FORTY-TWO

“Now what do we do?” Christian asked. We all looked at Aloysius.

“No need to panic. We will keep Tomas, Lucia, and all the children upstairs. They will be guarded. We are going to find Melinda and her gang but, if for any reason they should come looking for us, they only know about this apartment.”

Christian and I took the supplies from him, but before we could get all the children together, the building began shaking again. Leilani screamed and ran to me, wrapping her arms around my legs.

“It’s just an aftershock. It’ll pass soon,” Aloysius said and looked at Leilani. “See? It stopped already.”

Everyone stood still for a moment, trying to determine if there was any more movement. There was none so everyone returned to what they were doing. Christian, Jose Luis, and I took Leilani upstairs by way of the darkened stairway. We managed not to scare anyone who might have been on the stairs as we walked in the darkness with Christian carrying Leilani. When we arrived at the other apartment, suitcases lined the side of the entryway.

“I guess we are not flying anywhere tonight,” Tomas said as he maneuvered his crutches around the fallen chair someone had not yet picked up. Jose Luis grabbed the chair and moved it out of the way. Alegría and Lucia knelt on the floor picking up the pieces of a broken flower pot.

“The electricity is out all over the city. You will all have to stay here. You will have two guards at all times, one inside, and one outside the door,” I told him. Lucia paused to look at me, her face pale with fear.

Christian took Leilani to the sofa and set her down before taking the candles out of the bag and lighting them, setting them on any flat surface he found. He reached into the bag again and pulled out three flashlights, passing them out to Jose Luis, Tomas, and Lucia.

“Jose Luis, can you come with me for a moment?” I asked and stepped toward the open door so he would follow me.

“What is it?” he asked as soon as he shut the door behind him.

“I want you to stay with the humans. Having a third vampire with them will be best,” I whispered the rest so no one inside could hear me. “Will you be ok, I mean, you know?”

His eyes widened in shock. “I do know and yes, of course I will be ok.”

“Please don’t be offended. You are a brand new vampire. Sometimes your hunger can feel overwhelming and, being new, you do need to feed more often.”

“I know I am new, but I am fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I love these people, especially my sister. They are not on the menu,” he said in a sarcastic tone.

I laughed and wrapped my arm around him, causing him to relax in spite of his anger. “I always knew you were strong. We are going to go find Melinda and her gang and put an end to this chaos. I am leaving you in charge of the humans. Two guards will be here in a few minutes to help you.”

“Please do not worry about us. Just go do what you need to do and hurry back to us. I want to leave here as soon as possible. I want to go to the United States and really start my new life.”

Just as we finished talking, two guards came walking up the hall. I hugged Jose Luis before walking him back through the door. Leilani sat on the floor, a flashlight in her hand, looking at both of us as we entered.

“You have to go,” she said, her facial expression blank.

“I know. I just wanted to make sure everybody here is situated before I go downstairs to make plans,” I assured her as I took a step toward her.

She shook her head, stopping me in my tracks. “No,” she said, her eyes remaining locked on mine. “It is too late for plans. They are here.”

“Go, Lily,” Mauricio commanded as he pulled me out of the apartment by the arm and then positioned himself in front of the door. “Get downstairs!”

Without hesitation, I ran down the hall and to the stairway. Instead of wasting time by running down the steps, I jumped the whole flight, rounded the corner, and jumped the rest of the way. Giovanni stood outside our apartment.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as I ran toward him.

“Leilani says they are here, in the building.”

“We need to block the stairs,” he said and opened the door to the apartment, going right to the other guards converged inside, awaiting the meeting.

“Lily,” Christian ran in after me. “You took off without me.”

“They are here,” I yelled loud enough for everyone to hear. “They came to us. We’re not ready for them. We still have to—”

Aloysius appeared at my side without me even noticing he moved. “Lily, it will be fine. We are all here. We can do this.”

“But we don’t even have a strategy yet,” I protested.

“We don’t need a strategy. Our only objective is to destroy them. All of them,” he said, his eyes firm.

“Oh, God,” Kalia cried as Aaron wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Please think about it first. What if Maia is with them?”

“Then we try to do whatever we need to do to get Maia away from them safely,” Aloysius said. “Then we destroy them.”

“Just like that?” Christian asked.

“This will never end unless we do. They will always find a reason to pursue Lily and destroy any happiness she finds. We already know reasoning with Melinda is impossible.”

“You have a point there,” Christian answered. “I will get the box of weapons out of the closet. We will grab what we can and wait for them.”

“Two of us are going upstairs to position ourselves at the doorway of the hall. The rest of us will stay with you,” Giovanni announced as he and Margarita exited.

Christian returned with the box. “We don’t have many wooden bullets left.”

“I know. Carmela was supposed to bring more but she must have gotten held up because of the quake. We should have plenty of stakes, though, right?” Aloysius asked as he approached the box.

“Yes,” Christian said and handed a stake to each of us as we stood around the weapons. “Grab a sword or knife, too. We stake and chop their heads off.”

It was really strange to hear Christian talking like that, so brutal and lethal. But he was right; we didn’t have time to waste. The quicker we ended this, the better.

“We ready?” Aloysius asked. Everyone replied that they were. “Out to the hall then. No reason to wait for them here.”

As we filed into the hallway, a door opened down the hall. A man in his early thirties poked his out to investigate the noise, squinting his eyes in the darkness.

“Please go back inside and lock your door,” Fiore yelled to him in Spanish. “Do not open it for anyone.”

The man squinted harder trying to find the source of voice, but then gave up and went back inside. We heard his locks turning.

“Maybe we should go down to meet them,” I whispered to Aloysius. “That would keep them as far away from the others as possible.”

Aloysius opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a bang against the wall as the stairway door was thrown open. All of us automatically assumed fighting stances, our knees bent and our hands grasping our stakes.

“Lovely security you have in this building,” Melinda’s voice mocked from down the hall. “He will fit quite nicely in my collection.” She shoved Giovanni ahead of her. Arturo walked on one side of her, and two vampires I’d never seen before on the other. Giovanni was gagged and his hands were tied behind him.

I am sorry…I tried to…

“Oh, zip it! No one wants to hear how cowardly you really are,” Melinda taunted interrupting Giovanni’s mental apology. “I will add the other one…the woman, to my collection, too.”

I wanted to lunge at her, scratch her eyes out and feed them to her, but Fiore grabbed my arm. “They have the humans,” she whispered.

My whole body stiffened at that realization. The children were no longer safe. They had been our first priority and their first target.

“Where is Maia?” Kalia asked before I could say what I wanted.

Melinda and the rest stopped about twenty feet in front of us. “Don’t you worry about her. She is keeping the humans entertained. We wouldn’t want them to get bored while we’re having all the fun here now, would we?”

“You keep your hands off them!” I screamed and tried to run toward her. Fiore and Christian held my arms to stop me.

“You all seem like rational adults to me,” Melinda said. She kept Giovanni in front of her, shielding herself from us.

Giovanni locked his eyes on mine. Though he didn’t think of what he wanted, I knew. He was pleading with me to save Margarita. His love for her was obvious. He cared more about her life than his own. I nodded, promising him that I would do whatever it took to get her back.

“Lily, pay attention. I am talking,” Melinda shook her head. “Always letting your emotions get the best of you. See all the damage you cause?”

“I didn’t do this! You and Ian did this!”

“Hasn’t anyone taught you not to speak ill of the dead? Ian is no more. May I remind you that it was at your hands that he died?” She looked at me for a moment and shook her head. “Anyway, I want to talk. I have a proposition for you all.”

Aloysius stepped to the front of the group. “What is this proposition?”

“Give me Lily and no one else needs to die. It’s that simple. You hand her over to me and all of you, the humans included, and Maia get to walk away, as will we.” She tilted her head as she waited for an answer.

Hushed murmurs ran through our group and, before any of us noticed, Christian ran down the hall toward Melinda. He dove through the air, landing on top of her and Giovanni. I tried to run toward them but Fiore and Aaron restrained me by wrapping their arms around my waist.

“Let’s go get the children,” Aaron said. “The rest can handle this.”

He ran toward the stairway with Fiore, Kalia, and I following close at his heels. We ran up the stairs and reached the door, pulling it open. A scream caught us all off guard.

“Dios mio!” a woman yelled holding her hand to her chest. Her other hand held a leash with a small dog. The dog pulled at the leash, barking furiously, trying to get free of her hold.

“Ma’am, please go back to your apartment,” Aaron said in Spanish.

“I will not. My dog has to go out,” she said and reached down to pick up the furious fur ball.

“Then let him go on newspaper, but go back to your apartment, now! There is a man running around the building with a gun,” Aaron said looking at us and shrugging without the woman seeing. “Go back inside and lock your door.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, I will go,” she said and turned, hugging her still barking ball of fur to her chest as she ran down the hall.

Reaching the door to the apartment where the humans were hiding, we found the door locked. Kalia stepped back and kicked it open. We ran inside and an eerie silence greeted us. We stood still and quiet, listening for the beating of their hearts.

“They’re not here,” Fiore said. “Where could they…?”

Laughter coming from somewhere down the hall froze us all in place and chilled my spine. I knew that laugh.

“Maia?” I yelled. A door slammed and the laughter disappeared.

“They took them upstairs,” Aaron said.

“What makes you think up and not down?” I asked. The stake clutched in my hand almost felt like an extension of my arm.

“We would’ve passed them if they went down. How many more floors are there?” he asked.

“Just one more and then the roof,” I answered already on my way to the door.

“Ok,” Aaron said as we climbed up a flight. “We will check this floor first. We can listen for their thoughts.”

After a few moments of walking the hall, we agreed they weren’t on this floor. Of course they were on the roof. Where else would they be? Determined not to let my fear of heights hinder our rescue attempt, I led the way up the last flight of stairs. I took a deep breath and pulled the heavy metal door open. Wind whipped my hair around my face hard enough to make it feel like a slap. The sound of hearts beating way too fast flooded my ears before I could look around.

“Oh, shit,” Fiore said, her usual proper speech forgotten.

“What?” I asked holding my hair in my hand to keep it out of the way. “What is it?”

My stomach rose up to my throat and the ground felt like it was tilting. On a metal pole that was probably once one end of a clothes line, Jose Luis, Leilani, and Alegría were gagged and tied. The other pole contained Lucia, Tomas, and Paco. Paco’s head hung as if he were unconscious. Tears streamed down Lucia’s cheeks and her bottom lip quivered silently.

“Jesus Christ,” Aaron said behind me. “Look.” He pointed toward the ground at the base of the pole.

Wood had been neatly piled around the base of both poles. Just then, as if awaiting her cue, Maia stepped out from behind a small cement structure used for storage. Her mouth held a fake smile, as if she were posing for a photograph. She tilted her head to the side and looked down, then back up at me.

“No!” I screamed and ran toward her, my focus only on the red gasoline container she gripped in her hand.