Blood Royal (Blood Destiny #5)

by Connie Suttle

  Bill grumped a little—if he released that information, NCIS would come in to investigate further on the blood bank break-in. I figured he was going to call the President as soon as the man was up and coherent in the morning.

  We had a hotel set up for us, and Roff and Michael's room connected to ours while Tony and René's room was across the hall. Winkler's was down the hall a bit. Bill called in day guards, just so nobody would disturb or attack us. Winkler, Michael and Roff were going to sleep part of the day, too—they'd been up most of the night, just as we were.

  * * *

  "Lissa, wake up," Winkler was shaking my shoulder. Bill, Michael and Roff were standing right behind him. I figured Winkler was the brave one of the bunch; the one willing to wake a vampire during daylight, anyway. Thank goodness, I'd gotten my PJs on again after Gavin's amorous advances before daybreak.

  "Winkler, I hope there's a good reason for this," I slapped a hand over my face, trying to convince my eyes to open. Yeah, I knew he and the others were there by scent only.

  "Bill needs you," Winkler said as I removed the hand from my face.

  "What's up?" I asked, blinking at the four faces staring down at me.

  "Admiral Hafer has been abducted," Bill answered my question.

  "My other favorite person," I grumped. "If you tell me a senator from Oklahoma has been abducted next, my life will be complete." I sat up with help from Winkler and pushed hair away from my face. I couldn't begin to imagine what I looked like right then. I allowed Winkler to help as I slid out of bed as quickly as my sluggish brain and body would allow, running into the bathroom and almost slamming the door. There's nothing like a male committee watching you wake when you have bedhead and are wearing rumpled pajamas.

  I cleaned up and dressed as quickly as I could, scribbled out a note for Gavin and left it with Roff (he and Michael were staying to watch over Gavin, Tony and René) and off we went. It was three in the afternoon and hot in the D.C. area as Bill drove us to the site. Admiral Hafer had been abducted from his home, just as Larry Frazier had. The same scents from the blood bank were inside Admiral Hafer's house.

  "Did Frazier and Hafer know each other?" I asked, after telling Bill what I'd scented.

  "It's possible—Larry Frazier worked with most branches of the military," Bill acknowledged. "NCIS is definitely involved now, and I have to share information as much as I can, although the President is keeping all of you out of it for the moment. I had to agree to this in order to get the information exchange from them."

  Bill didn't sound terrible happy over that revelation and I wondered what Tony was going to say about it. He knew Larry Frazier better than any of us. Maybe he would know if Hafer and Frazier knew one another.

  "Lissa, do you want a drink?" Winkler herded me into a bar a little while later after Bill dropped us off at our hotel.

  "I'd rather have a cinnamon roll," I said. We found one at the hotel coffee shop on the main floor. My cell phone rang while I was wiping gooey frosting off my face. It was Merrill.

  "Lissa, sweetheart, I didn't expect you to answer. I was going to leave a voice message," Merrill scolded lightly.

  "Didn't you have the talk with Griffin?" I asked, licking more frosting off my fingers.

  "Lissa, what are you doing right now?" Merrill asked.

  "Eating a cinnamon roll," I answered honestly.

  "Perhaps Griffin needs to provide more information than he has," Merrill muttered. "He can be cryptic at times and this was certainly one of those times. He can't interfere, but from the conversation we had, I got the idea that Director Jennings needs to contact a friend of mine—a werewolf named Daniel Carey. He was working with Admiral Hafer not long ago. He may be back in Corpus Christi; he's the Second for the Pack, there."

  "I've met him," I nodded. "He's Shirley Walker's Second."

  Winkler's ears perked up at Merrill's message; he was hearing it almost as well as I was. He knew Daniel Carey, too, I realized. Daniel and Shirley had come to the beach house when I was working for Winkler. Winkler pulled his phone out and dialed a number before Merrill could hang up the phone. And he did hang up—a little abruptly, I thought. I wanted to ask about Greg, but didn't get the chance. I hadn't asked Gavin to borrow his computer lately, either, and I wanted to see if there were any emails from Franklin and Greg.

  Winkler was talking with Daniel Carey while my mind wandered a little, and I realized I was more tired than I thought. "Admiral Hafer's been kidnapped," Winkler told Daniel, bringing me back to a normal orbit.

  "I heard," Daniel said on the other end.

  "Someone named Lawrence Frazier was kidnapped as well," Winkler said. "Do you happen to know if they knew each other?" There was a lengthy silence on the other end. I was watching Winkler's face carefully, now. Daniel decided to talk.

  "This involves state secrets," Daniel said. "A vampire helped me out with this, otherwise Anthony Hancock's name would have been splashed all over the media and the President might have gone down with him."

  "Which vampire?" I got in on the conversation now.

  "Is Lissa there with you?" Daniel asked.

  "She's here and we're working with Director Jennings on this," Winkler said.

  "Merrill helped me with this," Daniel sighed. "Hafer had dirt on Hancock—said he approved a risky experiment on six top agents. The agents were dying, the last I heard. Hafer wanted you, Lissa, and if he didn't get you, he was going to cause a lot of trouble. I think Dr. Frazier was his informant on the whole experiment thing."

  "I guess Dr. Frazier was trying to cover his own ass," I grumbled. "Since it was his experiment. He was the one to go ahead and try his little concoction on humans without going through the proper procedures."

  "You know about this?" Daniel asked. Winkler still held the phone but Daniel was talking to me, now. Winkler handed the phone over. He could still hear the conversation, after all.

  "Yeah, I know about it," I muttered into the phone. I was hip deep in the middle of it at the time, since Frazier was taking my blood to do his little experiments. "Those six agents are still alive as far as I know, because I got outside help to cure them," I added. Winkler's eyebrows lifted at that information. "Do you know how well Hafer knew Frazier?"

  "Frazier was Hafer's physician a few years back. Hafer had a hip replacement, plus one or two serious repairs done on his heart. The whole thing was hushed up and never made public. Frazier was the perfect person for that, obviously."

  "I don't know why Bill doesn't have that information," I told Daniel.

  "You have no idea what can be erased from the records if you're high enough up," Daniel replied. "Poor health could have forced Hafer into retirement, and that would have kicked him off a lot of defense committees. He didn’t want that. I don't know why, he never told me. That's all I know, Lissa. And remember, you never talked to me about this."

  "Of course not," I said and hung up when Daniel terminated the call.

  "Let's go find Bill," Winkler said, tossing his coffee cup into a nearby wastebasket. I dropped the rest of my cinnamon roll in the trash, too. It had gone cold and my appetite disappeared while I spoke with Daniel.

  * * *

  "Hafer was planning on exposing the experiments?" Bill paced in front of us. Gavin, René and Tony had wakened and Roff and Michael, who were sharing a room, sighed happily and went to dinner. They were planning an early night. Tony was growling until René got him calmed down—he hadn't known about Larry's duplicity, either. His friend had been willing to let Tony take the fall, even though he was more responsible, in my opinion. He was the physician and the research biologist; he should have known not to take shortcuts. Vampire DNA would kill humans if introduced into their body in small amounts. I gasped, I think, when the thought hit me.

  "Lissa, what is wrong?" Gavin came to my side quickly and began rubbing my shoulders.

  "Who came up with the idea to introduce vampire DNA into the flu vaccine? Who told Rahim and Xenides how to do it? Do you thin
k that Larry Frazier was under Xenides' thumb all that time?"

  "Lissa, I think you're jumping to conclusions," Bill said.

  "Larry was in Oman, tending to a few patients who'd been brought in from Afghanistan. That's why he was on the Navy ship afterward when the pirates hit," Tony said. He was trying to piece this together, just as I was.

  "They knew he was on that boat," I muttered. "Those pirates were out there, waiting, I think, for somebody to come and get them. They didn't seem interested in going anywhere with their hostage."

  "Rahim may have paid them to take Larry—he was the only one they kidnapped, but they shot several others getting him off the ship," Tony nodded.

  "So, Xenides, or one of his brothers or children placed compulsion on Larry while he was in Oman? Is that what you think?" Bill asked. "That Rahim may have gotten a vampire into the country and close enough to Frazier to do this?"

  "That's what I think, but since I don't have proof, right now it's just a theory," I said. "Regardless, somebody figured out how to put vampire DNA into the flu vaccine and now at least two vampires have Larry Frazier and Admiral Hafer. Frazier probably pointed those vampires in Hafer's direction, so he'd be taken. How does that fit into the equation?" My breath was shaky, now. How much damage could Xenides do with Dr. Larry Frazier in his clutches? What did he want with Hafer? I couldn't figure that out unless it was for information of some kind. That made me even shakier. Tony, I learned, was thinking the same thing. Only he was in a better position to know what Hafer might be able to hand out as far as information and state secrets went.

  "It's not looking good," Tony rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. René was watching over his newest vampire child with concern. Gavin pulled me tightly against his chest. He knew I was upset. I was shaking.

  "Sounds like we need to find these guys fast," Winkler said. He'd been standing nearby, listening to everything.

  "Let me make some calls." Bill was frustrated, I could tell. He was beginning to show signs of wear, just as Tony used to. Bill left us, walking out our hotel room door. A guard was posted outside and he fell in behind Bill.

  "Lissa, have you eaten?" Gavin pulled my chin up so he could see my face.

  "She had half a cinnamon roll earlier," Winkler said. "That isn't any kind of meal." René went to the locked cooler, pulled out a bag of blood and tossed it to Gavin, who wasn't satisfied until I'd drank as much of it as I could. He gave the rest to René, who locked it inside the cooler.

  "Gavin, do you think Xenides may have made Larry Frazier forget what vampire DNA would do to humans as soon as he gave Rahim information on how to get it into the flu vaccine?" I asked while we waited for Bill to return. "I mean, he went ahead and just shot that stuff into six guys without a second thought."

  Gavin was now sitting beside me on the bed. I had my back to the headboard and my knees drawn up to my chest. I'd pulled my shoes off, of course. Gavin was also lounging on the bed, but he had his long legs stretched out in front of him and had kept his shoes on. Oh, well. It was a hotel.

  "Lissa, Xenides could have placed compulsion for Frazier to believe the vampire DNA was harmless, or any number of other things to get him to willingly cooperate." Gavin lifted a stray strand of hair off my forehead and smoothed it behind an ear.

  "Gavin, I can't tell you how fucked up and scary that is," I leaned my forehead on his shoulder.

  "Little rose, do not fret," René said. "There are enough of us here, I think, that we can take care of this quickly. Anthony has experience in this area, as does Director Jennings. We will find these perpetrators."

  "Was that out of character for him, Tony?" I was looking at Tony now. "Did Frazier cut corners before or was he rushing things when he took my blood?" It still irked me, and I didn't understand how Tony had agreed to it.

  "Larry was a bit on the adventurous side at times," Tony admitted, crossing his arms over his chest and refusing to look at me. "It could go either way." His gray eyes held worry and more than a little guilt before he'd turned away.

  "I think we should not go down that road," Gavin murmured, pulling my head against his shoulder again.

  Bill was back in a few minutes, phone in hand. "We've got two receptions at the White House, plus a speech tomorrow." He didn't look happy. "Hafer knew the schedule, according to my contacts." Well, if Hafer knew, then Xenides probably knew, too.

  "Lissa and I can handle anything during daylight," Winkler offered. "Michael and Roff can stay here with the other three."

  "I want Lissa there at the night event, too," Bill said.

  "Lissa has to sleep sometime," Gavin announced. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I was tired right then, but I wasn't saying that.

  "She can sleep in until ten—the first one doesn't start until one in the afternoon," Bill said. "I think we can get her there by the right time. I just want her nose and her other abilities on these things. The President has been notified and the First Lady is going to be at all three events. I'm sure you all know what happened the last time we had a problem."

  "What can we do tonight?" Tony asked. He was restless from inactivity.

  "NCIS passed over a couple of leads," Bill said. "We can check those out." Tony nodded eagerly and René was prepared to indulge his child. We walked out of the hotel with Bill after he called for a van. Our first stop was a convenience store that looked as if a bomb had hit it, only there hadn't been any bomb. The night clerk had been killed the evening before and the security DVR had been destroyed after the disc was stolen. Bill explained all of this to us before we climbed out of the van. Yellow police tape was still strung up everywhere and the business was obviously closed. The convenience store was part of a chain, so a security guard had been hired to keep vandals away. There were also two D.C. cops there to help.

  Bill showed his ID when we walked up, so barricades were moved and we were allowed inside. Broken glass and bits of twisted metal and shelving were everywhere. If Gavin hadn't held me up, I would have fallen, I think. I smelled Larry Frazier and one of the vampires. Except the vampire had a little extra. "What's wrong?" Bill and Tony were asking at the same time.

  "Tony, I thought you'd have the sense to destroy whatever blood was left." I was angry and gasping out an explanation as best I could. The vampire had received some of my blood—I could smell it. "Gavin, what does this mean?" He'd gotten my blood plenty of times, most recently the night before.

  "Lissa, I do not know," Gavin whispered, his expression troubled.

  "Take blood now, and then see if you have any of my talents." I was praying that he wouldn't, but I had to be sure.

  "Lissa, first tell me what you wish for me to try." Gavin was worried; I could see it in his face.

  "Try misting. The humans could turn almost instantly," Tony said. I was now surrounded by all of them.

  "Cara, do you want the climax?" Gavin moved against me and murmured in my ear.

  "Gavin, no." I didn't want that embarrassment, though I knew the bite would be more painful.

  "I will be gentle," Gavin said softly, breathing on my neck. I stiffened when his fangs pierced my skin but he held me tightly, and René was at my back, helping Gavin hold me still. He took perhaps a mouthful before pulling away.

  "Just concentrate on turning to mist," I said, rubbing my neck. I could have saved my breath; Gavin was way ahead of me and already turned to mist. "Oh, dear God," I moaned.

  "It should only last for half an hour at the most," Tony said, so Bill set about timing it.

  Can you hear me? I sent to Gavin.

  Cara, I hear you always, he replied.

  But I've not heard more than a single word from you before, I returned. I went to mist just so I could see Gavin's mist—it was a bright gold.

  Cara, I see your mist—it is a blinding white, Gavin was excited, now. I turned back to myself and we waited. Gavin's effects wore off closer to the hour mark. He was smiling when he returned to us.

  "It must be because you took the amount
you did and got it directly from her," Tony sighed. Bill was nodding and agreeing.

  "I know how this happened," I looked around at the devastation. It wasn't as good as what I could do, but it was impressive anyway.

  "Lissa, what else can you do?" Gavin gave me his best, longest suffering tone.

  "Uh, blow things up with my mist," I hung my head. "I told Franklin and Greg, but Merrill had other things on his mind right after I got back from Refizan. He wasn't paying attention when I mentioned it."

  "What did you blow up?" Gavin frowned deeply, his brows drawn together with worry. He never showed this much emotion. Never.

  "A temple."

  "How big was this temple?" Bill asked.

  "Pretty big," I was staring at my feet. "If I'd used everything I had, this store would have been scattered for a mile, I think." I looked up into Gavin's concerned face.

  "Lissa, you frighten me at times," Gavin said.

  "So, now we have the how, we just don't have the why," Bill said.

  "What is the other lead?" Tony asked. I ignored him—didn't feel up to talking to him at the moment. His and Frazier's faux pas was getting us deeper into trouble as time went on. We climbed into the van and drove to the second crime scene.

  "Hafer was here, with the other vampire," I said, sniffing around the second convenience store. At least it was still intact. This clerk was also dead; his blood still permeated the front of the store. The DVR disc was missing here, just as it was in the last place. "Why are they hitting convenience stores?" I couldn't figure this out at all. If the humans were hungry, there were vending stands up and down the street. "Was this one robbed?" I walked over to Bill.

  "It was," Bill nodded. "But we think that's just a cover."

  "What if it isn't?" I asked. "What if they can't get cash or money some other way without robbing someone?"

  Gavin had his phone in his hand so fast I never saw him reach for it. Charles was on the other end in seconds.

  "Have any accounts been frozen recently?" Gavin asked curtly.

  "We got a few names from the shapeshifter," Charles replied. "The Honored One had me freeze their assets."