Vengeance (The Captive #6)(66)
The crowd parted and across the way, he spotted a familiar ugly face amongst the vampires. His step faltered as everything around him faded away and his gaze became pinpointed upon Kane. Everything he’d been preparing for over the past five months was within his grasp. He could have Kane staked through the back and squirming on the ground like the snake he was before the vampires knew he was there.
His fangs pierced the inside of his lip. He barely tasted the blood that trickled into his mouth. Tempest’s hand wrapped around his bicep as she pressed against his side. The world crashed back around him; the vampires and buildings that had faded away at the sight of Kane burst back into view again. The noise he’d tuned out once more pounded against his eardrums.
Warm blood trickled across his palms when he unfolded them; he hadn’t realized he’d torn open the flesh of his hands until now. Careful not to get any blood on his cloak, he knelt in the street and wiped away the red drops from his already healing wounds.
“William,” she whispered tremulously, her hand still on his arm.
He rested his hand briefly on her elbow and jerked his head to the right. He could feel the heat of her flesh beneath his touch; her brown eyes were troubled and searching when they briefly met his. “Let’s go back,” he said.
Her eyes closed. “Yes,” she breathed.
His fingers itched with the urge to stroke her cheek in order to reassure her further, but he couldn’t take the risk of drawing any unnecessary attention to themselves. When they were safely hidden away again, he’d do plenty of reassuring.
She followed him around to the back of the orphanage and inside once more. Abbot and Pallas were standing in the dining room doorway. Abbott twisted his hands before him, while Pallas shifted from foot to foot.
“They’ll probably be back soon,” Pallas whispered.
Keeping his hand on Tempest’s elbow, William hurried her toward the basement door. “Wait, the attic might be better,” Tempest told him. “If Kane went into the basement this morning, he may go down there again.”
“Is the attic over where they’re staying?” he asked.
“It is, but they shouldn’t be able to smell us or hear us in there. The attic was where we would sometimes hide as children.”
“No one ever found us up there,” Pallas confirmed.
He glanced at the basement door before looking at the stairs leading toward the second floor. “Are there windows and another way out from up there?”
“Yes,” Tempest said.
“Can we get past the children without them seeing us?”
“I’ll make sure they’re in one of the rooms, and they stay there,” Pallas replied.
Kane hadn’t noticed them in the basement this morning, there had been plenty of places to hide, but he was used to moving and changing his locations. His instincts screamed at him to not be in the same place two nights in a row. “We’ll get our supplies and move into the attic.”
“I’ll get the children out of the way,” Pallas said.
He watched her hurry up the stairs. “Stay here,” he said to Tempest and dashed down the stairs. He couldn’t shake the thought that their time was running out; he could practically feel Kane and his cohorts closing in on them. He grabbed his saddlebags and some blankets from where they’d spent last night and ran up the stairs again. Tempest waited for him at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor when he emerged.
She took hold of his hand and led him swiftly up the stairs, past the rows of closed doors to the one Pallas and Abbott stood outside. “Let us know when it’s safe to come out tomorrow,” William told them. “I have a plan to get us out of here. The sooner we get it done, the sooner we can get out of this town.”
Pallas bit on her lip and nodded enthusiastically. “We have to go soon.”
“We will,” he promised.
“What about the children?” Tempest asked. “They have to come with us.”
“We’ll get them out of here too.”
He took hold of her elbow again and led her up the rickety stairs to the attic above. Below them, the door closed, the dim light it had provided faded away but faint slivers of illumination could be seen shining underneath the door. At the top of the stairs, Tempest opened another door. He stepped through it and into the massive attic.
Boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling in the corners of the room, cobwebs dangled from the thick wood beams running across the ceiling. The layer of dust coating everything would have made him sneeze if he’d still been human. Now it tickled his nose and filtered up around him when his footsteps fell onto the thick wood covering the floor. The dust sparkled in the fading sunlight filtering through the round windows at each side of the house.
He placed the blankets on the floor before walking over to one of the windows. There was no latch to open the windows; he’d have to bust the glass out if escape became necessary. He gazed down at the small alley between the orphanage and the building beside it. The twenty-five foot fall into the snow would be nothing for a vampire.
Satisfied they would have warning if someone was coming, and they’d have a chance of escape, he turned to Tempest. She stood in the middle of the attic, her fingers near her mouth as she bit at her nails. Pulling her hand away, she scowled at her fingers before shoving them down to her side. He hated the shoe polish in her pale hair and the uneasiness in her warm brown eyes, but he drank in the sight of her.