Vendetta Road

by Christine Feehan

  There was silence again as he listened. Again, he glanced at his watch, shook his head and then sighed. “Fine. But just get here, Harold. I’m telling you this place is haunted.” He shoved his phone in his back pocket and looked around the room again.

  He went over to the fireplace, picked up the remote and turned it on, so the flames danced and added more light. At the same time, the flickering fire threw more shadows, so they crept up the walls, reaching out with dark tentacles toward the ceiling. Swey sank onto the bed, staring into the fire.

  Take him anytime. We don’t need him, Ice. He’s low level. Doesn’t know shit about the top dogs. Czar gave the order.

  Consider it done.

  That was Ice. A glacier. Czar and the others could watch through the camera as Ice came out of the shadows right behind Swey just as the man jumped up and started to pace. Ice matched his strides exactly. Three steps in, Swey glanced at the wall to see his shadow cast against it. Right behind him was a second shadow, and in the hand reaching toward him was a very wicked-looking knife.

  Swey gasped and started to turn. Ice locked the man against him and jabbed the knife deep into his jugular. “For all those kids whose lives you destroyed, you sick fuck.” He whispered it into the man’s ear and then stepped back, letting him fall.

  Swey writhed on the floor, blood pouring onto the thick, luxurious and very white carpet. Ice stood watching with a cold, detached expression.

  Incoming, Absinthe reported. Sheriff SUV coming up the drive. Can’t identify the driver or if he’s alone in the vehicle.

  Lightning forked across the sky, lighting up the darkness, throwing the night into stark relief. Storm’s work, Czar was certain.

  Harold McDonald, Absinthe acknowledged. He’s alone.

  There was Absinthe. Like Ice, Storm and Alena, he’d been exceptionally beautiful. Sorbacov had seemed to find the children that suited him most. Absinthe had had an older brother, one he’d adored and looked up to. Absinthe was a beautiful soul. All of them could see that. Sweet, compassionate, not at all suited to live like a wolf, planning out kills meticulously and carrying them out. He was brilliant beyond measure. And so very talented.

  Sometimes the planning to kill each individual pedophile had taken weeks, or even months, depending on how difficult it had been to acquire the information needed to be successful. Czar hadn’t taken chances. They had been little kids and they could never have been seen or heard. Suspicion couldn’t have fallen on them or they’d have all been killed outright. That had been where Absinthe came in. His gifts were extraordinary, and he’d practiced all the time.

  Absinthe could remember conversations. He could read lips. He could influence with his voice. He could read others when touching them. That was both a gift and a curse. Somehow, he’d learned how to crawl inside minds, and when he did, he could wreak havoc. He was a human lie detector. Over the years those gifts had become even stronger. He’d grown quieter. Czar, like all of Torpedo Ink, worried about Savage the most, but Absinthe was a close second. He was too quiet. Too apart from them.

  Czar sighed and shook his head. He had a lot to answer for. He’d turned those children into killers in order for them to survive. That was their only way out, but one didn’t come back from that or the things done to them.

  There were two teams. Steele, the vice president of Torpedo Ink, ran the second. They always held one team back if possible, in order to have a full team to get one another out of trouble if it was necessary. Czar didn’t leave anything to chance. Each team had nine members. They were so used to working together, just like that wolf pack, each of them had a specific role, and they carried it out with the ease of practice.

  Together, they were a well-oiled machine, working off a careful master plan that was always fluid, but they never deviated from the safety rules put in place. It was better to walk away before they had completed their task than to die. They were patient, impassive, never bringing their emotions into play if it could be helped. They didn’t make mistakes. They had learned from the experience of losing other children that even a small error meant death.

  Harold McDonald, still in his sheriff’s uniform, parked his SUV in the covered parking spaces just to the left of the front door. The roof ran straight from the parking area to the porch, so no one would ever get a drop of rain on them if they didn’t want to. Harold didn’t want to.

  He strode straight to the door and pulled out his phone. “Yeah, I’m here. I’ll keep David here. He’s such a coward whenever there’s a storm.” There was a bit of a sneer in his voice. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  He listened for a moment, his hand on the knob of the front door. “Yeah, okay, but Avery, get here.”

  He yanked open the door as he shoved his cell phone into his jacket. He stepped inside and closed the door. “David.” Moving quickly, he hurried through the great room to the wide hall. “Where are you?”

  The house remained eerily silent. A slight breeze ran down the hallway, bringing a chill with it. The wind outside picked up. Howled for a moment. When it did, it brought the sound of a child crying with it. Harold halted abruptly and looked around. He put his hand on the wall.

  The crying continued. It sounded soft and pitiful. Hopeless. Harold’s breath came out in an angry rush. “David. Shut that kid up.” He looked in every direction, trying to figure out where the sound originated.

  The wind came down the hall again, that same slight breeze, but the temperature seemed to have dropped. This time a second child joined the first. Harold’s face turned slightly red.

  “Avery’s going to kill you for bringing those kids here without permission. What’s wrong with you, David?” He started down the hall again with long, angry strides.

  Now a third child could be heard. The voices had that same tone, soft, pitiful, weeping endlessly, without hope.

  Harold yanked open the door to the den. He took two steps inside the room and the door swung shut behind him with a loud bang. He visibly jumped. He looked around. The crying was louder, as if he were closer to the children, but there was no one in the room. Cursing, he strode back to the door and grasped the knob. Instantly a jolt of electricity ran up his arm and spread through his body. He almost seized. He yanked his hand back and staggered, rubbing his chest.

  That was Mechanic, Transporter’s younger brother, delivering the electricity to Harold. Mechanic had some kind of energy field in his body and could use it to disrupt electricity or send the charge outward. He could understand just about any electronics and absorbed information and technology easily. Both brothers, like Absinthe, could read at an astonishing rate, comprehend and retain what they read. Transporter had amazing hand-eye coordination. It was easy for him to drive at high rates of speed with his reflexes and keen sight.

  Reaper and Savage had to be the ones throwing the sound of children crying. They could mimic any sound, reproduce any voice. They were doing so now in perfect coordination. With Mechanic and Transporter, they were “herding” the sheriff where they wanted him, just as the wolf pack would do. Terrain could tip the favor to either predator or prey, so the pack would always know exactly the best place to take down their selected victim and how to get him there.

  Harold did exactly what they were certain he would. He avoided the door leading back to the hallway, not wanting to have anything to do with the doorknob that had inexplicably delivered jolting volts of electricity to his body. He went to the door leading to the sunroom. Very gingerly, he touched the doorknob. When nothing happened, he grabbed it, turned it and let go instantly.

  The door creaked open a couple of inches. The sound of the children crying grew louder. Frustrated, Harold yelled very loudly, “Shut those kids the hell up, David! I swear I’m going to shoot you if they don’t stop.”

  The wails increased, and it sounded as if there were a dozen children crying. Harold put his hands over his ears a
s if that would drown out the sound. He nudged open the door with the toe of his boot. It was dark in the room. Through the glass of the sunroom, he could see the brewing storm. The wind had picked up and the trees were swaying, bending toward the house, branches whipping around as if in a frenzy.

  “Harold. How lovely of you to join me.” Alena’s voice came out of the darkness. She had the voice of an angel. Soft and musical. “David said you’d be here soon. Make them stop crying. They’re so sad. So many of them. They told me it was you. You helped those men and women hurt them. You like to hurt them.”

  Alena. Czar closed his eyes for a moment. She was one of the two females they’d managed to save. Like Ice and Storm, she had that natural platinum hair, so blond the thick mass looked like mixtures of silver, gold and white. Her eyes were the same ice blue as her brothers’. She was a beautiful woman, but like the men, she had scars. Too many. Terrible things had been done to her as a child. Even more as a young girl and then even more as a teen. There had been no saving her from their pack. If she wanted to live, she had to become what they were—killers. Like Ice and Storm, there was determination in Alena. She had learned, and Czar had taken on another responsibility and another sorrow.

  Harold drew his weapon and pointed it into the shadows of the dark room, first in one direction and then in another, turning in a circle in an effort to locate her. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “You don’t know who I am?” There was amusement in her voice. “I’m your conscience. I’m the one you should have listened to when you were hurting those little boys. You heard me, but you kept ignoring me.”

  Harold squeezed the trigger, firing in rapid succession, all along the wall where the voice seemed to be coming from. Each bullet leaving the chamber seemed to turn up the temperature of both the room and his weapon. Sweat broke out. Maybe it was the children and their incessant crying.

  “David! Shut them the hell up!” He screamed it and wiped at the sweat dripping from his forehead with his arm. He had a holdout gun in his boot, and for some reason it felt like a brand pressed against his ankle.

  “David can’t make them stop,” Alena said. “Only you can do that. David is dead. You wanted him dead. I heard your thoughts. You wanted to slice his throat so many times to shut him up. You thought he was a weak link, and you didn’t like him knowing Avery or you.”

  Harold let off another round of bullets, nearly emptying his weapon into the wall. “How do you know these things?” he screamed. “David was a weasel. He would have given us up in a heartbeat if anyone caught him. Yeah, I wanted him dead. I talked to Avery a million times about it. So what? Come out where I can see you.”

  Alena’s soft laughter could barely be heard above the crying children. They wailed constantly now, so many of them. “How can a conscience come out where you can see it? You barely hear me when I protest the things you’re doing.”

  Harold whirled around and rushed to the door leading back to the sitting room. Before he grasped the doorknob, he hesitated and then tried to yank. The door refused to budge. The doorknob delivered another very hard jolt, the electricity running through his body, burning through him. He yelled and dragged his hand back. The other one, the hand with the gun, was burning now. So was his ankle where his holdout was.

  Cursing, Harold hurried through the room to the other side. He put his hand near the door and immediately felt the electrical energy. He didn’t grab it. Instead, he whirled around and screamed at the voice. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to pay. They want you to pay. Can’t you hear them crying out for justice? You want that for them, don’t you, Harold?”

  Her voice sounded so angelic. So pure. So reasonable. Harold found his gun hand coming up toward his head. Gasping, he shook his head and forced it toward the large plates of glass that made up the outside wall. The sunroom looked like a massive porch walled in with glass on three sides. To get out of it, he determined he would simply shoot out the panels. He began squeezing the trigger, shattering the glass.

  Each bullet fired raised the temperature of the metal on his gun. His hand burned. He glanced down at the weapon and it glowed red orange in the dark. Startled, he yelped and let go. Inside his boot, he could see the same orange-red glow. His calf burned like a mother. He didn’t want to take the time to pull the gun from his boot. He just wanted away from those bawling, sniveling children and that voice that seemed to consume him.

  Harold ran toward the glass panels, raised his arms to cover his face and leapt. He felt the glass shatter around him, go into him, dozens of pieces as he passed through. He hit the ground, rolled and stood up, looking back into the room and giving it the finger. He had gotten out. He reached for his cell phone to warn Avery. As he did so, he turned. Something jerked at his chest. He stared into the iciest blue eyes he’d ever seen. They looked like two twin crystals.

  “Who are . . .” He staggered and looked down at his chest.

  Frowning, he saw a handle sticking out of it. He went to his knees. “What is this?”

  “The children you hurt send their regards, Harold,” Alena said. Her voice was detached, composed, serene even. She stepped back and walked away.

  The main man has arrived. He’s driving right up to the front entrance now, Absinthe warned.

  Ice and Storm immediately reacted, increasing the rain, dropping the temperature so every drop was icy and uncomfortable. That would ensure Avery would go straight through the front door and not go around back where Harold’s body could be discovered. Avery was dressed in a long black trench coat. He slammed the driver’s side door closed, took two running steps toward the front door, still under the canopy so he wasn’t getting wet, but he turned back.

  Avery isn’t alone. He has a companion with him. Repeat. Avery isn’t alone. Second man is tall, maybe six foot two or three. Looks to be in excellent shape. Sending picture to Code to get ID right now.

  Czar rubbed his chin on the back of his hand as he studied the situation. If they aborted now, Avery would know he was under a death sentence and would scurry into the woodwork. The others waited for his decision.

  We’ll stick to the plan. Reaper, the second man, you and Storm deal with. Ice, Savage, you’re still on Avery. Czar hated giving those orders.

  He had promised himself that when they found a home, he would find a way to ease his Torpedo Ink family out of what they’d been doing for most of their lives—what he’d gotten them into doing. They had been shaped into killers by him in order to survive. They’d been taught how to seduce and kill by their instructors, so they were “useful” to their government—and Sorbacov—as assassins. They had been fucked up sexually by their childhood training. They had joined an MC club to take down the Swords international president. Now they hunted pedophiles. It was never-ending.

  On it, Reaper said.

  With Reaper, Storm acknowledged.

  Ice and Savage were up, and they needed to get a single name from Avery. It would be nice if they could get more than one. Czar wanted to know the name of the Russian. He was certain he was one of the few pedophile instructors they’d left alive. He was someone who traveled back and forth from Russia, and he was highly intelligent. Czar had every confidence that they’d track him down. Their first priority had to be the collector. He was murdering families and taking innocent children to fulfill orders from his sick clients. He had to be stopped.

  Czar rubbed his aching head and watched the rest of the drama unfold. The moment Savage and Ice had Avery in their custody, and Reaper and Storm indicated the stranger was taken care of, the others would go through the house looking for anything they could find that would help them find others in the large ring.

  Avery flung open his front door and stepped back to wave the newcomer through.

  Code says the man with Avery is named Jay Gordon. He’s affiliated with the human trafficking ring both Yeger and Ku
shnir were involved with. Looks to me like he wants to climb the ladder. They were slightly turned away from me, so I was only partially able to catch what they were saying. Gordon believes with a little backing from Avery he can take the lead. Absinthe delivered the information to all of them.

  Czar quickly analyzed the information and added to the pool of general knowledge. Avery works for the San Francisco PD. He runs their tech department. That gives him access to where all the cops are and what kinds of operations the cops are running. He must be helping the human trafficking ring as well.

  Avery walked with complete confidence through the foyer into the great room without turning on a light. The house had gone quiet. There was only the sound of the wind outside and the occasional creak of an old house settling. Jay followed close behind him, taking a moment to look around and then hurrying to catch up.

  “You must love the privacy out here, man,” Jay said admiringly. “Must be nice. We could use a place like this. Set the girls up and have the men come to them.”

  “Too much traffic on a road like this, sooner or later you’d be noticed. Harold can only do so much.” Avery turned into the hall. No lights were on other than one shining under the door of the room straight ahead—the master bedroom. “That’s weird. I thought they were going to meet me in the den, but it looks like they’re in the master bedroom.”

  He didn’t miss a step but continued on down the hall toward his bedroom. “I only use this house on weekends. Or if I have sick days coming, or a vacation. Then it’s perfect. I can have a nice leisurely time, and no one can hear the screaming but me, just the way I like it.”

  “I prefer to hear them moaning around my cock.”

  Avery shook his head. “You know those teenagers you like aren’t into it, right? They’re strung out on drugs and do whatever you say because if they don’t, someone’s going to hurt them. Seriously hurt them. That’s the way it works, right?” He stopped at his bedroom door and looked at his guest over his shoulder. “Better to be honest than a hypocrite. Just own what your preference is and to hell with everyone else.”