Phantom Shadows

by Dianne Duvall

  “Think they’re bait?”

  “Could be. I’d hate for any of the network employees to lose a life or a limb when they arrive.”

  “I’ll join you when we return. We can sweep the entire compound. If anything is here, you and I will find it.”

  Chris was pulling on a peacoat when Seth teleported to his living room.

  Seth glanced around. Chris’s home was the antithesis of David’s. While David’s was pristinely neat, Chris’s was all chaos, greasy pizza boxes, discarded clothes, and dirty dishes. Since Chris always kept his office neat, Seth wondered if the man wasn’t simply too damned busy to do housework.

  “So . . .”

  Chris moved some crap around on the coffee table and dug out a pile of small, brand-new spiral notebooks. “Yeah?”

  “You ever consider having someone from the network’s cleaning crew come out here to tidy things up a bit?”

  Chris grinned. “The clutter aggravating your OCD?”

  Seth nodded. “It’s making me feel guilty as hell, too. Is it that you’re too busy to clean or too tired when you finally make it home?”

  “A little of both.”

  “You’re welcome to put it on the network’s dime.”

  Chris shook his head. “This place may look like shit, but at least I know where everything is. If someone comes in and starts cleaning, I’ll have to waste time looking for things.”

  “Just tell whoever does it to only worry about the dishes, the trash, and the clothes. Because . . . damn.”

  Chris laughed. “If you think this is bad, don’t look in the kitchen.”

  “I don’t have to. I can smell the fungus and the dried-up, crusted food from here.”

  Still grinning, Chris stuck the pads in his coat pocket and added a couple of short, stubby pencils.

  “At least think about it,” Seth requested.

  “I will. Okay, let’s book.”

  Seth teleported them both to the entrance of the compound’s main building.

  David’s blurred form raced toward them from the vicinity of the hangar. “Nothing so far.”

  While Chris and David exchanged greetings, Seth opened one of the front doors and motioned for them to enter.

  They showed him the dead soldiers first. Out came the first notepad and pencil. Chris didn’t enter the room. He merely studied it, taking in every detail and scribbling down notes.

  “Which ones do you recognize, David?”

  David pointed out the ones he had seen at the network.

  “Okay. What’s next?”

  They showed him the rooms Seth believed had temporarily housed the vampires.

  “You think they still have both of them?”

  “Joe may have been destroyed by the blood loss.”

  “I don’t think so. They probably wouldn’t have bothered to pick up his clothes if he had expired and there aren’t any lying around.”

  Good point.

  Chris exhibited no emotion until they showed him the first pair of the civilian bodies downstairs.

  Seth cast David a questioning glance when Chris’s face lost all color.

  “Do you know them?” David asked.

  Chris swallowed. “The man is one of my contacts. I think . . . I think the woman is his wife.”

  Or what was left of her. Emrys and his men must have tortured her to extract information from her husband.

  Chris left the room, walked to the next and halted in the doorway. “Shit!” He strode to the next room. And the next. And the next. Spun around. “They’re my contacts!” He turned and continued on to the next. “They’re my fucking contacts. All of them!” Judging by the moan of regret that hummed in his throat, he had caught sight of the children in that one. “And their families! Why the fuck did they kill their families? Their children?”

  “Leverage,” Seth stated.

  David sighed. “What better way to make a man talk than by threatening to harm those he loves the most?”

  Chris paced furiously for a moment.

  Seth didn’t have to read his friend’s mind to know guilt was eating him up inside.

  Pausing, Chris closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were trying very hard to erase those images from his mind. “Why leave them here like this?”

  “Only two reasons come to mind,” Seth said. “A message, warning you not to use such resources again to search for the mercenaries in the future.”

  “Or bait,” David added. “Seth and I are going to scour the place for explosives or other booby traps that may have been set to take us out while we were distracted by the bodies so we can be sure no harm will come to the cleaners when they arrive.”

  Chris nodded.

  “This wasn’t your fault, Chris,” Seth told him.

  “I recruited them,” he said, unconsoled.

  “At my instruction.”

  “You aren’t going to make me feel better about this.”

  Seth nodded. He could relate.

  “So how are we going to locate Emrys and the remainder of his men now? This was our biggest lead to date.”

  Seth met David’s gaze, knowing they had both come to the same conclusion.

  “I don’t see that we have any choice,” David said.

  Seth sighed. “We’ll have to let Ami lead us to them.”

  Chris stared. “Is there no other way?” He had read the files. He may not have seen what Emrys and his butchers had done to Ami, but he knew all of the details.

  “I think the one thing we can bank on is Emrys being wherever the vampires are. Since Ami was in close proximity to the vampires on numerous occasions during the attack on the network, she should be able to lead us to them.”

  Somber silence enfolded them, made worse by the sickening stench that constantly assaulted them.

  “Tell me something,” Chris said. “Have you guys ever dealt with a situation this . . . dark . . . before?”

  “Yes,” they answered simultaneously. Seth and David had seen trials the others would never believe.

  “Okay. Pity party is over. You guys go ahead and do your thing. I’ll start making calls.”

  “Make them outside.” Seth didn’t want the man to stay down here and stare at the bodies he felt he had placed in these rooms.

  “Is he dead?”

  Emrys, Donald, and Nelson stood in the observation room that overlooked one operating room on one side and a second on the opposite. Both of the rooms below looked very much like the ORs one might find in a hospital. Except the table in the center rested atop a titanium pedestal and was bolted to the floor with titanium screws coated in heavy concrete.

  The patient they currently studied was held immobile by steel manacles it would take a blow torch hours to cut through. Two at the wrists. Two just above the elbows. Two across the thighs. And two more at his ankles. A ninth steel manacle, covered in a strip of leather, kept him from moving his head.

  The short stubs of his dreadlocks poked out above it.

  A narrow sheet had been draped across his groin to spare the partners’ delicate feelings.

  Delicate my ass, Emrys thought, eyeing Donald resentfully. The man acted like he shit diamonds.

  He returned his gaze to the captive. “No. He’s sleeping.” Sedated actually, but that was need-to-know.

  Both vampires had been in pretty bad shape after their examination by Emrys’s medical team. The other one had left half his damn brain on the wall and hadn’t cleaned up as well, so Emrys had shown Donald and his yes-man this one first.

  “Why is he restrained?”

  Because he’s fucking Charles Manson times a thousand. They both were. “The torture the immortals subjected them to has driven them insane.” He had not yet confided that the virus tended to have that effect on any humans infected with it. He had removed that little tidbit from any and all information he had handed over to Donald, who may have wondered how exactly they would command an army of supersoldiers who were totally off their rockers.
/>
  Emrys would figure out the whole insanity thing later. After he made his first billion.

  He pressed a button on the wall beside him. “Proceed, Nate.”

  A man in scrubs and gloves stepped into view. A blue surgical mask hid his face. A cap the same color covered most of his light brown hair.

  Rolling a cart full of instruments along with him, he stopped beside the vampire.

  “Check this out,” Emrys said, smiling in anticipation.

  Picking up a scalpel, Nate pressed it to the vampire’s waist on the far side and carved a deep path across the vamp’s abdomen.

  Blood welled and spilled out of the wound that, on the battlefield, would have required the attention of a medic and taken a human soldier out of play. As they watched, the wound narrowed, the gaping sides drawing together as though magnetized, then sealing. Scar tissue formed, then faded. All in a matter of minutes.

  Donald stepped closer to the glass. “Holy shit.”

  Even that little pissant, suck-up Nelson moved closer to the glass and stared with wide eyes.

  Again, Emrys depressed the button. “Demonstration number two, please, Nate.”

  Nodding, Nate left their line of sight for a few seconds. When he returned, he wore protective ear phones and carried a Smith & Wesson M&P. He raised the semiautomatic pistol and aimed it at the vampire’s torso.

  Donald and Nelson both stuck their fingers in their ears.

  Pussies.

  “Fire in the hole,” Nate called and squeezed the trigger. Emrys had told him to leave the silencer off for effect.

  The vampire’s body jerked as a hole sprang open in his chest.

  Blood welled and spilled from the wound in thin rivulets that wound their way down the vampire’s sides to drip onto the table. Moments passed. A misshapen lump of metal slowly rose to the entrance of the wound and tumbled out.

  The ass-kisser gaped. “You are shitting me!”

  The hole closed, sealed itself, and began to scar over. It took longer than Emrys would’ve liked because the vampire was drugged (and would have taken longer if they hadn’t pumped him full of extra blood), but the men beside him were no less astonished.

  Donald turned to Emrys. “He’s still alive?”

  “Yes. After what he endured in the immortal’s compound, we thought it kinder to sedate him.”

  “I want a closer look.”

  “I thought you might. Follow me.”

  Emrys led them down to the room they kept the Black vampire in, glad Donald hadn’t asked to see the other one. The White vampire’s wounds weren’t healing as quickly because they had nearly OD’d him on the tranquilizer, so he was still in pretty rough shape. They’d slapped some makeup on him to hide the worst of it, but that wouldn’t fly up close and personal.

  Emrys waited while both men donned scrubs over their suits.

  Nate nodded to each of them in turn as they entered.

  Donald leaned over the recumbent form on the table. The vampire’s medium brown skin was smooth and free of wounds, the blood that had not yet dried and the expelled bullet the only evidence left that he had been cut and shot.

  Donald held his hand out for the scalpel. “May I?”

  Nate met Emrys’s gaze.

  Emrys nodded.

  When Nate handed over the blade, Donald sliced a deep gash across the vampire’s thigh.

  Like the others, the wound welled with blood, then closed and healed.

  “See?” Emrys said. “No special effects.”

  “Are they really as fast and as strong as you say they are?”

  “You saw the video. Did your analysts find anything to indicate the footage had been altered in any way or sped up?”

  Donald shook his head.

  “We are going to be so rich,” Nelson said, his expression full of awe as he stared down at the vampire.

  For once, Emrys agreed with him.

  And so did Donald, who at last met Emrys’s gaze. “Let’s talk.”

  Melanie felt strange in her new vampire-hunting togs. Almost as if she were playing dress-up. Instead of her usual jeans and Chuck Taylors, she wore boots and black cargo pants with a butt-load of pockets. A black turtleneck hugged her torso. A gun belt hung on each hip, sporting Sig Sauer P220s. Her breasts were flattened by a Kevlar vest. A bandolier sporting a dozen daggers draped across her chest. Several auto-injectors full of the antidote filled one hip pocket. Extra clips and auto-injectors containing a human dose of tranquilizer filled the other.

  Bastien paced the bedroom they shared, throwing off a real caged tiger vibe.

  “Is it that you’re pissed?” she asked finally. “Or are you just worried?”

  “Just worried?” he repeated. “We’re heading into the den of the men who shot you three times in the chest. Men who tortured Ami. Men who left piles of bodies behind at the compound Seth and David found. Just worried doesn’t cover it.”

  “I’m immortal now, Bastien. I’m also wearing a vest. And I’ve already been trained, so it’s not like I’m going into this blind or unprepared.”

  “Immortal doesn’t mean immortal. It means almost immortal.”

  “You’re going up against the same people,” she pointed out. “Why—”

  “I didn’t nearly die twice in recent weeks.”

  “If I’ve cheated death twice, I can cheat it again.”

  “Don’t joke about this.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think I’m not taking all of this seriously. I’m taking it very seriously. I know any of us could be killed tonight. I also know that having me around to both kick ass and serve as a medic will be to your advantage. And if, when we find Cliff and Joe, either one of them has gone over the edge, I know that I’m most likely the only one who will be able to talk them down and bring them back under control without hurting them.”

  “You think I can’t? I talked Vince down.”

  “I know. But his psychosis was different than that afflicting Joe. Joe’s is infused with a lot more paranoia. At times it makes him view everyone—even you—as the enemy. Everyone but me. Which is why it’s so important that I’m there when you find him.”

  Bastien ran a hand through his hair. “No wonder he took off when he thought you were dead.”

  She twisted and bent and walked around, trying to acquaint herself with the feel of the weapons and ammo and the slight shifting of the holsters and belts and weighted pockets. Were she still human, it would have taken her time to get used to it. The ammo alone was surprisingly heavy. But her increased strength made it a breeze.

  Bastien continued to pace restively.

  “Bastien?”

  He glanced over. “Yes?”

  When his eyes flared, she forgot whatever she had intended to say. “What is it?” she asked, uncertain what emotion had struck him.

  He raised his brows in question, his luminous gaze piercing as it traveled over her.

  “Your eyes are glowing,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t tell you.”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “It’ll just encourage you,” he said and smiled wryly. “You look hot all geared up for a fight.”

  A momentary brightness entered her being. “I do?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Yes, damn it.” He closed the distance between them and rested his hands on her hips. “Incredibly hot.” He drew her close until their noses touched. “I-want-to-rip-your-clothes-off-with-my-teeth hot.”

  Shivers of arousal rippled through her at those husky words. Their doorbell rang, squelching any notion of engaging in a quickie.

  So much soundproofing had been used to create this and the other quiet room that anyone inside—save Seth—couldn’t hear the knock of someone out in the hallway, so David had installed doorbells.

  “To be continued?” Melanie suggested.

  His hands tightened on her hips. “Are you sure you’re up to this? I’m not asking because you’re a woman,
or a doctor, or an egghead.”

  She grinned. He made egghead sound like an endearment.

  “I’m asking because you’re fresh from your transformation.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “And because I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I’m up for it,” she assured him.

  Dipping his head, he took her lips in a warm passionate kiss that carried with it his fear that it may be their last.

  “It won’t be our last,” she promised. “Can you feel my certainty of that?”

  “I can. How did you know what I was thinking?”

  Reaching up, she stroked his face. “I just know you.”

  The bell rang again.

  Bastien sighed. Backing away, he released her and crossed to the bedroom door.

  Tanner stood out in the hallway. “It’s time.”

  Bastien’s Second was garbed in typical vampire-hunting togs like Melanie, but with fewer blades.

  Something about him looked different, though.

  Melanie studied him. Same lean form. Same broad shoulders. Hair still cut as short as an accountant’s. Oh! “Did you get contacts?”

  He smiled, blue eyes no longer hidden behind spectacles. “No. David corrected my vision.”

  “Really?” That was so cool.

  He nodded. “He was worried that glasses or contacts would hinder me when I’m fighting, so he put his hand over my eyes, it got warm for a minute, then I could see perfectly.”

  Melanie looked up at Bastien. “Why couldn’t I have been given that gift?”

  He rubbed a hand up and down her back. “Even though you weren’t, you’re still a born healer.” He ushered her through the door. “Will you and the other Seconds be accompanying us?”

  “To a point,” Tanner said. “We’re going to monitor things from a distance.”

  Melanie wondered if that was wise. The humans at the network had pretty much gotten their asses kicked the last time.

  Bastien shook his head. “I think the humans should stay out of it. You’re too vulnerable.”

  “Not with the armored vehicles Chris and Seth commandeered for us.”

  “Do you even know how to drive one of those things?”