by J. C. Diem
My brother checked in with everyone else at the appointed time, while I sipped my coffee and ate a pastry. Brynn and Yas both informed him that they’d detected Killion’s and his goons’ scents.
“Why would Killion buy another nightclub so close to Colorado?” I asked in puzzlement as we waited for the sun to go down and for our quarry to arrive.
Catching the eye of a pretty young woman who was walking past, Liam smiled at her in appreciation. She blushed, then gave him an inviting smile in return. Once she was out of earshot, he replied. “He probably doesn’t think we’ll search for him so close to our own turf. Master vampires are just as arrogant as alpha shifters, if not more so. He thinks he can skate under the radar and carry on with his sick deeds without being noticed.”
“What if this is another trap?” I asked. “Maybe he chose this location deliberately. The witch could be waiting for a chance to kidnap me again.”
I shivered at that thought and my brother reached over to touch my arm. “She won’t get her hands on you again, Alex,” he vowed. “Emma will take you to safety the moment she thinks you’re in danger. Right, Em?” he asked. The squirrel’s head popped out of the backpack long enough for her to twitch her nose. “That’s a yes,” he said solemnly, as if he could read her mind.
Snickering, I was comforted that the zombie was watching over me, but I couldn’t shake my unease. This mission felt hinky to me. I hoped it was just leftover fear from almost dying in a car crash earlier.
The sun slowly sank from the sky, bringing deep shadows with it. Liam and I remained at the café, drinking coffee and eating food neither of us really wanted. He kept checking in with the others, contacting Nick, Brynn and Syd in turn. The teams had chosen spots where they could see the nightclub, but weren’t close enough for the vamps to smell them.
Humans turned up to stand guard on the doors, while others entered to get the club ready for the patrons. The men guarding the doors all wore black and green gang colors. They were heavily tattooed, but were more well-behaved than most thugs. It was an obvious sign that they’d been enthralled.
It wasn’t easy to wait for nightfall to arrive. Feeling impatient and restless, I entered the café to use the bathroom. My unease increased as I was washing my hands. I glanced into the mirror and froze when I saw my eyes. For a second, they looked like they had a hint of green. When I blinked, they were back to being their usual brown again.
Pretending I hadn’t seen anything unusual, my heart was racing when I returned to our table.
“What’s wrong?” Liam asked, picking up on my anxiety straight away.
Night had fallen while I’d been in the bathroom. I sensed the dead rapidly approaching. “They’re coming,” I warned him rather than telling him about what had spooked me.
Liam texted the others to be ready, then we watched Club Feenix without looking like we were staring at it. I didn’t see Killion and his henchmen arrive, but I felt them when they reached the club. “They went in through the back,” I whispered.
Sure enough, he received confirmation from Sydney a few seconds later.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “Are we going to attack him in his office?” If he’d followed the same pattern as last time, Killion’s office would be on the top floor of the building.
Liam shook his head. “We’ll track them back to their lair and stake them when they fall asleep.”
“It’s going to be a long night,” I figured with a grimace.
“Welcome to the fun part of the job,” he joked. “Sometimes, it can be ninety percent sitting around waiting and ten percent action.”
“I can barely contain my excitement at the thought of staking out the club until dawn,” I replied wryly.
“At least you won’t risk being hit by a truck by sitting on your butt all night,” he said with a smirk.
We shared a companionable laugh and I realized I felt comfortable around him now. I’d grown used to the squad and I didn’t feel as awkward with them. Having a stranger join the team was probably to blame. Someone else had taken my place as being the outsider.
Just as I’d figured, it turned out to be incredibly boring staking out the club. We moved around to avoid suspicion, but stayed within sight of the building. Young men and women turned up to party and the sidewalks became clogged with pedestrians. There were a few clubs in the area and they were all popular.
“Do you wish you were one of them?” Liam asked as we took refuge in a recessed doorway to let the crowd wash past us.
Eyeing the scantily clad girls who were around my age, I shrugged. “I wish I’d had a normal life, but I guess that was never in the cards, considering my heritage.”
“What was it like being trapped in the cottage in the woods?” he asked. “Were you lonely?”
I thought about it, then nodded. “I guess so, but I had Virginia to keep me company.”
“Your only friend was a ghost who couldn’t even talk to you,” he said mournfully. “I’m so sorry, Alex,” he added quietly. “I’m sorry we weren’t there for you.”
Tears stood in his eyes and I knew he meant it. “I know,” I said and squeezed his hand. He was startled by my brief sign of affection, then smiled at me bleakly. Deep down, I knew my family had suffered after I’d been stolen from them. But none of them had gone through my ordeal. None of them had been tortured and abused for eighteen years. They hadn’t been marked with tattoos that controlled them completely.
Rage pulsed deep inside me at the injustice that I’d suffered. Irene Dawson had broken my body and my spirit, but she wasn’t done with me yet. The witch was lurking in the shadows, plotting her revenge for the deaths of her relatives who had been killed long before I’d even been born.
Chapter Ten
KILLION AND HIS GOONS stayed in the club all night long. Enthralled staff and gang members came and went from the building periodically. Music thumped inside all of the nightclubs, making it impossible for us to hear what was going on inside the place we were watching. We stuck to Liam’s plan and kept watch from the outside, waiting for the vampires to leave.
I wasn’t used to staying up all night, but I wasn’t a mere human. My vampire and werewolf were nocturnal. They kept me awake during our long vigil. An hour or so before dawn, I felt the vampires emerge from Club Feenix. “They’re leaving,” I murmured just as Syd sent a message to Liam’s cell phone to warn him.
“I’ll get Yas to follow them at a distance,” Liam said, then texted the order to the werecougar. As the only full vampire on our team, my bestie would have the best chance of following them without being seen or heard. “She’s on it,” he reported when Syd texted him back.
“I’ll watch through her eyes,” I said, then connected with the vampire. Yas had kept her hood and gloves on after the sun had gone down. They helped muffle her scent, so she was almost undetectable as she followed in Killion’s wake. She trailed after the leeches as they streaked through the city and headed away from civilization. They stopped at an isolated house that looked like it had been abandoned years ago.
“She’s found their lair,” I reported as Yas bolted back to us.
Liam texted the rest of the team to meet back at the van. “We know where Killion and his men are holed up,” our boss said when we were all gathered together. “We’ll wait for dawn, then move in and wipe them out.”
“It hardly seems sporting to kill them in their sleep,” Crowmon said with a faint frown. “From what I understand, they can’t even fight back.”
“Just because they can’t kill any living creatures doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous,” Nick told him. “All vampires can use their innate power to ensnare minds. Master vampires are far better at it than lesser bloodsuckers.” He gestured at the gang members who had been charmed into doing Killion’s bidding.
“Killion could take over our minds and order us to kill each other,” Yas said when the trickster god still seemed doubtful about our plan.
“Well, when you put it
that way, I can see the benefit of chopping their heads off while they’re asleep,” Crowmon conceded.
“I say we torch the building and burn them all to death,” Heath suggested as we climbed into the van.
“We don’t want to draw that much attention,” Liam said. “It’s smarter to be subtle rather than announcing our presence to the entire city.”
Agent Franko scowled at the mild reprimand. He’d once again proven he didn’t think before he spoke. It was a sure sign that he would be a terrible leader, even though he’d been born for the role. Maybe he’d grow wiser with age, but I was pretty sure his arrogance would always prevent him from being a truly effective pack leader.
Liam kept to the speed limit as he followed Yasmine’s directions to the remote house. It sat in the middle of an overgrown field, with a huge barn nearby. He drove past the house, then pulled over to wait for dawn to arrive.
Once the sun was up, Liam turned the van around and returned to the driveway of the vampires’ lair. We bumped along the rutted dirt track and came to a stop near the house. I sent my senses out and frowned when we climbed out.
“What’s wrong?” Yas asked.
“I can’t sense Killion or his men,” I replied.
The twins turned to me in surprise, then they both drew their guns with eerie precision. “It’s a trap!” Nick said as enthralled humans came boiling out of the house and barn.
Most of us couldn’t harm the humans, which was what Killion had been counting on. He didn’t know that Yas wasn’t constrained by the same rules that he was anymore. Neither was Crowmon, but the deity’s magic wasn’t strong enough for him to be of much help.
“Get us out of here!” Liam ordered Emma.
“Wait!” I said before the squirrel could obey his command. “Let Yas try something first.” Liam clearly didn’t want to hang around, but gave me a curt nod. I delved into Yasmine’s mind and gave her a boost of necromancy. “Try taking over their minds,” I urged her.
Yas gathered her power and sent out a blast of vampiric mojo moments before the gang members could reach us. Ensnared by her enhanced magic, they lurched to a halt. All were armed with guns, knives and other weapons, yet none of them had tried to hurt us yet. “Hah! It worked!” my bestie crowed in triumph.
“How did you know she could do that?” Franko asked me suspiciously.
“Yas isn’t an ordinary vampire,” I replied with a nonchalant shrug. “She’s stronger than normal. I figured she would be able to bend them all to her will.”
“What is she, some kind of new type of master?” the rookie asked skeptically.
“It’s classified,” Liam said as he holstered his gun. The rest of the team copied him and they studied the minions.
I turned to the van and saw a tiny flash of green in my eyes in my reflection in a window. Clenching my hands into fists, I knew I wasn’t alone in my head. Irene was watching through my eyes, just like I could see through Yas and Emma. I didn’t want to say anything while Heath was listening. He hadn’t earned my trust and I didn’t want him to know more about me than he already did.
Liam took photos of the gang members to add to the file on Killion, then we checked the buildings. The barn was empty, but it was obvious the vampires had been living in the house for a while. All of the windows had been boarded up, so sunlight couldn’t penetrate inside.
“They must have another lair,” Yas figured when we were done with our search. “They knew they were being followed and waited for me to leave before they took off.” Neither of us could sense any vamps in the area.
“I’ll see if I can pick up their trail,” Brynn offered. She and Syd headed outside to scout the area.
Vampires didn’t need many possessions, but they’d taken everything with them. I knew Killion was partial to pricy suits. He’d barely left any trace of himself behind, except for his scent. They couldn’t feed from humans, so they’d captured animals to drink from before releasing them. If they got their hands on another shifter, they could keep them captive for weeks while slowly draining their blood. I shivered at the fate that had nearly befallen me. If I hadn’t met Yas and she hadn’t led the squad to me, I’d probably have been long dead by now.
“It’s okay, Alex,” Franko said as he approached me. “I won’t let that filthy leech get his hands on you again.”
I grimaced at the possessive tone in his voice, but I didn’t respond. The twins exchanged a glance, Yas looked at Crowmon and he shook his head in derision. Emma glared at the alpha in growing hatred. He gave her a smug smirk that I didn’t like one bit, then backed off.
Brynn and Syd didn’t have good news for us when they returned. They loped back to the house just as we were leaving it. “We followed Killion’s trail to a house over there,” the wereconstrictor said, waving to a distant property.
“The family who lived there are dead,” Syd added. “The human gang members had been ordered to shoot them.”
“Fresh tracks from a heavy vehicle are heading in that direction,” Brynn said, pointing away from Phoenix.
“It’s probably a truck,” Nick figured. “Killion must have ordered one of his thralls to drive them to another lair.”
“They’re long gone by now,” Liam said in annoyance. “Order the humans to go home and to forget they were ever here,” he said to Yas.
My bestie did as she was asked, then sent the gang members on their way. Once they reached their homes, they would snap out of their daze with no recollection of what they’d done.
Chapter Eleven
LIAM DROVE US BACK to the hotel and parked in the lot again. Heath’s flashy red Corvette stood out among the blander models. “Grab your gear and we’ll head back to the base,” Liam said. “Franko, you should crash for a few hours before you drive back.”
The alpha frowned and glanced at me. “I’m driving back alone?”
“No one else is going to ride with you after that stunt you pulled yesterday,” Nick said.
Instead of being angry, Franko just shrugged. “Fine. I guess I’ll see you all later, then.” His eyes flicked to my backpack where Emma was hiding and he smirked as he gestured for me to enter first.
We headed upstairs to our rooms and grabbed our gear. Yas yawned and even with the hood covering her face, I yawned as well. “I’m ready to crash,” I said as we headed back out into the hallway.
“Me, too,” my bestie agreed. “It sucks that Killion slipped out of our grasp, but at least no one got hurt this time.”
“Yeah,” I replied, but I didn’t tell her what I was thinking about. It would have to wait until we were back home and were safe from prying eyes and ears.
Everyone except Heath met back at the parking lot. We gathered into a huddle on the grass, then Emma took us home. I reached out to the herd even before we emerged from the soil. “No one has been here while we’ve been away, boss,” I reported before Liam could ask.
The fleshless skeletons were patrolling the edges of the property. They were ready to sink out of sight if any humans came close enough to see them. It was comforting knowing my tireless guardians were a constant presence.
“I’m starving,” Syd said as we filed inside. “I’m going to eat before I go to bed.”
We all shared her sentiment and went about making breakfast. Syd had tea and coffee duty, since she wasn’t allowed to prepare food. I’d yet to witness her utter lack of cooking skills, but I’d heard she was as bad at cooking as I was at fighting and shooting.
I waited until we were sitting down at the table before broaching the subject I didn’t want Franko to know about. “I think the witch is using a spell to watch through my eyes sometimes,” I said.
All conversation stopped at that announcement. Crowmon, Yas and Emma looked over from their seats on the couches. “Why do you think that, lass?” the jester asked.
“I saw my eyes turn green a couple of times last night,” I explained. “I think Irene is still working with Killion and his crew. She helped them set u
p that trap. She doesn’t want me dead, or the thralls would have used their weapons on us.”
“I bet she was counting on us not being able to harm the humans,” Brynn mused. “That’s why they all rushed at us like that. They were probably going to try to separate you from us.”
“A car was parked behind the barn,” Liam said with a frown. “They probably had orders to drive you to her when they managed to grab you.”
I hadn’t seen the car, but Nick nodded in agreement. “That witch is relentless,” he said in a disturbed tone. “She’s obviously not going to give up on trying to kidnap you again.”
“If Yas hadn’t been on our team, their plan might have succeeded,” Liam said.
Yas preened beneath the praise. “I’d like to take all the credit, but Alex boosted my vampire mojo with her necromancy.”
Everyone looked at me and I shrugged. “I was pretty sure it would work,” I said, uncomfortable at being the center of attention.
“The alpha hole still has no idea you’re a necromancer,” Sydney said with a grin that showed fragments of bacon stuck in her teeth. “It’s fun to keep Franko in the dark. It’ll drive him crazy knowing we’re keeping secrets from him.”
“Did he scream like a little girl while you were driving to Phoenix?” Nick asked in a hopeful tone.
I snickered, but shook my head. “He tried to pretend he wasn’t scared, but he was drenched in sweat by the time I had to stop to fill the tank.”
“Is that when he decided to take over?” Brynn queried.
My mood darkened at the reminder. “Yeah. I knew he was going to try to show off, but I didn’t expect him to almost get us killed.”
“He’s never going to drive on any of our missions,” Liam vowed.
“Thank God,” Nick said in relief that we all shared. “Franko isn’t just a douche nozzle, he’s quite possibly a bit unstable.” I was glad I wasn’t the only one who’d had that thought.
