Page 77 of Caretaker

Chapter Twenty-Six

“My God,” I cried. “What’s happening?”

The night was suddenly full of voices. Guards, the humans who’d ferried over for a weekend of fun, the tortured vampires. The entire island would be scoured until the murderer of the checkpoint guards was found. More guards were called in.

Overhead, another helicopter sounded.

“We’re soon to be outnumbered,” Al said. “We’re sort of fucked, my friends.”

I ran grimly on, following my nose to Madalyn.

And then I saw the vampires.

The supernaturals weren’t sensitive to silver—with the rare exception—but vampires were. Therefore it was easy to hold them, once they were captured.

Almost to the tree line were a dozen cages, and even as I ran toward them, I saw hatches lift. More vampires climbed from the ground inside those cages, and the moans grew louder. They stumbled around, not getting too close to the silvered cage bars, and they cried. They moaned, begged, starved.

In a cage between them was Madalyn. She lay sprawled on the ground, unmoving, bleeding. The scent of her blood was whipping the starving vampires into a frenzy, and I understood one thing immediately.

She was being used as a food source for the vampires, who’d likely been starved since the epidemic had begun. There were no infecteds inside those cages. Though the vampires were insanely hungry, they were not sick.

Perhaps Madalyn had just arrived and they’d not yet been fed, but the vampires were maddened by her scent.

And then they sniffed the air as they caught the scent of another pure-blooded human. Me.

They quieted for a heartbeat, and then the rush of their voices swelled anew, even louder. More desperate.

“Why?” I asked, my voice jerking as I ran.

“Fun, of course,” Alejandro said. “Fights, money, humans.”

There were perhaps two dozen vampires, and even if they didn’t realize it, being on the island had saved their lives. They were hungry, but they were not infected.

I wondered, for a second, how long they’d been there. Decades, likely. No wonder they were full of despair.

And then Amias darted from the shadows, glanced my way, and began ripping the locks from the cages and flinging open the doors. All of them except Madalyn’s.

The burns he received had to have been agonizing, but he didn’t make a sound, and he didn’t pause.

‘You’ve made him strong enough to do that,” Clayton said.

“Listen,” Al said.

“Motorcycles,” I replied.

Then two of them sped toward us, followed by half a dozen golf carts.

Men wearing protective vests, holding electroshock guns, batons, and blades swarmed the area.

We were surrounded by not only humans, but vampires.

And we had maybe two minutes before they reached us.

Amias was suddenly beside me, his eyes feverish, his face pale. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he told me. “But I had to release them. They will distract the humans.”

He didn’t add that he’d been unable to bear their suffering and would have released them anyway, but I knew.

His burned hands trembled but even as he stood there, he began to heal. “I’ll do what I can to turn them away from you,” he said. “Get the woman.”