before he finally answered. “Fine. Help me up.”
“That’s more like it.”
I grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet as much as I could, considering I was a full foot shorter than him. He leaned his nearly six and a half feet of solid muscle against me. His gaze moved toward Dr. Reynolds and the growing pool of blood forming a wet, red halo around the dead man’s head.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
“Just what I was thinking.”
“You know what this means.”
“Yeah,” I said, grimly. “It means I’m definitely going to die. But it won’t be here. And it won’t be now.”
One look at Declan confirmed to me that he’d fought with Lawrence and lost. Several deep knife wounds were in the process of healing. I tried not to worry about that, but it was difficult. He wasn’t dead, and for that I was very grateful.
“I’m still feeling the tranq effects,” he growled, straining to be heard over the loud alarm. “That’s going to make this harder. And I don’t have my stake—Lawrence must have taken it.”
“Let’s try to stay positive.”
“You go ahead and do that. I’m going to be a realist.”
“And what does your realist self tell you?”
“It tells me that I’m in rough shape and healing slower than I’d like.” His grip on me tightened. “My phone’s set to vibrate—someone’s calling. Grab it.”
Without thinking twice, I slipped my hand into the inner pocket of Declan’s jacket and took out his cell phone, stabbing at the answer button and holding it to my ear.
“Yeah?”
“Jill? Is that you?”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“It’s Jackson. Glad to hear your voice, too.”
My grip on the phone tightened as I shouted into it. “Where the hell are you?”
“A level down from you, I think. What the fuck happened?”
I hurriedly explained to him about the vampire on the rampage.
“Shit. That explains it. The vampires have been let out of their cells down here. At least a dozen of them, maybe more. You need to get out fast. Is—is Declan dead?”
“No. But he’s wounded.”
There was silence for a moment. “Find the nearest stairwell. Don’t try to use the elevator, it’s been knocked out. If you see a vampire, kill it. Just don’t let them get too close or you won’t have a—”
