Redemption (Jane #4) Read online

  Redemption

  (A Jane novella)

  By

  Samantha Warren

  © 2011 Samantha Warren

  Smashwords Edition

  The following story is a work of fiction and all names and characters are strictly the creation of the author.

  All rights reserved.

  This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without expressed written consent from Samantha Warren.

  Cover Art © 2011 Samantha Warren

  PROLOGUE

  The world spun as I tried to stand. At least it remained blurry instead of fading completely to black. I realized after a couple seconds that standing wasn't going to be an option. The most I could muster was rolling to my side. My cheek rested against the rough pavement and I could smell blood--my blood. A quick glance to the side told me that a lot of it lay on the ground under me and the sight set my stomach pulsing.

  I coughed and more blood splattered the blacktop. I placed my right hand on the tarred surface and pushed, giving myself enough leverage to bring my left elbow underneath me. I balanced there, fighting against the nauseating twirl of the planet. A few deep breaths later and I had my digestive system under control. Turning my head slowly, I surveyed the scene.

  Several feet away, I could see two vampires I didn't recognize. Both were laying on the pavement. One, a female, looked like her neck was broken. She stared at me, eyes and mouth wide, but didn't move. I couldn't tell if she was dead or alive from that distance. The male was missing an arm and a leg. He lay on his back, his remaining hand pressed to his chest. I could see blood dripping down his side to join the ever-growing pool beneath him. His chest rose and fell in jagged breaths while his lips moved. If he was saying anything coherent, I was too far away to hear him.

  A familiar boot off to my left drew my gaze. I cringed as I recognized the man attached to it--Jax. He was on his side, his back to me, unmoving. With his armor, I couldn't tell if he was still breathing. A quick glance around showed no others from my team, so I made it my goal to help Jax if I could. Using what little strength I had, I pulled myself forward, grunting with the effort. Something below my ribcage but above my hips felt wrong and my legs wouldn't work properly. I've never been one for biology and I pushed aside thoughts of permanent disability while reminding myself that vampires can heal better than any other species on the planet.

  After several agonizingly painful minutes, I'd dragged myself the ten feet to Jax. His eyes were closed, his face covered in blood. I leaned in close, sending up a silent prayer. I almost cried aloud when I heard the faint, gasping breaths echoing from his partially opened mouth. Shoving my hand up under his body armor, I felt around for the cause of his incapacitated state and found it quickly. In his chest, just under his arm where the armor stops to allow freedom of movement, was a hole. After a bit more searching, I found the accompanying exit wound.

  As I reached for the first aid kit on my belt, I heard a roar behind me. I jerked my head around, cursing inwardly as the world tilted and my stomach heaved. My left arm gave out and I landed heavily on my back, gasping for air while I fought the urge to vomit all over myself. I turned my head to the right, toward the growling sound that continued unabated. Felipe lay pinned beneath our Humvee, his muscles bulging as he attempted to push the vehicle off his lower extremities. My gaze was drawn to his left, though, where a blood-covered female vampire stalked toward him, her lips curled into a vicious snarl, makeshift stake in hand.

  My nostrils flared and my eyes burned with tears that were sure to shed. Donna. Her clothes were in tatters, her hair a mess. I could barely recognize her through the dirt and blood stains on her face, neck, and arms, but it was most definitely Donna--the bubbly, dog-grooming fashionista who had been my first friend at the sanctuary. And she was heading toward my boyfriend with a very sharp, very deadly piece of wood.

  "Noooo." The voice sounded hoarse, pained, and unfamiliar, but I knew it was mine. My body moved before I thought to move, trying to draw itself toward the fallen vampire. I reached out a hand, clawing at the black stones, pulling myself forward. Felipe turned his head from the Hummer, seeing the oncoming attacker, then tilted his head as far as it would go. His dark eyes landed on mine, terrified. My heart seized. For the year that I'd known Felipe, I'd never seen him afraid of anything, much less death. But this was different, so different.

  I opened my mouth to cry out, to plead with Donna for mercy, to tell Felipe that I loved him. The words never came. An unexpected pain blossomed across the back of my head, spidering out across my skull. The horrible agony was followed by an uncontrollable urge to yack. As my breakfast finally freed itself, my vision blurred, shrinking until all I could see were Felipe's eyes, dark and pleading. Then they were gone.

  ONE

  After the death of Ado, the mood in our group of vampire hunters changed. Drastically. It was no longer just about doing our job and hunting down rogue vampires. It was about revenge. We didn't want to just find and kill Felipe's murderer; we wanted to inflict as much pain on him as possible. In the months since that horrible, fateful day, we had taken down eight covens of freshly-turned vampires and their snacks. But it wasn't enough. More kept popping up. When we started, there had been sixteen in our district. After taking out the eight, we still had twelve confirmed locations to deal with.

  "This isn't effing working!" Felipe paced the debriefing room after our most recent slaughter. "We have to do more. We need help."

  Father Bellini sat in a chair, staring at Felipe silently while the vampire raged. The rest of the team had left, seeking to avoid the verbal slaughter that was about to occur, but I stayed, hoping to keep the two frustrated men from killing each other on sanctuary grounds.

  "And what do you suggest, Felipe? We are pulling all our resources, doing the best we can. We've found and handled three of Conrad's accomplices. We are making progress."

  Felipe scoffed. "Handled? They sit locked in rooms in the sanctuary, fed, clothed, entertained. They need to be punished. Harshly, so others are afraid to cave to Conrad's false promises."

  "You know we can't do that. We need them for information, and it is not our way to inflict cruelty on those who have done wrong. We are not like them."

  "No, we're not like them. So we sit here every day talking, hoping that will prevent others from being turned and dying." Felipe stormed out, the door slamming so hard I felt the chair beneath me shake.

  Father Bellini sighed and placed his elbows on the table, resting his forehead in his hands. I sat silently, not having any idea what to say or how to help. This was so far beyond anything I'd ever experienced before. Since the crackdown on the unapproved vampires began, the hunter teams had taken down more than three dozen covens. But we'd suffered our fair share of casualties, too. An entire team in Russia had been wiped out. They'd received false information and went into a job expecting ten vampires. They met three times that many, including two of the older rogues we'd been hunting. One human made it back to his sanctuary, but he died of his wounds a day later.

  The Americans had four teams dealing with more than two dozen covens. Like ours, their teams were made up of four vampires and two humans each. They had lost half their humans and a third of their vampires trying to take out the rogues and their offspring. Several reports stated that the new vampires had been trained and given weapons powerful enough to take down even a seasoned vampire. I thanked the stars that I had ended up in an Italian sanctuary and not in America when I was turned.

  "I just don't know what else to do, Jane." Father Bellini's voice made me jump. I'd gotten lost in my own thoughts and forgotten he was there. I turned to look at him, opened my mouth, and snapped it shut again, shrugging.

>   He scratched his chin, thinking. "We need help. I think..." Bellini sighed, shaking his head, his forehead creased. "I think I need to talk to the Pope."

  That made me sit up straight. The Pope? Bellini had access to the Pope? He saw my expression and a weary chuckle escaped his lips. "Yes, Jane. I know the Pope. He's really quite a nice man. And he has access to more... powerful weapons, I guess you could say."

  "What kind of weapons?" I couldn't imagine anything more powerful than vampires. Well, I could, but I sure as hell didn't want to meet them.

  He just shook his head again, sinking back into his thoughts. I bit my lip and waited a few more minutes. When he didn't stir, I got up and wandered down the hall. Felipe wasn't in his bedroom, the dining room, or the lounge, so I headed to the gym. By the time I got there, he'd almost pulverized one of the punching bags. Sand trails lined the floor, showing the erratic path the bag had taken after his multiple kicks and punches. I leaned against the wall and watched his muscled, sweaty form until the bag broke, fabric and what little was left of the sand tumbling across the black mats to land in a lumpy heap.

  Felipe snarled at the mutilated bag and turned, looking for something else to punch. When his eyes settled on me, I raised my eyebrow in a just-you-try-it way, which brought a faint smile to his hard face. His signature smirk had hidden away since Ado's death, only appearing on special occasions, and only when we were alone. The most I usually got was a faint curl of the lips paired with a strange, deep sadness in his dark eyes.

  He walked over to the boxing ring to pick up a towel he'd draped over the ropes. I followed him, taking the towel from his hands, and stood before him, carefully wiping every drop of glistening sweat from his bare neck, chest, and arms. It was horribly tedious work and I didn't enjoy a bit of it--if you believe that, I have an oceanside beach house on prime real estate in Idaho I'll sell you.

  When I finished, he grabbed the towel from me and tossed it to the floor, pulling me in close to him. His skin was warm and still a bit moist. The scent of his sweat mingled with the cologne he'd put on that day, forming a strange combination of nauseating wonderfulness. I leaned into him, resting my cheek on his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his waist. He propped his chin on my head, sighing audibly.

  We stood like that, quiet and safe, for a good ten minutes. That's one of the things about vampires. They don't have to move if they don't want to. I've stayed in the same damn position for over seven hours once. Hurt like hell when I finally moved, but it was worth the pain.

  Felipe's heavy sigh brought me out of the contented zone of nothingness I had drifted into. I looked up, searching for his beautiful eyes. He gazed down at me, a faint, sad smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

  "Let's go watch a movie or something. I need mindless entertainment."

  I bit my lip, failing miserably to suppress a grin as I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

  "Not that type of mindless entertainment, you dirty little girl." He pinched my side, making me squeal. I swatted him away and he laughed. "Come on. Let's go find a movie."

  On the way to the lounge, I sent Annie a text and invited her and Jax to join us. They arrived while I was standing in front of the shelves and shelves of DVDs. Finding the one I wanted, I pulled it from its home and turned to face the group with a grin on my face. It'd been a long time since I'd watched that movie, and if Felipe wanted mindless entertainment, I'd be sure he got it.

  "Alright! A woman after my own heart!" Jax began clapping in excitement and earned a playful smack from Annie.

  "Is that the movie you're always gushing about? The 'best of the worst'?" Felipe looked at me, eyebrow raised in concern at the comic on the green cover.

  "You bet it is."

  I spun from him and popped the DVD in. As the beginning credits rolled, Felipe's grumbling was stifled by my pointy elbow. "No groaning during Tank Girl!"

  For the next hour and a half, Felipe's exaggerated groans alternated with muted laughter as Annie, Jax, and I quoted our favorite parts--pretty much the entire movie. Puh puh puh pow! He even joined us in a horribly tone-def rendition of Coltrane's Let's Do It. When the final credits began, Felipe disentangled himself from me and stretched.

  "I can't believe you made me watch that horrible garbage."

  My mouth dropped and I punched him, a little harder than I meant to, in his tightly stretched abdomen. He doubled over, moaning and gasping for air. I'm sure he was at least half joking, but I apologized profusely anyway until he quit pouting and suggested we go find an open ice cream store. It was the first time in months that he and Jax showed signs of wanting to have even a modicum of fun, so Annie and I jumped at the idea.

  By the time we made it back to the sanctuary, both boys had opened up and Felipe actually pulled out his classic smirk once or twice. Seeing him finally relax made my heart soar and I almost didn't want to head back home. His room was next to Ado's and his mood changed noticeably every time he headed into that hallway. When he walked me to my door, I held his hand.

  "Stay here tonight."

  "Jane..." His eyes were sad again, but not for the usual reasons.

  "I just want to be near you. This is the first time we've really had any fun in months, and I don't want it to end."

  He stood there, my hands in his, looking from me to my bedroom and back again. Finally, when I was certain he'd say no, he nodded almost imperceptibly, then swooped me off my feet and carried me in, closing the door behind us.

  TWO

  "I've made a call. We're getting reinforcements."

  "It's about damn time."

  Felipe sat in his chair, arms crossed, scowl planted firmly on his face as Father Bellini glared at him. They had been at each other's throats for months now. Both were stressed beyond belief, the weight of the world on their collective shoulders. It was easier for them to focus their anger on each other than admit they were overwhelmed and terrified. Bellini's lips puckered in an irritated frown before turning to the rest of the team.

  "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we're getting reinforcements. You will be supplemented with a twelve-man infantry team. This also means we will be stepping up the attacks. You'll have less time to prepare between assaults. We want to take out these covens before they have a chance to multiply."

  "So when do we meet these guys?" That was Nathan, an American transplant who had lived in Italy for half a century. He had replaced Ado physically, but his attitude couldn't be different. He was friendly, carefree, and didn't even let Felipe's sourness foul his mood. None of us liked him much.

  "They'll be here tomorrow."

  "Any vampires on the team?"

  "Not at this time. We're looking to borrow a few from other companies around the country, but most of them are engaged at the moment."

  "Engaged with what? What could be more important than stopping a plague of untrained, unauthorized, blood-sucking serial killers?" Ronin. His faith had suffered a bit during the last several months, but he still tried to get us to come to his sermons every weekend. I'd folded to his constant prodding and attended a service once. He was a powerful speaker, but I could hear the pain and frustration in his voice as he preached from the pulpit.

  "Vampires aren't the only bad guys in the world. Humans tend to cause their own problems, as I'm sure you know, and terrorism still ranks quite high on the nuisance scale. Not to mention that some are still dealing with that ogre attack from a few weeks ago." Ronin knew all that already, but he still grumbled in annoyance.

  A silence fell in the room. There was nothing else to be said and the casual banter from months before had disappeared. With a nod, Bellini dismissed us and we filed out, exhausted both emotionally and physically, struggling to combat a group of vampires we couldn't completely name. We knew some of the culprits. The ones we had been able to identify before they absconded had been captured and held at a secure facility deep in Siberia.

  I agreed with Felipe on that one. They had broken the rules, turned pe
ople (often against their will) into creatures of the night without permission from those who make the decisions. Now there were hundreds of these new vampires roaming the civilized world, unschooled in ways to avoid detection and unaware--or unconcerned--that they were vile creatures doomed to the pits of hell if they didn't change their ways. They were teenagers, many of them, frightened and lost, drawn into a life they didn't want or ask for. Much like Marta, the girl we rescued from the crack-addicted coven--the coven that led to Ado's death.

  Marta had gone through a brutal detox, still addicted to the drug after a month of being a vampire. For hours, I sat with her in a windowless room, holding her hand or holding her down, depending on her mood at the time. She frequently bounced between thankful for us saving her life and hating us for not killing her with the rest of her new friends. She never once tried to hurt me or anyone else after that night, but she did try to take herself out more than a few times. It took three months before we could leave her alone without her being sedated. She still has episodes on occasion, but they typically fall along the lines of self-pitying sob fests rather than suicidal screaming sessions. I'd say we made definite progress.

  As we were leaving the room, Father Bellini pulled Felipe aside, inviting him to his office for a little tete-a-tete discussion. Not wanting to be part of that painful experience, I bid them both farewell and headed off to find the girls. I often sought out Annie and Marta after a tense session like the one I just attended. Though they had been affected by the war we were waging, they were still sheltered enough from its horrors to be pleasantly girly company. They were right where I hoped they'd be--hanging out in the lounge watching Project Runway repeats. I'm far from a fashion guru--jeans and t-shirts all the way, baby--but that show is horribly addicting. Damn you, Heidi Klum. You and your auf weidersein.