Even though he wasn’t entirely sure it would.
When the car pulled away from the curb, as Violet’s entire body shook from the rush of anger and fear and the sheer injustice of it all, Harper sighed and said, “Well, that didn’t go at all as planned, did it?”
Violet couldn’t hold back a derisive snort. “You think?”
Harper just shook her head. “The big love declarations just aren’t as simple as the Hallmark Channel would lead us to believe.”
“Word,” Benny agreed.
Yes. Word indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Two hours and three cups of crappy police station coffee later, and Cunningham still hadn’t released Nikolai. Violet was starting to wonder if he ever would. Maybe they just planned to keep him in that interrogation room, grilling him until he confessed to something, anything they could officially lock him up for.
Harper didn’t look up from her phone, but said, “If you don’t sit down willingly, I’m going to sit you down. I’ll super glue your ass to that chair if I have to. Your pacing isn’t doing anyone any good, and it’s driving me nuts.”
With a heavy sigh and absolutely zero doubt that Harper would make good on her threat, Violet dropped into the hard plastic chair next to Harper. They were sitting in the middle of the police station’s bullpen, and the combined smell of day-old doughnuts, burnt coffee, dust, and something unidentifiable (the stench of injustice, most likely) were starting to give Violet a headache.
Or maybe that was just the lingering possibility of Nikolai being sent to Midvale for crimes he didn’t commit that was paining her so.
Harper slipped her phone back into her oversized, slouchy handbag and glanced over at Violet. “It’s going to be OK, you know. The lawyer Hunter sent over is the best. He’s a total weasel—figuratively and literally, since he’s a weasel shifter—but really good at what he does. Trust me. When he’s done with them, the cops will be tripping all over themselves to apologize to Nikolai and fist-fighting over who gets to drive him home.”
God, Violet hoped Harper was right. Nikolai had already been through so much. He deserved for things to go his way just this once. Then, the other part of what Harper said sank in, and she asked, “There are weasel shifters?”
Across from them, sprawled across a lumpy brown leather loveseat reading what looked to be a year-old copy of Guns and Ammo magazine he’d lifted from a cop’s desk drawer, Benny snorted and said, “Doc, there are every kind of shifters out there. There was this dude who used to come into the Rag Tag every month.” He held his hand up. “Hand to Jesus, alpaca shifter.”
Harper leaned forward in her chair. “Really?”
“I shit you not. And don’t even get me started on the honey badger shifters.” He shuddered.
“Oh, I have so many questions.”
Violet tuned them out as Harper fired her alpaca and honey badger shifter questions at Benny. Not that she wasn’t grateful for the distraction from what must be going on in the interrogation room with Nikolai, but she almost wished Harper and Benny had left with Mischa and Riddick. Some alone time definitely would be welcome at the moment. Time to figure out exactly what she was going to say to Nikolai when he finally—
Violet gasped as the power went out. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights, computers, desktop fans, the whir of the heating and air conditioning system…it all died, leaving an eerie stillness in its wake, an utter lack of sound that was almost unheard of in the city.
The handful of cops that were scattered around the bullpen started murmuring, wondering when the backup generator was going to kick in and power everything back up.
It didn’t.
Harper made a noise that was half growl, half groan. “Swear to God, if Mischa and Hunter are fucking and knocked the power out again, I’m gonna be pissed.”
Violet glanced toward the only window in the room and saw the faint, blinking neon-pink glow of the Jack’s Doughnuts sign next door. A growing sense of dread gnawed at her. “It’s not a city-wide blackout.”
“Oh, man,” Benny whispered. “I do not have a good feeling about this.”
Harper eased a Glock out of her purse and the sound it made as she pulled back the slide and let it spring forward was as loud as cannon fire in the quiet station. “I don’t either,” she muttered.
The front door of the station made a sound like a wail of pain as it screeched open on rusty hinges. The cop closest to the door had only a scant second to yell, “Gun!” before a shot was fired.
“Get down!” Harper shouted, shoving Violet to the floor.
Two more shots were fired as Benny dove on top of her, shielding her with his body as the cops around them rushed the shooter. Or, shooters, more likely, as it now sounded.
Screams and the frantic shouting of orders filled the air as shots were fired and bullets pinged off the walls around them, but Violet could barely hear them over her own ragged breathing and the pounding of her pulse.
Above her, Benny’s body flinched, then was suddenly just…gone. As if he’d been lifted and thrown off her. Before Violet could even think of getting away, something sharp pinched her neck.
She heard Harper scream her name and fire off a shot before everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nikolai was pretty sure his heart stopped when the lights went out and the gunfire started.
Violet.
He shot to his feet, giving the cuffs they’d used to chain him to the interrogation table—standard procedure, my ass—a tug. The cuffs remained intact, but the table lifted a good inch or two off the ground. Great. He really didn’t want to have to drag the fucking table around with him, but he supposed he could if necessary. “You need to let me go. Now.”
Cunningham crouched down behind the door, gun drawn and poised to shoot at anyone who might try to get into the room. The lawyer had dived under the table when the first shot was fired.
“Get down, dumbass!” Cunningham shouted at Nikolai. “You’re going to get yourself shot.”
Screams, pained grunts, and more gunfire sounded on the other side of the door. Nikolai’s head spun. It sounded like the end of the world out there and Violet was right in the middle of all of it.
“Please,” he spit out, not even caring how desperate he sounded. “I have to get to her! You have to let me go!”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Cunningham spit back at him. “How do I know you’re not behind all this and those aren’t your people out there?”
Jesus. He’d been a damn fool to think he could explain anything to this guy, to prove his innocence or his devotion to Violet. In this cop’s small mind, Nikolai was the bad guy and always would be.
He’d tried to do this the right way. The human way. And look where it’d gotten him. Chained to a desk in a police station under siege while the woman he loved was right on the other side of the door, probably fearing for her life.
Time to do things the only way he knew for a fact worked.
Adrenaline flooded his system as he leapt onto the table, holding it down with his weight while he yanked on the cuffs with all his strength. The cuffs snapped under the pressure.
Cunningham turned, his eyes widening as he instinctively turned his gun on Nikolai. In a flash of inhuman speed, he jumped down and rushed Cunningham, snatching the gun from his hand and flinging it across the room before shoving the cop out of his way. His elbow hit the cop’s nose in the process and blood splattered across the front of Nikolai’s shirt.
“Ow, Jesus, you broke my fucking nose!” Cunningham wailed from his position on the floor. He tried to get up, but Nikolai shoved him back down.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
“You’re going to rot in Midvale, motherfucker!” Cunningham cried, pressing a hand over his bloody nose. “You’ll pay for this!”
“You can’t threaten my client like that!” the lawyer shouted from his hiding spot under the table. “The Council will see to it that you’re—�
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Nikolai ignored them both as he eased the door open and stepped into the darkened bullpen. The acrid stench of gunpowder burned his nostrils as he scanned the room. Fortunately, dhampyres had superior night vision, so the power outage didn’t really slow him down.
Son of a bitch, the place was crawling with hostiles, all vampires, all armed. The human cops were hopelessly outmanned. Half of the ones who’d been in the bullpen when Nikolai went into the interrogation room were down, wounded or dead. The other half were gone, having either left before the shooting started, or run when it did.
And he didn’t see Violet anywhere.
He’d just have to kill every last one of these motherfuckers until he found her. Might as well start right here…
Nikolai grabbed the gun hand of the vampire closest to him, aimed it at one of the other’s heads, double-tapped the trigger, then snapped the vamp’s neck before he even had time to react. The two limp bodies hit the floor at the same moment, but Nikolai had already moved on to his next target.
A monster of a vamp in some kind of biker club cut had a wounded cop down on the ground and was trying to feed off him. The cop was kicking and clawing at the vamp, but with what looked to be a gunshot wound through his shoulder, his efforts were ineffectual at best.
Nikolai grabbed a fistful of the biker vamp’s greasy ponytail and yanked him off the cop, tossing him backward. Then he caught the vamp with a back-kick to the chin. The sound of crunching bone and cartilage let him know the vamp’s neck had snapped on impact, but once again, before the vamp’s body hit the floor, Nikolai moved on.
Two vamps came at him at once and before he could drop into his fighting stance, Riddick popped up behind the vamps, grabbed their heads, and smashed their skulls together. When they dropped to the ground, he gave each a swift kick to the head—for good measure or for his own enjoyment, Nikolai wasn’t sure.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” Riddick growled at Nikolai.
“I don’t know. Where the fuck is Violet?” he growled right back.
“Riddick, I’m here.”
Riddick swung around and his gaze shot straight to his wife. And then to the vampire who held her against his chest like a human shield with a knife to her throat. “Let her go,” he ordered.
The menace behind those words, spoken in that rough, feral voice, would’ve given Nikolai pause. Would’ve made him consider letting the woman go if he’d been in this vampire’s position. But the vamp was obviously too stupid to recognize he was prey in this scenario. Riddick was clearly the predator.
While the vamp was focused on Riddick, Nikolai reached down and pried a Glock out of a dead cop’s hand. He aimed it at the vampire’s head, but he didn’t have a clean shot. Not with Harper right in front of him like that.
“Let her go or what?” the vampire sneered at Riddick. “What will you do?”
Riddick shrugged in a gesture that would’ve looked careless to anyone who couldn’t feel the waves of rage and menace rolling off him. “I won’t have to do anything. If you don’t let her go, she’ll fuck you up.”
The vampire chuckled. “Is that right?”
Riddick nodded and shifted his gaze back to his wife. “Isn’t that right, baby?”
“Fuckin-A, that’s right,” Harper growled.
And with that, Harper stomped down hard on the vampire’s instep. When he loosened his hold on her, she drove her elbow back, knocking the knife from his grip. Then, for apparently no other reason than she was good and pissed off, she reached down, grabbed a handful of the dumb bastard’s nuts, and twisted with everything she had.
The vampire promptly puked, dropped to the ground like a sack of wet shit, and curled into the fetal position, mouth gaping in a silent scream.
Riddick grabbed Harper and tugged her roughly into his arms.
“Jesus,” he muttered, stroking his wife’s hair as he held her against his chest. “I heard the station was being attacked over the police scanner. I was fucking terrified. What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t have any idea what happened,” Harper said, her voice slightly shaky and muffled against Riddick’s chest. “One minute everything was fine, and the next, the place was crawling with vampires shooting at anything human that moved. The one that grabbed me and one other one were specifically looking for Violet.”
Nikolai took aim at the vampire’s head once again, but Harper stopped him. “Don’t,” she said, her voice muffled against Riddick’s chest. “We might need to get answers from him.”
The lights came back on at that moment and Nikolai blinked several times to clear his vision, then he took in the carnage around them.
Jesus, what a mess.
“Oh, my God!” Harper cried, shoving away from Riddick. “Benny!”
The halfer was curled up on the ground, arms curved protectively over his head. The blood stains and rips on the back of his shirt suggested he’d been caught by a couple of—wait, no, three—stray bullets.
Harper dropped to her knees and slid her arms under Benny, clutching him tightly to her chest. “Wake up, damn it!” she shouted at him. “Don’t you dare die on me, motherfucker!”
Benny let out a low moan, followed by a dry, hacking cough. Harper let out a relieved sigh and loosened her grip until Benny’s head was resting in her lap. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “Thank you, Jesus.”
Benny blinked, then squinted up at her. “Am I dead? Is this heaven?”
Harper grinned down at him, tears shining in her eyes. “We’re in a smelly police station, Benny. Why would you think this is heaven?”
He coughed again, then said, “’Cause I woke up with my face pressed into your boobs, and you was talking about God and Jesus. Figured I must be dead, ‘cause why else would I be feeling your boobs on my face? But I ain’t dead?”
“No, but you will be if you ever think about or mention my wife’s boobs again,” Riddick warned dryly.
Harper ran her hands over his shirt. “Your vampire blood will heal you, as long as the bullets are out. It’ll just take some time.”
Time—and patience—was something Nikolai was just fresh out of at the moment. “Where the fuck is Violet?”
Benny lifted his head off Harper’s lap, wincing as he rolled his head around on his neck. “When the shooting started, Harper pushed her down and I covered her. But the guy who shot me…I’m pretty sure he grabbed her right before I passed out. I’m so sorry, man. There wasn’t nothin’ I could do.”
Nikolai shoved a hand through his hair, fighting for the cool detachment that had gotten him through so many missions for Sentry. Him panicking wouldn’t do Violet a damn bit of good. She needed him to stay sharp, focused.
“It’s not your fault,” Harper said to Benny. “There were too many of them.”
Riddick glanced around, hands on hips. “They didn’t take anyone else. They killed the cops that got in their way. Tried to kill Benny. Threatened to kill Harper.” He paused to give the vampire on the floor a swift kick to the gut. “But they took Violet. If I had to guess, I’d say they needed her for something, which means she’s still alive.”
Nikolai sent a silent prayer up to whatever gods might be listening that Riddick was right. But at the same time, what would they need Violet for? What was happening to her? What did this have to do with her death threats and whoever trashed her home and shot at her?
“We need to call Seven,” Harper said. “She was following up on a lead for me. If it panned out, I might have an idea who took Violet.”
“Who?” Nikolai snarled, barely recognizing the cold, feral voice as his own.
Harper shook her head. “You’re not going to like this.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Violet woke up tied to a chair. Again.
Jesus, wasn’t once in a lifetime enough? No, not for Violet Marchand, apparently.
Ugh. And as if being tied to a chair with plastic zip ties—again—wasn’t bad enough, her head felt like it might explode and her
mouth tasted like she’d gargled with a dead rat. She recognized the symptoms of homemade roofies from the last time she’d been kidnapped.
But this kidnapping was different, she reminded herself. Nikolai wasn’t watching over her this time.
Violet’s eyes burned as she tried to stifle tears. There’d been so many bullets flying around the station. Was Nikolai still alive? Had they taken him, too?
Needing to know had her cracking one eye open a bit wider. Fluorescent light immediately assaulted her eyes and the pain almost made her throw up. It felt like someone was ramming an icepick through her eyeball into her brain.
But slowly, the pain dulled to merely agonizing, and she forced her eyes open again.
She was in what looked to be an old army barracks. Concrete walls and floor, metal-framed bunk beds shoved against the walls, fluorescent overhead lighting. No windows. Only one door.
About half a dozen men were in the room with her—vampires, if she hadn’t missed her guess—all wearing black cargo pants and T-shirts, all armed with assault rifles and hunting knives.
And Nikolai was nowhere in sight. She was on her own.
The door opened and another man entered the room. Violet’s stomach turned over. Oh, Jesus, this can’t be good.
Miles looked utterly ridiculous in the mercenary chic the other men were effortlessly rocking. Instead, he looked like, well, an actuary playing dress-up.
He kneeled down beside her chair and held up a bottle of water, his eyes wide and hopeful like a puppy expecting a belly rub. Violet glanced at the water bottle and saw it was still sealed, so she nodded.
He twisted the top off the bottle and held it to her lips so she could drink. When she’d had enough, she turned her head away, and asked, “Miles, what the hell is going on? What have you done?”
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 94
