Free Vampire Beach Hunted by Alex Duval Page A

with him.
    Van Dyke wiped his face with his fingers. ‘I’ll try. But I’m telling you right now I don’t remember everything.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘So, the beginning: I get a call from Maggie.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘I start driving over there. On the way, there’s an accident blocking the road. I can see a body on the street.’
    Jason heard Belle give a little gasp.
    ‘I pulled over and ran to check on the guy. I wasn’t sure if he was still alive. I had my cell out. I was about to call 911. But when I leant down to check his pulse, he sat up and zapped me with some kind of stun gun,’ Van Dyke explained.
    Brad looked like he badly wanted to punch something again. Jason felt the same way.
    ‘When you get hit with one of those, your whole nervous system gets disabled. Human or vampire,’ Van Dyke continued. ‘So I’m on the ground. I can’t move. And five guys – I think five – pour out of the van. I forgot to say that one of the vehicles in the accident was a van,’ Van Dyke added, turning to Zach. ‘The guys had me in the back in seconds and we were out of there.’
    ‘One of them must have driven your car off,’ Brad said. ‘There was no sign of it when we followed your route to Maggie’s house.’
    ‘They really had the whole thing planned out,’ Jason added. ‘Not just staging the accident, but slashing Maggie’s tires. They must know you’re her boyfriend and figured that she’d call you for a ride. They knew exactly which streets you’d take to get to her place, too.’ They aren’t going to be easy to stop , he thought.
    ‘They have to have been watching us closely to know all that. I don’t like it,’ Belle said.
    ‘That’s the kind of information we need about them. That kind of detail,’ Zach told them, his voice cold.
    Zach’s not going to be easy to stop, either , Jason acknowledged. He looked around the room. At Brad’s clenched fists. Maggie’s tight jaw. Erin’s ramrod straight posture. Sienna’s blazing eyes. None of them would be easy to stop. They were all pissed off. Even Zach in his own icy way. And Belle, scared as she was. One of their own had been hurt and someone was going to pay.
    ‘What do you remember about where you were held?’ Zach asked Van Dyke.
    ‘My cell was small,’ he answered slowly.
    ‘Cell!’ Belle exclaimed, outraged.
    ‘It was . . . maybe . . . nine by six,’ Van Dyke continued. ‘A cot. A bucket. Damp. Smelly, obviously. It’s weird, because other parts of the place were really hi-tech. They brought me into operating rooms a couple of times.’
    Jason saw Sienna’s face pale. His hand drifted to the spot on his head that had been shaved on Van Dyke’s. When he realized what he’d done, he jammed his hand in his pocket.
    ‘Were the people who captured you human?’ Brad asked.
    ‘Yeah. But they had some hi-tech equipment. They strapped me on a gurney to move me and the straps were made of nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like something from a space shuttle. I couldn’t make even a tiny tear in them. Sometimes they half knocked me out with gas. Every time they wanted me not to use my strength, they gassed me.’ Van Dyke stared blankly into space for a moment. It seemed like he was focusing on a memory. Then he gave his head a brisk shake. ‘Like I said, I wasn’t always conscious, but I know they drew a lot of blood from me, and they took some spinal fluid. And they kept sticking me with these long needles. Not injecting me. Pulling stuff out.’
    ‘It sounds like they were doing biopsies of your organs,’ Adam said. ‘They were doing a real workup on you.’
    ‘Is that what happened to his head? A brain biopsy?’ Erin asked.
    ‘Maybe,’ Adam replied.
    ‘How did you get out of there?’ Maggie asked Van Dyke. Her eyes shimmered with tears she wasn’t allowing herself to shed.
    ‘They have another vampire,’ Van Dyke told the group. ‘I should have said that right up front. Christopher.