“Rory!” Sasha called, from behind.
Rory didn’t look back. They were simple humans, she reminded herself. They were beneath her attention. Playthings. That was all. Besides, they would never catch her.
She kept up the superhuman pace until the roof of the big house, with its planes and angles, came into view, looking ghostly in the weak moonlight. She maintained her speed as she strode across the acreage, into the house itself and upstairs to the bedroom that was nominally hers, that in practice no longer could be called hers. Their belongings and possessions were scattered everywhere.
She could smell them and the scent brought back the memory of being held between them, while their mouths and hands wandered and teased…. The memory was so sharp and clear, her body pounded with the sudden pressure of intense longing.
More than annoyed with herself, she yanked the big duffel bag out of the back of the closet and put it on the bed. Still moving faster than she should, she yanked open the two bottom drawers of the bureau and dumped the lingerie and shirts into the duffel bag in tangled bundles.
She told herself she should fold everything. The wrinkles and snarls would make unpacking impossible, later.
Instead, she sat on the bed next to the open duffel bag, her heart working far harder than it needed to. Fear was a runaway train in her mind yet each time she reached out toward the duffel bag, her hand would fall back into her lap.
“Coward!” she railed at herself. “It’s just sex!”
When Dante and Sasha reached the house and she heard their heavy treads on the stairs, the duffel bag was back in the closet and the clothing in the drawers. She let them seduce her, ignoring the intense pleasure just having them in the room with her gave her.
It was just sex. Good sex. That’s all it was.
Chapter Thirty
For three days, no one in the big house seemed to speak. It was as if an artificial layer of suppression lay over all of them.
Azarel locked himself away in the pool house, refusing food and any attempt to communicate with him. When Rory did see him, she was floored by the haggard shell of a man he had become. His face was drawn and his eyes haunted with a peculiar type of guilt that Rory thought she could understand.
Blythe’s twin daughters went to school with red eyes and Blythe looked as though she had aged ten years. Patrick couldn’t change, although Rory didn’t hear his well-trained voice ringing through the public rooms anymore. At night, he drove his hunting teams to work harder, longer and faster.
Even Rory could feel her energy sapping and was forced to feed early to compensate. She stayed silent while others muttered about Patrick’s relentless hounding, because the distraction was just what she needed. Being forced to focus upon the hunt meant she could safely ignore the thoughts plaguing her.
On the third night after Dominic and Francesca disappeared, Francesca staggered up the roadway toward the gate house, sending up an alarm among the guards and the paparazzi, for she was bloodied and exhausted.
The guards escorted her to the house and Winter was called for. Winter locked herself in Francesca’s room for an hour, while everyone gathered silently in the hall to wait. Blythe stood with her hand in Patrick’s. Neither of them spoke. They could barely tear their gaze away from the closed door.
Rory found herself moving toward them, speaking words she had never thought she would utter. “Are your children fed? Can I get them something?”
Blythe stirred. “They’re doing homework. We haven’t told them.”
“Not yet,” Patrick said, his voice strained.
“But thank you,” Blythe finished softly.
Rory nodded and moved back to where she had been standing. Her legs felt clumsy and stiff. Her mind was chaotic. What on earth had possessed her to say such a thing?
Then the door opened, relieving her from the need to analyze her own thoughts. Her mind was a stranger to her, lately. It was better to not think about such things at all.
Winter emerged and closed the door, preventing Azarel from ramming it open. “She’s sleeping,” Winter told him.
“I must—”
“Let her sleep and recover. She will be much better in the morning and you can talk to her then.”
Rory moved toward him, ready to physically force him back if he insisted upon entry.
Azarel dropped his chin. “I cannot stand this ache in me!” He whispered it, yet the corridor was almost completely silent so everyone heard him.
Garrett stirred and moved over to his side. He took his arm. “That ache is what tells you you’re human. Come on. You’ll be able to sleep now and the morning will get here that much faster.”
Azarel let him lead him down the corridor to the stairs. Garrett glanced at Nial as he passed by. Nial nodded.
In the strange way that such things happened, empathy for Azarel had swung around the dial. No one had cared for his excesses and unfeeling sampling of the human experience. Now, almost overnight, they felt sorry for him. Rory wondered if the Summanus had enough intelligence to learn that about humans. They would use it if they did.
Winter beckoned Nial toward the stairs. She wouldn’t speak outside Francesca’s door and risk waking her. So everyone went down to the main room in a long train, the silence holding, still. It was a strained silence, filled with expectation.
Winter lowered herself onto one of the ottomans with tired slowness and sighed, while everyone assembled around her. Some sat. Most stood in tight couples and threes, waiting. Sebastian went into the kitchen.
Rory stood at the back of one of the sofas. Dante and Sasha also took up separate positions around the back of the seating. For the last twenty-four hours, they had left her almost completely alone. Her mood had communicated itself to them.
The knowledge didn’t improve her mood at all.
Nial sat on the edge of the sofa directly in front of Winter, his hands gripped together between his knees and waited.
Winter looked at Blythe and Patrick, though. “I’m sorry. She didn’t see Dominic at all. They held her in the dark. She didn’t hear him, either. She tried calling, although if he was there, he wasn’t able to answer.”
Blythe dropped her head, her shoulders falling. Patrick pulled her into his arms and held her. His face was strained. “It was the Summanus?”
“Yes.” Winter shook her head. “They didn’t talk, of course. There were no demands. They kept her in a dark room with a locked door, until they came and pulled her out. She was blind-folded and carried. Sometime later, she was dumped on concrete. She found herself on the outskirts of Inceville and had to walk here because she had nothing on her, not even ID.”
Sebastian pushed a coffee mug into Winter’s hands and she gripped it tightly.
“There’s something else,” Nial said, studying her.
Rory nodded in agreement. Everything about Winter said she had more to say.
Winter nodded. “They tried to feed her. Raw meat of some kind. Apples, too, which she did eat.”
“They don’t understand cooking,” Roman murmured.
Nial shook his head. “That’s beside the point. They were actively working to keep her alive.”
“The Summanus would not have heard of the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war,” Rory said. “Even if they had, it would be meaningless to them.”
Nial glanced at her. “That just leaves leverage.”
Blythe gave a choking sound. Everyone else looked unhappy, too.
“Leverage in exchange for what?” Patrick said.
“Mom! Patrick!” It was Jake’s voice, from beyond the top of the stairs.
Rory could hear his footsteps. He was running.
“I think we might be about to find out,” Nial murmured, turning as everyone else was, to look at the stairs.
Jake rattled down the stairs two at a time, one hand clenching the bannister, the other waving a tablet. His face was peaked, his eyes wide. He was looking only at Patrick and Blythe. Then he n
oticed everyone else watching him and came to a halt.
“It’s alright,” Blythe told him. “Show us.”
Jake looked down at the tablet and tapped it, then held it up so that everyone could see the video running on it. The sound was soft for the little tablet didn’t have the power to fill the huge room with sound. The images said everything, though.
The dateline indicated the video was only an hour old. At the top of the screen were the giant fan blades of wind turbines, long rows of them. Many of the tall structures were canting to one side, their strength failing.
Leaping up from the base of all of them were bright red flames, intense and ferocious.
“That’s the wind farm next to the California aqueduct,” Patrick said.
“The fire is very red,” Kate said softly.
“Pyrrhus,” Sasha breathed.
Marcus whirled to face Nial. “You made more of it?” His tone was one of horror.
Nial twisted to look at Rory. “Check your supply,” he said shortly. “Now.”
Rory moved before she made the decision to. Her body propelled her toward the kitchen and the yard door beyond it. She was running by the time she reached the conservatory and she could hear heavy footsteps behind her that, from their rhythm and weight, she could tell were Dante’s.
It couldn’t be Pyrrhus. She had checked the stash the night after Dominic and Francesca had been taken. It had been untouched.
When she reached the garden shed laboratory, her heart squeezed. The door stood slightly ajar, showing a black inch of shadow between it and the frame. Rory threw the door open and turned on the light.
The security cabinet in the far corner was still standing, but only just. It was a mangled piece of metal. The Summanus had not bothered trying to open the lock. They had busted the doors off their hinges, tearing open the cabinet like a sardine can. The shelves inside were all empty.
Marcus shouldered his way past her, to stop in the middle of the floor, looking at the cabinet. Then he turned on his heels. “How much?” he demanded.
Rory swallowed. Her throat was remarkably dry. “Thirty five liters.”
Marcus’ face drained of color. He licked his lips and tried to speak. Then he strode out of the lab, hurrying. Just outside, she heard the unmistakable sounds of vomiting and Ilaria’s soft voice, filled with concern.
Nial stepped into the room and studied the wreckage. “No one heard anything.”
“They would have waited until we went hunting. Possibly last night, before they let Francesca go.”
“They let her go because they had what they wanted,” Sasha said from his spot by the door.
“And the guards didn’t notice?” Roman’s tone was withering. He was standing just outside, where the light fell on him.
“They’re used to keeping the paparazzi out.” It was Patrick’s voice, from even farther away. “Even we did not anticipate such a smart move from the Summanus.”
Marcus staggered toward the door and leaned with one hand against the frame. “Thirty-five liters,” he said weakly. “That’s enough to take out half the city. And I invented it.”
Nial shook his head. “This is not your fault, Marcus. I insisted upon having the safeguard. If anyone is to blame for this, it is me. If there is any price to pay for this, my vanity will pay it. I thought I could stay in control of the Pyrrhus. I was wrong.”
Sebastian squeezed his shoulder. “We were all wrong about the Summanus and what they are capable of.”
“We were wrong about one other thing, too.” Nial looked around the lab, then through the door. “Where is Azarel? Someone bring him to me.” His voice was as cold as the depths of the ocean.
* * * * *
While Kimball and Efraim were sent to round up Azarel, who had silently disappeared, Nial ordered everyone back to the main room. “We don’t stand here and discuss this out in the open,” he insisted. “They’ve learned how to understand human speech and no one knows how good their hearing is.”
“How do you know that?” Winter said sharply. “That they can understand us, I mean?”
“Because they made a deal with Azarel,” Nial replied, his tone still chilling, promising a bleak future for Azarel when he was found.
The sky lit up over the top of the hill behind Patrick’s house, the light leaping, playing across everyone where they stood on the grass in front of the garden shed. It was bright enough to make everyone turn to look and it glowed red.
Then the sound reached them, a low rumble that shook the buildings around them.
“Oh my God…” Marcus breathed.
Patrick ran. “We might be able to see it properly from the top of the house!” he cried. He moved fast.
Rory took off after him. Her heart had slipped loose and was beating independently. She couldn’t guess what this second explosion meant, although she had an uneasy feeling that none of them would like the answer.
She matched Patrick’s pace as he climbed the curving stairs, ran the length of the corridor to the back of the house and opened a door onto another stairwell, that climbed upward in two steep flights. He took the stairs three at a time, his long legs pumping.
Rory had to take them two at a time. She pushed herself to a better speed so she wasn’t left behind. She could hear others behind her, trying to keep up.
There was a heavy metal external door at the top of the stairs and Patrick hit it with his shoulder, as his fingers wrenched the lock around. The door slammed open and he pushed out onto the roof, turning to face to the east, where the sky was glowing.
Rory pushed the wavering door back open and stepped out onto a widow’s walk. Patrick was gripping the railing, staring into the night.
She turned to look. The red flames were visible from here, leaping to impossible heights and she pushed her hand against her chest, which was squeezing tighter. “What is it that burns?” she asked Patrick. “I don’t know this city.”
Nial stepped out onto the walk and Dante was right behind him, which was an impressive speed for a human. Dante was breathing hard. Nial wasn’t breathing at all.
Patrick looked at him. “It’s the Colorado River aqueduct.”
Nial turned his chin to look at Rory. “Pyrrhus burns in water?”
“Yes.” Her voice emerged thick and hoarse. “It burns so hot it evaporates the water around it.”
“There was an aqueduct next to the windfarm they just blew up,” Dante said, between breaths.
Others were emerging onto the walk, now, lining the edges and staring at the disaster.
Nial looked at Patrick. “You said it was the California aqueduct, next to the windfarm?”
Patrick nodded.
“They were going for the aqueduct, not the farm,” Dante said.
Nial looked down at the ground. His eyes closed. “They’re going for the water.”
Rory swallowed. “They don’t use water, while humans have to have it. Humans die without it. If they cut off the water supply….”
Patrick shook his head. “They almost have. They’ve just taken out two of the three aqueducts that supply all of the greater Los Angeles area.”
Nial lifted his head sharply. “Where is the last one?” he demanded, his voice sharp.
Patrick pointed, farther north-east. “It starts up there. The L.A. Aqueduct.”
* * * * *
Sebastian found a map of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system and Roman divided it up into chunks and assigned a section to pairs. “No one moves around alone,” he said. “No one should move on foot, either. There is over a hundred miles of aqueduct in the second section and nearly all of it is outside the city. You scan from your vehicles and you go fast.”
Rory took her section from him and Roman glanced at Dante and Sasha. “The humans should be left out of this,” he said quietly.
Rory smiled. “Tell them that.”
Dante and Sasha glared at Roman, daring him to repeat it.
Roman shook his head. “Then stay together, t
he three of you. If they really are going to destroy the aqueduct, then they’ll be mean to anyone trying to stop them.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that’s what they’re doing,” Dante said calmly. “Rory?”
“It’s extremely likely,” she admitted.
Roman shoved the marked map into her arms. “No dawdling,” he said and moved on to the next pair.
“My car is fastest,” Dante said.
“If I drive,” Rory pointed out.
Dante winced. “Just this once,” he conceded.
“I call shotgun,” Sasha said quickly.
“Done,” Rory replied.
“Fuck, now I’m in the back seat?” Dante cried. “I’m the biggest of the three of us!”
“You’ll act as a weight on the back wheels,” Rory told him serenely. “It’ll give me better traction.”
“I’ll get the weapons,” Sasha said.
“I’ll get the ammunition,” Dante said, sounding grumpy.
“I’ll get the ammunition,” Rory told him. “You get the car keys.”
* * * * *
Their section of the aqueduct was close to the Sylmar head of the second section, so with Sasha navigating with his phone, Rory directed the Viper onto the Sierra highway and let it leap forward, the engine growling. She didn’t worry about speed limits or the police. It was two in the morning and no police interceptor would be able to catch them, anyway. Not if she was driving. Her reactions were faster than Dante could ever manage, excellent driver though he was.
Dante complained about the cramped quarters in the back, until the aqueduct came into view. Then he started scanning the ghostly gray length of gigantic pipe, looking for anything that was out of place, or even moving.
“The highway doesn’t parallel the whole aqueduct,” Sasha said quietly, his face lit by the glow of the phone’s screen.
“Not a problem,” Rory said, as the highway curved away from the long pipe. She steered the viper off the shoulder and down onto the rocky ground, heading for the inspection vehicle track that ran along the fence line.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 30
