by L. A. Banks
“Just come home, Son,” Doc said, and then glanced around the empty lab. “We’ll figure out a way to make this all work.”
“You aren’t disappointed?” Crow Shadow’s question lingered between the two men like a third party on the cell phone with them.
“I wish we could have talked about all of this before it happened,” Doc said, carefully choosing his words. “But now that it is what it is, we have to figure out the best way to bring Jennifer and the baby into the pack.”
“I thought you’d be a little more welcoming, Dad, since you’ve been through this yourself.”
Doc released a long breath and coaxed patience into his tone. “I am, as you young people like to say, being real. If she freaks out and ultimately cannot handle what she learns, she becomes a security risk to the entire North American clan. If she stays and a war breaks out—something that could be in the offing and too sensitive to get into detail about over the telephone—your new bride could be severely injured or worse, if our location is discovered. So don’t read my hesitancy in congratulating you as some form of prejudice. Frankly, because I’ve lived through this, I’m worried. I also know that’s what’s going to be a concern for Silver Hawk and the other elders. What’s more is, I worry about the future. I worry that my grandchild may come out with the same disability I have—the inability to shape-shift into his or her wolf. Then that child will know the pain that I’ve known all my life. That, Son, will break my heart.”
“I’m sorry, Pop,” Crow Shadow said in a subdued tone. “You didn’t deserve that earlier crack.. I’ve been thinking about everything you said, too. Maybe that’s why I’m stressing.”
“Just come home,” Doc replied, and then stood to go to the door. He could feel Sasha near. “You fly your ass in well before nightfall, and if you can’t do that you and Jennifer and Bear get to hallowed ground and stay there until morning, even if you’ve gotta go find a church mission or a shelter and spend the night. You hear me?”
“Is it that bad. what’s actually going on?”
“Yes, it’s that bad,” Doc replied, now looking out the window at Sasha and Hunter as they rounded the house. “And God only knows what’s going on. But trust me, whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
Even though she and Hunter could have easily entered the house through a shadow, Sasha rang the bell. There was no need to accidentally get shot if nerves were jumpy. But thankfully the nausea had subsided.
Doc opened the door before she could draw her hand away from the bell. “Good to see you. The world has gone crazy in the last twenty-four hours.” He pulled Sasha into a hug and reached around her back to clasp Hunter’s hand. “And I’m really glad to see you.”
“Likewise,” Hunter said, ushering the threesome into the house. “We could all use a dose of your wisdom at a time like this.”
“Fresh out,” Doc said, shaking his head. “Silver Hawk is on his way. Bear and Crow are coming in from Vegas with complications.”
“I heard,” Sasha said, jamming her hands in her back jeans pockets. “Where’s the rest of the team?”
Doc glanced between Sasha and Hunter. “Clarissa and Bradley went to try to pick up intel from any psychics in the area, and no dice. Everyone they tried and had previous contacts with was gone. It’s like all of the New Orleans tarot houses and palm readers simply skipped town. Winters went with Woods and Fisher to try to see if they could get any info from the graveyards, but based on the last call I got from them, everything was cleaned up and locked up tight as though there’d never been a grave invasion.”
“Figures,” Sasha said, beginning to pace. “The Vamps are really private and will handle it with their own brand of justice.” She stopped walking and stared at Doc. “Which is why I want you all to hunker down at NAS. I’ve already made arrangements with Colonel Madison for you guys to go there just like the old days when we were part of the Paranormal Containment Unit—and if I had enough time, I’d be sure you guys went back to NORAD. but there’s not enough time for that today. But tomorrow, first light, you guys are—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Doc said, gesturing with his hands. “Our job is to work as a team to avert any human catastrophes as a result of paranormal activity. So how do you expect us to make that happen sitting in Denver?”
“I’m thinking selfishly,” Sasha said in a quiet tone. “I’m thinking like a civilian, and I want our families out of the hot zone. I admit it.”
“And I agree with her,” Hunter said, lifting his chin. “If I could coax Sasha to go to Denver with you and get her to stay at that huge underground human facility until all of this was sorted out, I would. But you and I both know Sasha well enough to know she won’t do that.” Hunter gave her a pointed look with a sad half smile. “So, the best I can do is support her decision to try to keep her family out of harm’s way. Her family is my family; her people are my people.”
“You’ve discussed all of this with Silver Hawk?” Doc looked between Sasha and Hunter again.
“No,” Hunter admitted. “But when he arrives, I will.”
“I see the two months away from the team did you both well. as far as strengthening the mate bond,” Doc said, sounding slightly peeved. “You’ve clearly already made up your minds.”
“We have.” Sasha walked over to her father and hugged him. “I don’t know why, but something about this feels more. I don’t know. more dangerous than before, and I just want all of you away from it.”
Doc held her tightly and released a weary sigh. “And me and Silver Hawk want to make sure that the two people we love most in this world survive. We’re both old wolves. You hold the future of the pack, of the clan, of the way of the North American Shadow Wolf. Beyond all of that, you’re still my only daughter.”
Sasha and Hunter stepped out of a shadow behind the Blood Oasis club. For a moment they said nothing as they sized up the seemingly deserted building. The instant the sun went down the establishment would spring to life—or into living death, as the case may be. But they weren’t so foolish as to believe that the premier Vampire blood club in the area was vacant. There would be lower-level Vampires in the building as security forces, as well as human guards. The question was how did one leave a message for the club owners by day without breaching security and risking getting one’s head blown off?
Turning to Hunter, she searched his troubled expression for an answer. “Thanks for having my back with Doc,” she said, and then glanced at the building. “Entrance strategy?”
“I meant what I’d said. I wish you weren’t here right now, Sasha. with all my soul I wish you weren’t.”
The tone of his voice and the level of quiet urgency it contained stunned her. They’d been through so many battles together and had experienced so many near misses, but she couldn’t recall ever hearing outright fear in Hunter’s voice until now.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” She touched his arm and was surprised that he pulled her against his stone-cut chest in a protective stance and then nuzzled her hair as his gaze swept the terrain.
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “All I am sure of is that every sense within me registers a threat to you. I want you gone, Sasha. After we go in here and speak to the Vampire Cartel’s human helpers, I don’t want you on the hunt with me when the sun goes down. Not this time. Don’t ask me why, because I haven’t one logical reason to give you. It’s just my gut. Go to NAS. Please.”
She looked up and cradled his cheek with one palm. “I’ve never, ever heard you sound like this, Hunter. but you know that I can’t leave you and just go sit at NAS waiting for word. I’ll lose my mind.”
He briefly closed his eyes and then nodded. “I already knew the answer, but I had to at least try.” Glancing around, he motioned with his chin toward a long shadow by the door. “Take cover there. I’ll try to raise a human from the interior and hopefully we’ll get one to deliver a message.”
Grudgingly she agreed and stood near the shadow while Hunter banged on the door.
“We come in peace!” Hunter called out. “The North American Shadow Clan needs to speak to your leadership.”
Within seconds the sound of a click made her and Hunter dive for the long shadow. Just as Hunter pulled his legs into it a pump shotgun blast shattered a small side window. Moving swiftly, they came out of the shadow inside the club’s foyer. Hunter had the human shooter in a headlock as Sasha stripped him of his weapon. She spun on a rustle behind her and pointed dead aim at a shadow.
“Drop it. We came in peace,” she said, quickly cocking the pump for another blast. “We’ve got an important message for your bosses.”
“Tell the man to walk out slowly with his weapon above his head or he’ll be wolf carrion when the Vampires find his body tonight,” Hunter growled, allowing the security guard he held to see his canines beginning to extend in his peripheral vision.
“Come out, man!” the security guard finally yelled. “They said they came in peace. Just wanna deliver a message, all right.”
After a few tense minutes three guards came out. Each held his weapon at an angle away from Sasha and Hunter but had not disarmed.
“Listen,” Sasha said, training the shotgun on the guard who seemed to be their leader. “We heard through the grapevine that some Vampire graves got opened to daylight. We had nothing to do with it. We also heard that your bosses think the Fae were involved—the Unseelie, to be exact. We don’t know the full story yet, but our main concern is that war doesn’t break out in the streets of New Orleans in a way that could cause a lot of human casualties.”
“If you know who we work for, then you know that retaliation is gonna happen,” the burly lead guard said, flexing his muscles beneath his black T-shirt. “If you’re not involved, then we suggest that you lay low until it’s all over.”
“Bad move under a bad moon,” Hunter said, thrusting the guard he held away from him. He waited until the frightened guard ran over to the others and took cover. “If the Vampires attack the Fae and find out they were wrong, there will be a hundred-year war. You know that; they know it. Therefore, we need you to get a message to your bosses the moment they wake up.”
The lead guard cracked a cynical smile. “It doesn’t matter what I know or think. I just follow orders. That’s how I stay alive.”
“Tell them that the wolves are in a rare position to be neutral third parties—that we will be their noses to the ground by day and we’ll try to find whatever evidence we can, because the Fae swear they haven’t done this.” Sasha lowered her weapon and stared at the lead man. “If you don’t deliver the message and it’s later found out that the leadership from the North American Shadow Wolf Federation came to you to offer a potential negotiation, how long do you think you’ll live?”
Hunter smiled. “I may be wrong, but the way I have always heard it, Vampires hate anyone jacking with their negotiations. We are putting a firm offer on the table. We’d like to hear their counteroffer.” He backed away holding up both hands in front of his chest. “That is all we came for, no more, no less.”
A slow hiss made both Sasha and Hunter turn toward the sound. It was coming from a darkened alcove deep within the club. Two red glowing eyes blinked slowly and then were gone.
“They heard you,” the lead guard said. “Now get the fuck outta here!”
CHAPTER 8
“That so did not go well,” Sasha said, trudging along the sidewalk. “Now what?”
Hunter stopped and looked off into the distance. “There’s got to be some place to start. What are we missing, Sasha?”
“The graveyards and desecrated mausoleums maybe?”
Hunter shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt, but what’ll be left after the Vampires just did their search and, according to Doc, Woods, Fisher, and Winters, had nothing to report?”
Sasha landed a hand on Hunter’s broad back as they continued walking. “I don’t know, but I’m hoping the human factor will kick in.”
He gave her a puzzled glance and she motioned with her chin toward the homeless milling the streets.
“Humans are creatures of habit. Somebody saw something. Graveyards are a great place to rest and hide when you have nowhere else to go. We just have to hope that any eyewitnesses got out of Dodge with their lives when this all went down during the daylight hours and we can find at least one person with some info.”
If it wasn’t for Winters’s genius on the computer, it could have taken days to find Monroe Bonaventure’s grave. New Orleans was a complex series of elaborate aboveground cemeteries. There were just some things, like narrowing down options, that technology easily solved.
“This doesn’t look like a place that a homeless person might wander in and sleep during the day without a hassle, Sasha.” Hunter glanced around at the well-manicured rolling lawns and detailed landscaping.
“Yeah, I know,” Sasha said in a dejected tone. “But a place like this would have groundskeepers and some kind of security to shoo out any vagrants, though.” She glanced up, noting the pitch of the sun, and then began jogging. “The administration house should still be open.”
As they ran side by side along the paths, she tried to memorize every detail of the cemetery that housed a seriously old Vampire, one strong enough to become a sixth viceroy. What would have made Monroe fear his own mansion and come back to his actual grave? He should have had a well-protected lair and not been forced to go to ground. The older ones rarely did that, only keeping dirt from their original burial site to give them extra power. None of it made sense. But one thing she was sure of, someone at the administration house had to be clued in. Monroe Bonaventure would not have come here without human daytime security. Who was not on the job today would be as important as who was.
Sasha stopped in front of the building and glanced at Hunter. “I want to know who was on shift when the mausoleum was desecrated, and who called out sick today.”
“We are thinking as one,” he said, loping up the large white steps of what looked like an old plantation house.
She rang the patron’s bell and then slowly opened one side of the huge white double doors. Although sunshine brightly lit the interior and the entire place gleamed with lemon-scented furniture polish, an eerie feeling settled into Sasha’s bones.
“May I help you?” a heavyset older woman wearing a floral print dress asked. “I am Mrs. Vance, administrator for Golden Estates.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sasha replied, using her most polite voice. “We are here to find out what happened to our late relative’s grave.. We understand from family sources that someone vandalized it yesterday and we’ve arrived as soon as we could.”
The woman raised her eyebrows over the tops of her half-glasses. “You are, uhm, Monroe Bonaventure’s relatives?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sasha said, trying not to smile. She dropped her voice and whispered, leaning in. “A lot of family doesn’t want it known and we respect that, but family is family and when we heard of what happened here we just wanted to see what we could do to make it right.”
“We promise to leave quickly, ma’am,” Hunter said, needling the distressed woman. “If we can find out a little more—enough to report back to the family.”
Mrs. Vance cleared her throat and nodded, seeming relieved. “Well, yes. yes, of course. It was all such a nasty business, but we’ve replaced the locks and have done what we can to repair any disturbed masonry. Some people are just so sacrilegious and have no respect for the dead.”
“Terrible,” Sasha said, dramatically placing a hand over her heart. “But could we speak to the groundskeeper who was actually here when the discovery was made?”
“He was so upset that he called out sick after the incident. Poor Mr. Romero has been with us for years and he gave a brief statement to the sheriff and then took ill.” The administrator lowered her voice and looked around. “Some around here are very superstitious, and desecrating a grave is considered bad luck. We may well have to go to lengths to coax him back here to work after somethin
g like this. But if you’d like to see the progress of the repairs, I can give you the plot coordinates so you can look for yourselves. We can have someone take you out there, if you’d like?”
“Thank you so much,” Sasha said, eyeing the building through the large picture window behind the administrator where groundskeepers seemed to be gathered.
“Then please have a seat.”
Sasha and Hunter crossed the room and waited as Mrs. Vance made the call. They kept their voices to a low murmur to be sure their conversation couldn’t be overheard.
“Romero has to have a locker or something in the groundskeepers’ house, wouldn’t you think?”
Hunter nodded and spoke in a low, barely audible rumble: “I also don’t think one very old man would be the security force for a powerful Vamp. I’m getting weird vibes from this lady, and all the groundskeepers walking toward the building seem like they could double for Marines.”
“I feel you,” Sasha said, watching as groundskeepers suddenly flanked the building. “Maybe I need to go to the ladies’ room and you should walk me, huh?”
Hunter nodded. “Excuse me, ma’am. My wife is a little overwrought by all of this. Would there be a ladies’ room where she can splash water on her face?”
Mrs. Vance offered Hunter a tight smile. “Why, yes, of course, poor thing. Just down the hall to your left.”
“Come on, honey,” Hunter said, lifting Sasha from her chair by the elbow for dramatic effect. “Let’s put some water on your face and then we can go see your late cousin’s grave, twice removed.”
The pair walked down the hall and calmly took the corner and then bolted. Thankfully, the massive plantation-style home was replete with shadows. They slipped into the nearest one cast by the ladies’ room entrance and came out inside the groundskeepers’ shed and then both stared at each other.
The scent of day-old human blood assaulted their noses. Quickly moving from locker to locker and trying to keep an eye on the windows, Hunter yanked locks off the doors with a quick turn of the wrist while Sasha rifled through the contents.
