Kai (A Dark Assassins Novel Book One)

by Valerie Ullmer

  Seth emerged from the darkness of the stairwell, and she started to smile at him until she recognized the terror in his eyes. Understanding dawned on her the moment she spotted a huge hand on his shoulder. She froze.

  Her mind reeled as she took in the scene in front of her, but she knew she wouldn’t allow this man, whoever he was, to hurt Seth. She then remembered the two capped needles that sat in front of her on table. With a sleight of hand, she reached for them and slid them into the front pocket of her jeans. She turned toward Seth and his captor, and sucked in a deep breath as she glanced at the man’s long blond hair.

  “Are you Dr. Olivia Sabin?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  As her eyes roamed his lithe, athletic body, she thought that the man had to be a vampire. His muted gray eyes looked haunted, but as his top lip pulled back and showed his sharp fangs, dread filled her as she feared for Seth.

  “Do you need me to go with you?” she asked.

  He stood straighter in surprise at her question, but recovered quickly and nodded without taking his eyes off her.

  “Can you let my friend go? You can lock him in the lab, and I will go with you willingly. I promise,” she said.

  He snarled at her last word, and she started. She wondered what human was stupid enough to promise this vampire something and not follow through, but her immediate concern was for Seth, so she quickly thought of something else to distract him.

  “I assume you were hired to find me and bring me in, for a reward. I am fine with that, but I need my friend safe,” she said.

  “Come out first,” he grunted.

  She shook her head. “I will stand by the door to make sure he isn’t harmed, and then I will go with you.”

  His eyes drew down in confusion, but as he heard footsteps upstairs, he dropped Seth to his feet and pushed him inside the lab. It surprised her that the vampire didn’t make a move to reach for her once Seth had been released.

  The next moment, Seth reached for her, but she knew she didn’t have much time. She hugged Seth hard, trying to convey her sorrow in the fierce hug.

  “You take care of yourself, okay? Tell the others that I enjoyed getting to know them, and thank them for looking out for me. Tell Kai that I’m sorry, and that I’ll…miss him. And Seth, be happy. You can be whatever you want to be. You’re perceptive and intelligent, funny and handsome. I believe in you.”

  Tears poured down his face as his arms tightened around her. “No, Liv, don’t go.”

  “I have to.” She gave him a smile, but stepped out of the lab and quickly shut the door, locking Seth in. When she started to turn toward the strange vampire, his fist shot out and punched the keypad, destroying it with one shot. Not wanting to show him fear, she faced him and found him looking at her as if she were odd. It wasn’t the first time.

  “I’m going to have to carry you down the mountain,” he said, his voice low.

  “Okay.”

  Again, he surprised her when he slid his arms underneath her legs and behind her back, lifting her and cradling her to his chest. She directed one last smile at Seth.

  Her surroundings then blurred as the vampire ran. She closed her eyes, sad that she hadn’t been able to see Kai or the others one last time, but Seth would tell them what she said.

  Within a few minutes, the vampire stopped by a car and slid her into the passenger seat. He darted around the rear of the car before he reached the driver’s side door, and when he was seated, he paused. She glanced at him, and again, noticed that he had a look of confusion on his face.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Why do you smell like vampire?”

  A sharp pain traveled through her chest and into her heart, and it took a moment before she could form words to explain. “I’m…I’ve been intimate with a vampire, and he drank from me just a few hours ago. I’ve been staying with him for over a week, so I’m guessing that is why.”

  “Are you his mate?” he asked.

  “I…don’t know.” Her voice cracked on the last word. If she were honest, she had no idea what she meant to him, and couldn’t even begin to guess what it meant to be a mate to a vampire. It could be like the wild wolves that mated for life, or it could be a word that had no definition to them, because Kai told her that it was not common for a vampire to have a mate.

  He nodded at her answer before he started the car and drove into town.

  The town of Snowfall had been built as a college town that happened to house several Fortune 500 businesses, so the town had been built to cover the entire valley, one hundred and fifty square miles. She wasn’t familiar with the industrial part of town where he headed. She memorized the street signs and numbers, so if she got out alive, she would know how to make her way back. With each mile that they traveled, she became less optimistic about that possibility.

  Another thought popped into her mind as she analyzed this new vampire’s reaction. He had to be working for someone. Maybe someone from her company. And if that was the case, she wouldn’t get out of this alive. There was no appealing to the vampire because he had the advantage, and if he was working for someone, there would be leverage against him. Her best bet would be using her surroundings to hide if she ever had the chance to escape.

  “I think I spotted you out the kitchen window several days ago,” she said.

  Her eyes scanned her surroundings, and she almost gasped when she spotted a woman in scrubs, running in thin tennis shoes close to the warehouses. The woman darted behind one of the dumpsters before Liv got a good look at her. Not wanting to alert the vampire about the woman, she turned to look out the windshield. Curiosity had her turning her eyes back to the vampire driving to see whether he spotted the woman. His eyes hadn’t left the road, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  After a few more minutes of driving deeper through the abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings, he parked in a secluded area and walked around the car to open the door for her.

  “Thank you.”

  His eyes widened in surprise at her words. He waited patiently for her to exit the car. He gently gripped her elbow and turned toward the rusted-out steel door that seemed to be the only entrance on the east side. Taking a deep breath, she walked forward before he could propel her toward the entrance, and he paused, holding her back just inside the entrance. Her eyes scanned the decrepit beams and the windows that were all located on the top floor. Her eyes fixed on the one chair that sat alone in the middle of the warehouse floor. The vampire indicated that she should have a seat, and she nodded before she sat.

  As soon as she settled into the chair, a man walked out of the shadows. She had a strange urge to roll her eyes at his dramatic entrance, but instead, she watched him warily as he came closer. Her eyes traveled over his puffy, red-splotched face, his eyes covered by distinctly oval glasses that overwhelmed his features. A sneer disfigured his lips, and she wondered what she had done to make this man, this stranger, so angry at her. She narrowed her eyes and filtered through the faces she had memorized as she tried to place the man, but again, came up blank.

  The dread that had come over her when they parked outside the warehouse reappeared, leaving her hands shaking in her lap. She laced them together, refusing to show this man any fear.

  He stopped a few feet away from her. She could smell the stench of body odor and tobacco wafting from him. She tilted her eyes up to meet his, and his sneer contorted his entire face.

  “Stupid bitch,” the man spit and slapped her across the face.

  She ignored the shock of the hand, but she froze at his voice. She placed his voice, his words, and realized that she had run into the man before. She’d never worked with him, or even been acquainted with him, but he knew her.

  It didn’t matter who he was, because she had solved the problem he’d presented and he wouldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else. Because he had kidnapped her, she knew that he must be desperate. His career must’ve been in jeopardy after she destroy
ed his data, and the stress hadn’t been forgiving by the looks of him and the pulse that beat rapidly near his neck.

  The vampire walked into her sight line, and she turned her eyes to him. She hadn’t been scared of the vampire until he knelt and tied her feet together, and then the fear roared in her ears. Her breathing become shallow and heavy. She noticed that he tied her knees together as well, but he left her hands free. Before she could contemplate why, Puffy nodded to the vampire, as if giving him a silent direction. The vampire winced as he reached for her hand, but for a reason she couldn’t understand, she gave him a small smile.

  For a long moment, she expected him to ask her questions, ask her to reveal what she had done with the data and the samples. Instead, she watched in horror as he brought his fingers together and crushed her pinkie finger with one infinitesimal movement. Stunned at the look of her bone crushing beneath her skin, it took her a few seconds to realize that her scream echoed around the barren warehouse as the pain finally registered in her brain.

  Taking several deep breaths, she brought her mind back to the present. As she spotted the hatred in the other scientist’s eyes, she was grateful that she left the laptop in the safe and told Kai where to find it. The man had no intention of keeping her alive, because he thought that she wasn’t intelligent enough to know how to replicate his work, much less give him any information that would prove useful.

  When her mind pushed away the pain, she realized that her capture had been a trap for Kai and the rest of the assassins. He couldn’t do anything when they broke into the lab earlier, but they would come to his playground and he would be in control. Her heart seized and hoped that she would be dead before they had even realized that she’d gone.

  She had accepted that she could die because of her actions, but regret swamped her that she never told Kai that she loved him.

  As the scientist closed his hand and made a fist, she remembered Kai’s anger at her, and she regretted that most of all. She would never have a chance to apologize to him and fix what she’d broken, but she hoped that Seth would pass on her words and he would forgive her, someday.

  Then all thoughts ceased as a fist slammed into her cheek and pain exploded, blocking her vision.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kai

  The words from Reaper and Hunter still echoed in his brain several minutes after they’d had gone silent, and without realizing his actions, he moved toward the basement where she had been working. Even distracted, he knew the moment he opened the door that something in the environment had changed.

  “Liv.” He groaned.

  He dashed downstairs. Reaper and Hunter followed closely behind him. An unfamiliar scent lingered in the air mixed with Liv’s, and the realization that she’d been taken from him, caused his heart to stall in his chest. He had thought that they had all the time in the world. At the realization that they had run out of time, he almost dropped to the floor.

  As despair began to wash over him, he spotted Seth trapped in the lab in a frenzy, working on rewiring the keypad from his side to escape the glass prison. When he spotted Kai, Reaper, and Hunter, his shoulders sagged with relief. Reaper pushed past him to the keypad, and cursed roundly when he found it smashed.

  “Xander,” Reaper shouted.

  Within half a minute, Xander stood in front of the damaged keypad and started to rewire the system to get Seth out of the locked lab. Instead of watching Xander, his gaze moved to Seth, who had dried tears on his cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot. For a reason Kai couldn’t understand, the kid couldn’t look him in the eye. Kai scanned the boy for injury or blood, but when he found none, he breathed a sigh of relief. The door swung open. Without a thought, he strode forward and enveloped the younger man in a tight hug, before he pulled back and looked at the devastation etched on his face.

  “A blond vampire kidnapped her. Shit—she went with him willingly because he managed to trick me into opening the outer basement door. You have to get her back,” Seth choked out. “She said that she was sorry. The vampire didn’t hurt her, but he said that he would have to carry her down the mountain. They left about fifteen minutes ago.”

  The room soon filled with the seven shifters who stayed behind, and even Thomas and Isaac came when they heard the commotion.

  “We’ll find her. Let’s get suited up.” Ghost took command.

  The assassins separated to grab their gear, their footfalls louder than normal as they scattered around the house.

  Kai was paralyzed for a moment. Thoughts of what Liv was going through at the hands of a vampire raced through his mind. He hoped that the vampire who took her would scent him on her, and would determine her connection to him, and leave her without hurting her. He knew that it was a long shot, but he hoped anyway.

  Kai turned back to Seth. “Go upstairs and lock down the house after we leave. Lock yourself in a room. Take food. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but we’ll get her back. Okay?”

  Seth nodded, and Kai dashed up the stairs after the others. He had already dressed in black, so he added his vest, holsters, and loaded up with guns, grenades, door busters, and his MK20 strapped to his side. They didn’t know whether they were going to deal with an entire team of immortals, so they armed themselves in case they ran into a more dangerous situation than one vampire.

  Something akin to insanity filtered through his mind with each minute that ticked by, and although he wanted to scream in a rage and destroy everyone and everything that took her away from him, he knew he had to get Liv back. The one way to do that was to keep his head in the game.

  But he’d hurt her, made her cry. He should have understood their desperation to get her back and get the information only she knew. He’d underestimated their enemy, and he wouldn’t do so again.

  When he had her safe in his arms, he would tell her everything and nothing would keep them apart again. He only hoped he got to her in time.

  A hand clamped onto his shoulder and squeezed. When he met Reaper’s eyes and conveyed the images and feelings he couldn’t hold back, the other man squeezed harder.

  “We’ll get her back. Jade has already left on recon, and we’ll know more once we track the scent. But you need to keep your shit together, for Liv, okay?” Reaper demanded.

  With a short nod of his head, Kai and the others sprinted out the door. Gunnar took lead, as they tracked her scent back to town. Ghost threw worried looks at him, but if he took a moment to stop and think, or explain to his boss and friend what he was thinking, his sanity would slip a little more and he wouldn’t be able to keep going.

  Jade’s booming voice echoed through his head.

  Abandoned building, three miles east. One vampire who seems to be down, and one human enemy combatant. It looks as though they are waiting for something, maybe us, so be aware. It’s…bad.

  Jade’s voice wobbled on the last statement. As he tried to get images from her mind, she blocked him and the others from her head. He snarled. It was standard operating procedure for images of the area and target to be shown, and all thoughts of Liv being unharmed disappeared with the wind. He didn’t need to see. He could imagine exactly what the man did to Liv.

  They picked up their pace, and before long, he spotted Jade outside the crumbling warehouse. As he neared Jade and the door to where they would find his Liv, he almost cut himself on a piece of jagged tin that jutted from the building due to his inattention, but Reaper pushed him out of the way in time. A few steps from Jade, he could hear painful moaning from inside the building, but he couldn’t hear any other voices or sounds.

  He sprinted to the window and Jade paused for a long moment. He could see the tears in Jade’s eyes for Liv, and he swallowed a lump of emotion when she reached out and gave his arm a squeeze of support. She nodded her head toward the window and moved over to one side so he had room.

  Positions. This came from Ghost.

  That meant the team would breach within half a minute, but as he glanced into the window,
rage and fear built to a crescendo as he watched the human ball his hand into a fist and punch an already bruised and bloody Liv in the face. The man had put everything he had into the punch. By the sweat dripping from his head and moisture that covered most of his gray shirt, Kai knew he’d been at it for a while. He could have sworn that he saw the man’s hand slow dramatically before he struck her face, as if he were pushing though a viscous substance to make the punch. Because the punch hadn’t been full force, the impact was lessened. It didn’t matter. From several hundred yards, he could see that Liv had already been beaten to within an inch of her life.

  The man turned around and punched the wall with full force. There was no slowing motion this time. Kai heard the bones in his hand break the moment his fist struck the solid concrete. The man howled it pain. Kai was satisfied that he wouldn’t be able to strike Liv again, but it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t tear the man apart for the damage he’d already done.

  Within a second of Ghost’s command, he breached the window and darted toward the man with a sneer on his face. Kai watched as the man’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak, but Kai had tackled him and broke his ribs with one punch to his chest. Another howl of pain sounded throughout the room, but the only sound he heard was the rest of the team breaching the building.

  He turned toward the woman he loved, and hated himself for keeping Liv human and vulnerable. He couldn’t believe he didn’t think about it sooner, but he should have turned her, told her he loved her, and kept her safe because she would be strong enough to handle this lifestyle. He’d been so stupid, so worried about his feelings being returned, it never even crossed his mind.

  She reached for him and he gently wrapped his arms around her. “Kai,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry…didn’t…tell him…anything.”